Month: April 2013

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

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A recent discussion between friends had me pondering a well-worn topic covering the Westboro Baptist Church.  While I am loath to give this repugnant organization any more lines in the massive universe of online and paper text I feel that the notion they were positing was not the best course of action.

It is the standard argument that crops up each time there is a tragedy and these vultures, nay ghouls, crawl out from their miserable crypt and threaten the world with their mere presence.  The subsequent ballyhoo over these vile, barely passing for, human beings feed into their hopes of either 1) spreading their woefully misguided message of monumentally ignorant hate with little understanding of their source material, or 2) getting someone worked up enough to do something irrational enough to warrant a lawsuit that will fill what has to be dwindling coffers.

However, I believe, and have argued, that the desire by the masses to simply ignore these individuals, or to refer to them in some offhand way that does not recognize them directly (such as ‘they who shall not be named’) does not retract from their capacity to continue these repulsive acts.  If anything, I believe it encourages them.

They are not deterred by legions on Facebook or twitter from referring to them as ‘those wackos’, but those who attend these services and stand in direct opposition of them and their message.  The Patriot riders who lined military funeral processions and revved their bikes so loudly that the WBC packed their things and left because they could not be heard.  The hundreds of students who mass against a planned protest on a college campus to face off against the WBC when they came to picket, or more likely celebrate, the death of a gay student.

Our society has picked up this notion that an evil ignored dies on the vine of ignominy.  We forget that terrible thoughts and hideous acts must be met with thoughts and actions in opposite.  Where there is truly misguided hate and disgust, there must be compassion.  Where praise of violence against the soldiers or against the children, there must be the solemn respect for the deceased and those still suffering from the loss.

The quote above is from one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett.  I won’t go into his fiction, and how it should be read by all who can spare the time, but I want to point out that in this scenario we are the darkness.

We contain the ever-present capacity for humanity to care, to feel, and to have compassion in times of our own suffering as well as the suffering of others.  The WBC may think they will get there first, that they will be the loudest voice, but the light, as is not often stated, only illuminates the area around it, leaving the rest into darkness.  Is it not too much to hope that the darkness is not the evil of the universe, but that which is all-encompassing.  That compassion for the injured, physically and mentally, the wounded, and the deceased fills the void that their ‘light’ would so like to dispel.

In that vein, should that light die, to turn a phrase on Dylan Thomas, I doubt there will be many that rage against it, but until it fails, until the abomination that is the WBC is stripped of its undeserved title as a ‘religious’ institution, and crushed under the heel of both judge, jury, and social executioner it should not be forgotten.  No evil that is forgotten dies.  No evil that is unchallenged shrinks.  if history has taught us anything, it is that.

Fear is the mind killer

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It’s a quote from Dune, I highly recommend reading the books or watching the films.  Fear is the name of the game in politics anymore.  See that guy over there, he’s going to take away something valuable to you, and the only way to protect it is to vote for me.  It’s played by both sides of the aisle, and the application of fear in campaigns is well know, well documents, and flat-out nonsensical at times.

Why do I bring this up?  Fear goes both ways.  We’re afraid of the pending failure of our government to be able to pay its bills, so the President and the dutiful denizens of the left in congress roll out additional taxes and new spending to engage the economy in what could be the most over-estimated recovery that has yet to happen.

Meanwhile there is the argument from the President that the Deficit is going down (as a side now, each projected pseudo-budget that has been touted out for the last five years has been a ‘deficit-reducing’ budget) and yet we’ve tacked on $6 trillion to the national debt.  So, there’s our fear.  We’re deep in the hole and we need money.  So, how do we get this money.  We limit how much goes into Roth IRA’s.  It’s a short story put up by The Hill pointing out that the super wealthy have been squirreling away money in Roth IRAs, which they can’t touch until they’re 59 and a half without some heavy penalties, and in a desperate attempt to raise some additional coin, the government thinks that the amount of dough saved in those accounts shouldn’t exceed a specified amount.

I understand the logic.  There’s money there, and, after pouring through more pages of the IRS website than I care to do ever again, it turns out you pay an excise tax of 6% on excessive donations, and early withdrawals are taxed at rate, and then 10% more on top (again if withdrawn before you are 59 and a half).  So, in all that, there’s money.  How much money?  I’m not certain the numbers are solid, but according to the article from The Hill roughly $9 billion over the next decade.  Yup, over the next decade they’d square away 0.005% of last year’s deficit.

Solid plan there.

Nominally, it’s going to take work, and I hope to god they’re working on it because right now I don’t think it’d pay for the paper it’s being printed on.

The other side of the sword is the delivery method.  Like I said, we’re talking about fear here, and the need to make people afraid.  Why are we talking about this?  Because it’s scary.  Because the Government is going after our retirement savings, or so the Drudge Report would have you believe.

If you hit the Drudge Report over the weekend you would have seen the hyperlink to “Obama budget targets retirement accounts…”.  Rolling off the recent move by the EU to soak the owners of money laden accounts in the national bank of Cyprus, there is an expectation of the government in the United States doing something similar to ward off a fiscal boogeyman (don’t get me wrong, we have serious money problems) but to snag 40-60% of the value of all accounts that hold more than $100,000…can’t happen, won’t happen, and will break the financial system faster than the housing bubble of 2008.

Now, rank and file readers aren’t expecting this.  Most folks are pretty certain that their money is safe, and it is.  The Cyprus situation was a state run and controlled bank, we don’t have that in the US. We have a fed that feeds into banks, but those accounts are ours, and the money comes out of the hides of the bank, not out of Uncle Sam.  However, it’s still a scary thought.  It’s in red, of all colors, against all the black text.  It’s important.  It’s also inaccurate based on the text of the article linked.  Not wholly inaccurate, but omits the focus on the wealthy aspect of the donors being targeted.

So, boogeymen abound on both sides, and what do we have.  People worried that their retirement funds are now the target of a government siege on savings to slake their ever-growing thirst for funds to toss at social projects, and politicians who are offering weak tea solutions to monumental budgetary issues.  This is not a good-get.  This isn’t even a good story.  It’s about as bottom of the barrel as you can get when it comes to dialogue.  There is no genuine interest in doing what is right, just in making sure that someone is scare, and what they are hoping is that someone is you.

When the banker wants to pick up the policeman’s gun, no one is safe

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A recent story out of Seattle states that an amendment proposed for a bill that would safeguard employee passwords from being requested during job interviews, however should an internal investigation be started that protection of the employee’s private information goes right out the window.  Thankfully the provision was pulled a day later and the bill protecting potential employees from having to divulge unnecessary private information went to the floor without the excessive intrusion attached.

It’s not the first time an amendment/ provision/bill like this has been introduced, nor will it be the last.  The horrifying part of the story is not so much the provision, but the intention of the representative who added it (quote from The Columbian story linked above):

On Wednesday, House Labor and Workforce Development Committee chair Rep. Mike Sells withdrew the amendment. He had introduced it at the behest of business groups, who say the original bill would open an avenue for possible illegal activity by employees, such as divulging proprietary or consumer information to outsiders.

The fear by business groups who were concerned that this would open up an avenue for possible illegal activity apparently forgot that should illegal activity occur there is a process by which they contact the police and then the proper law enforcement agencies, who are trained and the only bodies by law who can do this, SUBMIT A WARRANT for the personal information directly to the site in question.

I respect a need for businesses to protect their trade secrets, yet it seems that Apple’s latest iPhone doesn’t so much show up on an employee’s news feed or blog spot, rather in a bar after they’ve had one too many.  If there is potential theft of intellectual property, embezzlement, or or other such criminal activity going on, my first advice to a business owner would be to get the police involved (i.e. get the folks whose job it is to sort this kind of thing out) rather than trying to play cowboy and find it on their own.  The process, should it have proceeded, would have been, as privacy advocated pointed out, rife for abuse, and could lead to lawsuits from employees should other private information be divulged to a company who has not right or reason for having said information.

Lastly, to the state and federal representatives of the nation.  Take a moment to think on this matter when it comes to you.  Realize that anyone looking to pick up a duty of law enforcement must be addressed with great care and skepticism.  Any effort by a business to take on a responsibility or to take an action that would circumvent the law of due process, those pesky warrants that police need in criminal investigations, needs to be shuffled off, and documented for public consumption.  These business leaders should be named, and their organizations chastised by the public, but I feel comfortable in saying that none of the barking voices that decry the vices, real and imaginary, of the government will raise a word against the corporate sector.

Simply because people work for a company does not mean that they are to have access to every nook and cranny of their employees lives.  If we as a political body fear the encroachment of a nebulous, faceless monstrosity trying to worm its way into every aspect of our lives, why should we treat the businesses who are not restrained by the rules of our Constitution with less caution than the government which we can control?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

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A curious note was passed my way regarding a recent court decision to prohibit the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from holding a pre-meeting prayer that included the name Jesus.  Couple that with the knee-jerk reaction from some state representatives in North Carolina who submitted a resolution to establish a state religion, and it’s another spin on the ‘religious freedom’ movement.

Going back to Virgina first, The article regarding the court decision can be found here and the ACLU has it’s own take here.  In short, the County Board of Supervisors had deviated from the religious neutral prayer that most government organizations insist upon at the beginning of meetings for a clearly identifiable Christian one.  This raised the hackles of one Mrs. Barbara Hudson, and she informed the Board that what they were doing was unconstitutional…which it is.  The board more or less told her to shove off, and, true to form, the ACLU became involved.  Mediation failed, and ‘lo the Judiciary is brought in to lay the smack down.

A similar incident occurred in North Carolina, in the district the that is represented by the state congressman that presented the resolution.  The judicial response to the prayer is what inspired these two representatives, one of which wears the tea party badge with honor, to file this amazingly unconstitutional piece of legislation.

The ground level I’m getting to is this: They were informed that it was unconstitutional, and when informed of such they didn’t bother to research their position nor did they take it under consideration.  They blew the challenge off for self-indignant or self-righteous reasons, failed to come to a compromise in court mandated mediation (a simple acquiescence would have sufficed), and in the end cost the taxpayers significant time and energy better spent addressing the issues of their respective county as well as the thousands, if not millions, of dollars in legal fees that will be assessed after the dust has finally settled.

The need, not desire but flat-out need, to invoke God at public government events also makes me wonder, as I have many times before, about the personal relationship with God that the believers are suppose to have, but seem very eager to show off in public.  My understanding was that it was a deeply personal, one-on-one kind of relationship.  One that cannot be impressed upon by the government, and, through that same clause, cannot be impressed upon others.

The comments on other articles claiming this is another attack on religious freedom by the Judiciary, the resolution goes on to itemize how these decisions are just that, but here’s the thing; the government, any government beholden to the Constitution of the United States America, cannot endorse any religion. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution overrides state Constitutions and local legislatures.  Its not an attack on religion when those affected are asking that the rules that apply to the situation be enforced accordingly.  Somewhere along the line those who are pushing for “religious freedom” forgot what it was about.

The Representatives from North Carolina, short on civics lessons or long on sleeping in class, fail to realize that the federal government does have a say in what the states do.  The power of the states lies in their people and the states capacity to represent themselves at the federal level.  They rage about judicial oversight with regards to these, and many other social matters (and religion is a social matter), but fail to recall that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are to balance each other.  Should the legislative, or we’ll say the most representative body of the electorate, get a wild hair up it’s ass, it is up to the Judiciary (since the executive cannot directly interfere on state affairs) to apply the law as it is interpreted.

Does that mean that the “majority” might get a black eye supporting specific causes, yes.  I’d point to school integration, inter-racial marriage, interstate commerce, property rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, and several thousand other decisions made by the Judicial branch that have in some respects hindered the majority from being a collective dick to a select group of people, but also protecting the body politic from those in both the state and federal realms from doing long-lasting harm.

There isn’t a gun being held to their heads saying that they must worship Allah, Amaterasu, or Cthulhu because there are explicit protections prohibiting the government from enforcing a state religion. That protection, however, does not guarantee that a specific religion will remain in the majority over the existence of a nation, or that the majority religion receives any special privileges or protections because it has the most, or most influential, followers.  It appears that those that normally decry religious freedom forget that the government is designed to protect not only those practicing a religion from government interference, but also to protect those of us who don’t share their beliefs from being steamrolled by the them.