Author Archives: Tom Liberman

Arresting Parents for the Crimes of Children

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Bad ParentsThe recent case in which Rebecca Ann Sedwick killed herself after months of relentless bullying, mainly through social media and email, has once again brought forward the idea that parents should be punished for the illegal activity of their children.

The idea has a large emotional appeal because it is easy to blame poor parenting for bad children. Not only is it easy to associate the two but they are, in fact, often causally related. Children raised poorly by their parents often end up behaving in criminal ways.

The question that I intend to explore today is if such punishment is merited. Many experts argue that punishing the parent will do nothing to prevent such bullying but that’s not my focus here. I want to determine if parents should be held responsible for their children’s behavior.

There is some legal precedent for the idea. A number of states place various penalties on parents when their children are found guilty of crimes.

The idea is that parents would fear punishment based on the behavior of their children and thus take steps to curb said actions. If a certain number of parents are arrested for the crimes of their children, other parents will become more involved parents. That, out of fear, they will become better parents.

I’m convinced this argument is, at best, largely false. There are good parents and bad parents. Good parents will look at laws of this nature and possibly spend more time trying to be good parents; but the reality is that they are already good parents and their children are not likely to engage in this sort of bullying. Bad parents are living under the illusion that they are good parents or they simply don’t care. Therefore they will make no effort to change.

However, my main argument against this kind of law is that it punishes someone for a crime they didn’t commit. Yes, they were awful, absent parents but that’s not a crime. Their children committed real crimes and should be punished for doing so.

I think an interesting analogy would be punishing a dog owner for allowing their pet to roam free and defecate on lawns. The dog cannot comprehend the law and simply goes to the bathroom without cleaning up. The owner understands the law and allowed the dog, who doesn’t know any better, to violate the law.

Another example that comes to mind is leaving loaded firearms in places where children have access to them. A child shoots another child with said firearm. Parents have been convicted for crimes in these cases. I’m not opposed to convicting the parent of negligence in leaving a dangerous weapon so readily available but that is the crime of the parent. Possibly even convict them of negligent homicide. But the reality is the child pulled the trigger and should face whatever punishment law-enforcement and our judicial system deems appropriate.

I do not think a child is an animal. A child knows better; the sooner they learn there are consequences to their actions the better.

What message are we sending a child by punishing someone else for their crimes? It doesn’t take much of a leap of logic to imagine an angry child committing a crime in order to get their parent punished.

Those girls that bullied their classmate knew what they were doing was cruel and wrong. They should be punished. They should face the full force of the legal system. I have no problem with laws about making threatening statements, about libel, about slander. If the girls in this case have broken those laws then let them face punishment. They are not pets, they are people. Perhaps not adults but old enough to know right from wrong.

Laws must be enforced with blind justice.

In summation; people should be held responsible for their actions and their actions alone.

What do you think?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length novel)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt (Out very soon!)

Goblin Valley – Boy Scout Self-Delusion

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Goblin Valley State ParkThere’s a mildly interesting story in the news today about a pair of Boy Scout leaders who pushed over a boulder in Goblin Valley State Park.  The reason it’s such a big story is that the two are Boy Scout leaders and their actions are antithetical to the policy of the Scouts, which is to leave nature as it is found, “Leave no Trace”.

The two men noticed an apparently precariously perched boulder and decided it represented a threat to people who were walking nearby. They climbed up, and with some effort, managed to push the boulder over. It fell about five feet and rolled another foot or so.

What I find interesting about the situation is not the violation of scout ethics, the vandalism done to a park, but the self-delusional nature of those who did it. They have managed to convince themselves that they were saving many lives with their heroic deed.

This gives us insight into how flawed thinking can lead us to make bad decisions; that’s what I’d like to talk about today.

Goblin Valley State Park is filled with rock formations of this nature. Most hiking trails have such formations. Whenever I go on a hike I usually see a large rock perched in a fairly precarious appearing position. I always feel the temptation to push said rock over. The idea being that moving such a massive thing with my own power makes me feel stronger.

I would guess that just about everyone who has ever seen such a rock formation has had similar thoughts. What is it that kept me from pushing over the rock? Why, even as a young boy of ten or eleven, did I realize that to do so was wrong? What keeps every person who see such rock formations from behaving in such a way?

Critical thinking.

There are the two conflicting thoughts. The first is personal gratification in pushing over the rock. The momentary elation in doing so. The second is that the park is not mine. That many visitors come to the park and that by selfishly pushing over the rock I’m potentially ruining other people’s experience.

It is clear that the glory of pushing over the rock simply overwhelmed the critical thinking capacity of the two scout leaders and they justified their actions with the nonsensical rationalization that they were saving many lives. Even now they claim that they did the right thing but should have notified a ranger. That is clearly a lie established to rationalize their own behavior. It is the lie they told themselves and now repeat for all to hear.

They are convinced that they saved lives despite the fact that Goblin Valley is filled with such formations by the thousand. Here is an image search.

They assume that they are good people and good people wouldn’t do a bad thing, therefore the bad thing they did must be good.

It’s a lack of critical thinking and such irrational thoughts lead to poor decisions. Poor decisions lead to a worse life.

When presented with any decision take a moment to make a critical analysis. Have you arrived at the conclusion that you want to be true or have you come to the conclusion that is true.

It’s an important question. Get in the habit of asking yourself that question before every decision. Is buying a gallon of ice cream the correct decision? Is tailgating on the highway the correct decision?

Life is decisions, one after the next. The more correct ones you make, the better your life will be.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt (Out very soon!)

Zero-Tolerance means Zero Responsibility

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zero toleranceWe haven’t had many of these zero-tolerance stories in the news lately but there is a big one out now.

In this case teenager Erin Cox went to pick up a friend from a party. The friend was too intoxicated to drive herself. When Cox arrived the police showed up as well and gave a summons to every underage person at the party. Cox violated the schools zero-tolerance policy for students attending parties in which alcohol is served. She was suspended for a few games from her volleyball team and removed as captain.

There’s a lot of outrage about the ruling because Cox was there not to party but to help a friend. That Cox is being punished for helping  her friend avoid driving drunk. I totally agree with the idea that Cox is blameless in this but I want to look at the idea of a zero-tolerance policy and what it really means: Zero responsibility.

The stated idea behind a zero-tolerance policy is to ensure the safety of people, generally students. The danger of drugs is so terrible that we cannot allow any drugs in the school; including aspirin. The horrors of teenage drinking and driving with its attendant accidental deaths is so great we must protect our students by punishing anyone going to a party where alcohol is available.

The reality behind zero-tolerance policies is that adults are afraid to make decisions. Zero-tolerances gives them the opportunity to mete out punishment without taking any responsibility.

Why are they afraid? Because if they give different punishments for the same crime based on circumstances they will be sued by the other parents, accused of favoritism, racism, nepotism, and just about anything else. They could lose their livelihoods in the storm of lawsuits that will follow.

Why are lawmakers afraid to make legislation? They will lose their job. That’s why we have a dozens of Propositions on the ballots when in a Representative Republic our elected officials should make decisions. It is why there is gridlock in Washington D.C.

Why does our legal system rely on mandated sentencing guidelines?

I’ll tell you why. Our society is filled with people more than happy to blame everyone else for what is wrong with their lives. Listen to a politician talk and if lips are moving, someone else is being blamed. It’s not just politicians. It’s everywhere and it’s rampant. Read the comments on any news story about anything. It’s always someone else’s fault.

Anyone who stands up and takes a position is bulldozed in the ensuing blame Olympics. I’m not surprised that schools enact zero-tolerance policies out of fear. I’m not surprised that Cox is being punished for her actions. Zero-tolerance means no one has to make a decision. That all decisions are mandated and that means that the person making the decision can utter the most useful phrase in the United States, “Blame Canada!”

So, in this latest case who are we blaming? The administrators who created this policy out of absolute fear that they’d be punished no matter what decision they made about student drinking. Whose fault is that? Look in the mirror. It’s your fault. It’s my fault. Our willingness to blame everyone but ourselves is to blame.

You don’t like zero-tolerance policies? Then stop blaming everyone else when something goes wrong.

You don’t like our useless government? Blame yourself and start voting better.

You don’t like your job? Go out and get a better one. Educate yourself. Work hard.

Your kid got the raw end of a deal? Tell them that’s life. Watch out in the future.

You don’t like this blog? Stop reading.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt (Out very soon!)

The Spear of the Hunt – Coming Soon!

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The Spear of the HuntGeneral Yumanar has led the armies of the Republic of Caparal to one victory after the next but his immense popularity is a threat to the corrupt civilian powers. They send him on a quest to retrieve the legendary Spear of the Hunt rather than allowing him to return home to acclaim and certain political triumph.

They hope he will never return.

The son of the most powerful family in all of Caparal joins Yumanar on the quest. Sent to spy on the general he must eventually choose his own loyalties. Will he choose his friend or his family?

What happens when those in power will do anything to keep their authority even if it means betraying the very nation they promise to protect?

The Spear of the Hunt.

Coming to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords soon!

Always $2.99

The Education Gap – Adults Count Also

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EducationThere was an interesting study recently completed by a group called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies in which they tested adults in various countries on Math, Reading, and Problem Solving skills.

I recently wrote about how China and India are graduating huge numbers of college students and that the United States is falling behind. That this transition of intelligence from the US to other countries does not speak well of our nation and our chances to continue to be a world leader in scientific advancement, economic power, and military power.

The new study did not survey adults in China and India and I certainly wish that it had. It would give us a more complete picture. However, the U.S. continues to score extremely poorly on education tests pretty much across the board. This is often explained by the fact that in the U.S. we have a very diverse population with large numbers of immigrants. There is truth to this statement as smaller countries tend to have better educational systems simply because they have fewer students to teach.
The nations that dominate us in this most recent survey are generally smaller in population and that means we still have a greater number of highly intelligent people, it’s just that our average is lower.

I’m firmly convinced that our economic power, our scientific acumen, and our military dominance grew largely out of the fact we had a huge number of intelligent people in the United States in the 50’s and 60’s. Some of them born here and educated through our system and others who fled totalitarian regimes.

It matters not that we ended up with a huge advantage in intellect; it only matters that we had it and much of our power today stems from that time.

That advantage is clearly ebbing although we are still the world leader in economics, barely, and military might, by a large margin. It seems to me that if we continue down this path it is inevitable that new inventions, new ideas, economic power, and military power will shift away from the U.S. and to the increasingly smarter nations. That is why I’m disappointed India and China were not included in this survey.

I love the idea that other nations are producing intelligent adults. I’m all for education around the world. I love great ideas and the people who promulgate them. I think these ideas make all our lives better and result in economic bounty for everyone. I just want my country, the U.S. to keep up.

If this survey is to be believed; Americans rank 17th in Problem Solving abilities of the 23 nations surveyed. Yikes.

Here is a look at the entire file on the U.S.

They looked at a number of other factors and it makes for interesting reading including the fact that blacks and Hispanics in the U.S. were a significant drag on the scores. They make up a huge percentage of the worst scores with whites and Asians making up the high-end of the scale. Something the article does not talk about, I’m sure to avoid being accused of racism.

The article also talks about how those with higher intelligence are paid more, as it should be.

I’m not a fear-monger. I think despite these scores the U.S. has not fallen irretrievably behind other nations. We still have a massive population and many intelligent people. We need to focus on getting people to value education. President Obama, Colin Powell, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sonia Sotomayor, and other highly educated and prominent minorities are making that effort but it in the end it comes down to the parents and the communities.

Those people who value education will succeed in life and those who do not, will not. Those nations that value education will prosper and those who do not, will not. Those who spurn academia, education, science, and intelligence will reap what they sow.

The gauntlet has been thrown down, the rest of the world is gaining, are we up to the challenge?

Time will tell.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

I Paid for my Ticket! Rude at the Game Explored

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Rude FansI’m a huge sports fan as almost anyone who regularly reads my blog knows. My mother is a season ticket holder for the St. Louis Cardinals and I’m the same for the St. Louis Rams. I go to a healthy number of games each year and it seems to me that boorish behavior is on the rise lately.

I could be wrong about this. It could simply be me getting older and less tolerant; although those who know me will tell you that patience and tolerance are not character traits of mine. I’m not one to put up with stupidity and rudeness.

I’ve noticed an increase in haters and shouters at the games in the last few years.

Anyone who follows a sports team with passion will know of “haters“. These are people who predict dire results and are happy when the team loses or a player fails because they were right. They revel in the misery of fans who want the team to succeed. They dominate the comment section of sports stories and incessantly call talk radio shows to express their opinion.

They are now not shy about expressing their hate, loudly and repeatedly, at the game itself. No longer anonymous exactly but in front of a crowd of strangers they feel it’s perfectly acceptable yell out obscenities and vile words at those players who have engendered their hate. They ruin the experience for those around them, by golly they say, “I paid for these tickets.”

I remember as a kid people booing a player for making a bad play. I remember sarcastic applause when after a series of blunders someone made an ordinary play. I even remember people shouting out things like “you’re a bum”. What I don’t remember is the vile, unadulterated hate that strongly overrides rooting for the team. What I see now is a larger and larger group of people who want the team to fail, the player to fail, and cheer only halfheartedly at success. They only seem happy with a failure that validates their hatred.

As for drunks, there have always been drunks at games. I probably see fewer of them these days.

The reason I bring all this up is that I had a pretty nasty experience at the Rams game on Sunday. There was a group of about six guys near me who were clearly pretty drunk but of a good nature. They cheered the team a bit too loudly but I found them perfectly acceptable. They were in body-paint which is apparently against the rules because security made them go get shirts. This caused one of them to become belligerent for a bit but he settled down quickly enough.

What was the problem was that others felt the need to crowd around them, to encourage them into stupid acts, and generally obstruct my view of the game. It gets old after three hours. I paid for my ticket also, I want to see the game and not be subject to random people constantly standing in my way and not paying any attention to the game.

The mere presence of these loud, drunken fans seemed to encourage louder and not so happy fans around us. If they can be loud and drunk; then I can be louder and more rude seemed to be the message taken. One fan continually shouted in my ear, from behind, for the entire game. I was four rows away. I can’t imagine being right in front of him. He shouted things that had no correlation to what was happening on the field. He was shouting for the sake of being seen and heard. Super annoying.

A hater in front of me kept shouting out nasty comments at our quarterback, Sam Bradford, who has not had a great season. The hater really drew fuel from the drunks and was hand slapping with them continuously. I’m not exactly a Germaphobe (technically mysophobia) but there are lines I won’t cross and high-fives with ushers (who have touched hundreds of strangers) and people who are clearly drunk and have probably urinated on their hands is one of them. Anyway, we put the game away with a late touchdown pass from Bradford and the hater, who has been bashing Bradford all game, is slapping high-fives with everyone around and I’m not going to do it. So now he’s mumbling and claiming I snubbed his greasy, likely urine-covered, hating, hand.

As he’s walking away he calls me an asshole. I’m pretty grumpy at this point. I paid $200 for my two seats and have essentially had my eardrums, sensibilities, and view harassed for three hours. I tell him to fornicate with himself. He keeps walking but it could have gotten ugly.

I do think people have the right to cheer loudly at a game and to boo sub-par efforts. I just think that at some point the rights of the fans around you dictate you mollify your behavior. I’m not opposed to standing and cheering the team, which forces others nearby to stand, but I think standing at inappropriate moments and for long periods of time is rude. That blocking the view of others wrong.

If someone doesn’t want to touch you then why do you care? People are looking for a reason to be angry, maybe they’re unhappy in their lives away from the games, maybe they’re just miserable people. I don’t much care. I’m not a miserable person. I enjoy my life. I root for my teams. I want them to succeed. I try to be careful not to intrude on the people around me, verbally or physically.

Maybe I’m being overly sensitive but I’m honestly thinking about giving up my seats. I still enjoy the games very much. I love being at the game. The crowd, the atmosphere, the game itself. But there is a point where the experience becomes a net negative. Sadly, I’m getting there.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

Pujols Files Defamation Suit Against Clark

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Clark PujolsI wrote a blog a while back about how a former local radio host in St. Louis, Jack Clark, claimed that he knew “for a fact” that Albert Pujols used steroids.

Pujols vowed to file suit against Clark although most people felt this was merely bravado because proving that Clark knowingly lied with malice is difficult. That Pujols would face something called discovery in which the defense gets to interview many people associated with Pujols about his past.

Well, Pujols went ahead and filed anyway.

I find this interesting because Pujols is opening himself up to a lot of scrutiny. If in the discovery process it is found that he did use steroids he will certainly lose the suit and a great deal of respect in the baseball community. It was clearly in Pujols’ best interest to let the matter simply fade away. This is the strategy that almost ever other athlete accused of PED use has done in the past with the notable exception of Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong strongly denounced those who accused him, filed suits, won money, destroyed lives, but eventually admitted that he was using PEDs all that time. This effectively ended his career and has him embroiled in multiple lawsuits to this day.

Pujols faces the same situation. If it turns out he did use PEDs his long-term contract with the Los Angeles Angels might well be voided. His future reputation in baseball is on the line. This is the reason that Ryan Braun never filed suit against his accusers. He was guilty and knew filing suit would open him to tremendous danger.

On the other hand I empathize with Pujols if he has been falsely accused. I’m glad that he filed suit because it’s wrong when someone lies about someone else in order to gain publicity. We see it all the time in the news about politicians and celebrities. Lies are told with reckless abandon because the US court system is set up to protect the defendant and proving such cases is extremely difficult.

In this case I do think the fact that Clark said that he “knew for a fact” that Pujols was using PEDs is clearly a lie. Therefore I think Pujols has a chance to win the case.

Why is it a lie? Let’s imagine that Clark actually did have a conversation with Pujols trainer some thirteen years ago and that trainer did tell him Pujols was using steroids. This still doesn’t rise to the level of “know for a fact.” It is hearsay at best. Clark has no first hand knowledge of PED use.

In the radio show where Clark made these accusations his co-host agreed that he thought Pujols was using PEDs but carefully avoided such language. The co-host is a lawyer and long-time radio broadcaster who is well aware of the laws regarding defamation and slander.

I’ll be an interested follower as this case makes its way through the system.

I know for whom I’ll be rooting . I hope Pujols is able to prove his case and Clark is ordered to pay a fine, which Pujols says will go to charity, and apologize.

If evidence arises that Pujols actually did use PEDs, I’ll be saddened although not particularly surprised.

Stay tuned!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

When is a Naughty Leopard neither Naughty nor a Leopard?

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Naughty Leopard

I’m just now reading about the Walmart Naughty Leopard controversy although the story has been out for over a week.

Walmart made the costume, which is designed for toddler girls, available for Halloween and there was an immediate uproar about the sexualization of young girls. People simply heard the name of the costume and immediately began to send in furious letters of outrage. Stories sprang up on all the media outlets about the horror of this awful, dangerous, evil costume that was turning little girls into wild sexual animals.

Enough outraged people inundated Walmart with complaints that the company pulled the costume from the shelves and issued an apology.

What is wrong with the Naughty Leopard Costume?

Do you want to know my opinion on this nonsense? Of course you do!

The costume has a major problem but being too sexy isn’t one of them. It’s a cute little costume that is not sexy, is less revealing that outfits I see little girls wearing out and about all the time, and in no way turns little girls in sexual objects.

So, what’s do I find wrong with the costume? Leopards are yellow/gold with black spots. The costume is black with purple trim. Seriously? Naughty Leopard? I’d call it the Purple Crab costume except the cute little ears don’t quite work.

Naughty in this case is meant to convey a mischievous little girl. Anyone who actually bothered to examine the costume before expressing their horrified outrage would have immediately noted all of this.

Cancel Culture at Work

Walmart is a big-boy company and can make their own decisions but I find this absolutely ridiculous. Clearly someone at the company felt an apology was a cheaper and better solution than simply telling the outraged parents the truth. That the adults obviously jumped to an erroneous conclusions and that if they simply examined the costume in question they would find nothing objectionable about it. Walmart should be getting an apology from everyone who wrote in a complaint, not handing one out.

I haven’t even started talking about the free market yet. By golly, if people want to buy a costume then Walmart should sell it. It’s economics, it’s capitalism, it’s the free market that this country supposedly believes in. People need to mind their own business.

I guess it seems like a little thing but little things add up. Walmart wanted to avoid bad publicity and acquiesced to a popular but ridiculous and unfounded fear. When a business gives into fear, when a politician gives into to fear, when you give into fear, when I give into fear, we all lose a little.

Conclusion

I’m not afraid. I demand Walmart put the Naughty Leopard costume back on the shelf.

Who’s with me?

Tom Liberman

American Exceptionalism – Myth?

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American ExceptionalismI’ve been hearing the term American Exceptionalism bandied about a lot lately and I thought it was good fodder for a blog. I think there are a lot of definitions as to what it means.

I’d urge you to read the Wikipedia Article but I’m going to go over some highlights and tell you what I think of the idea of American Exceptionalism, particularly the modern interpretation.

The first we hear of American Exceptionalism is from Alexis de Tocqueville and his book Democracy in America. He didn’t use the term exactly but it’s the origin of the idea. What de Tocqueville meant was that America was physically separate from Europe and its long political and social traditions. This meant that America could do things in a different way. He means that America is an exception to the traditional rules. He does not mean that Americans are exceptional as in superior.

This meaning of American Exceptionalism is no longer valid. The idea that we are physically separate from the rest of the world is just not true anymore. World economies are now intertwined and the politics of one nation directly influence others regardless of physical distance. If you subscribe to de Tocqueville’s definition then it no longer applies.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s Communist Russia was on the rise and there were many that felt the United States would be the next nation to embrace communism. A fellow named Jay Lovestone was originally a communist but eventually became fervently anti-communist. He argued that the United States was immune to communist ideology because of its strong capitalism and apparently limitless resources. A fellow by the name of Joseph Stalin refuted this argument and was the first to use the words American Exceptionalism.

The United States eventually rejected communism so it can be argued that Lovestone was correct and our exceptional circumstances granted us this immunity. This definition of American Exceptionalism proved at least partially accurate and our strong capitalistic history continues to mean that communist ideology has difficulty gaining a foothold. Therefore, for those of you who subscribe to this definition, it is still true.

Now I get to what happened in the late 1980’s and the rise of the neoconservative movement. This is real purpose of my post. Neoconservatives define American Exceptionalism as meaning that people born in the United States are superior to other people simply by the geographic location of their birth. That our nation as a whole is superior automatically.

From an Objectivist, Libertarian, Randian point of view I can say without hesitation that this idea is antithetical to everything I think is true. What makes a person exceptional is what happens after birth and has nothing whatsoever to do with their physical location when emerging from their mother’s womb.

To me the very idea that a person or nation is superior because of location is a vile and sick assertion. The reason you found success in life is because you worked hard, you studied hard, you made a place for yourself. The reason you failed in life is largely because you made bad decisions. It is the decisions you make after you are born that are important.

To anyone who believes that this is the meaning of American Exceptionalism I absolutely and totally reject your argument. This is a concept espoused by an entitled person, a weak-minded individual who doesn’t know what it is that makes people superior, exceptional.

To anyone who believes this nonsense I say; read Ayn Rand.

If you want to be exceptional, superior; get to work doing it. It’s not easy. It requires hard work, it requires attention to detail, it requires boldness, it requires strength of will. It doesn’t matter where you were born, what language you speak, how tall you are, how big are your breasts, or anything at all regarding the circumstances of your birth.

Every person can be exceptional. The nation that has the most exceptional people succeeds.

You can be exceptional but you aren’t born that way. You want to be exceptional? Get to work!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

$3 Million in a bra?

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Money In Bra

There’s a rather interesting story in the news about a school employee who stole some money over the course of seven years. Over that period she managed to steal an estimated $3 million by putting money in her bra as she was leaving school grounds.

The money came from students who paid cash for lunches over the course of the day. The employee was in charge of accounting for this money.

What I find interesting is that my first reaction, and that of most the people making comments, was that this was a huge amount of money to steal in seven years. That she must have had some specially made bra into which to stuff the huge wads of bills. Is that what you thought?

I heard the story as I was pulling up to pick up my dinner from a local grocery store and sat in my car for a few minutes before it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t all that much to money to stuff into a bra after all. My math skills being deficient I waited until I returned home to perform the calculations.

The first order of business was to determine how many days are in a school year. It turns out there are about 180 on average so I went with that figure. So, let’s work it out.

The number of years = 7

The number of days = 180

The total amount = 3,000,000

The unknown amount is how much was stolen each day (x).

The equation: 7 * 180 * x = 3,000,000

7 * 180 = 1,260.

So now we have 1260 * x  = 3,000,000. We move the 1260 to the other side of the equation and end up with this.

x = 3,000,000/1260.

The result is $2,380 per day.

Not so bad and it’s probably a good thing to get my algebra brain working again after all these years.

Now, let’s say it’s mostly $20 dollar bills, so that’s fairly simple. 2,380/20 = 119 bills stuffed into her bra on a daily average.

Our math isn’t done yet because I need to know how thick is a pile of 119 bills. Yes, I have a sickness, I admit it.

The US Treasury says that a dollar bill is .0043 inches tall.

Now we take 119 * .0043 and end up with .511 inches. Half an inch of bills every school day for seven years and we’ve got our answer! It can be done and without that much trouble.

Isn’t math great!

So, I was wrong and so were most of the people who made comments on the story.

Now, tell me the truth, when you first heard the story did you think, like me, it sounded impossible?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

The Tough Teacher is the Best Teacher

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Tough Teaching MethodsThere’s a great article in the Wall Street Journal about why it’s better to have a tough teacher than an easy teacher. It goes into a number of reasons why this is the case and I largely agree with one important side-note.

The author recalls a tough music teacher who berated both her and fellow students by calling them idiots, who prodded their hands and arms into the proper physical position with pokes from a pencil. The article then goes on to say that a teacher would be fired for such behavior in the modern classroom.

The article continues by citing a number of excellent studies suggesting that teachers who tell us we are wrong when we make a mistake, that make us memorize fundamental ideas, that don’t mind assigning us exercises which we are likely to fail, and who put us under stress, are almost assuredly helping us.

All this is clearly true. I’ve spoken out a number of times on this subject even suggesting that it was a mistake to allow a wrestler with cerebral palsy win a match. That we did neither the winner or loser of that match any favors.

I’m in almost total agreement with the author and the article. Almost.

The one thing the writer conveniently forgets is that for every well-meaning Mr. K out there who called people idiots not because he thought they were idiots but to encourage them to try harder. For every Mr. K out there who gently prodded with a pencil; our past education system also spawned generations of sadistic, bullying, power-mad teachers who enjoyed mentally tearing down students, played “favorites” to birth sycophantic slaves, and who got sick gratification from doling out corporal punishment. I had  a couple of teachers that fit this mold and I’ll bet most of my readers did as well.

That much of the coddling of students we see today stems from reforms designed by former students who were abused in this fashion.

So, what’s the middle line? How do we get the tough, but loving, teachers who see our potential and drive us to our highest level of achievement while avoiding the sadistic psychopaths who enjoy torturing children?

There are no easy answers here at the Blog of Tom Liberman. I’m not going to stand up and call everyone else an idiot and claim there’s a simple path.

We must churn out people with education degrees who have learned these principles. In other words, we teach people to teach properly. Administrators must carefully interview potential teachers and weed out those with tendencies towards sadism. We must monitor a teacher’s progress in the classroom and, with tough love, help them improve their teaching skills.

We must listen to student and parent complaints and fairly adjudicate them. We must support teachers who practice tough love even if it hurts our feelings. We must fire, after fair warning, those who cross the line.

We must spend time and effort doing what is right, because it’s worth it in the end.

What would be the state of our educational system, our nation, and our world be if we had nothing but great teachers?

What I just wrote seems straight-forward I’m sure. Gosh, Tom, that sounds easy. Let’s get to work. Well, it’s the getting to work that’s the hard part and I like to think Mr. K. would agree. We can’t just espouse what are clearly good ideas and pat ourselves on the back.

No one can instantly make every teacher better. The Cardinals didn’t win the 2013 National League Central Division Crown with one victory (Go Birds!). It starts with one person and one action. The next action you take. The next action I take.

Each action, each decision, each moment of our lives is an opportunity to be better. That’s what being a Libertarian, what being a Objectivist means. Will I make mistakes? Was my Access 2010 class the other day not my best effort? You bet.

Will I try to do better next time? Will I realize the errors I made and correct them? How I answer is the real test.

It’s hard to pay attention to detail, to work at your craft constantly, to accept failure graciously, to change patterned behavior, to improve, to improve some more, to truly listen to ideas outside your ideology, to get better.

No easy solutions here.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

Body Mass Index – The BMI Fraud

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Overweight GirlAt lunch today I spotted an interesting article about something called BMI (Body Mass Index) which is often used, unfortunately, to measure if a person is healthy or not.

In this case an 11-year-old girl was determined to be unhealthy and overweight because she is 5′ 4″ 124 pounds. A quick perusal of the BMI charts indicate that this is actually a perfectly normal weight and it wasn’t until I read the comments on the story that I found out a new piece of information. When reporting BMI some school districts take into account something called the CDC Growth Chart.

This chart looks at normal children and their weight compared to statistical outliers. In this case the girl is very tall and heavy for her age and, despite being in the normal range of BMI, is considered overweight when the CDC Growth Chart is taken into account.

I’m not against  tracking people’s health and I don’t think there’s necessarily anything completely wrong with either BMI or the CDC Growth chart, if they are taken in context. That’s the problem. They are not taken in context and they are often used to fraudulently claim people are overweight.

Let’s get a little background first.

The BMI was created in the mid 1800s by a Belgian polymath. A polymath is someone who is extremely intelligent and excels in a variety of disciplines. This index is flawed under a number of circumstances particularly very tall people, very short people, small boned people, large-boned people, and people with large amounts of muscle mass.

BMI is used by most insurance companies as a way to determine if a person is unhealthy. Anyone who is so determined must pay higher insurance rates. There is clearly a financial incentive to have as many people listed as unhealthy as possible. In the United States what used to be healthy in 1997, a BMI of 27.5 or less, became unhealthy when the cutoff point went to a BMI of 25 in 1998. This instantly made 29 million Americans switch from the healthy category to the overweight category. And meant that everyone in that group had to pay more money to insurance companies. Everyone in that group became, at least psychologically, a target for the diet industry. It also means that the pharmaceutical companies have 29 million more potential customers for their medicines.

BMI has come to be an accepted measurement tool for a person’s health.

In the story in question, the 11-year-old girl is very tall for her age and quite athletic. She is not overweight nor are many of the people who are classified as such.

I’m not saying stop using BMI and the CDC Growth Chart. They both have real uses in determining if a person is overweight and unhealthy. I’m suggesting that we stop using them as blanket treatments and people who fall into the regions where the tools are no longer accurate be diagnosed with a different chart. Ideally a doctor would examine each person and make the determination on the results of the exam.

In the case of the 11-year-old, her mother was concerned that being labeled overweight would have a negative impact on the girl’s self-esteem. I don’t think this is a frivolous claim. When the administration of an organization makes such a claim there are real emotional effects. I feel certain that the girl’s mother can explain that the BMI scale and the CDC Growth Chart scale are not accurate for certain body types and her daughter has one of those. I don’t think there’s any real damage done but I do think real harm is done by over-reliance on a system that plainly does not work for certain people.

Everyone should have their health screened regularly. A doctor should see everyone and make the overweight determination based on a physical exam; not a chart that, even the most ardent supporters of will admit, fails under some circumstances.

The fact that we have approximately 48.6 million people in this country who don’t have health insurance and are thus not getting regular screenings is a serious issue. All of those people should be getting screened. When they do not they stand a far higher chance of having serious medical issues, expensive medical issues, that could have been prevented. The taxpayer largely ends up paying those bills.

I’m not going to get into a debate about Obama Care so don’t bother commenting pro or con on that issue.

My point is that we are currently relying on flawed systems, BMI and CDC Growth Chart, that are spewing out, in some cases, clearly nonsensical results. I choose to call that bad.

This is dogmatic thinking. Rigid thinking. Wrong thinking. We can do better.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

China Dumped Honey and Tariffs created Crime

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HoneyI just read a fascinating story on Bloomberg Business Week about massive food fraud involving imported honey.

The entire episode could have been avoided if only we lived in a capitalistic system instead of a crony capitalistic system. It’s not that complicated but let me explain what happened and then I’ll talk about how it could have been avoided.

Cheap Honey

Not long ago I wrote about how a monopoly itself is not criminal but can lead to anti-trust behavior that is illegal.

In this case we have an entire country that engaged in the anti-competitive practice of dumping. Prior to 2001, China dumped huge amounts of cheap honey on the United States in an attempt to squeeze out competition. This included American beekeepers. They complained. These complaints proved to be accurate but, because China is a foreign country, it was impossible to arrest anyone.

Tariffs on Honey from China

Instead large tariffs were placed on Chinese honey driving up the cost of Chinese honey to the point where it cannot be profitable for an American company to purchase honey from China. This tariff is still in place and almost no honey brought into the United States, the largest honey importer in the world, is from China. At least it’s not supposed to be.

This is important. We, the American consumers, could be purchasing reasonably priced honey from China. This in turn would drive down the cost of honey. However, tariffs prevent it. The loser in this is the free market and the consumer. Not that China shouldn’t have been punished for their Dumping tactics but I’ll get to that.

In the meantime, China was still making huge amounts of honey but they couldn’t sell it to the world’s biggest honey importer because of the tariffs. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened next.

Illegal Honey Arrives

A company in Germany, along with allies around the world, managed to route Chinese honey into other nations, repackage it, and sell it in the United States at a cheaper price. Many American companies were complicit in that they purchased the cheap honey knowing full well it was not from the purported point of origin.

However, because this honey was not properly labeled, much was getting through that didn’t meet Food and Drug Administration safety standards. In particular the Chinese use a pesticide called chloramphenicol which is banned in U.S. Food.

In addition, much Chinese honey is substandard but was being adulterated to pass as a higher quality and thus getting a better price. Fraud.

Eventually the government caught onto the scheme and arrested a few of the Americans involved, penalized the American companies, and put out arrest warrants on foreign nationals who will likely never be prosecuted.

What Might have been Done

Now, here’s the issue. If the governments of the United States and China had agreed to some large fine on honey exporters because of the dumping then China would have continued to sell honey in the U.S. We would not have gotten contaminated honey, we would not have gotten adulterated honey. China would have sold its low quality honey at a low price, honey from China would have been tested regularly for chloramphenicol.

However, the honey producers in the United States saw an opportunity to put competition out of business. So a massive tariff was instituted by well-bribed politicians that potentially caused real damage to American’s health and certainly has us paying a higher price for honey.

Don’t mistake this post as an excuse for China to engage in Dumping. They should have paid a massive penalty used to reimburse U.S. honey producers for lost sales during the dumping. But, after that, sales should have resumed as usual.

We live in a massively complex global economy and I absolutely think it is the government’s job to protect American businesses from foreign nations engaging in anti-trust practices. On a fair playing field I think our industry will win many of the battles.

This fair playing field comes with a price though. If another nation provides a product in a way that doesn’t violate anti-trust laws, they might well put American companies out of business.

Right now the playing field is largely unfair. Nations like China have, until recently, had extremely cheap labor which makes manufacturing a less expensive proposition. As these Third World nations begin to prosper they will eventually lose this edge. Manufacturing will return to the U.S. It is already returning.

Conclusion

The way to level the playing field is complex to say the least. Fines and tariffs are weapons in our arsenal. I’m not categorically opposed to either one.

The long-term goal is to have a prosperous, developed world where equal competition brings out the best in everyone.

I think in this case the attempt to level the field actually tilted the field in one direction. Just as the Chinese honey dumping scheme attempted to tilt it in the other. The result was that you and your family members probably ate adulterated honey.

Tom Liberman

The Perceived Laziness of an Organized Person

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An Organized MindOne of the employees at my office was let go today and, as I was discussing events with another employee, an interesting point of discussion arose.

The employee who was fired had what I would call a disorganized mind.

What is a disorganized mind? I think of it as someone who has trouble putting tasks in proper order of importance and who has difficulty stopping doing one thing and focusing on a second thing.

The second employee has what I could classify as an organized mind. I consider this to be someone who can keep track of a series of tasks and get them done largely in order of importance.

I don’t think that an organized mind and an organized desk are necessarily the same thing so I’m not talking about a person with a neat and tidy work area. Just someone with the ability to clearly define what needs to be done, how much time there is to do it, and in what order it should be done.

I consider myself to have a fairly highly organized mind although it does not carry over into my living quarters. Because of this ability to prioritize events, determine the best sequence to complete tasks, and the skill to ration my time appropriately; people with disorganized minds have, over the years, often considered me lazy. It’s a strange concept but it does make sense. To demonstrate let’s go back to the person who was let go.

At one point over the last few weeks she was unable to complete a task because there was “too much to do” and she asked the other person, “What do you do around here?” The idea being that the organized person had time to socialize, have a full hour for lunch, and appear to be calm and under control. Therefore that person must not have much work to do, certainly not as much as the harried, running around, unable to complete tasks person.

Of course the opposite is true. The organized mind completes more tasks, in a timely fashion, and with better results. What is unfortunate is that someone who appears to have plenty of time to do all their work is often branded as lazy or as someone who doesn’t have anything to do.

This has happened to me many times over the course of my business career. I would imagine that it has happened to virtually everyone with an organized mind at least once or twice. This is particularly distressing when the person so judging you is in a superior position within the company.

The hope is that you have a supervisor with an organized mind who understands that you are getting your job done in a timely fashion and doing it well. That this supervisor promotes such people and your business office becomes filled with organized workers.

I think too often we associate a frantic effort with hard work. Frantic effort is generally a product of poor planning. Now, there are times when unexpected emergencies arise and it becomes crazy but I’m talking about a more day-to-day way of going about your business. Even at the craziest of deadlines, with time running out, it is the calm person who can calculate what needs to be done and how long there is to do it that is most productive.

My point here today is to remind people, particularly supervisors, that those employees who appear to be easy-going and casual about their work might be much harder, and better, workers than those dashing hither-and-yon. When evaluating your employees look at the total amount of actual work they do, not how they appear to be doing it.

This is important to the success of your business. As employees succeed, a business succeeds, and in a larger sense, so does a capitalistic system.

For those with a disorganized mind, all is not lost. This is not irreparable. Write tasks down as they come to you and assign a numeric value to them. Keep this list handy and try to complete things in order of importance. If you practice being orderly in your thoughts often enough; you will eventually become so. I certainly wish I had applied this sort of thinking to my schoolwork when I was a boy.

If everyone did their job just a little better, what effect would that have on the world? It’s an interesting idea, at least I think so.

Tom Liberman

Blowout Week in College Football

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Blowout Week in the NCAAFor those of you who are college football fans, this was a grim week. There were very few games of much interest and there is a reason for that. Money. Money for everyone except the players but I’ve written about that inequity enough. Today’s blog explores the reasons we have college football games that are not competitive around this time of year.

Why in the third week of the college football season do scores like 76 – 0, 72 – 0, 54 – 6, 77 – 7, and 56 – 0 occur more frequently? Why are the third and fourth week of the college football season largely not entertaining for fans of the game?

The top college football teams are increasingly moving into what are called super-conferences. These are powerhouse conferences with the best teams. The other conferences cannot and largely do not care to compete. The only way to compete in these super-conferences is to generate revenue. Bigger stadiums, better locker rooms, and more television exposure gives players a greater opportunity to showcase their talents for an eventually payday in the National Football League. It also generates huge revenues for the schools involved and the NCAA in general. Billions of dollars.

As college football teams and conferences settle into this model their schedules become all the more important. The conference schedule is when the teams in these new super conferences play games against one another. Generally this starts to happen around the fourth and fifth week of the college football season.

Many of these super-conferences are split into two divisions with the winner of each division playing in a massively lucrative championship game. As the stadiums get bigger, as the television contracts get larger, and as the luxury boxes get more expensive; the revenue rises. The schools want more revenue and this is quite natural.

After the conference championship game comes the Bowl Season. To determine who plays in what Bowl Game a series of six mathematical formulas are calculated based on team wins, points scored, points opponent scored, strength of schedule, and other factors. These results are averaged with human derived rankings called the USA Today’s Coaches Poll (current coaches) and the Harris Interactive Poll (made up of former players, coaches, administrators, and current and former media members).

Starting next year the top four ranked teams will play in what is called the College Football Playoff system which culminates in a Championship Game hosted by the venue that bids the most. More money.

The pursuit of this money means that teams from the super-conferences don’t want their schedules to be too difficult in the non-conference season. They pay teams from smaller conferences to come in and serve as practice dummies. Thus we have a few weeks of largely uninteresting college football.

It’s not completely boring, there are always a few competitive games among those in the super-conferences but it’s generally a poor couple of weeks for the fans.

What’s the solution? Time.

College football with its super-conferences and playoff system is becoming a professional sports league. I think that eventually the polls and ranking system will be removed, the winner of each division within the super-conferences will play a championship game, and the winner of these games will compete in a playoff to determine a National Champion.

When this happens I suspect the schedule will essentially be designed by the NCAA much like it is in the NFL with teams from the super-conferences playing their early season games against other teams from other super-conferences. Schools that cannot generate enough revenue to enter the super-conferences will compete among themselves.

Is this a good thing? Do we need a junior NFL or should college football be for the kids? These are largely irrelevant questions. The lure of money is too strong.

Those colleges that don’t want to participate will continue on in the traditional way and those of us who appreciate the noble nature of athletics played for the sheer joy of it will turn to the Army-Navy game and the Harvard-Yale tussle. Personally, I’ll head on down to Francis Field on a cool November day to watch the Washington University Bears take on the Case Western Reserve Spartans.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

It’s How You Teach, Not Learning Styles

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Teaching Methods

One of my jobs at Acumen Consulting is being a technical trainer. It’s the thing that until recently has made up the backbone of my work for the last fifteen plus years.

There’s a very interesting article in Scientific American about something called Learning Styles. I’ve always been skeptical of learning styles in general but this article confirmed my doubts. The article attempts to be even-handed, so much so that I think it bends over backwards to soothe those who believe in Learning Styles.

I imagine this post of mine will generate some anger from those who believe in Learning Styles, we’ll see.

The idea behind Learning Styles is that students best learn in different ways and that educators need to take advantage of this. That some students learn by listening, some by watching, and some by doing. That those who learn in particular ways should be taught in that way.

There is no empirical evidence that this is true. It sounds true and that is what makes it attractive to people. We like things that have the ring-of-truth to them. Often times those sort of things are in actuality true. However, just because something sounds like it is true doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be experimentation to prove it.

In this case they’ve finally done some studies and no one has found any connection between a Learning Style and learning faster.

What they’ve found, and what my own experience tells me, is that good teaching methods yield more learning. Period.

I was taught what is called the three-step method. Tell people what you’re going to do, do it, ask them what you’ve just done. It works.

The more senses you get involved in learning the better you are. If you show them that’s a start. If they do it, that’s even better, if they talk about what they just did that’s best. If you are studying don’t use the highlighter. Get a notepad and write down what you would have highlighted, say it out loud as you are writing it.

In the article they mention the type of learner makes no difference when teaching geography. A learner who does best by listening? Bunk. Show them a map and they’ll learn more than if you describe the shape and size of the great state of Missouri. It’s how we teach, not how we learn, if there is even a real “learning style” which I doubt.

Some people are smarter than other people and there are those with severe mental disabilities but if we eliminate those at the ends of the Bell Curve I think it’s more than possible to teach almost everyone critical thinking and analysis. Teach them useful skills so that they can enter adulthood with the ability to work and earn a living. With a population schooled in these tools we can build a better society.

There are good teachers, great teachers, and those less talented. Hopefully you had a great one somewhere along the line. The odds are whatever that great teacher taught is what you are now doing as a career. That’s how important teachers are in the world and our lives. Great teacher inspire us and change us.

So, don’t fall back on the excuse that you’re a visual learner and that’s why you failed to understand something. Ask your teacher to explain it better. You can learn it, you can do it.

Tom Liberman

JP Morgan – Trying to Make Sense of Nonsense

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JP Morgan ChaseJP Morgan Chase and Company is an international banking and financial service holding company. Employees of the company engaged in a series of trades in April and May of 2012 that generated about $6 billion in losses. By the company I mean investors who entrusted their hard-earned savings with JP Morgan Chase.

Now, a year and a half later the company has agreed to pay a fine of $920 million to various government regulatory commissions in the United States and England.

What’s it all about? I’m sure I don’t understand it completely, or even mostly, but I’ll do my best to explain what I do understand and my problem with the fine. Yep, I think the fine was unjustified.

After the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 the governments of England and the United States decided that a big part of the problem was banks behaving in dangerous ways. When banks take on very risky propositions they can lose the money of all their investors, they cost investors their life savings, their homes. They do damage to the economies of their countries which hurts people who had no investment with the banks. Your retirement money was lost even though you did nothing wrong. Too big to fail. Bailout, TARP, trillions of your tax-dollars spent to keep these institution afloat <—– (seriously, follow that link and read).

The governments of the United States and Great Britain passed rules about risky behavior. JP Morgan covered up violations of these rules and even went as far provide false information to the government about the trades in April and May of 2012.

With all this you might wonder why I think the fine unjustified. If a bank wants to make dangerous investments, that’s their business. If they lose $6 billion dollars that means other investors gained $6 billion dollars. Why should the government be involved unless the trades were criminal in nature?

Oh, yes, some of the trades were criminal in nature. Many of the trades were made simply to generate revenue for the people who worked for JP Morgan. I say arrest them. There are laws about larceny, let’s enforce them. The same during the original financial crisis with what were predatory loans. Loans designed to deceive the person signing the papers by increasing interest rates immediately after the purchase. Arrest the lawyers who wrote the language into the loans. Arrest the bankers who talked people into taking the loans. Fraud is a crime.

Arrest the real estate agent who bribed the home inspector to give an inflated price on the house. Arrest the home inspector. These are crimes and this is where the government should be involved.

What happens instead is regulations that do little good in the long-run while the actual criminals walk off with the money. Do we think such criminals will think twice before stealing again? That others won’t be attracted to the easy money? My easy money? Your easy money?

Do you think average home inspectors would continue to give out false pricing guidelines after a few hundred were sentenced to hard time in prison? The average real estate broker? Your average loan agent? Would a lawyer write deceptive language into a contract if he or she faced ten years in a federal penitentiary.

If you write a contract designed to deceive … jail. If we did that how long do you think before your phone bill became less complex?

The reason we don’t is because the phone companies, banks, and other enterprise businesses paid for your representative’s campaign, vacation, gave family members jobs, and much more. It’s simple bribery and that’s a crime also. Every single elected official in our government is guilty of taking bribes, every one.

Instead of arresting people the government and industry just play a shell-game with your money, with my money.

If you run a bank into the ground, tough luck. The bank closes and another, better run, one gets bigger with all that money. In the end this helps average people because even if your bank fails, another, better bank picks up the loan.

That will change the way financial institutions are run. This $920 million fine isn’t what forces a change.

The $6 billion JP Chase lost? That forced them to reevaluate the way they do business. They fired the people involved, the government is building cases against some of them. An excellent result. No fine necessary, in fact, the fine really comes out of the pocket of investors, not criminals.

I’m out-of-order? You’re out-of-order! The whole system is out-of-order!

Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eNovel)
Upcoming Release: The Spear of the Hunt

 

Rand Paul and Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

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Congressman Rand PaulThere was an article from capitol hill today about a topic I’ve talked about before, mandatory minimum sentencing. The idea is that power is taken away from a judge in the sentencing phase a criminal case.

I think mandatory minimum sentencing is wrong although for somewhat different reasons than Congressman Rand Paul, who is championing their elimination or at least modification.

I’m pleased that Paul returning to his Libertarian roots. Would that all politicians would take stances on political and philosophical beliefs rather than on what they think will get them elected. Some argue that Paul is merely courting minority votes and there might be truth to that. However, the underlying focus is on being a true Libertarian and how mandatory minimum sentencing goes against this philosophy.

Why is mandatory minimum sentencing against Libertarian philosophy?

Let’s first look at how the judicial system works. When a person is accused of a crime and, if they do not plea-bargain, the case goes to trail. The jury is tasked with simply determining if the person is guilty or not. This is why we see all those televisions shows where the judge doesn’t allow previous acts to be brought up during the case. It doesn’t matter to the jury if the person being accused committed the exact same crime three times before. The jury must only determine this case.

If found guilty the judge determines what the sentence shall be. This is where the problem arises.

Federal Sentencing Guidelines were instituted in 1984 to address apparent gaps in punishment.  Judges who gave severe penalties compared with judges who gave apparently small penalties for similar crimes. It was largely done as part of the utter failure we call the War on Drugs.

The guidelines themselves are broken down into 43 offense levels, six criminal history categories and four zones of time relating to incarceration. There are also a litany of causes which can reduce or increase the sentencing time.

These were all designed to ensure that equal punishment was dealt out by judges across the nation. Rand’s argument is that they are not working. That black people are far more likely to be sentenced harshly for the same crime as a white person. He argues that the guidelines have failed in their task. Statistics back him up.

I argue that there very goal itself is wrong. It is up to each judge to determine the penalty. If the people of a state do not like the decisions the judge makes, it is their job to replace the judge. This is our judicial system.

Who better than a judge, who has heard all the evidence both legally admissible and not, to determine the appropriate sentence? If a judge is giving harsh penalties to one ethnic group there are means to address the problem. The voting booth and appeals.

I don’t suggest that there aren’t poor judges out there who are racist and unfair; I just suggest that the guidelines have not alleviated the problem and additionally have caused people to serve inordinately long sentences for relatively minor crimes. Particularly for drug crimes where the mandatory sentencing is extremely harsh.

Don’t mistake my intent here. I don’t rail against mandatory sentencing because it leads to unfair penalties. I don’t rail against mandatory sentencing because it affects one race more than another. I argue against them because they are a typical extension of federal and state power into areas in which they have no business.

Bad judges hand out unfair sentences and mandatory sentencing guidelines haven’t solved the problem, they’ve actually made it worse. Not a surprise.

How do we ensure that judges pass out fair sentences? Get information to the voters. We live in the booming information age. I should be able to easily find all sentences handed out by a judge and base my vote accordingly.

How do we ensure that people do not get overlong sentences for relatively minor crimes? The appeals process will be unchained when minimum sentencing guidelines go away. An appeals court can decided a sentence was unfair. It’s not perfect for the person so sentenced but it is our system. With federal minimum guidelines as they currently stand, appeals are doomed to fail.

People will argue that I’m living in an idealistic fantasy world and I hear you. What I’m proposing isn’t an easy solution but I think it’s the best solution.

We tried to address a problem with government intervention to make things fair. It’s not working.

As is often the case with government intervention someone sees a problem and thinks the government can easily come in and redress the grievance. Issues like this are almost always complex in nature and not easily solved. So called simple government solutions generally exacerbate the problem.

Sentencing should be up to the judges who hear the cases. Judges should be voted on by voters. Appeals should be processed by appellate courts. There is a system and, although not perfect, largely works.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a 300+ page eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

 

 

Django Unchained and Samuel L. Jackson

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Samuel L. JacksonI haven’t done a movie review in a long time so I thought I’d break the drought, sort of. My good friend Jeff invited me over watch the Rams game (darn you, Falcons) and we put on Django Unchained afterward.

Let me warn you that this isn’t really going to be a movie review. It’s going be about the actor Samuel L. Jackson. He played a role in the movie that showed what I thought displayed a tremendous amount of courage. It’s not a role a man lacking self-confidence can play and Jackson played it fantastically.

Jackson is, as I’m sure most of you know, a black man. The role he played was essentially a House Negro. This is a black person who worked with white owners to help keep the field, or working, blacks oppressed in exchange for a better position. In the movie there are a lot of unpalatable characters but Stephen, Jackson’s character, seems to me to be the most despicable.

The movie itself engendered a large amount of anger in the black community from Spike Lee and many others. Jackson had to know that his character would be perceived as vile, particularly among blacks. That’s why I think Jackson was both incredibly confident and quite brave to take on the role.

He didn’t just take on the role, he owned it. He gave us a look at what a house negro was. History gives us example after example of people willing to help those in power oppress their own kind. Collaborationism is one name for it and the term was used extensively during World War II to indicate someone willing to betray their country for favoritism from the new regime. It is not a new idea. In ancient Greece helping the Persians was  considered Medism.

Jackson’s character in the movie is vile. Jackson read the script and accepted the role knowing what he was going to have to do and then went out and did it with incredible skill. He is absolutely convincing as Stephen the collaborator. He gives us insight into the times and into the type of person who behaves in this fashion.

I’m not really going anywhere political with this blog post. I’m just here to say that I admire Jackson tremendously for his courage in taking on this role and his acting skill in bringing it to life. He’s an actor and it’s his job, but not everyone does their job so well, particularly when doing so might have long-term repercussions. It’s not far-fetched to imagine him being “punished” by those upset with his portrayal. Future roles might be denied. Who knows?

A tip of the hat to Samuel L. Jackson, a man of courage.

As for the entire movie? Typical Quentin Tarantino, entertaining, over-the-top, ridiculous at times, plot holes galore, but stylish and made with passion. I’d recommend it.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

7 Million Chinese College Graduates

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China College GraduatesThere was an interesting article in the news this morning about how a large number of college graduates in China are causing an employment problem in that nation. Larger numbers of graduates make the job market more difficult to penetrate.

It was an interesting premise but not what I took from the article.

If China is graduating seven million highly educated students each year and the United States is producing fewer that means a shift of brain power in the world. An interesting article here shows how China has already surpassed the United States in college graduates and India will do so soon.

This shift of intelligence is changing the dynamics of power and the role of the United States in the world. It’s actually a good thing that countries like China and India are graduating more students and empowering young women. This has many beneficial effects for the world including decreasing population growth and increasing general wealth and well-being. However, it is also a challenge to the United States.

I wrote not long ago about how there is a politically motivated movement to discredit science in the United States. There is a general undercurrent of disdain for academia and intellectual achievement. The power structure of the world is changing as we continue to move from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. The countries that embrace this change will lead this new world in the same way the United States led during the Industrial Revolution.

Graduating college students is directly related to new technology, new ideas, and a new way of producing wealth. I’m not suggesting everyone should go to college, that a college degree is the end-all goal of every single person. I am suggesting that the nation that produces the largest number of intelligent people will have an advantage in the new world.

As I said, I’m thrilled to see China, India, and other nations educating their youth and making the entire world a better place. I’m eager for the days of abundant and cheap energy, super-fast transportation, and a stable population with plenty of food and goods for all.

I’m not so encouraged by my country’s response to the gauntlet that has been thrown down by the emerging world, and by Europe and other places. Economic power is, in many ways, military power. If the United States is not making the important breakthroughs, if the United States is not leading the way then we will be following. In some ways we are already following.

China and India have a huge advantage in massive populations but the underlying issue is society’s emphasis on education. It’s stronger in other nations than it is in the United States.

My main fear is that as the United States continues to fall from our preeminent position of power in the world that the citizens of my country will grow increasingly frightened. That we will elect officials who stoke this fear and offer draconian solutions to “save” our nation. That the very tenants of the Founding Fathers will be discarded in order to make us “safe”. On a personal level, that my freedom will be taken away.

In order to combat this decline and this fear I say emphasize education, teach people critical thinking skills, and venerate science.

Let us not fear this new world but instead embrace it and join it as an equal.

 

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for a full length eBook)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt