Second Amendment

 

Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

Bang bang, I shot you down

Bang bang, you hit the ground

Bang bang, that awful sound

Bang bang, I used to shoot you down.

What can Congress do to control gun violence?

The Second Amendment  in its entirety 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 state in question here is the United States.  A well regulated militia is NOT any group of individuals calling themselves a militia.  The Militia is discussed in Constitution  Article 1, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16, which read:

Clause 15. The Congress shall have Power * * * To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.

Clause 16. The Congress shall have Power * * * To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

The states have the power over the militia, but its training can be prescribed by Congress.  That militia currently goes by the name of the National Guard of each state.  In this context, the ability of the states to arm their National Guard may not be infringed.  It does not seem to say that states can not use other means of providing arms to its National Guards, such as having arms stored in a National Guard Armory. An individual citizen acting on his own, is not a militia, and thus does not appear to be covered by the Second Amendment. 

At the time the Constitution was written, members of a state National Guard, i.e. Militia, were expected to supply their own arms.  This is no longer the case.  No one expects an individual to have a Blackhawk helicopter in their possession that will be brought to arm the National Guard.  Why then is the expectation that guns owned by individuals are of any use, or interest, to the well regulated Militia, i.e. the National Guard. If those guns are not of interest to the National Guard, then they do not seem to be protected by the Second Amendment

If Congress requires that in the state training of Militias, arms are properly controlled and supervised, and no member of this well regulated militia should not have arms in his possession without such training, this does seem to be within the power of Congress. And then maybe my baby would not be able to shoot me down.

Voter Fraud

 

Flim Flam Man

He's the one in the Trojan horse
Making out like he's Santa Claus.
Oh lord, the man's a fraud,
He's a flim flam man

Should measures to prevent voter fraud be enacted?

Voter fraud laws are being proposed to ensure that there is ZERO fraud.  However as a former engineering professor of mine used to say, “You don’t build a church for Christmas Eve services”.  Perfection is the enemy of the good.  The benefit of eliminating voter fraud must be balanced against the cost of voter suppression. Just including the benefit of preventing voter fraud without also considering the cost of voter suppression is like building a church for Christmas Eve services, i.e. incurring the cost of an outlier, not an average, event.

The likelihood of voter fraud is small according to most studies.  It is not however zero.  But likelihood is not the risk.  Risk is the product of likelihood AND consequence.  The risk of voter fraud which must also be estimated. If the risk, likelihood times consequences, is large then perhaps the measure should be adopted.  But if the goal is zero fraud, then no measure can be considered to be worth the cost.

Australia requires everyone to vote.  There is a fine for not voting.  Fraud is expected to occur if everyone must vote and there are fines for fraud. This system does not require voters to prove their identity.  https://www.voteaustralia.org.au/faq_voter_fraud.

It is impossible to eliminate fraud, just as it is impossible to eliminate murder.  However to prevent murder we punish this behavior, we don’t assume that everyone is a murderer.

If someone still insists on preventing voter fraud, ask them if they have heard the phrase  “He that smelt it, dealt it.”

Voter Suppression

 

Nineteenth Amendment

They thought we were a joke
They tried to dash our hopes
With every word they spoke
They tried to revoke
A woman’s right to vote
But we made it

Voter suppression (revoking the right to vote) is still with us, and that also isn’t a joke.

“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.”

This is the text of Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (emphasis added).  Voter suppression laws directly affect the apportionment of seats in Congress.  The suppression of any voter reduces the population that is used in the apportionment of congressional representatives.  Before any apportionment is undertaken, the impact of voter suppression laws must be considered..  An argument will be made that over suppression laws do not DENY the right to vote, they make the right to vote more difficult.  However if any voter suppression law is intended to deny individuals their right to vote, it should be considered in any apportionment.

While the text of the Fourteenth Amendment refers to male citizens, the Nineteenth Amendment must be considered to change this to also include female citizens.

While the Supreme Court may have ruled in Shelby vs. Holder that, under the Voting Rights Act of  1965, Congressional oversight of mapping of the districts in which the congressional representatives are elected  was no longer appropriate, this does not remove Congress’s responsibilities for the apportionment itself that determines the number of those representatives. While Congress may have made the apportionment process automatic following a decennial census, this only determines the total population.  The Census does not report on the voters who have been denied the right to vote.  This still must be considered before any congressional reapportionment can be determined, or the joke is on us, the voters.

Apportionment

 

You're The Man 

If you've got the master plan
I got the vote for you, hey, hey
Got the vote for you, 'cause you're the man. 

You don’t have a vote in Congress, your representative in Congress is your vote. 

The 4 million persons in the Census of 1790 were used to apportion, by state, the seats in the United States House of Representatives.  In 1790 there were 67 seats.  Even though the population of the United States in 2020 has just been released as 331 million persons, an increase of over 8200%, this does not mean that the number of seats in the House has also increased by 8200% to 5,544.  A  Congressional law fixed number of seats at 435 and an automatic process for apportioning those 435 seats,  but that number is NOT in the Constitution.  The Constitution only requires that each state has at least one representative. 

The apportionment was based not on voters but residents (including women and children who could not vote at that time).  The issue of including enslaved persons was contentious and the subject of much debate.  Should enslaved persons, be counted towards the apportionment, even though they also could not vote.  This was not a trivial issue.  The Constitution contains many provisions that prevented the tyranny of the majority; through checks, balances, super majorities, and compromises.  In 1790, the enslaved population represented 0% of the population in Massachusetts, but 38% of the population in Virginia.  Apportioning House seats based on including, or excluding, the enslaved population would create vastly different apportionments.  A 3/5 rule was a compromise such that “slave” states did not immediately receive the majority of House seats.  Unsurprisingly the apportionment of seats remained a contentious issue before, and after, the Civil War that abolished slavery, but the number of House seats was not capped at 435 until 1913, no apportionment was made after the 1920 census, and the formula used was codified and made automatic in 1941.

The current automatic process is not the only way to apportion House seats.  One proposal, the Wyoming rule, would apportion House seats based on the ratio of a state's population to the least populous state, currently Wyoming.  This would meet the requirement that each state have at least one representative, but this would give California, the most populous state, 69 seats rather than its current 53 seats. This would also increase the current size of the House from 435 seats to 573 seats. While this number might not be practical if all representatives were required to be physically present in the House Chamber, but given today’s remote meeting technology, this may not be a burden.

If the population increased by 8200% from 1790, increasing the number of seats in the House of Representatives by 855% does not sound so radical.  Not all voters can expect to vote in the House, but if the number of seats was increased from 435 to 573, the residents might expect that their vote could be reflected in “the man.”

Words

 

Words

It's only words, and words are all I have
To take your heart away

You might only have words, but those words are important.

You have to be careful with words.  Cockney rhyming slang or highly technical language can do more than just be the words that are spoken.  The words, and the accent which is used to pronounce them, may reveal more than intended about the society to which the speaker belongs.  That language may be meant to exclude others ( if you are not "in with the in-crowd", you prove that by not understanding the slang of the "in-crowd"), but not being able to use the words of a society or its preferred accent does not mean that you are not trying to be a part of a society. 

My maternal grandmother spoke only Polish, but she still considered herself to be an American.  My paternal Irish ancestors did not learn English because they thought that was the superior culture, but because they were forbidden to speak Gaelic.  I try to remember them and not use words to keep people out, but to use words to include people and to speak the truth.  The important thing is the truth, not the words. 

Freedom

 Freedom '90

All we have to do now

Is take these lies and make them true somehow

All we have to see

Is that I don't belong to you

And you don't belong to me yea yea

Freedom

Freedom

Freedom

You've gotta give for what you take

Being in favor of freedom does not mean that you are for Freedom Caucuses or Conferences.

Testing support for freedom by support for “freedom” caucuses is like asking “Are you still beating your wife”, leading, questions.  Posing the "wife beating" question that way and only allowing yes or no responses, implicitly assumes that at one time the respondent has beaten his wife.  A yes or no response provides no information if the respondent  NEVER beat his wife. 

Freedom Caucuses treat rights as absolutes when they are not.  Rights are protected, but they are never absolute.  You have the RIGHT to shout fire, but that right is not absolute.  You have the DUTY not to shout fire in a crowded theater.   You have the RIGHT to bear arms.  You have the DUTY not to use those arms in a mass shooting.  Confusing rights with duties is the opposite of freedom.

Perspective

 

One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor

It's just apartment house rules

So all you 'partment house fools

Remember: one man's ceiling

Is another man's floor

It may be a floor to you, but it may be a ceiling to someone else.

Perspective matters.  You can't just develop the best solution from your perspective. You do have to consider other perspectives as well.  Take a store for instance.  From the perspective of the store operator, if he could just got rid of the customers, who only misplace items on the wrong shelf, or buy items, he would not have to restock the shelves.  However from the perspective of the customer, if you couldn’t find or buy any items from shelves, you wouldn’t patronize that store and that store would close.  So store operators need customers and customers need store operators.

Economists classify goods as rival ( are charged a price) or non-rival ( are not charged a price); and exclusive ( if I use a good, no one else can use that good) or non-exclusive ( if I use a good then someone else can also use that good).  We are used to dealing with Private goods that are rival and exclusive ( like  pieces of food).  That item has a price and if I consume it, then you can not also consume it.  Cable TV is rival and non-exclusive.  It has a price but my using it in my house, does not prevent you from using it in your house.

The problem is that some goods are rival and exclusive from the perspective of the seller, e.g. a seat at a concert.  But those same seats are rival and non-exclusive from the perspective of the buyer.  The buyer is interested in the concert and will pay for a seat at the concert which is non-exclusive, but is ONLY interested in the concert, not the seat, which is exclusive.  That same seat will not interest the buyer unless that concert is playing.  That seat may be a floor to you, but it is a ceiling to the concert hall operator.  Perspective matters and coming up with solutions that recognize all perspectives is important.