Common Core Math

About a week ago, I came across the post below on Facebook.



The left half of the video above shows a multiplication problem being done using the Common Core method.  The right half of the video show a person solving the same problem using the traditional method, followed by that person making a cup of coffee and taking their dogs outside to play.  The actions on the right side of the video take exactly as long as the actions on the left side of the video.  The obvious point of this video is to ridicule Common Core math.  Judging from 95% of the comments of this Facebook post, most people seem to agree that Common Core math should be ridiculed.

I don't comment very often on public Facebook posts, but in order to inject some sanity into the discussion, I made the following comment.

I was heartened to see at that at least 14 people and a teacher agreed with me, but for those of you who still don't agree, allow me to expand my argument a little bit.

Common Core math teaches kids to consider multiple ways to solve the same problem.  It may seem odd to solve a problem in an indirect way when the direct way works just fine, but the ability to solve math problems in several different indirect ways is an important mathematical skill to develop, because in higher orders of math, the direct method almost never works.

In just about every important mathematical proof, terms of equations need to be re-arranged in what can sometimes seem to be counter-intuitive ways.  Take the quadratic formula, for instance.  Many basic calculations in science and engineering rely on it.  I'd be shocked if the systems that run you car or your phone do not use the quadratic formula to calculate something.  If you take a look at how the quadratic formula is derived, you'll find that the derivation cannot be done without rearranging the terms of the equation multiple times.

The need to rearrange terms in mathematics equations only increases as one progresses through higher levels of math.   By the time one gets to advanced calculus, a high percentage of equations cannot be solved without dealing with imaginary numbers. *

* A quick lesson in "imaginary" numbers for the uninitiated.
An example of an imaginary number is the square root of -1, which is referred to in mathematics as the letter "i".  "i" is defined such that i multiplied by i equals -1.  Expressed as an equation ...
i x i = -1
A basic mathematical principal is that a positive number multiplied by a positive number yields a positive number and that a negative number multiplied by a negative number also yields a positive number.  For example ...
1 x 1 = 1
(-1) x (-1) = 1
So, with that in mind, it seems impossible that a number "i" could be multiplied by itself and yield a negative number, because ...
If "i" is a positive number ...
i x i = a positive number
and if "i" is negative number ...
i x i = a positive number.
So, whether the number "i" is negative or positive, "i" multiplied by "i" will be a positive number.  So, how could it ever be possible that "i x i" could be a negative number?  The answer is that the number "i" is defined to be neither a positive number or a negative number.  "i" is considered to be an imaginary number.
If you've never heard of imaginary numbers before, this may sound a lot crazier to you than the concept of Common Core math.  However, believe me when I tell you that imaginary numbers are vitally important, not only to mathematics, but to lots of the modern technology we enjoy today. 

In advanced calculus, it is quite common that imaginary numbers are an intermediate step in solving equations that start with real numbers.  For example, you could start with a real equation, with real numbers that needs to be solved for a real world application.  It often turns out that the only way to solve the real equation is to convert it into the imaginary realm ( look up "complex numbers" if you want to learn more about this "imaginary realm" ), do additional calculations and transformations in the imaginary realm, and then convert the equation back into the "real" realm to get the final real solution.

It's been more than a quarter century since I've taken any courses in advanced calculus, or physics or engineering courses, so I'd be talking out of my ass if I told you I knew exactly what current real world applications rely on the advanced Calculus that uses imaginary numbers.  However based on this and other things you can find online, I'd be shocked if your smart phone or GPS would work without the mathematics of imaginary numbers.

So, to get back to how this blog post started, my larger point is that the kind of thinking being taught in Common Core math is the kind of thinking is required to understands ( and develop ) the kinds of technology that makes our modern way of life possible.  In the coming decades all this new technology is going to replace a lot of traditional jobs.  There may not be any human cab drivers.  There may not be any human truck drivers.  Cashiers in retail stores may be as uncommon as non-automated tellers in banks today.  AI has already replaced a lot of jobs that used to be handled by receptionists, secretaries, and customer support, and these jobs will only become more scarce as AI improves.

So, if you're a parent you've got to ask yourself if you want your child's education to train them for jobs that are disappearing, or if you want your child's education to train them to work in the technological fields that are going to make so many of these traditional jobs obsolete.

I believe that Common Core math is a great first step in training children for the jobs of the future.  If you can't see that, your going to be doomed to stay stuck in the past.

Rich

Fantastic Fans and Where to Find Them

After spending consecutive Sundays watching a fun Fantastic Beasts movie and another depressing Jets loss, I got to thinking about how Jets fans are like Hufflepuffs.  As any Potterhead knows, Hufflepuffs value dedication and loyalty, and you've got to be dedicated and loyal to remain a Jets fan after all these years of losing.  In additional to dedication and loyalty, I noticed one Hufflepuff trait that fits Jets fans in this quote from the Harry Potter Wiki page on Hufflepuff:

"Hufflepuff is the most inclusive among the four houses; valuing hard work, dedication, patience, loyalty, and fair play rather than a particular aptitude in its students."

I highlighted "patience" above, because if there is one thing Jets fans need a lot of, it's patience.

So, having categorized Jets fans as Hufflepuffs, I thought it would be fun to sort the fans of the rest of the New York City area sports teams in Hogwarts houses.

A few notes before we begin ...

- I'm sorting fans of a team based on the collective average psyche of all the fans of a team.  Obviously there is going to be variation across a populations of fans.  For example, any Jets fan who bravely suffers loses without getting down and greets each new season with optimism is a Gryffindor.  However, most of us are Hufflepuffs who subscribe to the philosophy of "same old Jets".

- I should also note that when I tried to figure out the average psyche of a fan base, I considered how fans might vary over different age ranges.  For example, any New York Giants fan old enough to remember their 25+ years of futility prior to 1986 probably belongs in a different Hogwarts house than a Giants fan who started rooting for them in 1986.  I did my best to consider the age distribution of a fan base when sorting them into a Hogwarts house ( I just made estimates - it wasn't like I was pulling up actuarial tables for each fab base. ).

- It is also worth noting that the same individual can be sorted into 2 or more different Hogwarts houses in relation to the teams they root for.  For example, a large number of my friends root for both the Yankees and Giants, but I think their Giants-fan persona needs to be sorted into a different house than their Yankees-fan persona.

OK, so with all that said, let's get out the sorting hat.

Yankees fans: Slytherin

OK, I've got to start with the Yankees, because I know this is the one I might get the most grief for.  Yes, I've always hated the Yankees, and I'm sure that's part of the reason why I have sorted the Yankees fans into the "evil" Hogwarts house, but I swear, there is a lot more to it than that.  One of the most prominent attributes of Slytherins ( and important plot points of the book series ) is the pride they have in their pure-blood lineage.  To Slytherins, ancestry matters a lot; being from the right family matters a lot; having distinguished ancestors matters a lot.  Slytherins tend to think that their ancestry makes them better than other wizards.  Well, how many time have you heard a Yankees fan tell you that the Yankees have won 27 championships?  They talk about "Yankees Pride", and they always seem the project a sense that they are better fans than you because they root for a team that is better than your team.

Yup, Yankees fans are Slytherins.

Giants fans: Gryffindor

And yet, almost all of those Yankees fans who are Slytherins in their Yankees-fan persona are not Slytherins in their Giants-fan persona.  Sure, there are a small percentage younger Giants fans who have only seen relatively good years and might have some of the Slytherin qualities of Yankees fans, but very few Giants fans have the arrogant pride of Yankees fans. Older Giants fans suffered for years.   They remember losing the championship to Johnny Unitas in overtime.  They remember Joe Pisarcik.  They remember Bill Parcells going 3-12-1 in his first year.  Even the Giants fans who grew up with the LT championship teams suffered through the 6-9 strike season after winning the Super Bowl, Flipper Anderson, blowing a 24-point lead in the playoffs to the 49ers, and losing their chance to repeat as champions in 2008 because their star wide receiver shot himself in the leg.  Giants fans understand that winning isn't something you can take for granted.  They are true-blue fans who not only root for their team passionately, but also do not show any resentment during the rare times the Jets are the better team in town.  I've also never encountered a Giants fan who teases Jets fans about how bad the usually Jets are ( even though a lot of they same people do tease Mets fans ).  Giants fans respect their rivals, but they don't fear them.  Giants fans felt confident facing an 18-0 Pats team, couldn't wait for a rematch with the Pats during the 2011 playoffs, and would love to get a shot at Tom Brady again.  These folks are Gryffindors.

Mets fans: Hufflepuff

Mets fans in in the same boat ( house ) as Jets fans.  The Mets have made their fans suffer in myriad ways over the years.  There has almost always been a far superior team across town, and yet Mets fans have remained loyal.

Knicks fans: Gryffindor

Based on the Knicks terrible history, you might think Knicks fans would belong in Hufflepuff with Mets and Jets fans, but Knicks fans don't get any credit for being loyal when the alternative has always been the Nets.  However, you do have to pretty brave to keep rooting for a teams that's been so bad for so many years, and when the Knicks are actually good, the fans at the Garden have a swagger that no other NYC fan base can match.  They are definitely Gryffindors.

Nets fans: Hufflepuff

Any Nets fan who abandoned the Knicks when the Nets moved to Brooklyn is a Slytherin, but most Nets fans have been life-long Nets fan from the New Jersey Nets days ( some go back to the Dr. J New York Nets days ).  Part of me thinks they should not get credit for being loyal Hufflepuffs when the alternative has always been the woeful Knicks, but ...

1) Despite the Knicks being a terrible team, there has always been for more cachet attached to being a Knicks fan than being a Nets fan, particularly when the Nets were in New Jersey.  If you walk down a crowed street in New York City in a Knicks T-shirt, there's a good chance a fellow Knicks fans might give you a thumbs up, regardless of the Knicks record.  If you ever walked down a street ( be it New York, New Jersey, or anywhere else ) in a New Jersey Nets T-shirt, people on the street would just feel sorry for you ( including any Nets fans on the street ).

2) While I'm impressed that most New Jersey Nets fans did not becomes Knicks fans, I'm even more impressed that most Nets fans did not give up watching basketball altogether after watching some of those Nets teams.

It sucks to be the a fan of the number 2 team in a given sport in a city, but you can understand and accept it when the number 1 team has been a much more successful franchise than your team.  It's got to be really disheartening to be the number 2 team in town to the Knicks.  If you can handle being second fiddle to the Knicks, you are a proud Hufflepuff.

Rangers fans: Gryffindor

Rangers fans are tough sons-of-bitches.  They never failed to chant "Potvin Sucks" while the New York Islanders dominated the early 1980's, and I've heard stories that wearing the wrong jersey in the old "Blue Seats" could get you maimed.   They would never think of leaving the Rangers the Islanders or Devils, and unlike the sad sack Jets and Mets fans of Hufflepuff house, the Ranger fans always seemed to believe that next year would be their year, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

Devils fans: Ravenclaw

When the Devils ( the former Colorado Rockies ) move to New Jersey, New Jersey hockey fans were presented with a choice.  They could keep rooting for the Rangers ( there were probably very few Islander fans in New Jersey at the time, consider that MSG was much closer to Jersey than the Nassau Colosseum ) or they could give the new team in town a try.  Considering the Devils have won 3 championships since then and the Rangers have only won 1, I think the New Jersey residents who switched made a wise Ravenclaw choice.  They also get some brainy Ravenclaw cred for being only hockey fans who really understand and appreciated the neutral zone trap.

New York Islanders fans: ???

I saved this one for last because these are the hardest fans to sort.  The Islanders fans who mercilessly chanted "1940!" at suffering Rangers fans were certainly showing some Slytherin tendencies, but there are plenty of Islanders fan under 40 who don't ever remember when the Islanders were the undisputed kings of the NHL, and anyone under 30 probably doesn't even remember the "1940!" chant ( because the Rangers finally ended their title drought in 1994 ).  It's been a really rough 35 years for Islander fans since the their team last lifted the Stanley Cup in the spring of 1983.  The team has almost always been terrible, ownership has been inept, their stadium crumbled around them for years, and then their team abandoned their loyal Long Island fan base and moved to Brooklyn ( but they'll be coming back to Long Island soon ).  Through it all, Islander fans have been loyal, which makes me think they might be Hufflepuffs, but I just can't give the Hufflepuff designation to a fan base that won 4 championships in a row in my lifetime ( No other team in the 4 major American sports has matched that feat since then ).  Middle-aged and older Islander fans can still look back on 4 championship.  The only champion Hogwarts Hufflepuffs have to look back on is Cedric Diggory ( and SPOILER ALERT, Cedric didn't get to enjoy that glory for long ).  So, Islanders fans have a little a bit of Slytherin and a little bit of Hufflepuff, but not enough to be sorted into either of those houses.  However, they still have a fighting spirit after the all these years so ...



Rich

An Open Letter to Wealthy Businessmen

Dear Wealthy Businessmen of America,

  First of all,  congratulations on all your success.  I mean that sincerely.  I might be the epitome of an Ivy-educated, East Coast liberal weenie, but I do believe in capitalism.  I believe that you should be taxed a hell of a lot more because some luck plays a role in every great success story, and I believe that our laws should help level the playing field between poor kids and your kids to make sure income inequality isn't self-perpetuating, but even if some of you grew up with advantages that most people didn't have, you still out-performed most of your peers to reach you level of success.

Before going on, I want to make it clear that the intended audience of this letter is wealthy Republican businessmen.  I know not all of you are Republicans, so if you happen to George Soros, Tom Steyer, or a West Coast tech billionaire not named Peter Thiel, you can stop reading now.

Also, I'm going to keep referring to you all as businessmen, because let's face it, the glass ceiling is a real thing, and just about all of you are dudes.  After all, they don't call it "the old boys network" for nothing.

OK, so let's get down to brass tacks.  We need to so something about Donald Trump.  I know a lot of you gave money to Donald Trump in the last election, but I hope some of you are beginning to realize that Donald Trump is bad for your business.  Yeah, yeah, I know - that giant tax break Trump signed into law was great for you business, but do you really think Donald Trump deserves any credit for that?  After all, any Republican president would have signed that tax bill.

So, sure, Donald Trump signed a tax bill that any other Republican president would have signed, but he's also done a lot of things that have hurt you bottom lines.  Trump's tariffs have already hurt the stock market and soon will hurt most of your businesses.  I know you guys are not happy with these tariffs because every GOP candidate you supported before Trump was in favor of free trade.  I would also imagine that you are not fans of Trump's immigration policies, because less immigrants means less cheap labor for you to exploit.

So, what to do?  Well, I think you should do everything in your power to get Trump out of office ASAP.  No, I'm not suggesting that you support Democrats; I'm just pointing out that it would benefit you greatly to have any other Republican in the White House.  If Donald Trump gets impeached ( and convicted by the Senate ) or resigns, it is not as if Hillary Clinton will become president.  A more conventional Republican president like Mike Pence would reverse a lot of Trump's policies that are hurting your business.

Of course, getting rid of Trump is a lot easier said than done.  He's too much of an egomaniac to resign and even if the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress, it will take a each least 67 votes to convict him in the Senate of the House impeaches him.  In the very best case scenario for the Dems, they'll only have 51 Senate seats ( most likely 50 or less ) , so Congress couldn't get rid of Trump unless at least 16 Republican senators are on board.  That seems like an impossibility, but if all you Republican billionaires put your heads and resources together, nothing is quite impossible.

It was clear from the early days of the 2016 primaries that most Republican Senators could not stand Trump and just wished he would go away.  None of them have the courage to stand up to Trump now, but big enough campaign contributions ( or the threat of pulling campaign contributions ) could buy a lot of courage.  Of course, even that won't be enough unless some scandal that is finally big enough to stick to Trump.  You guys should use your power and influence to dig up anything your can and forward it to Mueller's team.  Maybe there's some info about his tax returns out there.  Maybe the women who he sexually harassed could file some lawsuits with your financial support.  Maybe enough payoffs to people familiar with the Russian mob and oligarchy could unearth some evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia ( or maybe it could uncover a certain video tape? ).

Look, I know this is all a pipe dream and the chance that a Koch brother actually reads this are practically nil, but I am really surprised that the ridiculously wealthy arm of the Republican establishments is just willing to sit back and let Trump hurt their businesses with his tariffs just for  tax cut that any Republican president could have provided them with.  I also know that Pence is no prize and would probably be a little tougher to beat than Trump in the 2020 election, but when a president is calling himself a "nationalist", refers to Nazis as "fine people", inspires people to commit hate crimes, inspires people to try to kill his political opponents, and calls the free press "the enemy of the people", we need to do everything in our power to get him out of office before the 2020 election, even though those efforts will almost certainly fail and extract a huge political cost on those that oppose him.  There was a time I was happy he won the GOP nomination, because I thought he was the only GOP candidate Hillary had any chance of beating ( I still stand by that ) and I thought he wouldn't be significantly worse that any other horrible Republican president.

I was wrong. *

Rich

* Wrong about him not being significantly worse that any other GOP  president, but he'd still be my ideal GOP opponent for Hillary if Hillary got do the 2016 election again.  I really don't think she could have beaten any other GOP candidate in 2016, but she came within a whisker of beating Trump ( For what it is worth, I think she would have beat McCain in 2008 ).

Kavanaugh

At lot has been said/written about the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing over the last few days, so I'm not going to bother to say a lot of things that have already been said already.  However, I am going to ask you to watch this video ...



Regardless of whether or not Judge Kavanaugh is lying about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's allegations, it it clear to me from the video above that he is lying ( badly ) about many aspects of his social life in high school and college.  While "boofing" and "The Devil's Triangle" are not terms that I have ever heard of before, a quick Google search shows that they do have meanings, and they are nothing like the meanings Kavanaugh clearly just made up.  Also, I don't think any of us have ever heard anybody say the work "fuck" like FFFFUCK.  That just doesn't happen.

All that said, Dr. Ford has no witnesses who are willing to corroborate her account, and all the evidence against Judge Kavanaugh is circumstantial.  I'd be the first to admit that there is not enough evidence to convict Kavanaugh in a court of law.  However, whether or not Kavanaugh could be convicted in a court a law should not be relevant here.

This confirmation hearing isn't a trial.

It's a job interview.

Not only is it a job interview, it is an interview for a position that has about 20 other well-screened completely qualified candidates that could do the same job ( to cast conservative votes on the Supreme Court ) that Kavanaugh is being interviewed for.

If you thought there was a even a small chance that a candidate you were interviewing had committed sexual assault as a youth and and was lying about committing sexual assault as an adult, would you hire that candidate if you had over 20 other qualified candidates for the job?

If Kavanaugh is not confirmed, Republicans in the Senate still have plenty of time to confirm another candidate with all the same conservative credentials, but without all the sexual assault baggage.  Far be it from me to do the GOPs work for them, but the GOP would really be doing themselves a favor if they rejected Kavanaugh and confirmed a different conservative justice.  If Kavanaugh is appointed to the Supreme Court, the conservatives could lose his vote in the Supreme Court if more evidence was uncovered and he was convicted of sexual assault ( BTW, if Kavanaugh was sent to jail, a Democratic president would not be able to appoint a new justice to replace him.  Technically, the Supreme Court seat would still be his, even if he was unable to sit on the court due his incarceration.  He could only be replaced it if he was convicted by a 2/3 vote in the Senate ( after being impeached by a majority vote in the House of Representatives ).  If a Democrat was in the White House, there would certainly be at least 34 Republican senators who would vote "no" on the conviction of Kavanaugh to keep a Democratic president from appointing a new justice.  If a Republican was in office while Kavanaugh was in jail, there would certainly be at least 34 Democratic senators who would vote "no" on the conviction of Kavanaugh to keep the Republican president from appointing a new conservative justice who could actually vote on the court. ).  The safest and most prudent thing for Republicans to do would be to reject Kavanaugh and confirm another very conservative candidate.

I certainly will not be happy if any conservative is appointed to the Supreme Court, but I understand that this is inevitable and liberal blew their only real chance to keep more conservatives out of the Supreme Court on November 8, 2016.  However, having a 5th conservative justice on the Supreme Court is one thing; having a 2nd justice on the Supreme Court that has sexually abused women is quite another.

Rich

Attention to Trade Deficit Disorder

As most of you know by now, President Trump has been obsessed with trade for a long time.  I already wrote about Trump's terrible tariffs a few months ago, but today I'm going to take some time to challenge the notion that trade deficits are a bad thing.

Like many of you, I first learned about the concept of trade deficits during the 1980s.  It was during a time when Japan was ascendant and lots of folks in America had xenophobic fears about Japanese economic dominance.  Everyone seemed to have a Sony Walkman in those days, it was becoming clear the Honda and Toyota were making far superior cars than Ford and GM, and Japanese companies were buying American landmarks like RockeFeller Center.  On the nightly news we started to hear about the problem of our large Trade Deficit with Japan.  Americans were buying far more Japanese products than the Japanese were buying American products, and this was widely seen as a blow to American pride.

At the time, I largely bought this narrative.  I'd like to think that I did not have xenophobic feelings about Japan back then, but I was concerned that this trade deficit was bad for the American economy.  I'm almost a little bit embarrassed to admit it now, but my feelings about the trade deficit back then were similar to the way this guy feels about trade deficits right now.

*** I was trying to embed a 28-second clip of Donald Trump talking about trade deficits, but every time I look at the published blog post, it does not seem to be working.  Please click on the "this guy" link in the paragraph above to view the video clip. ***

However, unlike some people, my brain isn't permanently stuck in a 1980's mindset, and I know better now.  Unlike what Trump said in the video above, a trade deficit does not represent our nation losing wealth.  Sure, our country is sending a lot of money to other countries, but we are getting a lot of products back in return.  In fact, we are getting more products back in return that an other nation.  We are getting all these products from other countries, because our nation has enough money to buy all these products.  In other words, we have a trade deficit because our nation is rich.  We don't have a trade deficit, we have a wealth surplus.

OK, I guess by the technical definition of a trade deficit, we do have a trade deficit, but that should be a seen as a sign of our nation's wealth, rather than a cause for despair.  We are still by far the richest nation in the world, and in a global economy, the richest nation in the world is always going to have a trade deficit.

Consider a very wealthy family with lots of expensive possessions like jewels, cars, private planes, and yachts.  This wealth family sent lots of money to jewelers, car dealers,  and the people who sell yachts, and planes, buy nobody would every suggest that the wealthy family has a "trade deficit" with merchants that sold them the jewels, cars, planes, and yachts. 

Well, the United States is like the wealthy family of the world.  We are buy lots products that are produced at a low cost in sweatshops in other countries.  We certainly have a trade deficit with those countries, but would you rather be the country that buys stuff made in sweatshops, or the country that makes things in sweatshops.

Now, I'm not trying to say that sweatshops in other countries are a good thing, and that we shouldn't pressure other countries to improve their labor practices.  I'm also not trying to say that our country should not strive to make products and services that other countries will want to buy.  I'm just pointing out that it is inevitable that a country as wealthy as ours would have a trade deficit, and we shouldn't act like the sky is falling when our politicians rail about it.  We've got too many real problems to deal with in our country to waste time worrying about a trade deficit which is simply a by-product of our nations wealth.

Rich

An Important Tip

I'll keep this short.  I noticed that "tipping" was trending on Twitter today.  I shouldn't really have to write what I'm about to write, and I'm sure most people reading this will agree with I'm about to write and have expressed similar thoughts to their friend and colleagues.  However, based on what I'm seeing on Twitter today, it seems there is a non-zero chance that somebody reading this needs to see the following message.

If you don't tip your server at least 20% at a restaurant, you're an asshole.

Actually, that's not completely fair to say, because some of you reading this might not know the following fact.

The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour.

So, let's start again.  Now that you know the information above ...

If you don't tip your servers at least 20% going forward, you're an asshole.

Those of us that go out to eat, are responsible for making sure that the people that serve us have enough to eat.  We are responsible for making sure they have a roof over their head and can take care of their children.  Nobody can live on $2.13 an hour, so those of us that go out to eat are responsible for bringing that $2.13 an hour up to a living wage.

I understand that the entire American system of tipping is stupid and it would be far better if restaurants across the country uniformly paid servers living wages and the practice of tipping was elminated.  I'd happily accept higher prices on the menu at restaurants if I knew servers were being paid a steady living wage that did not depend on the tipping habits of the people they happened to serve on a given night.  However, that's not the way things work in this country, and until the restaurant business does change, we need to keep tipping generously.  I'll admit that it sometime feels unfair that people who tip generously wind up paying more for the same food/service at a restaurant than people who don't tip much, but I'm going to continue to tip generously, because I'm not an asshole.

Rich

We Told You So

There were a lot a things I wanted to write about this month, but that will have to wait until later, because I've been pretty furious about the Anthony Kennedy news and I need to vent.  I know it's pointless to vent, and I should really be spending my time doing something more constructive, but I don't think I'm going to be able to write about anything else until I get all my feelings about the 2016 election off my chest.

I was planning to name this post "I Told You So", but then I realized this would vastly understate the stupidity and the culpability of everyone who allowed the Trump presidency to happen.  It would be understandable if so many liberals made the wrong decisions that allowed Trump to become president if I was the only person warning everybody.  However, I wasn't the only one sounding warning bells - there were millions of us making the same arguments, and too many people simply did not listen.

Before I start ripping in to those on the left who allowed the Trump presidency to happen, I'd to address a post of mine that some of you might come across if you look at my archives.  The title of that post was "Liberals for Trump".  The title may be a bit misleading, so I want to make is clear that the point of that post ( written in January 2016 ) was that liberals should have been rooting for Trump to win in the primaries because he'd be an easier candidate for Democrats to beat than some of his more moderate and less crazy competitors in the 2016 Republican primaries.  I still stand by this assertion, and the results from 2012 and 2016 back this up.

2012 Results

2016 Results

As you can see from the charts above Trump got a lower percentage of the vote ( 45.93 % ) than Romney ( 47.32 % ) got in 2012, despite the fact the Romney was running against charismatic politician with a net positive approval rating ( Obama ) while Trump was running against a politician with net negative approval ratings ( Clinton ).  I'm certain that Romney would have improved on that 47.32% if he had been running against Clinton and Trump would have done worse than 45.93% percent if he had been running against Obama.  I'll believe to my dying day that Donald Trump was the only major candidate in the 2016 Republican primaries that Hillary Clinton had any chance of beating.

This brings me to the first group of people I'd like to say "We told you so" to.   The DNC and anyone who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries should have realized that Hillary Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate.  I've recently seen a argument on Facebook that Clinton was not a weak candidate because it took the intervention of the RNC, Russia, Wikileaks, and the FBI to take her down.  Specifically, I saw this image ...

Well, I would counter that the RNC, Wikileaks, the FBI, and Russia would not have been able to take her down if Hillary has not given them so much ammunition.  Anyone who makes a "but her emails" joke needs to realize the Hillary's email issue should have been recognized as a fatal flaw long before the first 2016 Democratic primary.  This risk was as plain as day.  I pointed this out in this post from March 2015.  That's March 2015 folks,  more than 10 months before the 2016 Iowa Caucus.  There was plenty of time for Democratic establishment to point out Hillary's flaws and back another candidate that was actually - you know - electable.  Instead the DNC, the Democratic establishment, and pro-Hillary Democrats continued on this Hillary-led march of doom that led us to children being separated from their parents at the border and at least two ultra-conservative Supreme Court justices for the next 30-40 years.

However, as upset as I am about 2016 Hillary supporters, my disappointment is tempered by the fact that I know almost all of them would have done the right thing and voted for Bernie in November if he had won the nomination, just like almost all the them voted for Obama in 2008.


The same cannot be said for many of the "Bernie-or-Bust" people who stayed home on Election Day 2016 or voted for Stein/Johnson.  I tried my best to make it clear to anti-Hillary Democrats that they needed to support Clinton in the general election.  In the the anti-Hillary post I linked to above, I wrote "this isn't going to stop me from voting for Hillary if she runs against any Republican", and when it became clear that Hillary was going to beat Bernie in the primary race, I wrote a blog post called "Bernie Fans for Hillary" urging all Bernie Sanders supporters to get behind Hillary Clinton.  Unfortunately most anti-Hillary liberals had no intention of listening to me or any other sensible voices on the left.  Because I like to think the best of people, I hope the most of the people I argued with ultimately decided to fight against Trump's agenda by voting for Hillary on Election Day, but it seems like too many of then wound up staying home or voting for Johnson or Stein.

BTW, if you were a Stein voter, I hope you noticed the photo I posted at the top of this blog post.  That's Jill Stein sitting at a table with Vladimir Putin and Michael Flynn in December 2015.  Congratulations, you've been duped! 

While I was having vicious arguments with Stein voters on the day after Election Day 2016 ( vicious on their side - they called me Hitler and suggested I wanted to put Stein voters in gas chamber when I suggested that Stein voters were responsible for the Trump presidency ), they claimed that Hillary lost by so much that Stein voters would not have made a difference.  Well, the statistics tell a different story.

In you are concerned that this guy just made up his numbers, you can see the full MI, PA, and WI results in the links below:
MI
PA
WI

All you Johnson voters don't get off easy either considering that Johnson got far more votes that Stein in those states.

Of course, if you voted for Stein/Johnson and didn't live in one of those 3 states, you can tell yourself that your vote didn't count anyway, but I believe if you contributed to the anti-Hillary climate in any way leading up the the 2016 general election, you are partly responsible for this Trump presidency.

I know I'm just probably wasting my time, because I can't change what happened, but I just can't shake this profound feeling of frustration with some of my fellow liberals.  If just a small number of idealistic liberal Nader/Stein voters had done the right thing and had voted for Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Hillary Clinton would in the process of nominating a Supreme Court Justice that would give liberals an 8-1 majority on the Supreme Court.  Roberts wouldn't be on the Supreme Court, Alito would not be there, Gorsuch would not be there, and whatever ultra-conservative judge Trump is thinking of nominating would not be on the Supreme Court.  If Nader/Stein voters had voted in the best interest of their fellow citizens instead of casting a vote to make themselves feels even more sefl-righteous than they already are, the Supreme Court would soon consists of Clarence Thomas and 8 liberals.  Just think of all the good an 8-1 liberal Supreme Court could do.  Instead, we are going to be stuck with an 5-4 conservative that could become a 6-3 conservative court soon if Breyer ( 79 years old ) or Ginsburg ( 85 ) have any health issues.  Heck, it could even conceivably be a 7-2 conservative court; I did not realize Breyer was already 79 until I looked it up a few minutes ago.

I'm almost too depressed to write anymore when I consider the damage the Supreme Court could do in the years to come and potentially over the rest of my life.  I guess all we can do now is make every effort to make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of 2000/2016 in 2020.  If you are reading this, and have far-left family/friends who tend not to vote for mainstream Democrats, please start talking to them now to try to convince them to vote for the Democratic nominee in 2020 if their preferred candidate does not win the Democratic nomination.  Those of us on the left may have our differences, but it is vital that we all get under one big tent over the next two years and show up in November 2020.

Rich

Mild-mannered

I had a revelation the other day while I was thinking about the 1950's Superman TV series.  The original run of the show was way before my time, but reruns of the show were in heavy rotation on one of the local New York TV stations when I was a small child in the early and mid 70's.  I loved that show as a child and still take pride in the fact that I can still recite the intro to the show word-for-word today.



I was repeating the lines of that intro to myself a few days ago ( something had reminded my of Superman ) when I started to thing about the term "mild-mannered" from the intro.  Clark Kent was described as a "mild-mannered reporter", not only in the TV intro from the 50's but also in Max Fleischer cartoons from the 40s, and in many other depictions of Clark Kent in that era and the years to come.

As I'm sure everyone reading this knows, Clark Kent is Superman's secret identify.  While it is an absolutely ridiculous idea that glasses could be an effective disguise, it has always been understood the the effectiveness of the Clark Kent secret identity relies more on Clark's personality than his glasses.  After all, Clark is "mild-mannered", and nobody would ever suspect that somebody as mild-mannered as Clark Kent could be the same person as the heroic Superman.  As I thought about this, it occurred to me that the Superman mythos that was cemented in the 40's and 50's is asserting that "mild-mannered" is the opposite of "hero".

I then started to think of how the idea of using "mild-mannered" as a slightly pejorative term was very much a product of the era of the 40's and 50's, and how the concept of masculinity was very different in that era than it is today.  I'd like to think that plenty of people today would no longer consider "mild-mannered" to be the opposite of "heroic".  To be sure, a lot of people still do, and it's unfortunate that a lot of people with 1950's conceptions of masculinity are still holding on to so much power and influence in society today.  We need to work to change those kinds of attitudes in the years to come, because if there is one thing the world needs more of, it is kind, patient, and mild-mannered people.  After all anybody who grew up with the mild-mannered guy below knows he was the real Superman.

Rich

We (not) jammin'

This weekend, I came to grips with something that I probably should have accepted at least 15 years ago.

My dunking days are over and they are never coming back.

To be honest, it's probably a bit of an overstatement to say I ever had "dunking days".  It's not as if I was going to the playground and throwing down monsters dunks on people in my youth.  To be honest, I never dunked on anybody, and I never dunked in a competitive game.  However, I did occasionally dunk on 10 foot regulation rims while practicing.  Sure I was successful in only about one of every 100 dunk attempts, but in my, mind each one of those dunks was glorious, and was perfectly willing to make 100 or more attempts in an afternoon until I threw one down ( but I would never try in a game, because I wanted to win every game I played, and I wasn't about to pass up a 99% percent shot ( layup ) for a 1% chance at a dunk ).

So, I wasn't a great dunker; I wasn't a good dunker or even a fair dunker, but the fact that I was 6' 1" and could occasionally dunk filled me with pride, and gave a naturally unassertive kid like me a little bit of irrational confidence that helped me with many aspects of my life.  I'm gonna be honest, - if I had never dunked in my life, and don't think I would have ever asked a girl out to this day.

In any case, because being a "dunker" was such an important part of my self image, that it was hard for me to accept the idea that dunking was no longer in the cards when I got older.   Back in 2008 when I was 38, I found myself in gym with Michael waiting for his youth basketball class to start.  I instinctively ran to the rim and tried to to grab it.  On my first attempt, my fingers barely grazed the bottom of the rim, so I tried again and again until I started to touch the rim with the part of my hand where the base of finger meet the top of the palm.  Michael's class started after that, so I didn't make anymore attempts, but I tried to convince myself that if I'd had the chance to warm up a little bit longer  I would have eventually gotten my hand up to dunking level ( with my wrist touching the rim ).

Anyway, I could barely walk the next day, and I was limping around with a pulled groin in both legs for about a week after that.

As you might imaging, despite my best efforts to stay fit, my leaping ability has deteriorated quite a bit in the last 10 years.  My leg strength really hasn't declined at all, but my flexibility ( which never good to begin with ) is terrible, and I feel absolutely no springiness in my legs.  What worse, I now seem to have a fear of putting 100% effort into each leap, because feel like one of my tight muscle/tendons/ligaments is ready to snap at any second.

This all hit home yesterday when I was playing in the driveway with my kids with the rim set at 9-feet.  I was able dunk a 9-foot rim will relative ease as recently as last year, but yesterday I found my dunk attempts being rejected by the front of the rim over an over again.  Eventually, after about 20 semi-tentative attempts, I foolishly risked snapping a ligament, focused all my jumping power with a loud martial arts kiai, and barely manage to get a successful dunk on the 9-foot rim.  So, I guess I had a small victory, but it was a pretty pathetic victory, considering it was now just as hard for me to dunk on a 9-foot rim as it had been for me to dunk on a 10-foot rim in my prime.  I came to the realization that I had lost entire foot on my vertical leap since my youth.

Of course, I really shouldn't be complaining.  I'm been blessed with better health than most people my age, and I still don't feel my age at all when I engage in activities like hiking, lifting weights, or running on my treadmill.  Still it's a little bit scary to consider the implications of our inevitable physical decline.  After all, no matter how hard we work to stay fit, we all slow down, we all start to lose our ability to do things, and eventually we all ...

You know what?   Fuck it - let's not ever discuss this again.  How about that Infinity War movie, guys!

Rich

Trump's Tariffs

If you are a regular reader of my blog posts, you've probably noticed that I haven't written a decent blog post in quite some time.  I don't think I've written anything that I'm remotely proud of since my post about California more than a year ago.  I can't really promise that the post I'm writing now is going to be any good either, but I can promise you it will be unique.  The subject of this blog post is going to be uniquely boring.  I'm about to write about tariffs.

   That last sentence may have lost about half my readers, but if you are still reading this please stick around, because tariffs are pretty important.  As you might have noticed, the stock market has been tanking since Trump announced his tariffs on steel and aluminum, and I wouldn't be surprised if the economy as a whole starts to slump as a result of these tariffs.

    Before going on, I want to make it clear that my opposition to Trump's tariffs have nothing to do with my general opposition to Trump.  I've always been opposed to tariffs of any kind.  I've always been in favor of free trade, which puts me very much in opposition to many of my fellow liberals.  While I've never voted for a Republican, I've generally been happy with the trade policies of Republicans prior to Trump.  The fact that Trump is going against the typical Republican position on tariffs, and Bernie Sanders supported tariffs in the 2016 campaign lends credence to the idea that tariffs do not need to be a politically partisan issue.  Whether you are a Trump-loving conservative or a WTO-hating liberal, I'm hoping this post will help convince you that Trump's tariffs are a terrible idea.

   Just to make sure we are all on the same page, I'm going to start by defining what a tariff actually is.  A tariff is a tax on the importer of a particular good needs to pay to the customs authority of the country imposing the tariff. However, it is also possible the importer and exporter can reach an agreement for the exporter to pay the tariff or part of the tariff via a Delivered Duty Paid agreement.  Regardless of whether the importer or exporter pays the tariff the importer will general have to pay my money to procure a product a tariff is being imposed on.  Let's say an exporter in a country outside the USA acquires rubber balls for the equivalent of 89 US cents and sells them to an American importer for 1 dollar in the absence of any tariff.  If the USA were to impose a 10% tariff on rubber balls, the importer is likely to spend more than 1 dollar per ball going forward even if the exporter agrees to pay all of the tariff.  If the exporter was making a 11 cents per ball profit before the tariff, it's unlikely that the exporter could afford to make only a 1 cent profit per ball after the paying the 10 cent tariff per ball.  It's likely that the exporter will raise their price a bit to more than 1 dollar per ball, which would effectively make the importer absorb some of the price of the tariff even if the exporter is officially paying all of the tariff.
  In any case, the bottom line is that tariffs on a given product will generally increase the amount of money an importer will have to spend to acquire a given amount of that product.  If the importer needs to pay more for the product, retailers generally need to pay more for the product, and most people would argue that this mean the cost of a tariff is ultimately passed on to the consumer.

In fact, the argument that "tariffs are passed on the consumer" is the most common argument I've heard from people who are opposed to tariffs.  However, while this is certainly an argument I would often make against tariffs, I don't want the make a blanket statement that the costs of tariffs are always passed down to the consumer, because I can think of scenarios where this might not be true.  I say that because a retailer will not always respond to rising expenses by raising prices.

One of the most simple examples of this how the owners of sports teams set ticket prices.  For years, I've heard sports fan blame the players for rising ticket prices.  They'll say something like, "If those greedy players didn't demand such high salaries, ticket prices wouldn't be so high."  However, that's simply not true.  Consider what would happen if the the salaries of all baseball players, were magically reduced by 90%.  Would the baseball owners cut ticket prices by 90%?  Would the baseball owners cut ticket prices by even 1%.  No, they wouldn't, because there would be no rational reason for the baseball owners to give up any revenue.  Sports team set ticket prices to maximize revenue.  They will try to maximize revenue regardless of how high or low their expenses are.  More specifically, they try to set their ticket prices in such a way to maximizes the value of ticket revenue in the following formula ...

Ticket Revenue = (Average Ticket Price) x (Number of Tickets Sold)

Clearly, lowering the Average Ticket Price ( ATP ) will raise the Number of Tickets Sold ( NTS ) and raising the ATP will lower the NTS.  So, teams simply can't raise ticket revenue by raising ticket prices.  There are times that raising ticket prices might reduce ticket sales so much that ticket revenue would fall.  Conversely, there are times that reducing ticket prices might boost ticket sales so much that ticket revenue would increase.  My point here is that sports team probably employ groups of really smart people to figure out the optimal ticket prices to maximize revenue, and those people have no reason to take player salaries into account, because the process of maximizing ticket revenue has nothing to do with the expense of player salaries.

Just like rising player salaries don't lead to high ticket prices, tariffs that lead to higher costs for retailers won't always lead to higher prices for consumers.  However, they usually will, because retailer need to focus on the total profit they make from sales rather than the total revenue.  For example, let's say a New York store owner sells 100 Mets caps a month at a price of $10.  Well, in this case, the store makes $1000 in revenue from Mets caps each month.  Let's say the owner is aware of market research that suggest that the store could sell 200 Mets caps a month if the price dropped to $7.50 per cat.   While dropping the price of the cap to $7.50 would raise the revenue to $1500 a month, it may not be a good idea.  If it cost the store owner $8 to get each Mets cap, then dropping the retail price of the cap to $7.50 would obviously be a terrible idea, because the store owner would be losing 50 cents for each hat sold.  So while owner of sports teams try to set prices in a way that will maximize revenue, retailers try to set prices to maximize profit made for each product is a given amount of time.  In other words, a retailer tries to maximize Profit from Product in the formula below ....

Profit from Product =
( (Retail Price of Product) - (Cost of Product to Retailer) ) * ( Units of Product Sold )

A tariff on a product will almost always increase the "Cost of Product to Retailer" for a given product.  In the absence of any change in the retail price of the product, an increase in the cost of he product to the retailer will decrease the profit for the retailer.  In most cases, the retailer will increase the retail price in order to get back some of the lost profit, but this won't always be the case.  It's possible that the consumers of the product might be very sensitive to any price change.  It's possible that even a tiny increase in the price of the product might push consumers to by a similar yet cheaper product.  In that case, the retailer might not have any choice but to keep the price of the product the same and accept the lower profits.  Conversely, it might be the case that the product is something that consumers find essential and many would be willing to pay more for.  In that case, retailers could increase the retail price of a product after a tariff is imposed on it and make more profit than they would have made by keeping the retail price of the product static.

In any case, I'm not quite sure why I spent all this time writing about why tariffs won't necessarly lead to higher prices for consumers ( aside from the fact that I've always been annoyed by people who blame high-paid athletes for high ticket prices, and I wanted to prove them wrong ) because I'm undermining my position that tariffs will usually lead to higher prices.  It will usually make sense for a retailer to raise prices after a tariff raises their costs, because when profit margins are low ( which they often are in retail ), the profit-per-unit gained by raising prices after a tariff will outweigh the profits lost by losing sales.  For example, consider the example of the Mets cap I brought up earlier.  If the 100 caps are sold a month at a price of $10 and each cap cost the store 8 dollars to acquire, the store would be making $200 a month of profit on the Mets caps.  If a tariff is placed on Mets caps ( I know that's a stretch, but if Rudy Giuliani's campaign for president has been successful 10 years ago, and I guarantee you there would have been tariffs on Mets everything, regardless of whether the items were imported or not. ) and the cost of Mets caps for retailers becomes $9 after a tariff, the store owner's profits on Mets caps would drop to $100 a month if the retail price of the Mets cap was not changed.  In this case, I think the owner could expect profits to go up if the retail price of the Mets cap was raise from $10 to $11, because raising the price to $11 dollars would double the per-cap profit from $1 to $2, and it is unlikely that sales of the cap would drop more than 50% if the retail price was raised from $10 to $11.  Even if raising the price of the Mets cap from $10 to $11 dollars made sales go down by 40%, the store owner would make $120 dollars a month on Mets caps ( $2 profit/cap x 60 caps/month ) verses the $100 a month on Mets cap ( $1 profit/cap x 100 caps/month ) the store owner would have made if the retail price of the caps had remained at $10.
  Still a profit of $120 a month isn't as good as the pre-tariff profit of $200 a month ( nor would a profit of $198 a month be as good as $200 a month if sales of Mets caps caps had only fallen to 99 caps a month after the retail price of the cap was raised to $11.  I think it reasonable to expect some loss in sales for any price increase, so the store owner would not be able to recoup lost profit simply by trying to pass the entire cost of the tariff on the consumer ).  The store owner would definitely be worse off after the tariff was imposed, as would the consumers who would now be paying $11 for Mets caps rather than $10.  And that brings me to the main point I'm trying to make; tariffs hurt almost everybody.  They hurt both retails and consumers, not to mention anyone in the import/export business.  They only people who are helped by tariffs are the people in the USA who make the product a tariff is being imposed on.  However, I would content a lot more people are hurt than are helped by tariffs.  Take Trump's steel tariffs for instance.  According to Moody's Investor's Services, there are 6.5 millions Americans who work in industries that consume steel, and only 140,000 Americans who work in the steel industry.  Not only will these tariffs on steel and aluminum hurt a lot more workers than they will help, but they go against some of basic principals of capitalism the President Trump's party is supposed to be in favor of.  Republicans have historically believed that the government should leave private businesses alone, but tariffs do the opposite of that.  When a government imposes a tariff, it is picking winners and losers in the economy instead of letting the invisible hand of the market choose winners and losers.  Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs are making winners out pf American steel and aluminum companies, and making losers out of the auto industry, beverage companies, and all other American industries that benefit by getting imported steel and aluminum at low prices.  For that reason, I'm sure Ayn Rand's long-lost grandson Paul Ryan hates the idea of these steel and aluminum tariffs, but he'll ultimately cave-in and support Trump's tariff policies, because like almost all Republicans he'd rather abandon his principles to support a terrible Trump policy than face the wrath of Trump-loving voters in a Republican primary.
   This is unfortunate, because if enough Republicans in Congress found the political courage to do so, they could team up with Democrats to take Trump's power to impose tariffs away   I should emphasize that if Congress did take action to reduce the power of the president to impose tariff, it would not just affect President Trump, but all future presidents.  This would be a good thing, because something that could affect as American lives as tariffs should not be in the hands of a single person.  I know that very few ( if any ) Republicans read my blog posts on a regular basis, but if you are a Republican or are a constituent of a Republican member of the House or Senate, please considering letting that congressperson know you believe Trump's tariffs are a terrible idea for our country.  I know it probably won't any difference at all, but there's zero chance these tariffs will be stopped if Republicans don't speak out against it.  C'mon, there are probably more Republicans who believe in free trade than Democrats who do, so if these tariffs are going to be stopped, its the Republicans who are going to have to do it.
Rich

Guns Again

I've written about a mass shooting at least once  before in the past, but I haven't written about it in many years, because frankly, it's a depressing thing to write about, and the aftermath of each incident always plays out in the same depressingly predictable way; parents and friends of the victims call for more gun control, Democrats and liberals echo those calls, the NRA and Republicans oppose any gun control, blame the mental health of shooter ( if the shooter is white ) or call for more immigration restrictions ( if the shooter is an immigrant ) , and suggest that more guns ( in the hand of "good guys ) are the answer to the underlying problem of mass shootings.  In the end, Congress takes no action, the NRA receives more donations, gun sales go up, and the next mass shooting in just around the corner.

Just about all of that happened after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting ( with the one extra element of the GOP blaming the FBI, because the GOP has been anti-FBI since the FBI started to investigate Donald Trump ), but something else has happened too.  The fellow students of the Stoneman Douglas victims have started to organize in a way the families/friends of mass shooting victims have never organized before.  It is easy to be cynical about the chances these kids have to make any lasting impact on the gun debate in the USA, but one can't deny that some unprecedented progress has been made in the last week.  Until a week or so ago, most people were not aware that lots of companies offer NRA discounts, much in the way companies offer AAA discounts.  Thanks to these Stoneman Douglas kids, many more people became aware of these NRA discounts, voiced there displeasure to these companies, and many of these companies ended their NRA discount programs.*  For example, last week I learned that every major rental car company offered NRA discounts, and now all of them are ending their NRA discount programs.  I know that may seem like a really small thing, but it could potentially be one of first steps forward in changing the gun culture in America.  When all those companies ended their NRA discounts, they were well aware that they would be alienating the NRA and many members of the NRA.  They knew they were risking losing the business of NRA members.  However, they are apparently believed that the risk of losing the business of people who despise the NRA was greater than the risk of losing the business of NRA members.  In other words, these companies were more afraid of gun control advocates than they were of the NRA.  If we can get members of Congress to feel the same way, we can really start to make progress in the fight for gun control in this country.

Of course, it could still be a long time before we can get Congress to feel the same way, because GOP members of congress seem to joined at the hip with the toxic narratives put forward by the NRA after every one of these mass shootings.  I'd like to spend a little bit of time addressing some of those narratives.

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people"

I can't deny that if somebody wants to kill another person, there are plenty of ways to do it.  Somebody could build a bomb, or stab a person, or start driving on the sidewalk to run down people.  However, while there are many ways to kill a lot of people, there really isn't an easier way to kill a lot of people than by using a semi-automatic assault weapon.    Building a bomb takes technical knowledge most people don't have, a knife or sword can't be used to kill people from distance, and a car is a tool that is not designed to murder people.  A car could be used to murder lots of people if enough people are in close proximity, but the main purpose of a car is transportation.  The main purpose of an assault weapon is to kill many things in a short amount of time.  Yes, people do kill people, but with that in mind, why they hell would we every want to make it easier for people to kill other people?

"The real problem is mental illness, not guns"

This argument always makes me think of a cartoon I saw taped to one of my professor's door back in my college days.  The cartoon had two panels.  The first panel had the title "Crazy person with a gun", and showed a crazy-eyed man with an assault weapon firing multiple shots.  The second panel has the title "Crazy person without a gun", and showed a crazy-eyed man with his fingers in the shape of a gun shouting "BANG! BANG! BANG!".

"If you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns"

Well, first of all, most people in favor of gun control are not in favor of outlawing all guns.  Many gun control advocates would like assault weapons like AR-15s banned.  Presented with that fact, I think that many advocates for gun rights might responds with a quote like "If you outlaw AR-15s, only outlaws will have AR-15s".  However that revised quote would not be accurate either, because if AR-15s were outlawed, police SWAT teams and the armed forces would still have access to AR-15s and guns with far more firepower than AR-15s.".  I know that some people feel they need an AR-15 for home-protection, but feel like guns like that should be left in the hands of trained professionals ( I'll comment more on this in the "good guy with a gun" section below ).

The second point I want to make here is that every single illegal gun on the street was originally a legal gun ( There could be an extremely rare exception of a criminal who crafts guns from scratch, but c'mon, I don't see why a criminal would do that when so many gun are in circulation ).   A certain percentage of legal guns manufactured get bought/sold/stolen illegally and become illegal guns. If the gun industry keeps manufacturinglegal guns at the pace they are making them, there will inevitably be more illegal guns on the street.  Outlawing sales of assault weapons to civilians won't take assault weapons out of the hands of criminal, but it help dry up the supply of illegal assault weapons for criminals.  Why wouldn't we want to dry up the supply of illegal assault weapons and give our law enforcement officers ( who would still have legal access to assault weapons ) a fighting chance?

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

We've been hearing variations of this one a lot lately.  People have called for arming school security guards, and Donald Trump has suggested that school shootings could be prevented by arming a certain percentage of teachers.

There are so many problems with the "good guy with a gun" idea, that I barely know where to begin.

Let me start by conceding there are certain isolated scenarios in which a teacher or a security guard with a gun could save the lives of students.  For example, if a teacher and students were cornered by a school shooter, and there was no way to escape, I'm sure that a teacher with a gun would have a better chance to save students than a teacher without a gun.  However, the benefit of having guns for self-defense in schools in that very specific scenario is far outweighed by the dangers posed by having guns in schools on a daily basis.

While an armed teacher or a security guard could potentially save students in a school shooting situation, it is far more likely that the "good guy with a gun" is going to wind up getting more people killed.  If you look up statistics on "friendly fire" in the military or statistics on shooting accuracy for police ( This study indicates that police only hit their targets 18% of the time in a gunfight ), you'll see that even trained professions have a hard time hitting their targets in high stress situations.  In a school shooting situations, it is reasonable to expect that teachers or security guards wielding guns would have terrible accuracy.  There is a great chance that more children would die in the crossfire if a teacher or security guard tried to play Rambo, and even a greater chance that a teacher or security guard trying to be a hero would be gunned down by the first police officer who saw them wandering the halls with a gun in a school shooting scenario.

In addition to the issues that would be introduced by additional gun-firing individuals in a school shooting situation, having guns in schools on a daily basis will almost certainly lead to additional shooting incidents in schools.  Teachers and security guards are human being with human flaws.  They have the potential to lose their temper or become mentally unstable.  There also have the potential to get an "itchy trigger finger" and shoot people when they mistake minor problems for serious threats.  There are already far too many unarmed people shot each year by trained law enforcement professionals.  I'd hate to think about how many people could be shot in schools by teacher of security guards who are asked to "play cop" without the training  a cop receives.

I hear the next two narratives a lot when a Democrat happens to be in a Oval Office.  For the next two narratives, I'm going to address the people who hold these view directly in blue text.

"I need guns to protect me from government tyranny"

The federal government has far more powerful guns than the ones you might have stashed in your basement.  The federal government also has tanks, fighter jets, Apache Helicopters, drones, and various bombs and missiles at its disposal.  Your private stash of guns is not going to be able to protect you from any of that.  If the federal governments wants to impose their will on you, you will not be able to stop.  If the federal government wanted you dead, you would have been dead yesterday.  When it comes to stopping tyranny, a ballot in your hand is a far more effective tool than a gun in your hand..

"I'll give ups my guns when the President gives up his Secret Service protection"

The President needs armed Secret Service protection because there are millions of people all over the world who would like to kill him.

Nobody wants to murder your sorry ass.

"The government can't regulate my guns because of the 2nd Amendment"

2nd Amendment : A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Rich

* I don't know if any of the Stoneman Douglas kids were directly responsible for spreading the word about NRA discount programs, but I'm sure that information would not been publicized last week if the Stoneman Douglas kids had not shined a light on the NRA.

What is America?

I've been writing at least one blog post a month for nearly a decade now, and it has generally been a joy to write each post.  However, that has really changed over the last year.  I like to write stuff related to current events, but current events have just been so damned dreary lately.  With that in mind, I've decided to write about something positive this month.  So instead of commenting on current events this month, I'm just going to attempt to answer the question below.

What is America?

Before attempting to answer this question, let me make it clear that in the context of this question, "America" represents the United States of America.

So, that being said, in the most literal sense, one could define America to simply be the land mass consisting of the 50 states.  However, I've never considered America to be defined by its territory, or the by people who live within its boarders at any given time.  I've always considered America to be an idea.

America is the idea that anyone in the world can be an American.  Well, I guess that's not entirely true, but to paraphrase Anton Ego, not everyone can become an American, but a great American can come from anywhere.  I know a lot of people in Trump's America believe immigration dilutes America's greatness, but I believe immigration is the engine that drives American greatness.  I feel that nobody is more American than somebody who is willing to uproot their lives in another country to come to America.  Natural born American citizens often take citizenship for granted because they never made a conscious choice to be American.  I'm not saying that natural born American don't love America, but is it a different kind of love than the love immigrants have.   A natural born American loves America the way a child loves a parent.  An American immigrant loves America with the kind of passion one might feel for a sweetheart.  I'm not saying that people who were born in the USA don't love their native country deeply, but the love you choose always comes with more passion.  For our country to stay strong, we need new immigrants that have a passion for the country they chose.

I firmly believe that other the nations with largely homogeneous populations and cultures will never be able to match the the greatness of America's diverse population.  As long as the United States continues to encourage a diverse population of immigrants to come to the USA, the United States will be drawing from a larger talent pool than the rest of the world.  When a difficult problems needs to be solved, Germany can tackle that problem with the most talented German people, Japan can tackle that problem with the most talented Japanese people, India can tackle the problem with the most talented Indian people, and China can tackle the problem with the most talented Chinese people.  However, America can tackle the problem with talented and daring immigrants who came from Germany, Japan, India, and China, along with native born Americans and immigrants from many other nations.  There's a reason why Americans' keep winning Noble Prizes and that a disproportionate number of those Nobel Prize winners are America immigrants.

I also believe that America means the opportunity to achieve one's dreams.  America doesn't always live up to the ideal of the America Dream ( consider how much discrimination there is and how much the laws favor the wealthy ), but the ideal is something the nation should always be striving for.

I know a lot of people who think we need to "Make America Great Again" ( MAGA ), don't agree with my definition of America or Americans.  The "again" in MAGA implies that our nation's greatness lies in our past, while I believe that it lies in our future.  Those who believe in MAGA feel that our nation will become less great if it becomes less Christian, less English-speaking, and less connected to Western culture ( which for some, means less white ).   They feel that an America full of non-Christian, non-English-speaking, and non-Western people won't be America anymore.  I couldn't disagree more.  If America evolves into a largely Spanish-speaking nation in which white English-speaking Christian people are a distinct minority, it will still be America if the it lives up to the ideals or opportunity, freedom, and inclusiveness.  If we are still a democratic nation in which political parties can argue the issues of the day without fear of repercussions from the government, we will still be America, regardless of the language the politicians are arguing in.  If people are still free to worship ( or not worship ) they way they please, we will still be America regardless of whether most people are praying in a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a temple.   I'd agree with "Make America Great Again", if they dropped the "Again", and added an "er".  I would hope that's something we could all agree with.  We should all want to "Make America Greater".  However, America won't became greater just because we want it to.  It is going to take a lot of work, and we are not going to be able to do it until all of us are willing to work together.    Those who want to shun our newest wave of immigrants would should remember our nation's founding motto.

E pluribus unum ( Out of many, one )

Rich