January 29, 2013

In his New York Times column on January 16, Nicholas Kristof related the story of two men back home in Oregon who nearly shot each other over a goose:

That goose would wander off to a . . . neighbor’s property and jump into the watering trough for his sheep. The sheep owner was furious that the water would be fouled, and one time he was so fed up he threatened to shoot the goose. He was probably just making a point, but, since he had a gun handy, he pulled it out and aimed it in the direction of the goose. Seeing this, the goose-owner (who had come to fetch his bird) saw the need to protect his property and pulled out his own gun. They faced off — over a goose!

The Twin City Star Tribune reported that, on January 13, a St. Paul man became upset that his teenage daughter brought home two Bs rather than straight As; during a confrontation over the grades, he got out his AK-47 and pointed it at his daughter (and at his wife, who perhaps made the mistake of opining that the world wasn’t ending). Dad "had recently purchased the rifle because he thought that such guns soon will be banned . . . ."⁸

These two stories illustrate one of the reasons for gun control: a gun transforms an argument over a minor matter into a life-threatening event.

On the same page as Kristof’s column was one by John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia; it addresses another problem: mass murders by the mentally ill. As Howard told it, on April 28, 1996, a psychologically disturbed man "used a semiautomatic Armalite rifle and a semiautomatic SKS assault weapon to kill 35 people in a murderous rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania." Howard, though leading what he calls a center-right coalition, was able to rally support for a ban on such weapons. That was not an easy task:

Because Australia is a federation of states, the national government has no control over gun ownership, sale or use, beyond controlling imports. Given our decentralized system of government, I could reduce the number of dangerous firearms only by persuading the states to enact uniform laws totally prohibiting the ownership, possession and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons while the national government banned the importation of such weapons.

He succeeded. Imagine its happening here. Even with a stronger federal government, more modest reform is problematical. Howard noted that Australia had offsetting advantages:

Our gun lobby isn’t as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle Association in the United States. Australia, correctly in my view, does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no constitutional right to bear arms.

I have difficulty with the notion that a Bill of Rights is a bad thing, despite Heller and Citizens United , but the Second Amendment, even as now misconstrued by the Supreme Court, isn’t the main issue; national will is. Howard makes clear that a national consensus for change was the crucial element.

The Australian program went a step further: a federally-financed buyback program. "Almost 700,000 guns were bought back and destroyed — the equivalent of 40 million guns in the United States."⁹

Enacting any sort of gun control will be difficult, but this is an urgent problem. There are in excess of 30,000 gun-related deaths, including accidents, suicides and homicides, in the United States every year. Gun deaths per capita are higher here than in Canada, Australia, New Zealand or any European country. According to one source, we have 10.2 per 100,000 population; New Zealand has 2.66, Canada 2.13, Italy 1.28, Germany 1.1, Australia 1.05. Obviously the number of guns contributes to that. Our ratio is about 88.8 guns per 100 population, by far the highest in the world. The other counties listed have these ratios: New Zealand 22.6, Canada 30.8, Italy 11.9, Germany 30.3, Australia 15.¹⁰ The ratio between gun deaths and guns ranges from 0.03 (Germany) to 0.11 (the U.S. and New Zealand), so in some countries factors other than fewer guns are part of their success in controlling gun-related deaths.

Kristof had led his column with this: "When I travel abroad and talk to foreigners about the American passion for guns, people sometimes express a conclusion that horrifies me: in America, life is cheap." I don’t think that’s the problem. Americans may indeed have a slightly lower regard for life, as evidenced by our fascination with capital punishment, but the problem in the context of gun control isn’t regard for life: gun-possession advocates claim that they are protecting life by arming everyone. The problem is that we haven’t become completely civilized. We pretend that we live on the frontier, and fantasize that the frontier was populated, and tamed, by gunslingers. Americans simply haven’t grown up.

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8. http://www.startribune.com/local/east/188377421.html?refer=y
9. Actually, the equivalent number would be even higher. Here’s the arithmetic: The U.S. has about 27,923,352 guns, Australia about 3,432,912.
700,000 ÷ 3,432,912 = .2039
27,923,352 x .2039 = 57,076,371
10. For population, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population , and for gun ownership, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country .

January 14, 2013

The experiences of the past twelve years underscore the need for election reform. The electoral college is a relic, one which can deny election to a candidate who has won a majority of the popular vote. There is too much inconsistency in the administration of elections from state to state and county to county. Congressional districts are subject to partisan gerrymandering, leading this year to a House of Representatives dominated by a party which drew far fewer total votes than the opposition. ¹ States enact laws designed to interfere with voting. Pressure groups have opportunities to harass and intimidate voters. There is no federal right to vote in presidential elections. All of this needs to change. The only solution is to federalize federal elections, at least in the sense of setting enforceable standards and procedures.

The electoral college has survived despite being anti-democratic. Three times a candidate who had the most popular votes lost the election by losing in the electoral college. In 1888, Harrison was the clear winner in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote to Cleveland, so we elected the country’s second choice, but at least the system operated as designed. On the other two occasions, electoral votes were contested, but the Constitution provides no mechanism for resolving such disputes. In 1876 (Hayes v. Tilden), the outcome was decided by a commission appointed by Congress, in 2000 (Bush v. Gore) by the Supreme Court.² Neither decision can sustain scrutiny, and both elections illustrate the vulnerability of the system to abuse.

The electoral college supposedly was adopted in part because it would produce a choice between obviously qualified candidates by leading citizens.³ That illusion was dispelled early. In fact, the electoral college has a disreputable history. It was devised by the founders as part of the compromise which accommodated slavery. Allocation to the states of seats in the House of Representatives was based on population but, as an inducement to the southern states, each slave was counted as three-fifths of a person, even though slaves could not vote. Therefore the votes of southern whites were multiplied. The electoral college allocated to each state a number of electors equal to its number of representatives plus two for its senators, so again slave states were favored. That history alone should disqualify the continued use of the electoral system.

There are, admittedly, two problems with a popular-vote system. Vote counting is much faster now than in the past, but except in blowout elections, the result might not be known for some time. Also, in numerous elections, where there have been multiple candidates, the winner of the electoral vote did not win a majority of popular votes, although winning a plurality.⁴ We could simply declare the winner of a plurality of votes elected, or conduct a runoff election. The latter would be more decisive but would leave the outcome in doubt for longer than probably is wise. An "instant runoff," in which voters pick first and second choices, would be better.

As one scholar has pointed out, a majority of the amendments to the Constitution adopted since the first ten (the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791) have dealt with elections or terms of office.⁵ The original system having been so thoroughly modified, there is no reason to preserve the anachronism of the electoral college.

Abolishing the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment, but it could be neutralized by a device known as the National Popular Vote (NPV). Here is a summary by a supporter:

The concept is simple: individual state legislatures pledge that they’ll assign all of their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote — conditional on enough other states following suit. Once a majority of the nation’s electoral votes rest in states that have passed NPV measures, the laws go into effect and winning the popular vote becomes the only way to win.

(According to the NPV web site, nine states with 132 electoral votes (of 270 required) have passed such legislation). However, there is this problem:

This elegantly exploits one of the perversities of our current system—there’s no individual, federal right to have your ballot counted—and turns it against the system itself.⁶

Establishing a federal right to vote for president should be one of our goals.

Even more important than changing the method of election is to set and enforce federal standards for the conduct of elections. Such matters as eligibility, registration, identification requirements, early voting, polling place availability and hours, and protection of voters from interference by "observers," must be standardized, and so must congressional redistricting. Apart from the last, improved technology may be the answer, by creating some sort of computerized voting, which might also solve the slow-count problem. Voting by mail would solve some of the problems, but it exacerbates the delay in counting, especially if, as in Washington, votes are not counted as they come in, but are held until the close of the voting period. Redistricting must be removed from the partisan whims of state legislatures.

Most of the reforms apparently could be accomplished by legislation. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution provides:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

(The provision regarding senators was rendered moot by the Seventeenth Amendment). Congressional districting might be considered an exception, but the matter already is subject to federal control; a federal statute requires that states be divided into Congressional districts, that Representatives be elected only from those districts, and that no district may elect more than one Representative. ⁷ Setting standards for, or even administering, redistricting would not be a conceptual or constitutional leap.

Eliminating or modifying the presidential electoral system, and creating a federal right to vote for president, will require a Constitutional Amendment. Until there is enough support for that, the NPV scheme may be the best choice.

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1.Democrats drew 1,362,351 more votes than Republicans in November, according to a count final as to 49 states. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representativeselections,_2012 or http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/02/1382471/thanks-to-gerrymandering-democrats-would-need-to-win-the-popular-vote-by-over-7-percent-to-take-back-the-house/
2. However, only Tilden had a majority of the popular vote, 51%; Cleveland had 48.63%, Gore 48.4%.
3. See Federalist No. 68.
4. These include Polk (1844), Taylor (1848), Buchanan (1856), Lincoln (1860), Garfield (1880), Cleveland (1884 and 1892), Wilson (1912 and 1916), Truman (1948), Kennedy (1960), Nixon (1968), Clinton (1992 and 1996). See http://presidentelect.org/e1976.html .
5. Michael Dorf, "We Need a Constitutional Right to Vote in Presidential Elections," http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20001213.html. The list includes Amendments 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24 and 26.
6. Quotes from Katrina vanden Heuvel "It’s Time to End the Electoral College," 11/7/12: http://www.thenation.com/blog/171115/its-time-end-electoral-college#. The NPV solution treats a plurality of popular votes as the test for election. See http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ .

7. See US Code §2, which also specifies the time of election, and provides: "All votes for Representatives in Congress must be by written or printed ballot, or voting machine the use of which has been duly authorized by the State law. . . ." Those rules apply Article I, Section 4 as to time and manner of holding elections.

December 26, 2012

There was yet another shooting on Christmas Eve; the victims this time were firefighters responding to a fire set by the killer. The Newtown killings ten days earlier had prompted serious debate, and this additional incident — and no doubt more to come — may create the bare possibility of useful action on gun control. I set out my thoughts on that subject on June 14 and December 15; I won’t repeat them here, but will address a different point.

The NRA and its surrogates are in panic mode, as evidenced by a speech by NRA VP Wayne La Pierre at a "press conference" on December 21. Arming everyone, or at least someone in every school, is the only solution, according to him; certainly easy access to guns doesn’t pose a danger. Because guns can’t be a cause of so many deaths by shooting, the NRA must look elsewhere, and has decided that we are corrupted by the depiction of violence in movies and video games. That theory has been mocked on the left; below is an excerpt from an article on Think Progress captioned "The 10 Craziest Statements from the NRA Press Conference." (I’ve presented the statements in the order spoken by a Pierre; the article rearranged them, as shown by the paragraph numbers).

(2) There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people (9) through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one [projected on screens]: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?

(7) We have blood soaked films out there like ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Natural Born Killers’ that are aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays, and every single day. A thousand music videos — and you all know this — portray life as a joke, and they portray murder as a way of life.

(10) Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

(8) In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty right into our homes every minute, every day, every hour of every single year ⁹⁰

Those are not crazy comments. True, they are part of an attempt to divert attention from the role of guns in murder, but regardless of the source, they raise an issue which needs to be considered. I can’t offer any comments on music videos, having virtually no exposure to them. The same is true as to direct experience of violent movies and games. However, I see ads on television for video games and movies, and trailers for films in theaters, and they do indeed seem to feature gobs of violence, gratuitous violence. Experts seem to differ on the effect, and we are told that there is no direct evidence of increased violence due to these influences. At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I recommend using a little common sense: being awash in violent entertainment can’t be a good thing; a violence-is-fun culture is more likely to produce violence than a more peaceful one. One response will be that most people are not driven to violence by entertainment. That misses the point: mass and/or random killings are not the work of the well-adjusted.

Neither gun control nor restriction of violent images would be easy; both raise Constitutional issues, as that document currently is interpreted. The former would be less difficult, both because there is more room left by the Court’s view of the Second Amendment than of the First , and because it would be politically less difficult, especially if limited to such measures as outlawing assault weapons and rapid-fire clips.

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90. The article is at: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/21/1372001/the-10-craziest- quotes-from-the-nra-press-conference/ . Here’s a video of the press conference: http://www.nytimes.com/video/2012/12/21/us/ 100000001969743/nra-calls-for-armed-guards-in-schools.html #100000001969743 .

December 15, 2012

On December 11, a gunman killed two, wounded one and then killed himself in a mall in Clackamas, Oregon. The Seattle Times responded with an editorial captioned "Put the Oregon mall shooting in perspective." Its perspective is that we shouldn’t be upset: shopping malls rarely are the venue for deadly gunfire and only a small fraction of the people at the Clackamas mall were killed; the shooting "is not . . . a reason to be intimidated."

The Times seemed to deplore the media attention to the event: "A shooting is news. It should also be news that the rate of murder in America has fallen wonderfully in the past 20 years. . . . And while random murders in public places get big attention, few murders are random. Retail districts full of holiday shoppers are some of the safest places there are."

One of the perspectives the Times might have noted is that the country is awash in firearms. By one standard, beloved of Fox News, it would have been bad taste to mention that during a period of mourning, but talking about gun control couldn’t have been less sensitive than the Times’ advice to get out and shop. If we were having an ongoing dialogue about gun control, suspension of the discussion for a period after a shooting spree might be appropriate. However, we aren’t having that debate, and the only time anyone focuses on the problem is in the aftermath of killing. Almost as if to mock the Times ’ complacency, on Friday a gunman entered the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., and killed 26 students and teachers before committing suicide.

The paper addressed the Sandy Hook massacre this morning with a brief editorial comment notable for its evasiveness. "Once past the initial shock and grief that comes with deadly rampages in a single week, the public will demand a sober conversation about violence against innocents." Should that conversation include proposals for gun control? Well, no. The Times mentioned the Clackamas and Sandy Hook shootings, but added a reference to an attack by "a knife-wielding man" in China. "Reality will hopefully trump old rhetoric about violence and weapons," we were told, the message apparently being that taking away guns won’t eliminate violence. Of course it won’t, but it surely will reduce the number of dead. (The editorial neglected to mention that there were no fatalities in the China incident).

The Times managed to find the common element in the incidents to be that "they took place in innocuous settings — shopping malls, schools — with innocent victims," which doesn’t suggest any plan of action. Accordingly, the editorial’s conclusion — "Saying and doing nothing is not an option in the face of so many funerals and grieving families" — is devoid of content, and ludicrous given its refusal to mention guns.

November 26, 2012

Debates can be decided by the choice of the terms in which they are argued, by the label attached to the issue or position. In other words, they are decided by definition, and therefore in advance. Liberals have won a few that way. However, conservatives have had the overall advantage.

They have accomplished this in part by successfully defining "liberal" as a term of derision. When one side allows the other to define not only the labels for the issues but the names of the parties, the argument is nearly over. Liberals, rather than fighting back, have retreated into calling themselves progressives.

Liberals are derided in part because they are an "elite." Somehow, those who stand up for the welfare of the country and its citizens are elitists while those at the top of the socio-economic pyramid, who want still more, are allowed to pose as friends and protectors of ordinary folk. Dan Quayle often is credited with redefining "elitism," and saddling liberals with the epithet, by attacking the "cultural elite." I’m not sure that that phrase makes sense — the debate isn’t usually about the acquisitions budget of an art gallery — but it helped cement the image of liberals as out of touch. One variation has to do with values: ordinary people are religious and morally conservative and don’t care for the alleged loose lifestyles of the left; here’s where Quayle’s Murphy Brown attack registered. A corollary is the notion that liberals, residents of the Northeast or the West Coast, are unsympathetic toward real Americans from the heartland. Another trope has been the "intellectual elite:" people who, confident of their superior knowledge, tell us what to do; this goes back at least to the Roosevelt brain trust.

This year’s election gave us a twist on intellectual elitism courtesy of Rick Santorum: education is elitist.

President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob! There are good, decent men and women who work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor, trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. . . . .

Again:

I was so outraged that the President of the United States would stand up and say that every child in America should go to college. Who are you? Who are you to say that every child in America go — I mean the hubris of this President to think that he knows what’s best for you. . . . This is the kind of, the kind of snobbery that we see from those who think they know how to run our lives. Rise up, America. Defend your own freedoms and overthrow those folks who think they know how to orchestrate every aspect of your life.

Did Mr. Obama say that? Apparently not, but it hardly matters. Here the attack on the intellectual elite — they are liberals (socialists, communists, pick your favorite synonym) who want to impose authoritarian rule — comes wrapped in reverse snobbery about education. This was served up by a man with three college degrees. Not to worry; Rick definitely resisted being remade in the image of an intellectual.

Other words and phrases influence decisions: "right to work," not interference with unionization; protecting "small business," not tax breaks for the wealthy. (Small business has replaced motherhood as the icon to be protected; we could at least define the former). The current magic phrase is "the fiscal cliff;" it implies that some sort of unavoidable crisis awaits rather than a (less dire) situation created unnecessarily and irresponsibly which can be avoided by making intelligent decisions. Here’s statesman Orrin Hatch: "Rather than stop the country from going over the fiscal cliff and preventing the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief, they [Democrats] are prepared to Thelma and Louise the American economy right over the cliff.” Note the second magic phrase: "tax relief," the Bush gifts to the wealthy.

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87. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkjbJOSwq3A

88. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/07/santorum-obamas-education-stance-is-snobbery/

89. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/84207_Page3.html

November 11, 2012

In Science and the Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead praised the Seventeenth Century as "the one century which consistently, and throughout the whole range of human activities, provided intellectual genius adequate for the greatness of its occasions." His focus was on science, but he mentioned two men of letters, Shakespeare and Cervantes. He might have added another, John Donne who, in 1624, wrote these familiar lines:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Donne’s insight is a lesson we need to relearn. Conservatives, especially in their libertarian form, are wedded to the notion that everyone should be able to go his own way, keep what he has, take what he can, and ignore everyone else. (The contemporary formula for that is YOYO: you’re on your own). Contrary to Donne, they believe that the loss of a mere clod is unimportant: they will take notice only if a promontory, one of their manors, is lost. We’ve just had a presidential election in which that philosophy came to the fore and was personified in the Republican candidates. They lost, but no transformation should be expected.

One excuse for that philosophy is that we can’t afford the welfare state, that transfer payments lie at the heart of our budgetary problems. Another is that welfare (including Social Security) creates laziness and dependency. Both were offered up today by the reliably reactionary Robert Samuelson of the frequently reactionary Washington Post.⁸⁶

Our society is increasingly divided, increasingly controlled by great wealth, unwilling or unable to solve or even recognize urgent problems, prone to treat social programs, even disaster relief, as if they were gifts to the unworthy rather than a mark of an advanced and stable culture. We need inspiration but, unlike the Seventeenth Century, the present one is not blessed with thinkers adequate to the occasion. We must resort to those in the past, which ought to appeal to conservatives.

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86. "It’s the Welfare State, Stupid," http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-its-the-welfare-state-stupid/2012/11/11/e392868a-2ab0-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html?hpid=z2   

November 4, 2012

In two recent columns, Charles M. Blow described Mitt Romney’s relationship to the truth. In the first, he said: "This election may go down in history as the moment when truth and lies lost their honor and stigma, respectively. Mitt Romney has demonstrated an uncanny, unflinching willingness to say anything and everything to win this election." He referred to Romney as "the unprincipled prince of untruths."⁸³ In the later column, he added: "Evidence continues to emerge that Romney is one of the most dishonest, duplicitous candidates to ever seek the presidency."⁸⁴ Moreover, Romney has managed to combine a disregard for the truth with a lack of substance; his vagueness would embarrass Reagan and his deviousness would embarrass Nixon. In other words, he is a deceitful empty suit.

This is not to say that Barack Obama is a candidate to inspire confidence or enthusiasm. Whether from conviction, strategy or timidity, he has not staked out a progressive position with any consistency or tenacity, and at times he seems to lack imagination. I wish that we had a strong liberal on the Democratic ticket.

That reaction is common on the left and has led some to rebel. Chris Hedges recently declared that he will vote for the Green Party.⁸⁵ His basic argument is that "major correctives to American democracy have come through movements . . . that have operated outside the mainstream," and that the right course is to support those efforts by voting for their proponents. That conclusion is familiar, abstractly cogent and foolish. I can offer the last opinion without undue smugness, as one who strayed from the fold under similar circumstances: in 1980, I abandoned Jimmy Carter as insufficiently liberal and voted for the third-party candidate John Anderson. Mr. Hedges sees such a desertion as a statement of principle and a critique of the system. It is, instead, an exercise in pique, a self-centered and unrealistic demand that the world go one’s way.

A vote for a third party or write-in candidate is a vote not merely thrown away, but thrown to the opposition. Is Hedges sufficiently unaware to think that the choice of Romney or Obama makes no difference? Is he complacent about a Romney win? Apparently so: "The November election is not a battle between Republicans and Democrats. It is not a battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It is a battle between the corporate state and us." Hedges lists some entirely valid criticisms of Mr. Obama, and praises the Green Party leader, but neglects to evaluate Romney, who is the real alternative. He somehow sees the barrage of advertising by Republicans and Democrats, attacking each other, as a single corporate campaign to convince us not to vote for a third party. He is talking nonsense, both in his apocalyptic picture of the corporate menace and in the implied notion that the two candidates are equally committed to "the corporate state."

Leave aside his exaggeration and lack of focus. Third parties or non-party movements have, as Hedges argues, put forth important progressive ideas, but they haven’t implemented them for the simple reason that they never win national elections. The agenda is set by the party which does. Hedges will, in a tiny way, directly help the Republicans; to the extent that his argument has influence, he will have a slightly larger impact; others independently of the same disposition will push the result further in that direction. They need to recall that the most important potential impact of any third party which is at all successful is demonstrated by Florida, Ralph Nader, and the outcome of the 2000 election.

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83. http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/liberty-to-lie/
84. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/opinion/blow-is-romney-unraveling.html
85. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_im_voting_green_20121029/