RE: Zimmerman trial and Racism

I'm not going to comment on the outcome of the Zimmerman trial because I wasn't there in the courtroom.  And to form my opinions based on nothing other than the typical sensationalism pumped media information that's overly available would be like designing a building on bad math.  I knew the media was going to try to make this case into a big racism circus when the first pictures of both Zimmerman and Martin appeared (courtesy of our media).  Zimmerman was shown in his most recent form, and Martin was presented in his form as a 12 year old boy when he was actually 17 years old at the time of the incident.  And this was displayed this way in most stories for days with little or no footnotes about that deception.

Statistically, Native Americans likely have the highest incident per group of alcoholism and drunk driving. Does anyone with a brain honestly believe that it's because they are genetically an "Indian" - and drunkenness is  symptom or predisposition of their actual race? No, it's because we have laws and/or policies which have helped shaped their culture in some of those negative ways causing that behavior to be more predominant in that group. 

Our laws and policies specifically address their race and provide them special considerations.  Similarly, we have laws and policies about other minorities which also create a divisional impact. Most black police officers will admit that if 4 people are suspect of a drug crime and one is black, the black one will get the most scrutiny, even by a black officer. Because, statistically, blacks are caught up in these situations more often.  It's not because they're black that they're statistically the most probable suspects.  It's because we have  policies, laws and considerations for their race which have created and/or maintained a negative social condition for them, leading them to be involved in more crimes.  With multiple generations of children now who are truly color blind, the real racism that remains is what was written into our laws and policies that remains. 

Through the best attempts to make the information about actual differences in performance based on race unavailable because of the uproar such creates ("The Bell Curve") real science about what advantages and disadvantages each race typically has is absent.  But we all still base judgements off empirical data nonetheless.  If you're choosing the students to be on your basketball team, and they're all about the same height and you know nothing else about them, chances are you're going to choose the black students first.  If you're picking team mates for your math team and the choice of students all get about the same grades, you'll probably pick mostly Asians. 

When given a "choice" there has to be some criteria we use to decide or it's not a choice, it's just a random drawing.  Obesity maybe more inherent in one race than another, but if I'm choosing teammates for a Sumo tag team, I'm going to pick the fattest kids.  If most of the fat ones in my group happen to be white, someone could say that I'm being racist but that wasn't the case at all.  If it turns out indeed that whites are statistically the most obese for whatever reason, then the fact that the  results of my choosing would mirror the reality statistics simply on a probability basis.

In my life, on the average, I've found the biggest underachievers in life to be those who were spoiled the most and never had to really try to do anything.  Likewise, the biggest achievers (relative to their starting point) have often had to do it alone, without help from anyone.  In this instance, I consider outside additional support an actual handicap.   

Special considerations based on race, whether those considerations benefit or inhibit those individuals creates a divide in either case.  We can't treat people the same, if our government still doesn't treat them the same.  And if they're not treated the same, we can't expect their groupings to behave the same.  If that difference in behavior is noted, it will then be associated with the race and not the cause.  Racism is still very much alive in our laws and policies. If we truly want to end it once and for all we need to start by ending it there.

The illegal drug racket is alive and well, and it thanks you.

As a father of a beautiful teenage girl who I thought I had lost to drugs, I can tell you now that she is alive and well.  But my heart breaks as I have yet to see her now because she is afraid to come back home.  At 15 years old, she is now afraid to face the police who will now, like thoughtless robots, enforce the tragic train of victimless crimes she will now be charged with.  And while she is trying to better herself, she thinks she must stay on the run for fear of being caught, and then placed side by side with the very tainted people she is now trying to stay away from.  The crime of drugs is the crime.  You can say that drugs make the problem, but they are as inanimate as guns - it takes people with motives to make the problems with them.  

So I wonder, who was motivated first?  The child who used the drugs, or the person who made them available to that child because there was money in it?  I'm going to go with the money – a bet that’s usually never wrong.  And why was there money in it?  Because it's a protected racket.  A baggie of seeds less dangerous than a bottle Jack Daniels sells for 10 times as much!  And not because they’re hard to grow. 

Gangs need and like money.  They're violent, vicious and blunt headed antagonists.  Their best bet for making money?  The highest profit?  Nope, not theft.  Drugs.  Again, not because drugs hard to make.  It's because we make them hard to buy.  The drug cartels in Mexico are big enough to militarily take on their own government.  They don't make that kind of money needed for that power by opening coffee shops and paying taxes.  They don't even make it off producing child pornography, human trafficking, stolen credit cards, or any other modern crimes.  Drugs.  Many people are unaware that covert government operations not approved by congress are often funded from drug money that was made by government operatives in foreign countries - that is how profitable we have made the drug trade!

I have friends in law enforcement.  Most of them are too close to be able to see the bigger picture.  It's easier for them to believe and obey their chain of bosses.  I enjoy their company but I do wish they would long for being called Peace Officers once again instead of the heady, chest puffing title of "law enforcement."  It just says shows how mechanized and heartless their function has become.  My daughter has recovered from the drugs, but she has not recovered from the law.  I only hope that if she encounters "the law" again, she is strong enough and smart enough to stay away from of it, like a drug.

I have no doubt that the filter of the drug conspiracy, which collects so many of the less fortunate people through these deceitful drug prohibition laws, eventually overflowing with a resulting sludge of humanity, is seen as the problem itself by those who have to deal with it every day.  But for many people, falling down is also a "twelve step" process and only the last few steps are taken to blame by most in law enforcement.  Thus, the real culprit, the racket we’ve made the illegal drug industry through prohibitive laws, escapes time after time.  And most every time, the real public servants, who are often persecuted, as they attempt to dispatch this culprit at the ballot box, those people are looked at as kooks - like Ron Paul.  Yet, in the hypocrisy of legal alcohol, we spend billions of dollars every year, destroy millions of lives and families and allow to thrive, violent criminals who are paid very well, by the illegal drug industry.

What if our justice system raised our children?

Our values and morals come from common law and religious moral teachings. The most basic of morals is to treat others as you would treat yourself. But imagine if the values built in to our legal system and conveyed through the judicial system and our penal codes were the values taught to our children as moral priorities.

When I was young, I was taught that murder was the worst crime, cruelty, stealing, lying and adultery followed that up. The world is not black and white, there are levels of severity. In simple examples, given a choice between having to lie about something or steal, I would prefer to lie. Having to steal something versus torture or cruelty (sometimes stealing can be such), I'd rather steal. And having to choose between cruelty and murder, I'd rather be cruel (let's not get into euthanasia here). There was a moral priority established for me and it started with the degree of punishments I received from my parents.

If the severity of the crime was taught to children based on the severity of the punishment as is defined in our laws and practiced in courts, people would be quite different. Downright scary in my view. In America today, the penalties for murder are far less than many other crimes - some of which arguably have no victims! And Hollywood assists in the perversion of moral priorities as well by condoning murders as a means to end (Dexter, CSI, etc).

We categorize people as "good" and "bad" as well by their virtues or lack of, which we compare to our own values. But in our society today, a very good person by moral character and deeds can be found to be a very dangerous criminal by our system of laws. I remember just a few weeks ago hearing on the local news, back to back local stories that went something like this, a man convicted of committing acts of lewdness with a 9 year old girl was sentenced to 70 years without parole. Immediately following that story in almost the same breath was 3 men convicted of beating another man to death who were sentenced to 25 years with possibility of parole.

A 17th century French philosopher, Montesquieu once said "every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical." If our justice system is now inter-woven with so much tyranny, what sort of sensibility would it make as a map of moral values?

With government getting involved more and more with raising our children, this should be of major concern. Former LAPD officer Chris Dorner, turned murderer, may very well be an example of misplaced moral priorities heavily influenced by our justice system. In his manifesto,  he states his observations of crimes committed by fellow officers and department personnel. Many of these crimes, should they be real, deserve a serious course of action and justice. But do those actions deserve the death sentence of potentially innocent and guilty individuals as he planned to carry out? If murder is a lesser crime than others, then it might be justified in his view.

Attorney Paul Malikowski states that there are nuances in prosecution, "a 'weak' case, despite its heinous nature, often results in a negotiated plea and less punishment than a "strong" case involving less serious behavior."  This further perverts moral priorities by introducing both real and perceived  inconsistencies in sentencing.  This is partly because there are at least two courtrooms for every case, the justice court, and the media court. 

And what of the extreme trend toward incarceration which this country is headlong into? When your dad, mother, brother or people you knew and respected are suddenly locked up, do you question the attributes you respected in those people and reconsider your basic values?

Today in America, everyone is a criminal, the only difference is between those who have been caught and those who haven't. A look at many of our top governmental officials provides no clarity here either. For example, Secretary of Treasury, Timothy Gietner, was convicted of income tax crimes. The list of heroes to help mold our children is a messy one. Thus the only solution I can offer which is practical is, keep home schooling alive!  If the government raises our children as it's doing more and more, expect more and more crime, conflicts and insanity, because populations with different fundamental value systems are incompatible with each other.

I generally try to supply much more supportive evidence of my positions. And, try as I may have, I was going to assemble a list of worst crimes based on their typical punishments. However, this turned out to be a daunting task. For example, this document, tells of typical sentencing, but what's missing in most of these tables is the add-on punishments which typically accompany the situation or crime which can make a 5 year sentence turn into 50. Also, the prosecutorial trends which compound the complexities of sentencing. Some related research I did in an earlier rant   on  child sex hysteria details some perversion of punishment but not to the quantity which needs to be displayed here. Consider this piece, although published, a work-in-process.

We the people need a label we can use too!

Let's quit beating around the bush. If you believe in the 2nd amendment then you must realize that ultimately, it was included to prevent the advance of tyranny, be it foreign or domestic. Tyranny can be conducted in the course of minutes by individuals who seek a few minutes of complete domination of their victims. Or, it can be conducted over hours, days or weeks by small groups who are somewhat organized and better armed than their intended victims (gangs, corrupted police and governmental departments, organized crime-Mobsters and more). Or..., it can be conducted over decades by an unstoppable government which has grown so greedy and hungry that total domination (tyranny) over its citizens is its last stop to meet its hunger.

In the case of the latter two, those groups are likely to be armed well above a shotgun or a revolver or a gun with a magazine limit of seven rounds. While it is more likely that a conflict in which a firearm would be beneficial to the victim would come from common criminals and those who are not mentally stable, the long-standing but less likely threat from the larger groups and governments (including ours) can only be ultimately deterred if the citizens have access to respectable firepower in the same class as that which is likely to be used against them.

It's hard to imagine that anything here in the USA could ever come to that point where armed revolutions start breaking out throughout our union, but it happened here twice, and it happens throughout the world often.

If you have faith that our government will never commit such tyrannical acts against us, then you're short on your history and you're ignoring the daily evidence that it's continuing to lessen the power of the individual in every way - and to what end?

The government's latest tool is to label someone a "terrorist" or something a "terrorist organization". This label is now being used for some of the most ordinary of suspicions because it wields such power. Once this label is applied, you're suddenly not a whole citizen any longer and your rights are fewer, and their powers are far greater. So I propose that we, the citizens of the US, create our own label for those in government who continue to seek to diminish our individual powers, or those who support ideas which reduce our rights and liberties. Those people should be called "tyrannists". And maybe, if that label sticks, it will at least help that person out of their job.

Statistics and sensibility should guide policy, not emotion.

Statistical significance should guide policy decisions, not emotions. Emotional policy decisions are how we end up with laws where someone who murders 7 people can serve less time in prison than someone who pulls down their pants in front of a child.

The data from this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list states that in the USA, 3 out of 100,000 people die in homicides from firearms per year. But we'll use the CDC's data for a moment and call it 3.7 people. All things remaining constant, it would take 270 YEARS to just reach a total of 1% of that population. But in just 120 years, 99% or more of that population will already be dead from other causes.

The CDC states that the general death rate for 2011 was 740 in a population of 100,000. Whether that 740 includes homicides by firearm or not is inconsequential as even if it did, it would only account for 0.5% of the deaths!

To me, the incredible thing of all of this is... accuracy of data. Try to find the error rating for the statistical data gathered by the US Census, or the deaths by cause statistics from the FBI. There is none. And if there were any, these would be error rates based on the counted data and would often, only if audited at all, be determined by sampling. In a simple survey, often the accuracy is said to be +/- 3%. The accuracy of a typical automobile gas gauge is said to be +/- 7% but that's just someone's guess that most people agree with. The reason it's not published is because it's probably impractical to calculate.

But, the US Census Bureau did state it thought it's most recent error rate was only 0.4%. That's the agency rating itself (fox, hen house). Consider its basis for its data - it depends on surveys answered by us to be accurate. But lets take their number anyway. That would mean that any component statistic which is less than 0.4% by itself is just noise. Anything computed "per capita" starts with US Census data. and 3.7 gun deaths per 100,000 is a "per capita" rating. So, compare 0.4% accuracy by the agencies own rating with deaths by firearm, 0.5%. In-other-words, the population in focus could be as much as 100,400 or it could be as little as 98,600 to which we are comparing 740 against - the noise eclipses the feature data. If the same accuracy were applied to the CDC's number of 740 deaths, that would be 2.96 people, that's a very large chunk of 3.7 people so the statistic could really vary quite a bit in priority ranking relative to its neighbors from error alone.

According to the CDC, 3.2 times as many people take their own lives as those who died by firearms in a homicide. Given the tree of problems causing death, that's a much larger fruit to think about. Then there's the larger DUI fatalities, cell phone fatalities. There are some serious medical conditions which take more lives per year than homicides, suicides and DUIs combined. And yet, the public money spent on solving those problems is far less than that spent in pursuit of law enforcement and infrastructure for arms related crimes and control.

Whether you're for guns or against them, there's obviously some larger, lower hanging fruit to go after than guns if you're trying to reduce deaths. Going for new gun laws and all the infrastructure to enforce new gun laws to the extent that some wish right now, because of an emotional motive, and ignoring the statistical priority of the problem would be like trying to outlaw airplanes because you're afraid of dieing in an airplane accident.

"The Art of War" was written by the Chinese.

This famous text, "The Art of War" was believed to have been originally written around 600 B.C. by Sun Wu, who was recorded in the "Grand Historian" and the Spring and Autumn period Annals in the State of Wu in ancient China during that period. If you've never read this short and great collective of philosophy and tactics to waging war successfully, you'd be surprised at its' direct and machine like theories.

Much later there was a famous saying here in the US you may have heard, "speak softly and carry a big stick", courtesy of the 26th President of the United States (POTUS), Theodor Roosevelt.

PRIME POINT: But, one doesn't need to read the Art of War or recall our 26th POTUS's quote to understand that positioning yourself for power or to challenge power is best done with the utmost silence and during times of poor visibility. From the time of our rise as the world's most powerful nation, many of us including myself have tried to warn our leaders that China will surpass us if we do not stay ever vigilant, if this crown is to be ours.

But alas, most of our leaders are ignorant or succumb to greed and short sightedness and have thus not only not been vigilant, but have helped the rise of China. So let's review some things quickly:

1. We know Chinese currency manipulation is what allows China to be a prime exporter. Thus, they get our cash, we get their plastic. See "PRIME POINT" above.

2. China is advancing their military strength. See "PRIME POINT" above.

3. Chinese manufacturing has eclipsed or will eclipse US manufacturing shortly. *There are many economists saying they have already. Of course, China will not let this be known until the very last second. See "PRIME POINT" above.

4. China has exceeded advanced US medical capabilities for accessing genetic information (no link - source Popular Science October 2012 page 6 , RE: Animal to human viruses, "Dr. Chui also mentioned that a single Chinese company has more than 160 of the deep-sequencing machines we need to identify those sources. As of last year, he told me, that's more than we had in the whole United States). See "PRIME POINT" above.

5. China's been on a massive land grab for sometime now.

And there's probably a dozen or more additional other major categories we could go through this exercise on. The Chinese are not arrogant or egotistical as we can be. They're much more practical and concerned with function. Short-term thinking is not part of their nature. This philosophy can be seen in the spirit of their text, "The Art of War". The point is, if you think they're going to warn us before they make their alpha male move... you're wrong. If you're thinking that the things I've said, things that maybe you've heard elsewhere and have chosen to ignore, are all just conspiracy theories, then you're helping us lose whatever upcoming challenge they are preparing - just as our "patriotic" leaders have in the past and continue to do now. There's two kinds of animals on the Ranch, the cattle and the Ranchers, which are you?

I'm not saying China is our enemy. I'm saying the Chinese government is an efficient, calculating, focused, relentless and patient machine. It will steam roll us as a matter of necessity or blind ambition. Are we going to continue to be the road for them or will we rise again and make our own roadway as we did in the years when we became great?

As is the theme of my blog here, I try to offer solutions and not just rant about the problems like many others do. SO, I still stand by the solutions I offered in my text I wrote back in 2002.

Rethinking America...

Does America need to change? If America needs to be like some other country, I'd like to know what country that is. You may have your idea, but I can assure that there are many people who have different ideas than yours. I hear many people say we should be more like Europe, we should be more like Canada, Sweden, etc. But here is the thing, America was once a place where you could find a place that suited your desires. We had "States". And those states had prevailing rights of autonomy. The people that lived in those states had more power to control what the laws were and how those laws affected their lives. The people in counties within those states, and the towns within those counties had even more power over their own lives as those perimeters became smaller. But over time, the power has been sucked up from the bottom, and is now primarily at the top.
At some point, the direction to make everything the same became the prime goal, one size fits all as it were, and it seems like that is what we have moved towards ever since. But it's a known consequence that the larger the committee, the lesser the answer suits the individual. Like what they say about elevator music and the platypus, they're both designed by committee.
I'm not saying committees don't produce useful results. But as with most everything, there is a scale at which things work and a scale at which they don't. Nature is full of these examples. Fusion reactions within the Sun, the design of an insect's exoskeleton does not work on this planet past a certain size. A sheet of paper makes for a great paper airplane, but get much bigger than that and paper is simply not a strong enough material for larger airplanes.
We have moved towards a central committee in Washington to govern most of the United States of America. People seem to forget that Russia tried this not too long ago and the population mostly lived in poverty. This Washington committee tries to regulate almost everything in the US now. It stands to reason that if everything were the same, this maybe practical. But, people are not the same. Resources are not the same, climates, terrain, social interfaces and thousands of other things are not the same the farther you get from Washington. The job they're trying to do is impossible if competence and success are important factors.
And, not only that, but in order to manage so much from one small area, a tremendous amount of power must be granted to that small area. Everyone's heard Lord Acton's saying, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Why should we be surprised then that every time we give power away to Washington, the corruption becomes worse? The United States has become the honey pot of the world for corruption and we've allowed that to happen incrementally by agreeing (or not fighting) to let one little thing after another become the domain of the Federal government.
I've lived long enough now to know that everything has balance. Light and dark, good and evil, health and sickness, poor and rich, kindness and cruelty and many more. Just try to eliminate one and you'll find the universe manages to compensate and maintain the balance of both sides somehow.
Here are a couple more to think about, success and failure, safety and freedom. You can see over time how our centrally controlled educational system has attempted to remove failure but has resulted in a capping of success. And that in most almost every case, attempts to improve our safety have resulted in losses of freedom.
I've also noticed that everything is in motion and tends to oscillate. A perfect balance is only ever an instant and everything else is out of balance in one direction or the other causing a pendulum type of behavior between the two opposites. The builders of our Constitution had a sense for this left us mechanisms for keeping those pendulums in motion allowing for happy mediums over time. But if those mechanisms allowing us to change the directions of things are removed as they have been over the years, then that pendulum could make much larger swings. For example, instead of a law raising taxes one year, and a law lowering them another, multiple years of raising taxes may result in an exodus of workers and businesses causing the pendulum to swing hard in the other direction when it finally has to.
If exoduses, suicides, migrations, revolts or even armed insurrections are the only mechanisms left for us to change the laws which we are forced to live by, then we are doomed to the fate of many nations before us and around us to suffer these dramatic and tumultuous swings between opposite forces which affect our economy and our life styles. It is better that we the people, keep writing laws and repealing laws as we need through time than that we lose those abilities by granting them to a more centralized and remote authority which we have less control over and is more likely to be corrupted.