Government

 

And The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

The Movie-Palace is now undone,
The all-night WATCHMEN have had their fun,
Sleeping cheaply on the midnight show,
It's the same old ending-time to go.

Its an age-old question, “Who Watches the Watchmen?" 

In a System Optimal solution, the question is what, or who, is the system.  Merriam Webster defines system as “a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole”.  While humans are independent, they can act together as a system.  While there is a system of smaller systems, nature, or God’s dominion depending on your beliefs, humans as individuals have to form their own smaller system of other humans.  The problem is that each human acting as an individual, seeks a User Optimal solution.  The system of humans ideally will be composed those other humans who can put aside their own User Optimal solution and seek the System Optimal solution.  

In choosing other humans to represent them as that System, humans have to trust that those individuals  will act for the System. One way to do this is to choose a person of integrity who would be honest about any conflicts between his own User Optimal and the System Optimal, for example, “Honest” Abe Lincoln, or George Washington who could not tell a lie. Failing that, individuals might be chosen who have no incentive to choose their own User Optimal because they already are so rich that their User Optimal can be disregarded, for example the  Rockefellers or Kennedys.  What should never be their choice for the System are people who lie, and who will choose their own User Optimal and lie that it is the System Optimal.

Exonerated?

 

Words

You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say
It's only words and words are all I have
To take your heart away

Words mean what they mean, NOT what you choose them to mean!

Merriam-Webster defines acquitted as “ to discharge completely (as from an accusation or obligation)”.  It defines innocent as “free from guilt or fault”. It defines guilty as “justly chargeable with or responsible for a usually grave breach of conduct or a crime” . This means that not guilty could be defined as “not responsible for a usually grave breach of conduct or a crime”.  Not guilty or acquitted is NOT the same as innocent.  There are different standards of evidence and proof, i.e. guilt, for criminal trials, for civil trials, and for the court of public opinion.  You can be not guilty in a criminal trial, guilty in a civil trial and guilty in the court of public opinion.  For example, O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of criminal charges in the killing of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.  However, he was found guilty in the civil case for the same killings, and is guilty in the court of public opinion.  

Donald Trump was found not guilty in his first impeachment case concerning the Ukraine call. The Mueller report found that there were 10 instances where Obstruction of Justice charges might have been appropriate but were not pursued because of the DOJ’s position that a sitting president can not be indicted.  These are NOT findings of innocence.

In both Impeachment trials the vote was for or against impeachment, not for or against innocence.  Just as absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, a finding of not guilty is not a finding of innocence. You are only exonerated if you are found innocent.

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.