What are YOU willing to give up to help the economy?

"Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You"

John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

I read somewhere that the true art of negotiation involves figuring out what both sides can agree on, and then figuring out what you can give the other side, in exchange for what you want.  The real question is where are your priorities, do you want to 'win' the argument, or do you want to reach a deal?  It seems to me you can't do both.

The truth is you can't reach a deal if you don't really know what you want, are not prepared to give up anything, and you don't really know what the other side want.  When it comes to the discussion on the Fiscal Cliff, and all the blow ups of the previous 4 years about the economy, I am not entirely sure I know what each side really wants, I am sure I don't know what either side is willing to give up.

Yes Congress person it is possible to go against the party vote and survive!

Feeding my own confirmation bias, I will start with the GOP.  What exactly do they want from a deal?  What could the democrats give them, short of capitulation, that would bring them to a discussion that would include tax cuts.  I know they want spending cuts, but what cuts do they exactly want?  Do they want to decrease waste?  That is something I think both Dems and GOP could agree on, or do they just want to gut social programs?  A non starter for the Dems.  

Will they accept cuts to the Military (one of the biggest loss of revenue)?  Or do the cuts only have to come from programs that help the poor, women, minorities, the elderly and children?  If they get what they want, are they willing to give Democrats and the President what they want?

What about Democrats?  What are they willing to give up?  Spending cuts have to happen, can they look with objective eyes at social programs and find ways (much as the President did with the Health Care Reform Act), to make the programs more efficient, yet not reducing or removing needed benefits?  Are they willing to look at a better way of managing taxes?

The big question is does any of this need to be done right now?  I am not an economist, but it seems to me that the question of the deficit should be tackled once the economy is much healthier than it is now.  Obama has actually slowed down the rate of growth of the economy (Does the Economy do better under Democrats or Republicans?), so while the deficit is growing, it is actually growing at a slower pace than under Bush.  It seems to me that we should keep going in that direction until the economy is healthy enough to take some austerity hits.

It seems to me that we should be focusing on programs that will make our economy grow, that will put people to work, help kids get educated and put more money in people's pockets.  We need to provide a sense of safety and stability that will encourage people to start spending again, kick starting our economy.

Once we have done that, and the economy no longer needs help, then yes we can start cutting, and start increasing taxes.  Both need to happen but when the economy is good, the pain of austerity is much lighter.  But it seems that as a nation we are no longer willing to give for the good of the country, we seem to be willing to hold onto things as we all go down with the ship, rather than giving a little to patch the hole and keep the ship going until we get into port.

As for the argument for and against taxes for the rich.  I could be very naive, but it seemed to me that there was a time the rich in this country were as invested in society as the rest of us.  That sometimes their decisions were less motivated by greed, and in some cases were motivated by some sense of social good.  Perhaps it was greed, as if the economy tanked, they made less money in those days.  These days, despite the recession, the rich are getting richer, companies are making record profits while the rest of us are struggling to get by.  

When 90% of the wealth is held by the top 20% of the population, clearly to make significant revenue, it makes little sense going after the bottom 80% of the population.  The rich at the very least, should not be taxed at lower rates than those making less money.  What surprised me if the information in this blog is correct, is that the top 1% have not really increased their wealth over time, it is the next 19% of top earners that have increased their share of the wealth, at the expense not of the top 1%, but of the bottom 80%.  So the GOP is correct, there has been a redistribution of wealth, they were simply wrong about the direction of this redistribution.

I am willing (although not really able) to pay more taxes, for a country that is safer, cleaner, healthier and more egalitarian.  That is the price I am willing to pay.  I am willing to support spending cuts, if they don't harm those that are the most vulnerable, and are directed at reducing waste and increasing efficiency.  I am willing to vote for people that are willing to act like grown ups and put our country first.

After all, in a democracy, you can't complain too much about the government, as you get the government that you deserve.

Are those who commit unspeakable crimes insane by definition?

In a recent article (Guns and Mental Illness) the author noted that:

Yes, it is true, as has been noted in recent weeks, that most mentally ill people don’t commit crimes. But it is equally true that anyone who goes into a school with a semiautomatic and kills 20 children and six adults is, by definition, mentally ill. ~JOE NOCERA

I have to wonder if that is true, because if it is then we need to seriously rethink how we punish crime and how we look at some of the great atrocities that have been perpetrated over the centuries.   I think that this results from a desire to place atricities at the feet of those different from us, either the mentally ill, or people of a different worldview, different race, gender, ethnitcity, national origin you name it.

There seems to be this unconscious, yet strong desire to believe that if the ones that do these horrific things are different from us in some way that we see as important, then that difference must be what made them carry out the crime in the first place (The Social Psychology of Stigma).

Almost as if we can say that if we can just put away, get rid of 'those people', if we could somehow incapacitate or prevent them from coming anywhere near us, then we would be safe.  Because people like 'us' are safe.  It is 'those' people who are dangerous.

I can see how when we lived in small villages with little contact with people from the outside, this kind of thinking probably kept us safe.  A stranger wonders into town, he carries an illness nobody in that town has any immunity from, and before you know it half the town is dead or dying.

But we no longer live in small villages, and these days the most horrific crimes that we know of in recent history committed at a massive scale, were a result of this kind of thinking, of racial, ethnic, religious and gender discrimination that often eventually turned into hatred.

The uncomfortable question then becomes, are all those people who participated in these mass crimes, insane?  Were the inquisitors insane?  Were those who gave up their neighbors to be burned alive as witches, insane?   What about slave traders past and present, are they insane?  Sex trafficers?

When the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia murdered everyone who had a professional job, or who went to university (Wikipedia: Khmer Rouge), were they all criminally insane?  When former neighbors and friends in Bosnia (Wikipedia: Bosnian Genocide) and Rwanda (Wikipedia: Rwandan Genocide) killed and raped each other, did they all suddenly and collectively become insane?

Were the Nazi's insane?  Were all the people involved in these atrocities and many more that I have not listed here, criminally insane?  Recently I was reading an article about an ex Nazi fighting deportation from the US, the following passage struck me (From a lengthy deposition the story of Anton Geiser of Sharon is told):

Geiser said he only saw a prisoner harmed once. He was escorting prisoners to work and could see ahead some friction among prisoners.

“So the one prisoner couldn’t take it anymore and he walked out,” Geiser said. “So, the guards start to fire on that person, and he walked maybe 15, 20 feet before he fell. I was very upset. I did not like it. I thought to myself, ‘We all have good days, some days are maybe not as good. So, that poor soul, maybe had something he couldn’t take no more.’ I thought to myself, ‘That life could be saved. They could stop the prisoner and bring him back into his ... where he came from.’ He didn’t have to shoot him. I did not like it then, and I hate it today, but there’s nothing I could do. If I could do anything, I maybe be shot myself.”

I asked myself, could he really have been at a concentration camp and not seen the horror of it? But I looked at the pictures

 and listened to Edward R. Murrow's description of what he saw when he entered one of the camps that Geiser worked at (Edward R. Murrow Reports From Buchenwald), and I wondered how can one look upon such suffering and think that this is OK, or even normal.

Then you have studies like the Stanford Prison experiment which showed that putting ordinary people under certain conditions leads to some pretty extraordinary behavior when it comes to the treatment of other humans who have been dehumanized by their environment (in this case by design).  If you have not heard about this experiment, it is a fascinating and depressing view into the darkest recesses of the 'normal' human soul (http://www.lucifereffect.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment).  In this experiment and in another (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment), it was shown rather depressingly that rather ordinary people can do rather ugly things under the right conditions.

It seems to me that when an individual, or a society is able to dehumanize other people, for whatever reason, race gender, sexual orientation, religion (you name it we have done it), then it become easy to do the unthinkable.  Keeping guns out of the hands of the 1% of criminally insane that do become violent, will not really make a dent in mass atrocities, mass murders or even your garden variety murder.

Perhaps we should keep guns out of the hands of racists (of any race), as many mass murders have involved racially motivated hatred, we should also prevent those accused of domestic violence from getting them, as yes a number of mass killings were motivated by a desire to kill an ex, or current partner.  We should also focus on those who have been victims of crime, sexual abuse, bullying and discrimination, because that can lead to anger that can lead to this type of crime.  Not to mention men, as 99% of these crimes involve male perpetrators.  Who else?  Oh yes the recently divorced, those involved in nasty settlements from these divorces and child custodians should also be kept away from guns as some of those involved in these crimes have a history of domestic abuse and killed their ex or current loves just before, or after getting a divorce or a child custody hearing.

My point here is that I really see only two ways of reducing these types of crimes, and violent crime in general, one is my Kumbaya theory.  If you look at the people who do these things (mass murder on a small scale, not the larger scale genocides), unless they had a serious mental illness, their lives were spiraling out of control.  We live in a society that often is not very loving and supportive of those among us who we consider to be different, we don't have many of the social safety nets of other countries, we don't really have a great deal of empathy for those we feel are not worthy of our empathy, many in our society face ugly treatment from others if we are overweight, unattractive, introverted, short, disabled, or different in a way that is viewed in a negative manner by our extroverted, materialistic society.  Not to mention racial, gender and other forms of discrimination that despite some claims to the contrary, are still alive and well.

In addition to all that we live in a winner takes all society, where aggression, ruthlessness, anger (usually in men), power and force are seen as positives in normal social interactions.  People in jobs are often rewarded for having these characteristics, kids in school are rewarded for these behaviors as well, you know 'kids will be kids'.

And to top that off, 33% Americans have guns.

So my two ways of reducing these types of violent crime to levels seen in other industrialized countries, would involve having a kinder gentler society (most likely not going to happen in my lifetime, odd considering how many people consider themselves religious..subject for another blog), and/or removing guns.  I don't think either is likely to happen any time soon.

I wanted to, but decided not to include pictures from the Rwandan massacre (google search images: Rwandan Genocide), the Cambodian massacres (google search images: Khmer Rouge), lynching (google search images: lynching), Inquisition torture (Google search images: Inquisition torture), Wounded knee Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre), depressingly there are many, many more!

Mass Murderers are Angry People

I was curious about the characteristics that those who commit mass murder share, so I have been compiling a list of such criminals and their crimes from information on the web.  It is depressing work and I have not yet finished, but one thing is clear.  The one thing that links all of them together is anger.  The target of their anger differs, the reasons for their anger differs.  Sometimes the anger is justified (not the way they acted on it of course), often it is not although they clearly felt it was.

The types of criminals can be split into

1) Random killers; they are angry at society in general and sometimes at a specific group.  These killers include those who commit hate crimes.  The victims are generally not known to the killers.  The killers life had often just unraveled (another common characteristic shared by many of these killers), they are either unemployed, about to lose their jobs or have lost quite a bit of money.   I am guessing that they feel that society in general, and specific groups are responsible for what is going on in their lives.    Some but not all have a history of mental illness, some get their guns legally, some don't.   Some are married with kids, some are single.

2) Hate crimes; this is really a subset of 1, but here the targets are a specific race, religion, gender or ethnicity. This includes perpetrators of all races.  However, many hate crimes with multiple victims (minority) are not always listed as mass killings.

3) Spousal abuse; the main target in these crimes is the current or former love interest of the perpetrator.  Some are still married, or currently in a relationship, others have not been in relationships for years.  In these cases extended family and children are often killed as well.  Again it seems that these people (all the ones I know of are male), see their lives unraveling around them, they are either in divorce proceedings, about to lose custody of their kids (or think they are), or they have just lost or about to lose their jobs or a large amount of money.

4) Workplace violence; again the main motive here is anger, but it is directed against current or former co workers, clients or people that they have received services from.   The person feels (sometimes correctly) that they have been victims of discrimination, or that they have been unfairly treated (sometimes they have been, sometimes they have not been).  They have often either been terminated, or will be terminated or have just lost a large amount of money.

5) University violence; This is really a subset of 4 and the motivations are usually the same.  Here the person has either just been terminated, or they have been dismissed from the school. 

6) Youth mass violence: Schools are typically the locations of this type of crime, the perpetrators are typically teens or very young adults.  Anger is involved and usually there is more than one perpetrator.  The Sandy Hook violence is a little different than previous crimes at schools in the US, but is similar to at least 3 Chinese mass violent attacks at elementary schools.

While white males represent the majority of perpetrators, minorities including blacks and Asians have been involved in mass murder and in one case a woman was also a perpetrator. The perps have been outgoing, introverted, married, single, with kids, without, non immigrants, and immigrants.  Some were never treated for mental illness, some appeared to have mental illness but were never treated, others had been treated for mental illness.  Some came from broken families with history of abuse, other did not.

The only two things that all of them had in common was that they were all very angry and they all had guns. Some of those guns were purchased legally, some were not.  We live in a society that sees those who are 'different' as dangerous and bad, while those who are like 'us' are good and safe.  When we talk about keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill (different from us, but less than we think), that is mostly our prejudice talking, as they are not the only ones responsible for these types of crimes not by a long shot, most crime is committed by the criminally sane.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_School_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby%27s_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Iowa_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_California_Street_shootings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Ferguson_%28mass_murderer%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Johnson_and_Andrew_Golden

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Johnson_and_Andrew_Golden

http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/

http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_O._Barton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gene_Ashbrook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Felton_Parish

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakefield_massacre#Fatalities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Weise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covina_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupertino_quarry_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_University,_Fullerton_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikos_University_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Seal_Beach_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Illinois_University_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Gravure_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Grand_Rapids,_Michigan_mass_murder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_bombing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binghamton_shootings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Sherrill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kip_Kinkel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nickel_Mines_School

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_Square_Shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Jewish_Federation_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Seattle_cafe_shooting_spree

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Ratzmann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crandon,_Wisconsin_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westroads_Mall_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Distributors_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Sikh_temple_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Minneapolis_workplace_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Azana_Spa_shootings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Tulsa_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_IHOP_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage_nursing_home_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Baptist_Church_bombing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Essex

What is your Value as a Human Being?

 |Source=Derived from File:Us declaration independence.jpg |Author=Thomas Jefferson |Date=1776

As many have said before me, even as these words were written, it was clear that some men were not as equal as others, and that women for the most part were not equal to men.  However, some research I have been doing and some headlines I have been reading have lead me to ask myself, what my worth as a human is, and what worth we place on the lives of others.

In every society from the dawn of time, some have been considered to have more worth than others.  How we define who is worthy has changed, and varies from society to society, and how the worthy and those less worthy are treated also varies, but we have always it seems placed worth on the lives of others.

In California a woman is sleeping and a man buys some alcohol, walks up to her pours it over her and sets her on fire (woman set on fire as she sleeps).  I have changed the story a little from how it is typically reported, in most stories it is noted that she is homeless, now the man who did it is being called mentally ill.

It seems to me that those labels have the effect of distancing the reader from both people.  It distances us from the victim (homeless) and from the perpetrator (mentally ill), and while many will feel horror for this crime, few will send cards or donations to any family she had or other homeless people, few will have candle light vigils for her, few will call for legislation to address the violent crime against the homeless.

It is a pity, because I was shocked at the statistics and the number of people set on fire (mostly by people with homes) who happened to be homeless:

Over the past twelve years (1999-2010), advocates and shelter workers around the country have received news reports of men, women, and even children being harassed, kicked, set on fire, beaten to death, and decapitated. From 1999 through 2010, in forty-seven states, Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, there have been one thousand, one hundred eighty-four acts of violence committed by housed individuals, resulting in three hundred twelve deaths of homeless people and eight hundred seventy-two victims of non-lethal violence (http://www.nationalhomeless.org).

What is also disturbing is that 50% of those that committed these crimes were under the age of 20.  Those that attacked the vulnerable assumed that they would not be caught or severely punished, because those that they attacked were not as worthy as others in our society. They assumed it was OK to harm these people because their lives were not seen as worthy as the lives of others, simply because these people were poor and did not own a
 home.

A man pushes another man on the rails as a subway train enters the station (http://www.nypost.com/).  It is unclear what led to the man being pushed on the rails, but it really does not matter, nothing short of self defense against a mortal attack would be justifiable.   The initial stories portray the victim as a sort of hero, protecting other passengers from a deranged, homeless man.  However, it is also possible that the victim was the aggressor in the situation.  Neither scenario should make the victim any less of a victim, any less deserving of our sympathy.  Nobody deserves that kind of death.  Some make a point of mentioning that he was a father, does that imply that had he not been a father, he would have somehow been less deserving of our sympathy?

In a story more recent story of a similar nature a woman pushed a man in front of a moving train because she thought he was Muslim.  In this case the man simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was targeted because he looked Muslim.  His life was worth less in her eyes because he was Muslim.

Even with the coverage of the Sandy Hook tragedy I had to wonder what people meant when they noted that 'these kids did nothing wrong', does that mean that somewhere there are kids who have 'done something wrong' and thus deserve to die?  Apparently so, as there are poor and brown kids dying every day from gunshots and people don't really seem to care.  Many of these kids are just bystanders caught up in the deadly gunfire that they deal with every day.  Are they not innocent?  Do they not deserve better?  If not, why not, are then not 'our' children too?

The US media and many in the US were riveted to the story of Caylee Anthony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Caylee_Anthony), a child clearly deemed worthy of our attention, I have to wonder if the story of  Jade Morris will be deemed worthy of our attention? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/).  Somehow I doubt it and am very saddened that I am that cynical.

It has been said that the worth of a society is based on how that society treats and takes care of those most vulnerable within that society.  That would include children (especially poor ones), the poor, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the mentally ill, the loners, those without support, immigrants, minorities, women, those who are homeless, and others who have challenges taking care of themselves.

Most religions also urge us to take care of the same groups and yet, in most societies, those are the same groups that most often are judged as less worthy of love, care, attention and companionship.

It is clear that the US yearns to treat all as the same, many who come from abroad see and admire what the US has achieved through the spilt blood of all her children of all colors.

And even when I get dispirited by the stories I read, I often recall this group of kids that I saw when I visited Ellis Island and have to admit that if any country wishes to reach the ideal of all being created and treated equally, the US has to be counted at the top, even if clearly we are not quite there yet.

But I believe that they are all equally worthy, regardless of where they came from, what their religion is, what their gender, or sexual orientation is.  They represent what so many have died for all over the world.

How do you keep your New Year's resolutions?

I don't think I have ever made a new year resolution, although I have made many other resolutions, some of which I have kept, some I have not.  When I have kept a resolution it is because I have decided that what I would gain from keeping it, is worth the pain that I will go through to keep it.

I am usually successful when I decide to lose weight if I am at a time in my life when I can make it a priority.  As time has gone on and it becomes harder to lose weight, I have had to shift my goals, but the result has remained the same.

When I was younger and I decided to lose weight I simply increased my exercise and decreased what I was eating.  I was most successful when I was single and I had enough time where I could devote time to working out.

I know myself and I know that dieting alone does not work for me, I also know that I won't work out alone at home, and that I need to be in a structured class to really keep going and to get a consistent workout.

I also know now that losing weight is not a goal that motivates me anymore, it is too tied up with social expectations of what is beautiful, what I decided that getting fit was more important to me than being thin, so regardless of if I lost weight or not, I would work on getting fit (losing weight turned out to be a nice side effect).  I don't weigh myself daily, but I do notice if my pants are loser and if I don't get out of breath when I climb stairs.

Everyone is different, and different things will work for different people.  I think the key is to figure out what will work for you.  As an introvert, the buddy system is not one that appeals to me for working out, I am very self motivated, so once the decision is made I don't need people reminding me that I need to work out, often that can be counter productive in my case. But for others if that is what will get you into the gym and staying there, then do whatever it takes.

I know I will succeed at a resolution i:

1) I make it a priority
2) I am consistent
3) I find something about it that I enjoy
4) I set realistic goals

I know I won't succeed if:

1) I don't set specific goals
2) I don't think what I will gain is worth the pain to get it
3) I am not consistent
4) don't have a plan

Around November of 2010 I decided that I was tired of not being fit, I was already working out, but it clearly was not enough.  So I made a pact with myself.  I told myself that I was going to they gym 5 days a week for 6 months.  Even if I did not feel like it, I would go, even if it was just for 20 min (enough time to get a 15 min workout on the bike).   I knew that after 6 months, the gym would be part of my routine, I would be fitter so it would not be as hard and that by that point I would miss the gym if I did not go.  So I knew that once I got past the 6 months, even though I had given myself the choice to stop at that point I would not, and I have not.

I have lost weight yes, but most importantly I am fitter, I feel better and I am saner.

Around the same time I made a second resolution, that I would try and find love last year.  I had no plan, I made no real pacts with myself, I am still not sure the gain in that case is worth the pain LOL, and so that is one resolution I have not been as successful with.