Here we go again. Another social media post challenging us to prove our worthiness by supporting someone else’s favorite cause.

“Who has the courage to share this”

“How many likes can this person get?”

“Which of my friends will post this.”

“If you agree, then share this.”

And my personal favorite: “If you don’t REPOST this, you are the problem.”

Well, I might be the problem, but it isn’t because I failed to repost some uncredited, undated, unsubstantiated social media blast.

To folks inclined to threaten co-inhabitants of the social media universe, here’s a suggestion: If you want people to repost your information, present it in a logical, truthful, and convincing manner.  Credit your sources, support your argument with facts, and refrain from threats or insults. It probably won’t change people’s minds, since no one spends time on social media because they want to actually think, but it will make the internet a nicer place.

May 2, 2018

If we are interested in having a productive conversation about mass shootings in America – and I don’t for one moment believe that we are – the first thing we need to do is agree on what the actual problem is.

Right now, in the wake of the Parkland high school murders, there are two competing ideas.  One side believes that the problem is school safety, while the other side thinks the problem is safety in schools, churches, nightclubs, concerts, university classrooms, and everywhere else in America.

The difference in these views is significant.  If all you want to address is school shootings, then hardening schools might make sense. Even a crackpot idea like arming teachers might be worth discussing. On the other hand, if your goal is to make every place in America safer from mass casualty attacks from terrorists, disgruntled ex-employees, angry ex-spouses, and mentally disturbed ex-students, then hardening schools and arming teachers are ineffective options, and your discussion must be much more wide-ranging.

In general, the most effective voices for action – led by Parkland survivors –  are focusing their efforts on school safety. Unfortunately, school safety is just one element of a much more complicated problem, which includes shootings in churches, nightclubs, university classrooms, country-western concerts, army bases, county offices, and everywhere else.

April 26, 2018

On our way to the game, and then, at the ballpark. 32 degrees at game time, but in the sun it felt like 34. One difference from summertime games, in the fifth inning, instead of the grounds crew dragging the infield, they used the Zamboni. But the Tribe won, 3-1.

Hardy Tribe Fans Heading to the Game

At the Game

April 8, 2018

Some folks questioned the sincerity or motivations of participants at the ‘March for Our Lives’ events. I didn’t see the event the way they did.

I was at the march and I wouldn’t characterize it as a “gun grab.” More than anything else, the speakers expressed frustration at Congress for not being willing to take action that might reduce the threat of gun violence in schools.

As far as people being denied an opportunity to speak, I have no knowledge of that, although it sounds bogus and I would be skeptical of it until I confirmed where the information came from. There’s a lot of bad info out there on all sides.

At the event in Cleveland, no speaker that I heard advocated “banning guns.” I did hear suggestions for more effective background checks, maybe banning sales to persons under 21, and re-imposing the now-expired ban on AR-15-type weapons. Several speakers did discuss other steps that could lead to meaningful change.

I think some of the frustration that the marchers (and others) feel stems from hearing the argument that since no single action can be guaranteed to stop all future shootings, we should therefore do nothing. It would be like going to the doctor and being told that you have cancer, but while there are several possible treatments that might be effective, no single treatment is guaranteed to work completely, so we’re not going to do anything.

My own opinion is that we need to address mass shootings in the same way we address other disasters. When a plane crashes, or a bridge fails, we conduct a comprehensive investigation to identify the root cause. Invariably, we find that the disaster was the result of multiple failures. Mass shootings are the same. They happen when the complex system we have developed to prevent extreme anti-social behavior fails at multiple points.

When discussing possible causes of disasters, please note that there is a significant difference between “contributing cause” and “cause.” Contributing causes contribute to the outcome, but they do not by themselves determine the outcome.

If a long chain of events has occurred where multiple opportunities to intervene have been missed or ignored, and as a result a troubled person finally decides to head back to his old high school and shoot the place up, a contributing cause will certainly be the availability of firearms. If he can’t get a gun, he can’t shoot up the school. That is irrefutable. A firearm didn’t cause the event, it didn’t motivate the person to act, it didn’t shoot people on its own, but it did make the ultimate disaster possible, so it was one of a number of contributing causes.

And yes, he could use a knife or a bomb, and in those cases the contributing factor would be the availability of bomb-making materials and the availability of edged weapons, but this discussion is about gun violence.

My point is that these incidents are the result of a long chain of events, of which firearms availability is just one, and certainly not the main one. Nobody shoots up their high school simply because they had access to a firearm. Mental health and school security are also contributing factors and should certainly be addressed in any comprehensive attempt to reduce the incidence of school shootings. There are many other potential contributing factors as well.

These events are thankfully rare because we do have systems in place to identify extremely troubled individuals and to intervene. It is only when these systems fail – often at multiple points – that we get these horrific shootings.

There is no simple solution to shootings in schools, churches, nightclubs, movie theaters, concert venues, office buildings, and other places. Focusing on a single factor, like the availability of firearms, is a dead end that won’t take us where we want to go. But denying the possibility that some reform of our current gun laws can be part of the solution is equally wrongheaded. We’re never going to be able to stop all shootings, but perhaps a coordinated effort to address many of the contributing causes can reduce the number of incidents. If it takes us fifty years to cut the rate in half, we will have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

March 26, 2018

Attended the March for Our Lives event downtown with Kerstin, Melina and Sammy the Climate and Non-Violence Dog. Because who in their right mind could actually believe that the current situation is acceptable? And who could possibly believe that we can’t do better?

March 24, 2018

During a social media discussion of President Trump’s proposed infrastructure plan, a commenter remarked that “the $150 billion in unmarked cash that Obama sent to Iran would’ve made a good size dent in the infrastructure budget.”

There is a lot of misinformation about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but this particular nonsense is easily refuted. The fact is, it wasn’t unmarked cash, it was Iranian assets that had been frozen under previous sanctions regimes, and we didn’t have access to it. We could not have used it for infrastructure or anything else. It was their money. And while the exact amount is unknown, it will probably be between $100 billion and $150 billion. It was returned to Iran as part of the multi-national agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear weapons program. To date, they are in compliance with the agreement, although they still behave in ways that are problematic. Those activities, however, were never part of the agreement

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/17/donald-trump/no-donald-trump-we-are-not-giving-iran-150-billion/

February 26, 2018

In post-Parkland discussions, a common argument against stricter regulation of firearms is that many more people are killed in auto crashes caused by drunk drivers than in mass shootings, yet there is no movement to “ban cars.”

Yet that argument is fundamentally flawed, as I noted in a comment to a Facebook post:

I suspect that many people in this country – though not many NRA member, perhaps – would support a proposal to regulate firearms in the same way that driving and drinking are regulated.  Clearly, these regulations have not eliminated drunk driving crashes, but the fact that they are not 100 percent successful doesn’t mean that they are not reducing the incidence of drunk driving deaths.

February 18, 2018

111207-N-DX615-028
PHILIPPINE SEA (Dec. 7, 2011) A flag detail aboard the amphibious dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52) renders honors during a remembrance ceremony for the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on the ship’s namesake, Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor and embarked Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (11th MEU) are on deployment conducting operations in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility as part of the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Alan Gragg/Released)

Well, I guess there is something wrong with me. Even though I served 22 years on active duty in the U.S. military (including a year in Iraq) and another nine years as a police officer, somehow I feel neither disrespected, diminished, insulted, nor devalued by the modest and dignified actions of some NFL players. They didn’t yell at anybody, they didn’t threaten anybody, they didn’t break anything. Nobody missed a meal or lost their health insurance because some football players didn’t follow the customary procedure before kickoff. They didn’t even delay the start of the games. I have read their explanations of why they acted and they have been unfailingly respectful of the sacrifices of military and public safety personnel. They simply tried to draw momentary attention to an injustice that they see every day. This is their right under the United States Constitution, a governing document that I promised to defend numerous times in my military and law enforcement careers.
Unfortunately, the original message has long since been drowned out by a cascading torrent of overreaction and unhelpful vitriol. As this thing heated up, my initial reaction was pretty much “Nothing says ‘Land of the Free’ like forcing people to stand for the national anthem.” Now my reaction is just a dull sadness that people are so easily provoked into hateful and hurtful comments.
I like the flag, but I like the Constitution even more. The silent protests before football games haven’t diminished my pride in my service or interfered with my life, liberty or pursuit of happiness. If anything, the protests have reaffirmed my faith in America and its people. We are a better nation when citizens who see an injustice are willing to stand up and say, “This is not acceptable.”

September 25, 2017

Every day the news is filled with articles tracking, predicting, or misrepresenting the current state of the U.S. economy.  Many of these articles and posts are written with a jaunty confidence that seems to imply that the author actually understands the workings of the American economy.  Don’t fall for that nonsense.

The American economy is a massive, unplanned, uncoordinated, uncontrollable contraption that has been assembled by an uncountable gaggle of geniuses and idiots through three centuries of trial, error, invention, innovation, obsolescence, and political opportunism. While some economists understand specific elements of the economy, like the labor participation rate or the completely mythical Laffer Curve, no one understands the entire construct.  These subject matter experts are like auto mechanics who know all there is to know about fuel pumps, but who have never seen an actual automobile.

This is not to demean economists, many of whom are capable of leading normal lives. Their task is beyond Herculean. Economic activity is every activity. Get up in the morning, don’t get up.  Go to work, don’t go to work. Read a book, watch cable news, eat a grape, walk the dog, buy a house: every act, every decision, has an economic impact which mostly can’t be measured and can never be fully understood.

While the actual economy is far too vast to be accurately visualized, we can imagine a model that approximates our ability to understand and control it:

Think of the American economy as an enormous clanking machine; part colonial age, part industrial age, and part information age; rattling along in the sub-sub-basement of some marble-columned government building in Washington DC.  The machine fills several rooms, and there is no place to stand where you can see the whole thing.  Parts of it are wheezing and banging and leaking wispy streams of steam; other parts are warm and quietly vibrating; while still other parts are cold and covered with dust. New parts have been bolted, welded, or duct-taped to old parts, and nothing has ever been removed.

Assembled from mismatched pieces by millions of anonymous people over twenty generations, the machine has no blueprint, no schematics, no instructions, no technical manual, no parts list, no operator’s guide, no documentation of any kind.  There are levers and dials and switches, but most are unlabeled and no one knows what they do. A few (interest rates, money supply, and tax rates among them) are discolored from regular use, but even their effects are almost entirely guesswork.  A few display screens and gauges seem to measure something, although no one is quite sure what (GDP? Labor participation? Stock market value? Consumer confidence?). There is no on-off switch, and no discernible power source.  No one can turn it off, and no one controls it, least of all the president, who inexplicably is held accountable for the actions of three hundred and thirty million people.

So keep this picture in mind next time you read an article or post about the workings – past, present, or future – of the U.S. economy.  You won’t learn anything about the economy, but you’ll sleep better.

September 22, 2017

See the video: This unexpected moment happened when Black Lives Matter activists were invited on stage at a pro-Trump rally (via NowThis Politics)

A worthwhile video if you have not really heard the message of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.  I certainly agree with Mr. Newsome when he says, “The beauty of America is that when you see something broke in your country, you can mobilize to fix it.”  The urge to fix things that are wrong – which has existed throughout American history – animates both the BLM movement and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.  Of course, it would be helpful if we, as a nation, could reach a consensus on what is actually wrong, but that will require less yelling and more listening, traits that are in short supply right now…. Regarding BLM, having been a police officer for nearly ten years in the big city of Cleveland, Ohio, I am inclined to agree that police should be held accountable for their actions, just like doctors, lawyers, or naval officers.  When I joined the CPD I had already served four years on active duty as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard. In the Coast Guard and Navy, where I also served, accountability is a core value.  Coast Guard and Navy officers are routinely held responsible for not only their own actions, but for the actions of their subordinates.  In general, this concept is totally alien to American law enforcement.  Police work is one hard day after another. The law is complicated; America is a violent society; people are unpredictable and occasionally dangerous; and everybody thinks they know more about your job than you do. You must repeatedly make split-second decisions with little or no actual information, and these decisions are often reviewed in detail in court proceedings and occasionally in the news media.  One of the fundamental precepts of American law enforcement is that the person on the scene who had to make that split-second decision in the heat of the moment, with whatever scraps of information were available at that time, in the dark – literally and figuratively –  cannot be justly reviewed or criticized by people who weren’t there.  This is a very human and rational response, but left unchecked it is extremely corrosive to police organizations.  When we talk about killing people, the perception that there are no consequences for errors in judgement can be unsettling.

September 21, 2017