Cryptocurrency and Goldbugs

For years I’ve been listening to cranks talk about how fiat money is worthless and how we should return to the gold standard. Now, I’m not an economist, and I have only the most rudimentary understanding of economics as a field, but I do understand one simple economic principle: value isn’t inherent in anything, value is imposed by common interest. As I understand it, gold became a value standard in part because of its beauty but also because of its rarity. Aluminum (aluminium for you fans of the mother tongue) was once the province of kings because of its rarity before we learned to pull it out of the very soil. We prize things that are difficult to get, which is the argument goldbugs use to explain why paper, or “fiat” currency is trash. How can paper money be valuable when all we need to do is give ourselves permission to print more of it?

That brings us to cryptocurrency. In 2008 someone introduced the idea of a digital currency that requires computer resources to “mine” the complex blockchains that validate them as the real thing. The encryption is so complex and monitored that it’s allegedly impossible to hack. This artificial scarcity for cryptocurrency makes it difficult to obtain and therefore valuable. But why should anyone care about a complex series of bits and bytes on a hard drive? Well, because we said so, that’s why. Bitcoin isn’t any less arbitrary as currency than gold or paper currency. It’s valuable because we agree it’s valuable, and therefore can be used in exchange for goods and services by those willing to deal in it. Advocates say that digital currency ought to replace fiat currency because it’s stable (spoiler: it isn’t) and can’t fail like the US dollar (it can).

Why do I bring this up? Because of the hilarious news I saw about a man who lost a hard drive with something like eight thousand Bitcoins he had mined, currently estimated to be worth $760 million dollars. It turned out that his ex-girlfriend threw it away. The story itself is comedy gold, but the part that I think is lost on most people is the fact that cryptocurrency has still failed to live up to its promise of replacing physical currency as the standard. Note how the title of the article calculates the estimated value of the Bitcoins in US dollars.

Over a hundred years ago, the US pegged its monetary system to gold, and our economy was in a constant state of boom and bust because the value of gold isn’t as reliable as goldbugs claim it is. Silver didn’t do any better. What stabilized our economies the best was monetary policy, where smart professionals used their training and expertise to adjust economic conditions via interest rates and public policy. This smoothed out the market highs and lows so ordinary people like you and I didn’t suffer so much during market failures. In the 1980s, conservative lawmakers started rolling back those policies and regulations to give markets a freer hand at operating, and we got the Savings & Loan crash in the late 80s, then the 2007 market crash that made my 401k accounts disappear. Economic stability doesn’t come from pegging our currency to anything in particular, it comes from careful regulation and maintenance of our economic environments.

Last, but not least, cryptocurrency is a ponzi scheme. Unless you’re mining it yourself, buying cryptocurrency with your own money just enriches everyone up the chain who invested before you. Any benefit you get depends on others following you to buy it after you. If you are mining it yourself, then you’re depending on suckers to pay real money to inflate the value. It’s valuable because we think it’s valuable, not because it has any inherent value in itself.

There are other problems inherent with cryptocurrencies that invite criminal activity and international espionage, but they’re not really germane to the point I’m making here. I don’t do cryptocurrency in part because I don’t think it’s ethical, and largely because it’s not the magic spell its backers would have you believe. I hope you won’t fall for the scam, either.

Life Under Secularism

Pick any nation that is not secular or industrialized and compare it to one that is.

http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries

While you may find exceptions, practically speaking every nation that falls under the categories of both “secular” and “industrialized” will rank higher in terms of human progress. That means not just gross GDP but civil rights, quality of life, opportunities and so forth. Human progress means individuals are free to pursue whatever they feel makes them happy in such a way that they’re not in constant strife with their neighbors. While religion may have been a prominent part of their past it no longer has the power to compel people in these nations to be religious or to behave according to religious values. Religion is a choice, not an obligation. The most respected people in these societies are not those who wear their religion on their sleeve but people who contribute the most to their societies without needing to broadcast their religious affiliation. Religion has a largely ceremonial function in these societies and as a consequence a growing percentage of those societies identify with no religion.

People in these nations aren’t desperate. They’re not worried about where their next meal is going to come from or how they’re going to pay the bills coming due. They’re generally not worried about getting sick and losing everything because they can’t work or having to toil in a menial job until they die because there’s no way to pay the cost of living otherwise. What we’ve learned is that there’s a demonstrated correlation between inequality and religion.

https://www.russellsage.org/awarded-project/relationship-between-inequality-and-religion

The more inequality people perceive in their societies the more religious they tend to be. High inequality makes it hard for people to ignore their own plight. They can’t help but face the fact that they don’t have security in their daily lives, that a bad accident or an unexpected bill can tip them over the edge of hanging on into destitution. So they turn to anything that offers hope, even if it’s a lie. Religion feeds on fear and insecurity.

If you wish to nitpick the HDI rankings then look at others.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings

https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

https://worldinfigures.com/rankings

You may find exceptions where highly religious societies rank higher in specific indexes, but by and large the vast majority of places where it’s good to be alive are secular. That doesn’t mean religion is forbidden in these places, it means religion doesn’t dominate people’s lives. If civil rights is even remotely a concern for you then secularism is the way.

We also have contemporary research showing that religious indoctrination doesn’t promote progress:

This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914). In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of technical education in primary schools. I find that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower adoption of the technical curriculum and a push for religious education. In turn, religious education was negatively associated with industrial development 10 to 15 years later, when schoolchildren entered the labor market.

So why does the world work this way? In part, it's because modern governments are held accountable by the people they govern. When they're not then abuses and atrocities escalate. But it's also because people have the ability to compare promises made against promises kept. When governments make promises that they don't keep, those governments ultimately fall. But religions make promises [that can't be checked, let alone kept which is what makes them uniquely harmful in ways that governments aren't.

Here is independently verifiable evidence that human progress happens in spite of religion, not because of it. The goal is not to turn the world atheist; that's a choice everyone should be free to make for themselves. The goal is to turn the world secular, so no one is coerced into a choice they don't agree with. The end result is that the demand for religion diminishes with each generation as people discover they simply don't need it.

Labels and Semantics

Stop me if you've heard this before: "You can't be an atheist because atheists believe there is no God!" Maybe you've said it yourself, I don't know. Whether you've said it or simply heard it, I would like to explain why this statement is pointless no matter what definitions you've embraced.

Labels aren't important. They're really not. We use them as mental shortcuts to help us decide how to respond at a glance. You may be aware of my previous comments on mental scripting if you want a more in-depth examination on the topic, but the point here is that these shortcuts don't tell the whole story. Labels are descriptions of things, they're not prisons.

I am a liberal. To you that may mean I want to steal all your money so I can redistribute it around to make everyone poor. It may mean you think that I support killing babies to slake my lust for blood. If you're stuck in the Nineteenth Century you might think it means I support unregulated capitalism to cure all societal ills. To me it means I support progressive economic and social policies for the good of all. As a liberal I don't object to people being rich, but I do object to rich people using their wealth and influence to block the wellbeing of others. Identifying as a liberal is a label that I use as shorthand to describe my political positions, but any assumptions you make on specific positions are unlikely to be accurate unless you know me well enough.

Likewise with atheism. Atheism means I don't believe in any gods. This doesn't mean I claim to know there are no gods. If you insist that I can't be an atheist unless I stoutly deny the existence of gods then good for you, but that has nothing to do with me. I will continue to use the label of atheist as shorthand and I will not accept your authority to insist I must stop using it. I can tell you precisely what atheism means to me as well as why I identify that way and if you don't understand me after that then your insistence on playing semantic games will make me lose any interest in talking with you.

You can't pin me down with a label. You can't force beliefs on me simply because you think your definition of something is better than mine. I'm not going to stop being a liberal just because you think liberals drink the blood of the unborn, nor am I going to stop being an atheist because you think atheists can only say there are no gods. I understand why you'd prefer if I conform to your expectations, but I have no interest in complying. You can either choose to understand me or you can stick with your misconceptions. Either way, I accept no obligation from your assumptions.

The Injustice of Sexual Abuse

I want to apologize in advance for touching on a subject that's probably going to trigger a few people, so this is your advance warning: if discussions about sexual abuse, rape and the difficulty of prosecuting those crimes are likely to provoke some bad memories or feelings please skip this post.

---

Here in the US we have a problem with rape and sex abuse. The problem is that we're not treating it like a problem, just as an embarrassment that we'd rather see go away. That doesn’t mean addressing the problem so it doesn’t happen again or treating the problem like a genuine crime to be investigated and prosecuted like theft or murder, it means we just seem to throw up our hands and ignore the problem until people stop talking about it. For a while it seemed that the #MeToo movement would start moving the needle but I’m still seeing the same old attitudes and problems. Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein are being held accountable for their abuse but Brett Kavanaugh, Michael Shermer and David Silverman all look like they’re going to get away with a slap on the wrist at most. No real investigation, certainly no prosecution and no indication that this will ultimately end their careers. Today I encountered a fellow who argued that David Silverman is not a rapist because there’s no proof. Of course, Silverman admits to several of the encounters but insists they were consensual in spite of the testimony of the women who came forward to accuse him. It comes down to “he said, she said.”

That’s the problem. When it comes to personal testimony they’re not weighted the same. Rape and other sexual abuses aren’t like other crimes where it’s possible to dig until you arrive at the truth. Even where evidence has been collected there’s little hope of action. We’ve known for decades that rape kits aren’t being tested but in spite of that the status quo has not changed and doesn’t look like it’s going to be. Otherwise the evidence is ephemeral at best since bodies heal and witnesses tend to be scarce. The only thing the victims have left are the mental and emotional scars that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, and that’s difficult to display on trial because no one is willing to believe them. We’re willing to blame and convict pedophile priests without the kind of physical evidence we demand in adult cases. Is that really holding to a consistent standard of evidence? When so few rape charges lead to conviction is it any wonder that women give up trying to pursue justice for it? Women who accuse their rapists more often end up getting more abuse heaped on them as society blames the victims.

To add insult to injury, efforts to put a dent in the frequency of rape and sexual abuse have likewise failed. We’d much rather tell women they shouldn’t get raped than to teach men to not rape. We’d rather blame women for dressing provocatively or flirting or simply not taking enough notice of their surroundings than blame men for abusing them. I see more outrage over claims of false accusations than I do rape itself. When it’s pointed out that women get raped regardless of how careful they are, how modestly they dress or how directly they say “no” it’s disregarded. We don’t want to hear it. We’re not willing to lay the blame where it lies: on the rapist rather than the victim. Instead we demand evidence we know can’t be presented because it’s not a crime that leaves the same kind of evidence. We blame the woman for making the accusation because one false accusation somehow invalidates all rape accusations. We protect the men because their privilege matters more than women’s safety and call that justice.

As a man I am ashamed of my gender. I know this makes me a “bleeding heart liberal.” I know I’m a “social justice warrior.” I see no reason to reject either label because I don’t see these as bad things. There’s a moral rot at the heart of our society revealed by how often men get away with rape and sexual abuse and I want to see it come to an end. If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right. Use all the slander and libel against me you want, I don’t care. I refuse to provide cover to systemic failings in our society.

America the Tainted

The Chicago Tribune published an opinion piece called "Your response to Trump’s racist ‘shithole’ comment will be remembered." For those who weren't paying attention or enough time has passed for that day's scandal to have faded from memory, the comment in question was a complaint about protections for immigrants from "shithole" countries, namely Haiti, El Salvador and African nations. It was not an unusual comment from Donald Trump, serial racist that he is. The man has no respect for anyone who isn't white, rich and filled with flattery for Donald Trump. But the fact that what was surely an off-hand remark isn't unusual has no bearing on how reprehensible it is. He not only denigrated the kind of people who come from those countries but the countries themselves. That's why there's been so much public outcry and demands for apologies from dozens of nations around the world.

My response to Donald Trump?

You are not my President.

Donald Trump may be my elected leader through dint of a legalistic interpretation of our election laws but during an election year with historically low voter turnout, nearly three million more voters voted for Hillary Clinton over him, and I'm one of them. But still, the law of the land says that based on the votes he got in the states he won he's the President. Fine. He's still not my President. He may get to set policy, and has done a historically bad job of that, but his comments do not represent me. When he engages in a flame war with North Korea on Twitter he doesn't represent my interests. When he defends neo-Nazis who march for white Christian supremacy, he doesn't speak for me. When he degrades women and insults minorities I disavow him. When he brags about installing conservative judges who have no qualifications and tax bills that enrich him and the nation's wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class he's not a leader.

Donald Trump does not represent me.

This is a dark time for our nation, one that hopefully does not presage a repetition of previous dark times we've endured. However we come through it I have hope that we will survive intact and that we'll learn not to blindly trust con men who make big promises about what they think we want to hear with no plan to fulfill them. However we come through it history will record this as a blot that we inflicted on ourselves by being too eager to listen to men pandering to our darkest desires so they can manipulate us for their own ends. I'm ashamed to be a part of it for all that I did my part to avoid it. My voice was not enough.

Do I sound angry? I hope so, because I am. This is not my America. This is not my nation. These are not my people. These are a fringe element who managed to lie their way into power and are doing as much damage as they can before they're forced out. This is not the world I want to live in and certainly not the world I want my children to inherit. This cannot be allowed to continue, and I hope enough people recognize this to help me stop it. I hope you'll join me.

What is America?

First, because so many of us seem to have forgotten it, a reminder of what America used to be.

For those who have forgotten or never knew, this is what's inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, the gift we put on display to represent what America is supposed to stand for. We were never a nation of nobility ruling over serfs. We were never a nation of priests passing judgment over the laity. This was never supposed to be a club where you had to pay to get in. It was supposed to be a land of refuge where no one could tell you which god to worship or which master to serve. Whether you were poor or rich, brown or white, godly or heathen this was supposed to be a place where you could come to find your own way and not have to conform to anyone else's demands about who you are.

Now we've entered an era where all of that has changed. Now we're afraid of newcomers, suspicious of strangers if their skin is brown or they pray to strange gods. If they eat the wrong foods or say the wrong prayers then we feel the need to dehumanize them, to describe them as rapists and murderers and thieves. We no longer want the tired and poor, the huddled masses of the world seeking respite on our shores. If you don't already have money to add to our coffers then we consider you a drain on our resources, a parasite seeking a free handout that you haven't earned. Nevermind that our own ancestors were unlikely to be rich when they first arrived. We've forgotten what it means to have empathy and compassion and in their place we're promoting distrust.

This last election cycle has torn up the country and left us bleeding. It brought forward all of our darkest impulses and we decided that they would somehow keep us safe. All we have to do is hurt others before they can hurt us and we'll be okay. We have to keep out strangers unless we like the color of their money and that will make everything okay.

Why not build a wall?

Why don't we ask the East Germans how well they think walls protect borders. Of course, their wall only covered 66 miles in total. Our wall would need to cover thousands of miles with constant surveillance. And according to the people in a position to know best it won't actually work. "Rather than depending on a wall, Mr. Kelly said the key to stopping drug smugglers was to attack the problem at its source." That means better enforcement, yes, but also charitable aid. Empathy and compassion, the very things we've repudiated, so that's not going to happen.

Don't you care about illegal immigration?

In as much as I care about the law, yes. But illegal immigrants aren't cartoon monsters with claws and fangs. They're not evil masterminds bent on destroying our way of life. They're not here to take away our jobs or replace our good, white stock with their dirty brown mongrels. They're people who are desperate enough to take a chance at living illegally in the US on the promise of better pay and a better standard of living. Most of them didn't even cross illegally, they just overstayed their visit. No wall will prevent that. But their very desperation is what brings them there and they know they're likely to find someone willing to exploit it. So do we punish people for their desperation or do we crack down on the ones who exploit it? For years I've been pointing that out but for some strange reason no one ever wants to punish the exploiters.

We've become the United States of Bigotry. Muslims aren't like us so we're laying the groundwork to ban them. Whites are quickly becoming a minority so we're cracking down on minorities. If you don't look like us, sound like us or smell like us then we don't want you to vote, speak or be seen. If you're willing to put up with a certain amount of abuse and stay quiet then we'll let you do ugly jobs for illegally low wages but we're working to make everyone desperate enough to work for those wages so that incentive won't be around for long. And we justify it because it's not happening to us, we're just trying to protect ourselves. We're trying to restore some lost glory that went away not because of trade, not because of illegal immigrants but because the world has changed and we won't listen to anyone willing to explain why we're not going to get it back the way it was.

We're in a lot of trouble, and it's going to get a lot worse. I can only hope that we remember who we truly were before we lose it all.

Revisiting the Existential Threat to Western Society

I've argued this before but the topic is still hot so I'm going to approach it from a different perspective.

Believe it or not, Muslims are not inherently bad or evil. It's one thing to challenge their claims and criticize their actions when they behave badly, but that's not what a lot of the criticism is doing. I don't like vilifying Muslims as a group for a number of reasons. One is because they're not a majority in my society the way Christians are, so it's not as easy to punch up. Were I living in Iran or Saudi Arabia that would be a different story, but that would carry its own set of problems worthy of criticism in their own right. Vilifying Muslims in a Christian-dominated society doesn't promote secularism or anti-theism so much as give shade to Christian agendas. Even if you're not intending to promote Christian supremacy, unintended consequences are still a thing. If we want a post-religious society then I strongly believe that secularism needs to be our goal, not anti-theism. When enforced correctly secularism can't be so easily subverted to promote a sectarian agenda. Anti-theists can get so caught up in focusing on a particular threat that we ignore all others.

Another reason I don't support vilifying Muslims or other minority groups is because in spite of our recent gains atheists are still a minority. If there's anything that Christians and Muslims agree on is that atheists are a threat to religion. If you think that Christian society is a valid defense against Islamic aggression what you're doing is empowering Christians to fight against ideological threats. That necessarily includes us. Speaking as an atheist, if you think that Christians won't use the power we give them to shut us down with the same zealotry they'll use against Muslims you're sorely mistaken. We are the original Other, the true existential threat to all religious agendas. We may not use violence to achieve our ends the way Christians and Muslims do, but we are no less dangerous to their goals.

Christian extremists have been looking for ways to roll back the clock on the Enlightenment, to overturn secularism and restore their religious power in Western society. We should not help them achieve their goals by undermining secularism in our zeal to oppose Muslim terrorism. It will not stop with Muslims.

So think again before you share a post from Breitbart, World Net Daily and other right-wing sources. Look to see what else they have to say about religion in general; are they just anti-Islamic in particular or do they promote secularism in general? If the latter then go ahead and share it and I'll support it when I see it. But if it's just the former then most likely they're promoting a Christian agenda and no matter how much you may hate Islam or Muslims, that's not going to help anyone who isn't a Christian. Like me.

Post-Election Reactions

Help We Can Do Without

I voted today, and I'm glad I did. I couldn't find the ballot they sent to me until my wife kindly informed me it was probably buried in the pile of mail I hadn't noticed. But I dropped it off the completed form this morning on my way to work and all is well with the world. I hope.

Something in particular caught my attention, though. Now that the election is finally almost over and we're just about done with the Wikileaks' dump of hacked emails attacking Hillary Clinton they've gone and made a curious claim that they weren't trying to harm anyone in particular, they just wanted to provide a service by informing the general public. Nobody's buying it, and no one should. Here's why:

• They had this information back in March, long before the nomination was decided, before but carefully timed the releases in such a way to do maximum damage not to a specific candidate but to a specific party.
• They did not visibly work toward exposing corruption in both major parties. They just shrugged and said because no one had tried hacking the RNC it wasn't their problem.
• What they did release was overhyped but ultimately very weak tea. The most common comparison was with sausage: you don't want to watch it being made, but that doesn't make it bad. What we learned from those emails is that Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff are seasoned politicians, not that they'd actually done anything illegal or unethical.
• Even though they also claimed they didn't have any information damaging to the RNC, Assange admitted to having information on Trump. He claims he didn't release it because what Trump was saying to the media was far worse than anything he could release. He hasn't given us the opportunity to decide that for ourselves.

So I call bullshit on any claims of objectivity or being nonpartisan. This was very clearly a hit job on a candidate and a party that they didn't want to win the election today. Between Wikileaks and James Comey it's clear that if any rigging is going on it isn't in favor of the Democratic Party.

The Criteria For Public Ownership Of Industry

The public option for health care keeps coming back to haunt us and we have private health insurance to thank for it. Back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act was passed without a public option it was assumed that the issue was dead for another generation, but naturally we underestimated the obstinence of Republican opposition to any government program that might stand a chance to help people. "Obamacare" works...but only where it's allowed to work. So here we are seven years later right back where we started.

Naturally, the right-wing media is freaking out. They're trotting out all the old favorites, accusations of "government overreach" and "socialism" and the like which prompts a discussion about capitalism and government ownership of industry. Sadly, the Soviet Union demonstrated that it is possible to have too much control, but we've seen over and over again here in the US what happens when you don't have enough. Clearly we need to strike a balance which means we're going to need to come up with some criteria on which industries ought to be public domain and which ones should be run by private interests. To get the ball rolling I came up with three:

1. Is it an obvious need?

This ought to be a no-brainer, but we're Americans and by the gods we'll defend the right to be stupid no matter the cost! But I digress. Charging people for things they can't do without creates a captive market, ripe for abuse. I have no problem with recouping costs, but such industries shouldn't be treated as profit ventures the way health care is today. We have an entire industry that bases its profit model off the suffering of our fellow human beings. How is this moral, especially when we have proven alternatives that work better? Elaborate disinformation campaigns insist that capitalism is the only way to be efficient and government-run health care creates "death panels" but when put under scrutiny we find it's the other way around.

2. Is there an obvious reason why the government shouldn't be allowed to participate?

It doesn't make sense for the federal government to take over production of bath toys. There's no compelling need for it unlike, for example, power and communications. While the government has a vested interest in regulating the production of bath toys to make sure they're safe for the public, toys aren't a necessary commodity so it can benefit from competition without too much concern about oligarchic collusion. If bath toy manufacturers get together and decide to artificially inflate prices to increase their profit margins, consumers can opt not to buy them without significant risk. The same cannot be said for critical pharmaceutical products.

3. Is research or delivery hampered by profit margins?

Telecommunications haven't been making very big strides in the last decade. The core technology is decades old and at this point we're seeing diminishing returns. If anything, current business models are looking to eke the most money out of the least service, and delivery has been stymied in areas where there's simply no profit to be found to establish infrastructure. However, that doesn't mean the need isn't there. This is why we have public as well as private mail service, because private delivery companies don't like going out to remote locations. Clearly, there's room for both to co-exist.

I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Can you think of more?

The Enemy of Good

I've noted previously that I'm skeptical of Hillary Clinton as a progressive. In the six months since I wrote that, four other people threw their hats into the ring as candidates for the Democratic Party nomination including Bernie Sanders. Presently, Bernie is my preferred candidate as he best represents me on the issues I care about. Everywhere I look he continues to lead the pack as a progressive, liberal or whatever label you choose to apply.

Clinton's campaign is a juggernaut, with campaign money that dwarfs all competition and political endorsements from all over. Although a lot can happen between now and July, safe money continues to be on Hillary Clinton as the heir apparent. This is now her race to lose, which prompts another look at her as a politician and as a candidate for President of the United States. In the last six months I've discovered a few things about her, some of which surprised me and others that don't.

What I care about the most is not who slept with whom, what scandals may surround a politician or what dirt can be dug up on someone. No one is perfect, so I have to make allowances for the fact that my candidates won't be as well. If their misbehavior is relevant to the issues they claim to value then certainly I'm willing to cluck my tongue over the Family Values candidate caught having multiple affairs. On the other hand, if you spent years trying to dig up dirt on someone but investigations keep finding no wrongdoing then it's clear that what you're doing is engaging in a witch hunt. The email scandal is settled. All that remains is where Clinton stands on the issues.

Hillary Clinton on the issues is where I'm both surprised and not surprised. In both her voting record and her campaign platforms Hillary comes across very solidly as a liberal. In fact, when you compare her to Bernie she's closer to his position than any other Democratic candidate including Martin O'Malley and Jim Webb. I'm not going to bother with former Republican governor Lincoln Chaffee because he's not even on the radar. The only place where Hillary doesn't shine as a liberal is on military and foreign policy where she's one of the most hawkish candidates around.

There are, of course, still problems. First and foremost there's a strong movement for Anybody But Hillary which is popular among both Republicans and Democrats. Yes, Democrats. Do you think the Clintons could suffer through two decades of scandals and not have that taint stick in people's minds? She's untrusted because of her corporate connections, her history with Wall Street, her war-mongering, allegations of corruption and criminal behavior and so on and so forth. Clinton opponents have thrown everything at her in the hopes that something would stick, and for some people that's enough to bias their thinking. As I observed previously some of it is deserved, such as her relationship with special interests, but in this campaign she's come out with some credible proposals to combat those interests (author's note: this link is best viewed in privacy/incognito mode). People are still skeptical of her apparent change of heart on issues like Wall Street regulation and trade deals, and they should be. But the problem runs so deep that there are committed progressives who would normally vote for a Democratic nominee have pledged to vote third party rather than for Hillary Clinton.

The phrase for this is the Nirvana fallacy or "making best the enemy of good." So while I would rather see Bernie Sanders take the Democratic nomination and become the next President of the United States, I won't reject Hillary Clinton as the candidate who next best represents my interests. She promises to be more of a liberal and less of a centrist than Barack Obama has been, and that's still progress to me.

Modern Voter Suppression

For forty years it's been an article of faith that low voter turnout favors Republican candidates. It's one of the reasons why people attribute more electoral victories for Republicans in mid-term election seasons than for Democrats. The truth is that low voter participation favors extremism and further polarizes our politics, but that's neither here nor there. For at least the past twenty years Republicans have been working to discourage voter participation under the guise of voter fraud.

By the most amazing of coincidences, the voter ID laws being passed by Republican state majorities tend to discourage minorities and the poor more than anything else. Of course, conservatives are quick to argue that these laws aren't racist at all, that people disenfranchised by these laws are too lazy. But the fact is that these laws are responsible for lower voter participation among Democratic-voting citizens. The fact that it also tends to target voters who are minorities is apparently just icing on the cake; the racism is incidental rather than intentional.

Republican defenders of these laws insist it's about fairness and combatting fraud, but since Republicans have spent millions of dollars trying to prove voter fraud over ten years and have found only a handful of cases to support their claims, this argument falls flat. Instead we should listen to what Republicans are saying among themselves when it comes to these laws:

• “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine.”
• “Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” (emphasis mine)
• “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ”
• "Republicans have been slow to realize how early voting helps the Democrats. Most top Republican political operatives firmly believed, right up to the morning of the 2012 election, that Mitt Romney was going to win."
• “the law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt.”
• "In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats."
• South Carolina GOP State Rep. Alan Clemmons, author of the voter ID bill, received an email from a supporter of the voter ID law, Ed Koziol of Greenville, suggesting that if black voters received a reward for obtaining the voter ID “it would be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon.” To which Clemmons replied, “Amen, Ed, thank you for your support.” Clemmons also said he did not recall “distributing packets of peanuts with cards that read ‘Stop Obama’s nutty agenda and support voter ID,’” McClatchy reported, despite prior testimony to the contrary.
• "Yes. Absolutely. And the problem is that there hadn’t been that much activity with voter identification," Posner said. "Maybe we should have been more imaginative….We weren’t really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disfranchise people entitled to vote."

So yes, Republicans can argue that this is really about fairness but if your idea of fairness is to discourage a few cases of fraud at the expense of hundreds of thousands or millions of voters, I really have to question your motives.

Hillary Clinton and the Democrats

The Democrats have a problem in the US. Liberals have been the media's favorite punching bag for quite some time, and a lot of Democrats have been running away from it for that reason. That leaves at least a quarter of the nation with little to no representation as the Democratic Party pushes farther to their right in a bid to poach the moderates edged out by right-wing extremists in the Republican party.

Enter The Third Way, a think tank with corporate ties looking to support the Democratic Party's move toward the center. They're distinctly against populist rhetoric and they want us to play nice with Wall Street and other corporate giants who have repeatedly demonstrated a lack of interest in playing nice with anyone else. They're closely aligned with the Clintons in the aftermath of Bill's administration and have dominated the conversation among Democrats ever since.

An attitude that I find infuriating in American politics is the notion that whatever's good for business must necessarily be good for America. The Third Way seems more interested in promoting business interests at the expense of all else, even if it means reduced consumer protections, growing income inequality or skyrocketing poverty. This is why I've been leery of Hillary Clinton ever since she became Senator Clinton and voted like a Third Way Democrat. In trying to please everyone she abandoned her liberal roots and tried to play to the center. Conventional political wisdom said it was the smart thing to do at the time.

Now of course Hillary Clinton has thrown her hat in the ring as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. After electing the first black President a lot of Americans are talking about how it would be nice to have a female President, too. The problem is that we don't need people of specific identities to lead us, we need people of specific qualities and leadership to lead us. As much as I approve of electing a female President I don't approve of electing just any woman. Any candidate for political office, whatever their race or gender identification, needs to be qualified for the job before I vote for them. If they already have a voting record I want to see that they're representing me. I don't want another Obama who promises to fight for single payer health care and the restoration of civil rights only to turn around and pretend he never made those promises.

I have a lot of respect for Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton's Administration. He's a liberal, an economist and a keen political analyst. In his examination of Hillary's latest bid for President he acknowledges that she's disappointed liberals but reminds us of her roots and points out her liberal credentials aren't the problem. There's a reason that the Clinton-era health care reform debate lambasted the administration's proposal as "Hillarycare." The question is whether or not she'll stand up and fight for us again the way she did as First Lady? Can she remember her commitment to equal opportunity and upward mobility? Robert seems to imply she can, but it remains to be seen.

To her credit, Hillary Clinton is pulling to the left in an attempt to convince us that she hasn't forgotten liberals. Of course, Obama did the same before he tacked right and displayed a horrendous fetish for unrequited bipartisanship. I knew from the beginning that he was going to be a centrist and at the time I said "I'm not expecting more than a brief respite from the nightmare of the last eight years." I think that's what we've gotten, even though I was thankfully wrong about the economic crisis being worse than the Great Depression. Will Hillary be the one to turn it around? Not if she continues to be Senator Clinton, Third Way Democrat.

Let me be clear, I will not attempt to "punish" the Democratic Party if I don't get a more liberal nominee. I learned my lesson with Nader in 2000 and I'm not doing it again. There's no one capable of winning the Democratic Party nomination who is nearly as bad as the least objectionable candidate for the Republican Party nomination. The Republicans will not get my vote again unless they return to the politics of Abraham Lincon and Teddy Roosevelt rather than Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. But I am getting sick and tired of holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two evils.

Why Does the Chapel Hill Atrocity Matter?

It's only the second day since Craig Stephen Hicks and a lot of atheists are already tired of hearing about it. Although the police have been careful to avoid accusing Hicks of a hate crime, everyone else has been quick to leap to that judgment. Of course, rather than blame anti-Muslim sentiment everyone assumes that atheism itself acted as motivation for Hicks' crime.

We've been saying it for a while but it needs repeating: atheism doesn't inform our actions any more than not believing in unicorns informs yours. That doesn't mean religion can't be a factor in an atheist's behavior, it means that our non-belief isn't justification for action. Religion can still motivate us to react, to speak up or act in response to something that believers are doing. It can make us fear for our safety, and fearful people are more likely to lash out. History shows us several examples of this.

In 1793 French revolutionaries passed a law outlawing religion and religious belief. This anti-religious behavior added to the atrocities that history now calls the French Reign of Terror, as priests and devoutly religious people of all social and economic stations were tortured and murdered. In 1917 Russian revolutionaries formed the Soviet Union and seized all property and wealth of the elite including churches, beginning an era where religion was discouraged, suppressed or drafted to support the leadership depending on circumstances. In 1966 Mao Zedong duplicated the Soviet uprising through his "Cultural Revolution" with similar actions and results. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh and began a Communist dictatorship that oppressed religion and cultural minorities alike, classifying people into categories and starving or executing them as they saw fit.

Atheists will quickly point out that these actions were political, and they're correct. But the fact that religious followers were explicitly targeted can't be ignored. Atheism doesn't justify this, but humans can use any excuse to misbehave as long as we have reason to categorize people as "other." Why do I bring this up? Not to suggest that atheism is a religion or that it's just as guilty of promoting atrocities as any religion. It's to point out that even though we don't believe in any gods or follow any religion we can still rationalize our bad behavior, just as Craig Stephen Hicks did in Chapel Hill.

Human nature being what it is, we'll probably never completely excise our violent urges, and I'm not sure that we would be advised to do so. It's one thing to channel such urges into productive action, but another to remove them completely. It's not that these urges are bad in themselves, it's that allowing those urges to provoke us to bad behavior is the problem. What we need is not a lobotomy, we need to learn self-discipline. Atheism is not a cure for violence or any other bad behavior, it's just one less excuse for it. We can still find motivation through greed, fear, politics and so forth but we can't claim a divine mandate for it.

Given our tendency to rationalize our behavior I think it's in our best interests to police ourselves rigorously when someone suggests we need to kill all the Muslims or lock up all the Christians. No, it's not something that comes up often but I do see it from time to time. And when I do I'm quick to stomp on it. For one thing it's a deeply immoral thing to suggest, and for another it doesn't solve the problem. Religion spreads through indoctrination and justifies itself through fear. We can try to suppress indoctrination by force, but that simply aggravates the fear. Indoctrination goes underground and gets enhanced by fear of discovery and oppression. It didn't take long after the fall of the Soviet Union for the Russian people to return to their old religious habits, minus the aristocracy. Their reasons for clinging to religion for comfort were never taken away, in spite of the promises made by Communists. The Socialists of Western Europe offer a much better model by taking away the insecurities that drive both conflict and religious devotion.

Liberals have been betrayed

Very recently Obama's administration released a four trillion dollar budget proposal for 2016 that for the most part is not going to happen. Don't let the numbers fool you; just because it's a big number doesn't mean it's either irresponsible or unfeasible. Total economic output from the United States in 2014 was close to seventeen trillion dollars with a surprisingly strong fourth quarter growth of five percent, up from prior estimates. What Obama has proposed spends less than a quarter of the nation's wealth on national priorities. Maybe that still seems excessively high to you but there are a lot of things that still need to be addressed with no one but the federal government even considering addressing them. Four of the five of Obama's proposal are things that liberals like me have been waiting impatiently for since he first took office in 2009. So why do I call this a betrayal?

Doyle McManus of the LA Times had this to say about the President's 2016 budget: "...it's merely the president's announcement of what he'd do if Congress weren't there. It's a party platform with numbers." In other words he's reminding us that this isn't a serious proposal and reminds us along with everyone else that nothing in this budget is likely to pass with the exception of the defense spending that the Pentagon asked for. With both sides of Congress held by the Republican Party who have been almost pathologically hostile to Obama since he won the 2008 election, there's really no hope that they're going to take anything from him seriously. Of course, most of us figured that out six months into 2009. So my problem is that this is the budget proposal Obama should have been making every year since he took office.

Only now in his last two years of office has Obama come forward to once again champion liberal causes and liberal priorities. Only now is he willing to stand up to Republican opposition and show the nation what might be. I will be the first to admit that the budget he's set forth is a good one for liberals to fight for, with eighty percent of it promising things we can get behind. Only none of it will be possible now and both Obama and his administration knows this very well. This is my problem. This is a glorious proposal, only presented to us six years too late long after the damage has been done and there's no chance of negotiating even a slight compromise.

Obama's not the only one at fault here. Republicans have been fighting tooth and nail from the beginning, doing everything in their power and setting extraordinary new precedents in the lengths they'll go to in order to prevent even the appearance of success by Obama or the Democrats. They've now passed their fifty-fifth bill to repeal Obamacare in the House, and I'm sure the Senate will quickly ratify it. However, Obama will veto the bill and I don't expect they'll have the votes to overturn that veto. And again, six years after we started discussing health care reform they've still offered no viable alternatives to the Affordable Care Act, not even one they themselves are willing to vote for. We spent years without a budget because Republicans did everything to block it, and even when Democrats had a solid majority in both the House and Senate Republicans abused their privileges to make sure as little as possible could be done. I was deeply skeptical at first, but Pelosi managed to pass a remarkable amount of progressive legislation in the House in the first two years of Obama's administration that died in the Senate because Senate Republicans filibustered all of it. There was only a two week period during which Senate Democrats had a guarantee of cloture and most of that was during a recess. So Republicans have been frightfully effective at blocking Democratic legislation and Obama's policies and there wasn't much the administration could do about that.

What Obama did try to do was naive. He kept trying to compromise. He didn't try to negotiate toward the middle, he opened negotiations from the middle position allowing Republicans to drag him farther and farther to the right. Only the GOP's own incompetence saved Obama from even greater disaster when they were given ninety percent of what they demanded and still shut down the government over the last ten percent. Liberal priorities were abandoned for the majority of Obama's time as President, and I'm not going to forgive him for that.

The economy is doing better now, but eight years after the financial crash we still haven't recovered to the same level we were before it. Paul Krugman's prediction of an economic lost decade has come true. The loss and hardship inflicted on the nation was easily avoidable, and Obama shares a portion of the blame for that just as much as the Republicans. So now Obama steps forward with the plan we needed from the beginning and it's all for show, intended to make Republicans look bad as they made him look bad. It's intended to convince liberals that we haven't been abandoned by the Democratic Party after all, that if we put them back in power we'll get the priorities we've been demanding all along. But I doubt that very much, especially if the Democratic candidates are people like Hillary Clinton who are part of the so-called Third Way that focuses on centrist priorities rather than liberal ones.

We need someone like Elizabeth Warren who will fight for us without reservation, not another Clinton who will make pretty speeches and promote back room deals. To counter the extremism on the right we need someone who will push back just as hard toward the left. We need balance in our politics, but right now it's totally out of skew. Obama, in presenting this proposal, has tipped his hand about just how badly our priorities are off-center and the irony is that he's one of the primary reasons why. His "art of the possible" never truly conceded that Republicans would refuse to negotiate in good faith long until after the rest of us had figured it out. Does he think we're going to trust him now, that we're going to believe he's on our side after all?

No, Mr. President. You're far, far too late to kiss and make up now.

Republicans are back in power. How did we get into this mess?

Here we are in Obama's last leg in office as President of the United States, and he faces hostile majorities in both the House and Senate. The Supreme Court still has more conservatives than liberals on the bench and they're fairly unpredictable in what sweeping new legal precedents they're going to set. How did we get here? Democrats haven't done well in midterms, but they were also the majority for a while. Every party that's in the majority tends to not perform as well during midterms. This was also true of the Republicans: they lost their majorities in both the House and Senate in 2006 and Bush faced a hostile Congress, albeit a Congress who was willing to give him what he asked for. Obama won't receive that much consideration.

How did we get here? It's been suggested that the problem is with liberals, that we don't vote enough. I disagree with this. I think the liberals are the reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party because we know we really don't have anywhere else to go. If we split away from the Democrats and head for the Greens or Socialists our first-past-the-gate electoral system will punish us for it by allowing Republicans to take the majority. We're awfully gunshy about that after the Bush years. So no, I don't think it's the liberals at fault for the Democrats' poor outcomes in 2010 and 2014. I think it's the moderates who aren't showing up at the polls during midterms. Midterm elections aren't as exciting and they don't get the same media exposure as primary seasons. It's easy to rally behind one charismatic figure or another, not so much to pay attention to "lower" races.

In addition to that I think the Democrat's main problem is that they're not simply courting the middle, they've been courting the right. They're trying to steal from the Republicans' base, which guarantees they'll continue to shift farther and farther to the right. This makes both liberals and moderates frustrated as hell with them. Stop trying to out-Republican the Republicans. Stop pushing the Third Way bullshit that Hillary Clinton is so fond of. You're not going to win elections by allowing Republicans and corporations define where the middle lies, Hillary. You're going to win by listening to the popular support behind Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The Democrats need to come back to the left, not court big money to pursue power for its own sake. Stop repeating the Republicans' mistakes.

How did we get here? Democrats didn't give us reasons to vote for them, reasons that separate them from the Republicans. Instead they've been singing that old song about "anything you can do, I can do better."

What to do about Islamic extremism?

If you haven't seen the news today, Islamic terrorists shot and killed 12 people at the satirical magazine company of Charlie Hebdo. Their reason why? Because the magazine dared to print a cartoon caricature of the prophet Mohammad. It's not the first time Muslim terrorists have done this sort of thing, and it won't be the last. These people don't just demand unearned respect for their beliefs, they demand submission to them. The idea of civil rights and personal freedom doesn't seem to be part of their vocabulary.

This is a problem. It sets up a conflict between the Islamic world and everyone else in which no compromise is possible, it's either us or them. So far the Western world has been relatively measured in its response, which seems ridiculous considering the widespread destruction we've inflicted on Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and more but that's us restraining ourselves. If we truly commit to all-out war with people who are a dedicated threat to us we can do much, much worse.

There are factions in the Western world who are screaming for us to do just that. The more Muslim extremists provoke us, the more likely it becomes that people will listen to those factions. More and more people are looking at the Muslim world as problems rather than partners. I sincerely hope to avoid this, but as I discussed previously there are Christian factions looking to use this as an opportunity to come to power.

What do we do? Bringing these extremists to heel is going to be costly and troublesome on our own, and the more trouble it becomes the less likely people are going to treat it as a cost-effective solution. The Muslim world needs to be convinced to police their own, and it doesn't seem likely that this is going to happen. We're not hearing from the moderates, only the fundamentalists. Only it turns out that isn't true either, Muslim moderates are standing up in protest of their own extremists and we're not being told about it. Did I mention the Christian factions? Christians can be and are just as extreme but we're not hearing about them, either. We're getting a very skewed view of extremism in the world and it's not helping our decision-making.

We really need to put an end to this nonsense. We have competing religions vying for dominance, both of whom are willing to be ruthless in their use of violence to achieve their ends. We have moderates who are interested in peaceful coexistence and power elites who clearly have an agenda in which the winner takes all. It's time for us to take power back for ourselves and reach out to other moderates interested in peace. It's time to stop glorifying the extremists on both sides and acknowledge the destruction they're causing. It's becoming another Christianity versus Islam battle because we're allowing ourselves to be manipulated into it, but we have the power to stop this. We just have to stop buying into the idea that one side or the other is right. Neither of them are.

My Atheist Agenda Revealed

I was recently accused of harboring an agenda when I talk to people about atheism. I'm not quite sure where this accusation came from; it seems that outspoken atheists are perceived as being no different from the evangelical missionaries who knock on your door or the street preachers who accost you at intersections as you go about your daily business. And yes, I do speak up about atheism, primarily when someone else brings up the topic first. Ask me a question and I'll answer. Ask me for advice and I'll show you resources that I think will help. But the thing is, I've never heard of atheists going on a door-to-door campaign to preach the good news of no gods, nor have I heard of atheist street preachers shouting their message and harassing people in public.

However, as an atheist I concede to having an agenda: it's called secularism. In a secular state everyone is free to believe or not. There is no coercion one way or another. No one is told what to believe or how to think, because everyone is free to choose their own path. If that weren't true, if I weren't willing to let people cling to god belief then I wouldn't tell them the truth. I'd tell them whatever I thought would get the job done to shatter their faith. On the religious side that's known as lying for Jesus.

I know a lot of religious activists are threatened by secularism so they misrepresent it and fight to remove it from our laws. My old church used to wax eloquent about how secularism and humanism are against God's Will and open the door to Satan's evil. As godless people, atheists become the face of the secular movement, communists who want to take away your freedoms and burn your churches. It is not and has not been true. The military dictatorships that impose communism are not secular because they take away your choice, and that is not a secular agenda.

Personally, my agenda is that I want to see the end of religion but not by force. No one should abandon religion because they have to. The Soviet-model Communists tried that and it doesn't work, as well as being an indefensible violation of human rights. I want to see people abandon religion of their own free will simply because they don't need it any longer. I want to end the inequality and ignorance that breeds the fear religion depends on to bring in followers and keep them. I want critical thinking to be at the core of the education we give our children. My agenda scares them to death because they know what will happen if we succeed. We've seen it happen peacefully in other developed countries. They don't want it to happen here in the US, not without a fight.

That's fine with me. Religious believers brought this fight and I'll finish it; not with guns, knives or fists, but with words, passion and genuine concern for my fellow human beings. They can bring their gods and I'll bring my compassion. Let's see who is left standing.

I'll tell you what you did with atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanised them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were women, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disembowelled them, hanged them, burnt them alive.

And you have nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.

What is a Christian Nation?

I still see this being brought up, so here are some reminders of why the US is not a Christian nation.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlevi

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1.html

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

http://www.usconstitution.net/tripoli.html

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, — as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, — and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

A nation's laws determine its character. If we were a Christian nation our laws would be based on Christian laws and claims, but we are not and we are prohibited from basing our laws on any religion. We are a secular nation with a population dominated by Christians. But a further point can be made in showing how our laws violate what the Bible requires of Christians. Credit goes to /u/Xenolan for compiling this list. It was so good I felt it should be mirrored here.

Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. (Amendment I)

Bible: I am the Lord thy God… Do not have any other gods before Me. (Exodus 20:2-3)

Constitution: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. (Amendment XIII, Section 1)

Bible: Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever. (Leviticus 25:44-46)

Constitution: We the people of the United States… do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (Preamble)

Bible: It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. (Jeremiah 10:23)

Constitution: No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. (Article VI, section 3)

Bible: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. (Mark 16:16)

Constitution: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. (Amendment XV)

Bible: An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever. (Deuteronomy 23)

Constitution: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. (Amendment XIX)

Bible: Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:34-36)

Any questions?

The Problem With Unions

In the news today, Obama has finally done something to help unions, only six years late. Naturally, I posted this to social media and almost immediately got the following response:

FUCK unions. It is the unions who protect people like the cops who shot Hans Arellano, James Boyd, Levar Jones, Brian Dennison, Timothy Mitchell, Oscar Grant... I could go on.
In these situations not all of these guys are saints. But in all of these situations the officers life was not in danger and they killed them anyway. A single life lost unnecessary is too many.

I have a problem with leveraging popular outrage against genuine civil rights violations to build a straw man argument against an unrelated issue. Police unions -- not even the unions that helped to protect the police officers guilty of crimes -- are representative of all unions. There's a much bigger picture to consider here.

Unions are designed to protect their members and serve their interests. Now, not all of their members deserve protection. If they screw up badly enough they should be fired and where appropriate brought up on criminal charges. Where a union protects a member from appropriate consequences we can rightly say that the union has gone too far. It doesn't serve the interests of the union or its members to shelter bad members from consequences.

The point of public service unions is to provide a buffer between politics and people just trying to do their jobs. Should a science teacher be fired because someone objects to their teaching the theory of evolution according to natural selection? Should a cop be fired because he arrested a powerful person for breaking the law? In an ideal world unions protect the innocent and surrender the guilty. But we don't live in an ideal world and we don't have all the information we need to create an ideal world. We do know what kind of world we create when we discourage unions: a world where income inequality becomes the standard, worker rights get trampled on and median wages stagnate or decline.

We don't have perfect solutions. Let's stop attacking the solutions we have because they're not perfect. Where we can identify problems, let's work to make them better, not get rid of them with nothing to replace them.