2024?

Wonderland

You searched the world for something else
To make you feel like what we had
And in the end, in Wonderland
We both went mad

Are we living in Wonderland?

“Sentence first–verdict afterward”.  So cries the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland.  We are supposed to view the Queen as deranged for stating this.  Of course you have a trial with a verdict first, and only then can you have a sentence.

The sentence for impeachment is removal from office, if in office, and a possible disqualification from holding a future office.  During Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, a number of Republican Senators apparently placed sentencing first.  Their rationale for finding Trump not guilty was that he was not currently in office.  They said that since the sentence did not apply,  the verdict of the trial had to be not impeached. They apparently were not paying attention to the vote of the senate on February 9^th , when the Senate voted 56 to 44 that a sentence could be applied because the offense happened while in office, and even though removal from office was a moot point, disqualification from future office was feasible.  Their justification for a finding of not guilty was that the removal from office did not apply.

Given that Donald Trump appears to be very definitely considering running for President again, is it not appropriate to ask for a mistrial, because so many Republican Senators acting as jurors seemed to mistake the sentencing for the verdict. This is the United States, not Wonderland.  We have a verdict first and sentence later . If the penalty for murder is execution, but a murder is committed by an immortal, does that means that he is not guilty of murder because he can’t be executed?

Income Inequality

Straightjacket

Your way's making me mental
How you filter a skewed interpret
I swear you won't be happy 'til
I'm bound in a straight jacket

If incomes are skewed, who should be placed in a straightjacket?

A normal distribution of income with a mean income of $0, also has to considers negative incomes. Since the median income is equal to the mean income in a normal distribution, 50% will have incomes greater than $0 and 50% will have an income less than $0.

If the mean income is $97,026 as reported in the 2020 US Census, and the median is still equal to the mean, it would still be a normal distribution. In this case ~34% should have an income less than $0.  The top one percenters should have an income of approximately 2.33 times the mean or ~$226,070 per year, not the $538,926 that was reported in the 2020 Census.

If the upper incomes are increased, but nothing is done to change the other incomes, the mean and the median will no longer be equal.  In fact according to the US Census, the median household income is $67,521.  The distribution of income is reported as skewed towards higher incomes.  I know that normal and skewed are emotionally loaded terms, but these ARE the terms that are used in statistics.

Incomes less than zero are typically treated as if they were $0.  If these negative incomes are reported as $0, then the mean and the median can no longer be equal.  The Luxembourg Income Study, https://www.lisdatacenter.org/ , tracks income by country. The mean income is less than 120% of the median income in most countries.  It is declining over the period of analysis in all but two countries.  In the United Kingdom, the mean income increased from 110% of the median income in 1980 to 122% in 1994 before stabilizing in a cycle.  According to the LIS, in the US the mean income has increased from 111% of the median income in 1980 to 124% of median income in 2018 and appears to be still increasing.       https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2021/07/inequality.html. 

Increasing the mean national income does NOT increase the median national income unless those incomes are also equitably distributed.  It is possible to increase the mean income without changing median income, which appears to be why the gap between mean and median income is increasing.

During the height of the COVID pandemic, the phrase “flattening the curve”  became common.  Mathematically this means that the variance of the distribution was increased, This reduces the height at the median, e. g. the maximum cases that will need ICU beds at that point in time.  The number of cases over time will not change, but “flattening the curve”, increasing the variance, is a way to reduce that maximum demand on hospital ICU beds.  It seems like a similar phrase should be used for “skewing the curve” to describe income distribution.  The number of people with zero income does not change, the national income does not change, but more of that income is skewed to higher incomes than would be expected if incomes were normally distributed.

Critical Race Theory II

 

I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free

I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free
I wish I could break
All the chains holdin' me

You aren’t free until we all are free.

Chains bind not only the oppressed, but  the oppressor.  I am 70 years old.  I would like to consider myself well educated.  I have two degrees from Ivy League universities.  I have lived in Mansfield, Massachusetts since 1977.  My two sons graduated from Mansfield schools.  But I have just learned about Lord Mansfield and his decision on slavery in the Somerset decision and how that shaped the American Revolution.  And we don’t need to teach Critical Race Theory????

I was taught that the catch phrase of the American Revolution was “No Taxation Without Representation”.  That is only partly true.  The catch phrase in the southern colonies might just have well been “No End to Slavery Without Representation.”  In 1772, Lord Mansfield ruled  “no master ever was allowed here (England) to take a slave by force to be sold abroad " and thus James Somerset could not be forced to be returned to his “owner” who was a Boston customs official.  This did not end slavery in English colonies, but it frightened slave owners so much that they arguably joined the northern colonies not so much to oppose tax policies as to oppose this policy.   
 https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/slave_free.htm

If I am just learning this now, what else have I not been told?  IMHO, teaching Critical Race Theory is a not a bad thing.  It is a necessary thing.

Second Amendment II

 

Happiness is a Warm Gun

Happiness is a warm gun (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, momma (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)

Does a gun make you happy?

Judges are often derided by those on the right for concocting rights from the Constitution, which are not explicitly defined in the Constitution.  I am sure that the late Justice Scalia would have been their model for a proper Judge.  However in District of Columbia versus Heller, Justice Scalia wrote the opinion that stated that people had a undefined right, implied by the second amendment, of self defense.  The people’s right are defined in the First Amendment as. 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

There is no right of self defense that is listed.

The second amendment reads.

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

The people’s rights are explicitly listed in the First and later amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights, but not in the Second Amendment.  You have to purposely ignore the phrase “a well regulated militia” to imply a people’s right.

Justice Scalia noted, and explicitly ignored, the phase a well regulated militia, ( e.g. a state’s National Guard) and said that there was a right to self defense implied by the right to keep and bear arms.

By the text of the Second Amendment, Congress shall not infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms for purposes of providing for a well-regulated militia.  Thus Congress or the states should be able to regulate arms not needed by that state’s militia.  Armed individuals that are NOT in a well-regulated militia are more properly vigilantes, and not necessarily well‑regulated vigilantes, whether acting singly or collectively.  There is no right in the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms except for a well-regulated militia.  If you are not a member of a state’s National Guard, and your own arms are not desired by that militia, National Guard, I see no right to keep or bear arms, for self defense or otherwise in that amendment. Justice Scalia wrote. 

“Private citizens have the right under the Second Amendment to possess an ordinary type of weapon and use it for lawful, historically established situations such as self-defense in a home, even when there is no relationship to a local militia.” 

Talk about an activist judge!

Abortion

 

People

People,
People who need people,
Are the luckiest people in the world

Are unborn fetuses people?

The sovereign in the United states is the People.  The People, and their representation, are enumerated in the decennial census.  People is NOT synonymous with voters.  The constitution infamously made it clear that enslaved persons are counted as 3/5 of a person, but were not allowed to vote. Eventually  slavery was prohibited. Women are counted as persons, but did receive the right to not vote until a constitutional amendment.  Children are counted, but are not allowed to vote.  The decennial census does not now, and never has, included unborn fetuses.  At least as far as the constitution is concerned, unborn fetuses appear not to be considered to be people.  This is an observation, not a moral judgment. It is understood that fetus are considered people by many, but according to the Census fetuses are not counted.  Children are counted after they are born but not before then.

If fetuses are not people, it is not clear that they have any standing for consideration of constitutional protection.  The Supreme Court has ruled that a fetus who is viable, that is could survive on their own or with medical intervention, is protected, but while fetuses can be protected, they appear not to be considered as people according to the US constitution and its census. (Again an observation, not a moral judgment).  It appears that a constitutional amendment, which would include enumerating unborn fetuses in the Census would be necessary to change this status.  As such it is not clear how women who do not know that they are pregnant, as in the recent Texas law, could answer that they have an unborn fetus to the US Census and thus it is not clear that those fetuses could ever be people as defined in the constitution.

Debt

 

Sixteen Tons

You load 16 tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

The battle over the national debt is also a  battle over the nation’s soul.

The US debt ceiling is being extended until December.  That the US budget has debt is neither good nor bad.  Charles Dickens in David Copperfield said

 “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds and six , result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”

but if those extra six pence were an investment in the future, say a college loan, a home mortgage or a car loan, that result would probably be happiness too, not misery.  While we may be in debt at a given point in time, that does not mean that we will always be in debt.  Under Republican Presidents the national debt has always increased.  Under Democratic Presidents the national debt has largely decreased.

Presidential Administration	Change in Deficit (Billions of USD)
Lydon Baines Johnson	-$8
Richard Nixon	+$9
Gerald Ford	+$48
Jimmy Carter	+$25
Ronald Reagan	+$74
George H. W. Bush	+$102
Bill Clinton	-$383
George W Bush	+$1,500
Barak Obama	-$735
Donald Trump	+3,000

Source: Boston Globe: Fast Forward Newsletter (Tuesday October 5, 2021)

Yes, the table above could be adjusted to account for inflation, but that will only change the magnitude of the numbers, not their sign.

Debt is the difference between revenue ( i.e Taxes) and spending.  If revenue is decreased (taxes are reduced), but spending stays the same or increases, then the debt increases.  All of those tax cuts do have a consequence.  Growth in the stock market only reflects  the growth of capital, not growth  of the economy.

Republican's problem over the debt is not on how big the debt is, because clearly Republicans appear to increase debt.  Their issue is over how much revenue there will be and what kind of spending there will be.  Republicans cleary want no revenue, i.e Taxes, and are at least honest about that or haven’t you been reading their lips or reading Tea Party screeds.  They also do not want the “wrong” kind of spending.  They have discovered that if there is no revenue, then there can be no spending, and if the debt is increased so much that all of the income will have to pay off the debt then there will be no “wrong” kind of spending.  If society can’t play their way, they are perfectly willing to smash all of the toys so we can't play with them either.  Wise up America and save our soul.  The argument is not over the size of the debt.  The argument is over taxes and the right kind of spending.

Political Parties

 

It’s My Party

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
You would cry too, if it happened to you

Are political parties making us cry?

The founding fathers did not anticipate the formation of political parties.  If they had, the Electoral Crisis of 1800 would never have happened. This was an inadvertent tie between the Democrat candidate for president and  Democrat candidate  for vice president.  That led to the adoption of Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution which implicitly acknowledged the existence of political parties by separating the election of the president from the election of the vice president. 

Single member districts were also not a constitutional requirement.  The constitution required that votes in the House of Representatives should be apportioned by a decennial Census. More than one representative per state could was expected.  But the Constitution was silent on whether those representatives would be proportionally elected in a state (i.e. at large) or whether those representatives should be for specific districts within a state.  Single member districts were the result of Congressional apportionment act of 1842.

The result of single member districts and a plurality system is, according to Duverger’s Law, two political parties.  If the winner is determined by plurality, merging any political parties that did not receive  a plurality was proposed as inevitable.  Consequently there are two political parties in the United States, while there are more than two parties in proportional systems of representation,  e.g. parliamentary systems in Europe.

A consequence of a two-party system is that supermajority votes become a way for one of those two parties to block the actions of the other party if it is a minority, but not a super-minority.  Thus a supermajority action, such as advise and consent; ending debate and bringing a bill to a vote, popularly known as the filibuster; etc. can be blocked by the political party that is a minority.  If votes for a supermajority were secret, then retaliation against the “defectors” could not be enforced by that political party. Thus supermajority votes might then serve their intended purpose, to make sure that actions of a majority do not come at the expense of the minority.  Actions to block votes by a majority, by the party that is a minority, but not a superminority, are the current impasse.

Just as the framers of the Constitution did not anticipate the formation of political parties, Congress did not anticipate the consequences of single representative districts.  There is a good reason for a single representative for a district.  It ensures that the representative is closer to the people being represented.  However the consequence of this single representative  per district  system is to makes it possible for  the minority party to block all actions of the majority party,  unless that majority party is also a supermajority.  Rather than change the electoral system, require that all supermajority votes ( e.g. advise and consent, declarations of war, ending filibusters, etc.), be by a secret ballot. This would recognize that there are 50 States, 100 Senators, and currently 435 Representatives, and not just 2 political parties. A secret ballot in supermajority votes should serve to unite us, rather than divide us. Will that portion of the minority that is also a superminority object? Of course, but the alternative may be to allow simple majority action in all cases instead of requiring a supermajority.  Let’s not eliminate the protections against a tyranny of the majority because we don’t want  a tyranny of the minority.