FALLEN EMPIRE What Might Have Been #1: Choi and Watson

Awhile back, I wrote two Kindle Worlds novellas set in independent science fiction author Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire universe, "Ten Davids, Two Goliaths" and its sequel "Discovery and Flight."Both were part of a sub-series called "Choi and Watson" that took place during the rebellion preceding the events of the first novel Star Nomad. They followed Geun Choi, a Korean Buddhist warrior-mystic, and his friend Tammy Watson, a recovering drug addict. Both are fighter pilots for the rebellion that brought down the titular Empire and repeatedly cross paths with canonical characters like main-series protagonist Alisa Marchenko and her lecherous friend Bradford Tomich.

(Since neither character is part of the main series, this avoids the prequel problem of knowing a character's eventual fate. See this comment from Mad Magazine about the duel between Palpatine and Yoda in Revenge of the Sith. Since Choi and Watson aren't canon characters, it's entirely possible one or both of them could die in the events of a story and that allows for suspense.)

However, Amazon shut down Kindle Worlds not long after I started writing for it. Although Lindsay allowed those who'd written KW stories already to republish them ourselves, I didn't see any point in writing more. Here's where "Choi and Watson" would have gone if Kindle Worlds had kept going.

(I had some ideas for unrelated stories, but those will have to wait for a later blog post.)

"Torpedo Protocol" (Choi and Watson #3)-The Alliance unit that includes our heroes expended almost all of their torpedoes during the events of "Discovery and Flight," so the rebels have to steal more. While the mission is being planned, Tomich (who has had an eye on Watson since the beginning of "D&F" at least) finally sleeps with her, much to the protective Choi's irritation. To shut him up, Tomich tries to hook up Choi with one of his (many) previous flings, who's also a Buddhist. This one gets into the Empire's religious policies--in one of the later books, it's revealed the Empire required everybody to join the state religion centered on the three suns and exiled the die-hards of Earth's old faiths to a reservation planet. Choi's syncretic Buddhist faith was tolerated due to its similarity with the official religion, while Tomich's ex had to suffer for her more traditionalist beliefs and is surprisingly resentful of her date. And then the battle starts...

"Fire From The Sky" (Choi and Watson #4)-In the main series the rebels' Tri-Suns Alliance engaged in ruthless tactics like deliberately attacking civilians because they couldn't defeat the Empire in open combat, at least until very late in the game. In this story, we see this firsthand--after the Imperial admiral from "Discovery and Flight" bombards a rebellious planet from orbit, the Alliance uses captured civilian ships as relativistic weapons, devastating a loyalist planet in return. This causes the horrified Watson to break up with Tomich, who abandons his habit of poaching among the lower ranks to start sleeping up the chain of command, which we see throughout the main series. In his mind, Watson didn't want anything to do with him anymore because owing to her lower rank she's not aware of the "big picture," but someone higher on the totem pole would be.

Both of these novellas were plotted out when Kindle Worlds shut down, but I hadn't started writing them. I had some ideas for later novellas involving the characters stealing fighter spacecraft ("Stealing Strikers"), seeking to recover a psychic-amplification device referenced in one of the canonical prequels ("Psychic Fire"), and destroying a factory producing android soldiers for the Empire ("Android Rising"). The latter is particularly important because although sapient androids exist in this world, the Empire didn't mass-produce them to crush the rebellion. The point of this story would be to explain why.

The Gary Johnson Campaign: Media Buys or Consultants?

I promised one of my readers just before the election that I would do a blog post citing some links he found about how Gary Johnson's 2012 Libertarian campaign and how Jill Stein's 2012 Green campaign spent their money. During a discussion on Facebook, he posted these links showing that the Johnson campaign spent very little on advertising and a great deal on administration and consultants, while the Stein campaign spent a significantly larger percentage of its money (and more in absolute terms) on advertising. The breakdown as to what money went where is even more damning, with Stein's largest expenditures being media buys and Johnson's being various advisers.

What the heck? The Libertarian Party, although it's got the best ballot access of all the third parties, still suffers from the popular image that it's a party focused on legalizing drugs. When I was in high school, a friend of mine gave me a photo showing the three parties as cartoon characters, with the Democrats as a donkey carrying a board with a nail in it, the Republicans as big, burly elephant, and the Libertarians as a pot leaf with an assault rifle. Humorous as that was, the Libertarian Party is not going to get any traction if it's viewed as the party of stoners and gun fanatics. I'm not saying the campaign wouldn't need consultants and advisers, but when they eat up money that could be spent on, well, getting out the vote, there's a problem.

I do recall seeing a Gary Johnson advertisement on YouTube about how he was the only candidate who did not want to start a war with Iran, but when I searched YouTube for Gary Johnson advertisements, that was all I found other than an ad for Ron Paul and Gary Johnson that was around four years old. Meanwhile, I found several Jill Stein advertisements that got a lot more YouTube hits.

Of course, the obvious response is that Johnson ran one of the most successful Libertarian campaigns in history, getting one million votes and one percent of the popular vote. Jill Stein's results were much less impressive.

However, imagine how much more successful Johnson could have been if he spent more money on advertising. He could have gotten his name out there as the civil-liberties candidate, in contrast to both Obama and Romney. Although Romney could have used "the president can make you disappear" as a hammer to beat Obama with, he basically said both he and Obama can be trusted not to abuse this power and said U.S. citizens who join al-Qaeda are not entitled to due process because that's treason.

(Never mind the Constitution has specific provisions dealing with treason, but that's a different matter.)

Johnson could have also piggybacked on the successful marijuana-legalization initiatives in both Colorado and Washington. Given how Romney and Obama are both opponents of marijuana legalization, even in limited medical circumstances, promising not to interfere with state-level drug policy would have been a way to gain support from the voters who made marijuana legal. Given how Colorado Democrats feared Johnson would take enough votes to push Colorado to Romney, that was a MAJOR missed opportunity.

I did not hope Johnson could win the election outright, but I was hoping he'd be a spoiler in enough states that it might force the election to the House of Representatives. Colorado would not have been enough to do this in and of itself, but it might have been part of a larger strategy.

2012 was a massive missed opportunity. Who knows if another such opportunity will come again?

Gary Johnson: What I Like

The other day, I said I would post what I did like about Gary Johnson, the presidential candidate I did vote for, rather than what I didn't like about Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

It took longer than I intended, but as Horton the Elephant said, "I meant what I said and I said what I meant." So here goes...

*Civil Liberties-This is the absolute biggie. Our nation, from its very beginning, has emphasized the personal freedom of its citizens. In the aftermath of 9/11, various "anti-terrorist" measures jeopardized those freedoms our Founding Fathers fought so hard to attain, freedoms protected and expanded by the hard work and sacrifice of those who came later. The federal government has used its police powers to demand library reading records without a judicial warrant and detained an American citizen without trial. Although some of the most dangerous provisions have been recently struck down, others remain in place and the parts that were ruled unconstitutional might still return, as the Obama Administration has appealed. Johnson said he would not have signed the Patriot Act and the later National Defense Authorization Act that have threatened American liberties.

What good is defeating the Islamists of al-Qaeda whose demands go beyond the U.S. not having bases in the land of Mecca and Medina, all the way to demanding we convert to Islam and abolish separation of church and state if we end up becoming a police state at home?

*Free Trade-At different points in the past, I have praised Obama for supporting free-trade agreements with other nations like South Korea, Panama, and Colombia. I read a book in high school entitled The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression about the Great Depression and how tariff walls and despotic autarkic regimes like the fascists and Nazis made things worse. There's an adage, "If goods don't cross borders, armies will" and although that doesn't always hold true (people thought the First World War was impossible due to intra-European trading relationships), economic integration has contributed to the cooling of tensions between the United States and China that led to war scares in the late 1990s and things like the capture of a U.S. spy plane by the Chinese early in the Bush presidency. Johnson has strongly committed to free trade.

*Foreign Policy-To be perfectly blunt, war sucks. War is evil. War is dead men (and women), or mangled men and women whose lives will be diminished forever afterward. War is broken families. War is burned houses and cities. War destroys rather than creates. I shed no tears for Saddam Hussein and his two evil sons, but the cost to the United States of the Iraq adventure has been enormous, in terms of money, lives, and America's strategic position.

I am not so naive as to believe the outcome of beating our swords into plowshares will lead to anything but us plowing for those who don't, but that doesn't mean we should go looking for trouble. Bin Laden is dead and the Cold War is over and an interventionist foreign policy is something we are increasingly unable to afford.  It's time to re-evaluate our foreign policy priorities. Full-blown withdrawal from everywhere in the world is not practical--for starters, the U.S. Navy guarantees freedom of the seas for all countries--but there are plenty of areas where cuts can be made that leave us strong enough to deal with legitimate threats. Gary Johnson has explicitly stated he is not interested in picking a fight with Iran, which could turn into a bloodbath and strategic disaster.

*The War on Drugs-Let the record state I do not use any recreational pharmaceuticals. In fact, I do not even drink alcohol or coffee. However, the Drug War has jeopardized Americans' freedoms in various ways (asset forfeiture abuses are a biggie) and cost vast amounts of money. Drug arrests often set otherwise-harmless people on the road to becoming hard-core criminals. Prohibition of alcohol failed; why would doing the same for, say, marijuana, be any better? Johnson has advocated legalizing, regulating, and taxing currently-illegal narcotics. Legalizing and taxing marijuana would save billions of dollars and generate billions more in tax revenue.

I could post some more, but I have some more urgent projects I need to work on. Don't forget to vote tomorrow, or today if the lines aren't too long.

Why I'm Not Voting for Romney or Obama

As those who have known for while awhile know, I've been self-identifying as a Libertarian since a road-to-Damascus moment about how there is no moral difference between nonviolent ownership of "assault weapons" and nonviolent marijuana smoking when I was in high school. Although I was too young to vote in the 2000 presidential election, I voted for the Libertarian Badnarik in 2004.

In 2008, I voted rather reluctantly for John McCain. I can't remember why--either something the Libertarian candidate that year did got on my nerves or perhaps there was something about Obama I really didn't like and I didn't want to risk helping Obama win Georgia. Although I'm drifting away from Libertarianism (more because I support government spending on education, science, and infrastructure), my views are sufficiently different from the two major parties that I'm not inclined to vote for either of them and I'm not going to vote for hard-leftists like the Greens.

However, although I haven't voted yet, I'm probably going to vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson. Although I have spoken out in favor of Republicans Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul, here's why I'm not interested in supporting either candidate.

Obama

One thing I didn't like about Obama back in 2008 was the whole cult-of-personality thing that coalesced around him, with him being "the one" who would bring "change." I'll give Obama credit that he tried to make a joke out of it rather than use it for some more sinister purpose, but that did rub me the wrong way.

One of the big reasons I didn't like him in 2008 was the born-alive controversy in Illinois. This isn't a matter of abortion in the first trimester or so of pregnancy when the fetus doesn't really have much in the way of a brain. If there's the possibility the fetus can survive outside the womb, it must be fairly far along. See this. This isn't even abortion anymore.

Although I shed no tears for Gadhafi and have flat-out recommended Obama claim credit for Gadhafi's death to look tough on foreign policy, Obama has claimed the U.S. contribution to the overthrow of Gadhafi did not require congressional approval. I do not believe that to be the case.

Obama does not oppose indefinite-detention provisions that violate the Fifth and may infringe on the First amendments.

And then there's Gunwalker.


Romney

For starters, Mitt Romney flip-flops when it's politically convenient. I have no beef with changing one's opinions based on new evidence--after all, that's what science is all about--but the timing of Romney's changing views on issues like gun control and abortion smell.

It's not like Romney opposes the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens either. If someone is killed in battle and is a U.S. citizen that's one thing, but if they're arrested, that's something else. The U.S. Constitution specifically says people can be charged with treason for making war on the U.S. and that's how to handle American members of AQ who are taken alive.

Mitt Romney also opposes online gambling, using downright nanny-state arguments in favor of keeping the ban. I don't gamble for money, but I don't care if anyone else does. If someone causes their family to suffer because they can't control their gambling, that's unfortunate, but it's not justification for the government to ban everyone from doing it.

Romney vowed to fight marijuana legalization "tooth and nail." Considering how Colorado has greatly benefited from "medical marijuana" and several states are voting on legalizing marijuana this fall, we might well have a major state-federal clash. Considering how the GOP claims to support state and local control, the federal government being aggressive on this issue is rather hypocritical.

I'll get to why I support Gary Johnson later, since I generally believe in providing positive solutions rather than just complaining.

Reducing Gun Crime...Without Gun Control

Ever since the Colorado shooting happened, my alternate-history forum has been blowing up with arguments about gun control.  As you all may well know, I am a strong supporter of gun rights and I have a sneaking suspicion for many gun-control supporters it's more of a culture war issue than a public policy issue.

However, even though mass shootings like Colorado, Virginia Tech, and Columbine are massive statistical outliers and violent crime has actually been going down, tragedies like this are often preventable.  So here're some proposals to reduce gun crime in general (some of which would also address mass shootings as well) that do not involve infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

*Drastically increase the penalties for the use of a firearm in a crime.  Efforts like this bill in New York, for example.  It's true that criminals who actually go through with a crime don't expect to be caught, but this might provide additional deterrence that would dissuade the weaker and less-confident ones from using guns in whatever evil deed they set out to do.

*Drastically increase the penalties for "straw purchases," the buying of guns on behalf of those who cannot buy them legally.  The Columbine shooters got their weapons from older friends, who received little if any punishment for their complicity, while this article states the punishments for straw purchases are rarely severe.  In addition to stealing, this is how many criminals acquire guns.  Gun ownership is an inalienable right, but with rights come responsibilities.

*Increase funding and/or tweak the laws for the "keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill" mechanisms that should have stopped the Virginia Tech shooting, since Cho should not have been able to buy a gun in the first place.

*Legalize marijuana.  Selling drugs is a massive money-maker for criminal gangs who wage gun battles with one another, and marijuana is the most abused drug in the United States.  Furthermore, marijuana is a "gateway drug" because the same people selling weed are also selling other types of drugs.  If people who want to smoke weed can buy it at the Wal Mart along with cigarettes and beer, they're not going to meeting dealers in back alleys who might also offer them cocaine, LSD, etc. or cut the weed with other drugs in an attempt to get their customers hooked on something else.  This would reduce the drug-using population further.

(Other drugs could be legalized as well, but it would be best to start with marijuana first because it's less harmful than the others and its banning was for especially idiotic reasons.)

*Increase funding for mental-health treatment.  Historically private citizens had much greater access to firepower than they do today--one example being cannon on privately-owned ships, for defense against pirates and the like--but I've never read about someone going on a bender and shelling Boston Harbor.  What changed?  Probably how mental illness was dealt with.  I'm not suggesting bringing back scary-abusive insane asylums, people getting committed by family trying to steal their money or by those annoyed by their political views, etc., but the current regime needs work.  The Tuscon and Virginia Tech shooters were mentally ill, for example, while the Colorado shooter appears to be as well.

Newt's Space Comments and the Military-Industrial Complex

While campaigning in Florida, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has been a vocal proponent of space exploration, to the point of promising a permanent American moon base by the end of his second term.  Here is one article describring what he's been doing.

I'm not one of those people who thinks we cannot have space exploration because we have poor people at home, home being our own nation or other countries on Earth.  There are enough places where there's wasteful spending already to cut to free up money for space-related stuff without reducing funds for things like literacy, AIDS prevention, etc.  Farm subsidies come to mind, while the government could take the "weed is illegal but enforcing marijuana laws are not a priority" route that wouldn't save as much as full-blown legalizing it would but would cut some costs.

However, the U.S. financial situation is so dire with the debt and deficit being as huge as they are that the amount of spending needed to build a lunar colony, even a small one like the research stations in Antarctica, would be massively unjustified.  The American Colonies weren't founded "just because," but for economic or ideological reasons.  The Puritan colonies in the north were founded by people who wanted to create a godly society far away from the Church of England, Georgia to give debtors a new start, Maryland as a refuge for persecuted Catholics, South Carolina as a slave-based agrarian center, the French colonies in Canada to buy furs from the Indians, etc..

Much has been made of the Moon as a possible source for He3 to feed fusion reactors (the film Moon depicts an oil-rig-like colony mining He3 for this purpose), but we don't have that type of fusion yet and might not for quite while.  Viable fusion always seems to be 40-50 years away and although I'm an optimist where scientific progress is concerned, one must be realistic.  Fusion occurs in nature in the stars, but that doesn't mean it would be easy or cheap to do here on Earth.

And I'm not aware of any religious or cultural groups that want to establish their own ideal society far away from everyone else who've got the scientific training and resources needed to actually do it.  Let's remember how dangerous this will be, especially given the recent laming of the American space program.  One thing goes wrong in an attempt to establish a new Zion on the Moon (say a meteor smashes the greenhouse or the cosmic-ray shielding isn't thick enough) and the people back on Earth will be watching everyone up there die and be unable to do anything about it.

So not right now, Newt, however awesome it would be to do it.

However, thinking about the whole "space versus the poor" scenario has got me thinking.  Many areas in the United States are poor due to industrial decline.  The decline of the automobile industry is one of the reasons why Detroit is so awful.  Georgia's political representatives have pushed for continued production of the F-22 fighter, despite us already having nearly 200 of them and very little that can face us in the skies, due to Lockheed being a major employer in my neck of the woods.

Some more left-wing people have claimed the U.S. government uses military spending as a kind of Keynesianism, to create jobs and keep the economy going.  I admit being ideologically prejudiced against that kind of argument (it smacks of the U.S. being unable to sustain itself without an artificially-large war machine and international responsibilities to justify it), but given the defense of the F-22 program by Georgian politicians, I really can't argue against that being true in at least some cases.

So here's a thought for the long run.  Instead of a military-industrial complex that with the defeat of fascism and Communism is no longer as necessary, how about orienting as much of it as possible to a space-industrial complex?

Lockheed, for example, was experimenting with a single-stage-to-orbit called the VentureStar that was canceled after running into some problems.  If there was more demand for such technology, I imagine they wouldn't abandon it so easily.  After all, it's (potentially) jobs and money that might not be so readily available if there are more defense cuts.

And then there's the space elevator, which would cause launch costs to drastically decline.  If you're going to have space-Keynesianism instead of war-Keynesianism, this could lead to jobs in and around centers where materials research is conducted.  The LiftPort Group, for example, managed a smaller-scale elevator test on Earth before deciding to focus on a lunar elevator for the time being.  They're also engaged in other materials-science research that will bring immediate profits while allowing them to focus on their long-term goals.

Gingrich suggested prizes to provide incentives for private entities to work on this rather than simply increasing federal spending.  This makes sense, given the financial constraints everyone is operating under these days and the slowness of many government agencies.  The Ansari X Prize has shown promise.  However, let's not forget that the Manhattan Project and the goodies that have emerged from the National Labs were government programs as well.

Villain Protagonists In Music

I've written a supervillain-protagonist story for a possible charity anthology one of my writing groups is doing, and might do another.  That's got me thinking on the subject of villain protagonists.  There seems to be a fair number of them in music, ranging from fairly minor to severe.

"Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones-Satan.  Enough said.

"Crimson King" by Demons and Wizards-The Crimson King and Randall Flagg from the Dark Tower novels by Stephen King.  The Crimson King is an extradimensional evil power bent on destroying the universe and Flagg is his Antichrist-like apostle who ultimately aspires to backstab him and take control. It reminds me of Revelation 13:4 from the Bible, where men worship both Satan and the Antichrist.

"Copperhead Road" by Steve Earle-The protagonist is a drug dealer who's rigged his drug farm full of Viet Cong-type booby traps to kill Drug Enforcement Agency agents.

"Porn Star Dancing" by My Darkest Days-The protagonist is angry the women he is interested in either won't put out at all ("Stacy's gonna save herself for marriage") or won't put out to the degree he'd like (making out with other women, letting him sleep with their friends, etc), so he's going to seek out a stripper/porn star/prostitute who'll do anything for money.  Fairly minor compared to criminals and Dark Lords, but still.

"Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne-A girl seeks out to seduce the boyfriend of another girl because she doesn't like the first girl ("I don't like your girlfriend/think you need a new one").  Also minor compared to truly monstrous people, but it's rather mean.

"Dracula" by Iced Earth-Dracula, as depicted in Bram Stoker's Dracula.  More sympathetic than usual, but still an evil vampire overlord.

"Damien" by Iced Earth-The Antichrist.  Enough said.

"Hail to Odin" and "Blade of Triumph" by Iron Fire-Vikings on a pillaging kick.

"The Phantom of the Opera" and "Music of the Night"-I sympathize with the Phantom and think he's more interesting than pretty-boy nobleman Raoul, but he's a stalker, extortionist, and serial killer.

"Be Prepared"-Scar's villain song from The Lion King.  Still awesome though.

"Highwayman" by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Others-The protagonist, in a past life, was a highway robber who'd robbed women of their jewelry and killed "many a soldier."

"Seven Spanish Angels" by Ray Charles-The protagonist sounds like a fugitive being hunted by the Texas Rangers.

First News Article Round-Up of 2011

Here's my first news-article round-up of 2011...

http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb-gwinnett-receive-federal-784889.html

Cobb and Gwinnett Counties rejected participating in MARTA back in the 1970s and Gwinnett rejected it once again in the 1990s.  This is a significant turnaround.  Whatever concerns there are about costs and importing hooligans via train (crime around Lenox went up soon after MARTA connected there) must've paled in the face of the possibility of $4 per gallon gasoline starting next summer.

Given Atlanta's notorious traffic, anything that will take cars off the road will certainly be beneficial.  Although the project paying for itself via fares is unlikely, reducing congestion and air pollution will be a major benefit and in my opinion, worth paying for.

And including Cobb and Gwinnett in MARTA might improve the governance of the organization, which has been plagued by boneheadedness and corruption in the past.

Of course, there's the issue of finding money to pay for MARTA expansion, especially in a time of budget deficits.  I don't think monies from the TSPLOST voters will vote on in 2012 can be used to pay for MARTA operations, but they could be used to pay for building the lines.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/world/asia/04china.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/world/asia/index.jsonp&adxnnlx=1294156855-LPhLoeD57e9INs3S6Z+r/Q

This is good news.  Considering how the alternative to reprocessing nuclear fuel is burying it somewhere for 10,000 years (and making sure our descendants know not to mess with it) or letting it pile up at the nuclear plants themselves, this is very good news.

One quibble: The article states that the National Research Council found that Bush's reprocessing program would have been uneconomical.  Here's the actual report and it's much more nuanced--the technology is not at the point needed to justify an accelerated timetable for building reprocessing sites. 

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?recordid=11998

That does NOT mean that reprocessing in the United States is uneconomical.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/to-beat-back-poverty-pay-the-poor/

Now this is interesting.  It reminds me of something that Richard Nixon proposed back in the 1970s, a guaranteed minimum income.

I'm not a big fan of handouts, but in the countries where this has been implemented, they've imposed all sorts of conditions on it like making sure one's children are educated and giving the monies to women rather than men. 

(Lest anyone accuse me of bashing men, I read about micro-financing in Haiti and how they gave the money to women because the men would gamble it all away on cock-fighting.) 

In the long run, this could break the cycle of poverty, producing a net gain in income (from educated workers rather than vagrants) and savings (lower incarceration and law-enforcement costs, for one).

However, IF such a thing were to be implemented, I would make it conditional on not drinking, smoking, and especially doing illegal drugs.  Drug- and alcohol-testing is surely doable.  Including classes for the adults receiving the monies would also be a good idea, since lack of education contributes to poverty and related problems, plus there is a "culture of poverty" that makes things worse for the poor that needs to be eradicated.

Bagel Leads to Government Child-Snatching

Courtesy of Grimm Reaper from my alternate-history forum:

http://criminaljustice.change.org/blog/view/losing_a_baby_over_a_poppy_seed

Now that I've gotten your attention with the headline, time for discussion...

For starters, a drug test more stringent than the federal government's, a drug test that can be failed if someone eats a bloody bagel, is entirely too strict.  I agree that they should change that immediately.  Even the child protection types said they had problems with this hospital before.

One of the comments suggested that informed consent be required for any test, while another comment said that according to some of the documents, the hospital does the drug-testing in order to ensure the child won't be at risk of drug withdrawal soon after birth.

However, wouldn't it be a good idea to drug-test the infant, as part of the usual battery of tests they do on newborns, rather than drug-testing the parent?  An infant is not going to be eating a bagel with poppy seeds on it, after all.

I will take a moment to show some empathy for the hospital--if they do the drug test and send the kid home with parents they suspect to be on drugs and something happens to the kid, they're going to catch hell if it gets found out.  The state of Pennsylvania overreacting with an order to take the child when they could have simply sent one person (not several people and certainly not cops!) to maybe talk to the parents to see what is going on is probably the worse outrage of the two.

I hope the parents take everyone responsible to the cleaners.

John Monds and the Lesser of Two Evils

One common criticism of voting Libertarian, or for any third party, is that one is "throwing one's vote away" and the only realistic option is to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Firstly, I would wager that one is only throwing one's vote away if they do something absurd like write in Mickey Mouse or a candidate who isn't running. Otherwise, one's vote has an impact, even if that impact is helping a rival party.

(Voting Green tends to benefit Republicans; voting Libertarian tends to benefit Democrats.)

Secondly, in states with runoff elections for those who don't reach a certain electoral threshhold, one has a choice other than the lesser of two evils.

This WSB poll shows that neither Deal nor Barnes are polling above 50 percent.

http://www.wsbtv.com/politics/25192892/detail.html

If neither party gets more than a majority of the votes (50 percent plus one), it's runoff time.

My suggestion is that people who don't like Roy Barnes or Nathan Deal (and there are a lot of them) vote Libertarian John Monds. If Monds does well enough to force a runoff between Barnes and Deal, then it will be time to pick the lesser of two evils, since Monds will realistically not be among the top two finishers.

This will force the two of them to compete for Libertarian votes, which might affect their political platforms, and will strengthen the hand of the Libertarian Party in general.  After all, voting for a party that managed to force the two major parties into a runoff cannot be described as throwing one's vote away in the same manner that writing in Mickey Mouse is.

In turn, if the Libertarian vote is strengthened, the two major parties will alter their platforms to appeal to them.  Philosophically speaking, that would be easier for the Republican Party, since it strikes me as intellectually dishonest to support small government but at the same time support laws against victimless crimes that spawn big-government bureaucracy and abuses, like the Drug War or unnecessary foreign adventures.

Attack of the Mexican Lake Pirates

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/new-details-emerge-in-deadly-shooting-on-us-mexico-border-lake/19658735

Heard about this on Neal Boortz's radio program yesterday while driving into Atlanta for an appointment.  This is not the first time this has happened--there have been several other incidents as well, although this is the first time someone has actually died.

It turns out that all the shenanigans take place on the Mexican side or close to the maritime border between the US and Mexico, so it is primarily the Mexican government's responsibility.  And to be fair, it's not like the Mexican government is stonewalling on the issue.

http://www.reporterherald.com/news_story.asp?ID=29730

That being said, the Mexican government's control over much of its territory is rather tenuous right now.  Like what's going on in Somalia, if a state cannot police its own territory, someone else should.

Were I the governor of Texas, I'd base some National Guard attack helicopters thereabouts and have them periodically patrol the area.  In the event of anything like this happening again, the perpetrators get shredded.  The purpose of the State is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens and that's at risk here.  Chopper patrols might also be useful in deterring incursions by the Mexican military or armed cartel types as well, which have been known to happen.

Boortz went so far as to suggest American search teams with Apache helicopter escort cross over to the Mexican side to find Hartley's body and if anyone attempts to interfere, they'll get put on the bottom with holes in them, but given how the Mexican government is (allegedly) helping try to find the body, that might be rather premature.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2024162,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular

The above article said that signs the cartel violence has crossed the border (two shot-up Mexicans in a truck) are more troubling than Hartley's death, and since that happened in the U.S., she has a point.

However, what happened on that lake is pretty darn bad.

Hmm...maybe it's time to say something politically inflammatory, like "Out of Iraq, Onto the Mexican Border?"  One might need to modify the Posse Comitatus Act though, since border-security is primarily a law-enforcement issue at present and military involvement in law enforcement is restricted.

John Monds and Why He Could Be Good for the GOP

I read about John Monds, the Libertarian candidate for the Georgia governorship, in the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning.

Here's the article about him:

http://www.ajc.com/news/libertarian-candidate-john-monds-616835.html

Although voting for a third party with a similar position to an established party tends to benefit the established party's rival (Greens hurt Democrats; Libertarians hurt Republicans), the circumstances of this particular Libertarian candidate indicate he could do significant damage to the Democrats this time around.

For starters, the Democratic Party has been very strong among African-Americans for the last several decades.  Monds was a leader in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and many African-Americans believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Republican Party is racist.  A black Republican could be branded a token, a sellout, or window-dressing, but Monds is not a Republican and he was the president of the Grady County NAACP.

Some African-Americans are already interested in him, for that reason:

http://dekalbganaacp.blogspot.com/2010/01/will-georgia-elect-its-first-black.html

Furthermore, I believe research has shown that African-Americans are incarcerated at a higher rate for drug crimes than whites are and it is the incarceration rate (and the consequent difficulty in getting jobs or education after being jailed) that has hurt the African-American community, particularly men, rather badly. 

Given how the Libertarian Party has historically been opposed to the War on Drugs, this position could help make Monds attractive to African-American voters (in addition to him being black and involved in the NAACP).

Also, of the two policy positions Monds takes in the article, one of them is a socially-liberal defense of allowing horse-racing, casino gambling, and Sunday alcohol sales in Georgia on the grounds that although he may not like them, it's not the state's job to enforce his moral notions.  I don't think socially-conservative members of the Georgia Republican Party, the ones who picked Nathan Deal over Karen Handel, are going to be defecting en masse to Monds due to this issue.

However, those who are leery of social conservatism but also leery of the Democratic candidate Roy Barnes due to his previous term might be willing to vote for Monds.  See the book The Emerging Democratic Majority and the strong showing of Karen Handel, a more socially-liberal Republican who did well in Metro Atlanta, where half the Georgian population lives.

In short, Monds might be able to keep the Democrats from making inroads among independents and could divert black votes from Barnes, weakening him but affecting the Republican Party less severely.  And since he is an effective campaigner--he got over a million votes running for Public Service Commissioner in a prior election--he could do some real damage.

Even if all he does is force a runoff, this would force the Democratic Party to spend more money on Georgia, money that could be spent elsewhere.

Nathan Deal: Vulnerable on Ethics

Somehow, my work e-mail address ended up on the mailing list for Eric Gray, a Georgia Democrat.  Here's the text of a press release he sent out:

Atlanta – Wednesday was an historic day for Georgia - for the first time, one of the most corrupt Members of Congress became a nominee for Georgia’s highest office.



Congressman Nathan Deal was listed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), an independent watchdog group, as one of the most corrupt Members of Congress, sparking a Congressional ethics probe that forced him to resign his seat less than 5 months ago. In addition, the Congressional Office of Ethics said Deal may have violated up to six House ethics rules while in office.


“Congressman Deal ran away from Washington, thinking he could flee an ethics investigation,” Democratic Party of Georgia Chairwoman Jane Kidd said. “He’s mistaken if he thinks Georgia voters will let him find refuge under the Gold Dome. The last thing Georgia needs is Congressman Deal and his crooked past.


An Atlanta Journal Constitution investigative report revealed that while Rep. Deal was on the Federal payroll, his private business netted $1.4 million in four years thanks to a no-bid contract his company held with the State of Georgia.


“The choice in this election is clear: with Rep. Deal, you get a Washington, D.C. insider tainted by sweetheart deals and ethical corruption,” Kidd concluded. “With Roy Barnes you get an experienced leader who will promote transparency, end special interest favoritism and lead with honesty and integrity so we can make Georgia work again.”
 
Perhaps I should have blogged about this earlier, when it might have made some kind of difference, but I voted for Karen Handel for a reason when Eric Johnson (the one I voted for in the primary) didn't win.  Due to the whole no-bid contract situation, Deal is highly vulnerable on the ethical issue alone.  Barnes couldn't rag on Handel for not having a college degree without PO'ing a lot of people, but he certainly will be able to criticize Deal for having ethics problems.
 
Given the general public anger at incumbents, corrupt politicians, etc., Georgia Republicans have just given Roy Barnes a major advantage in the coming general election, an advantage the Democrats are already jumping on.  One hopes this will not be an election-winning advantage, since according to Johnson, the next governor will play a major role in redistricting.  Even if Barnes is himself superior to Deal (I haven't studied Barnes' positions), Barnes returning to the Gold Dome would be a major black eye for the Republican Party that tossed him out of the Gold Dome in the first place and would put the Democratic Party in a strong position for years to come.
 
On another note, I remember reading somewhere that Handel was the candidate of those more concerned with economics than social issues, with Deal being the reverse.  I also recall criticism of Karen Handel due to her more socially-liberal stances.  Thus, it is possible Deal won in part due to social conservatives winning out over economic conservatives.
 
Republicans would do well to read the book The Emerging Democratic Majority.  The U.S. is getting more socially liberal and if the Republican Party doesn't accomodate this trend, it risks electoral marginalization.  Many social-conservative stances aren't even small-government, like the War on Drugs.  That is more of an issue nationwide than in Georgia or the South, but it's going to affect us down here sooner or later.  After all, Handel, whose strength is in more-liberal Metro Atlanta as opposed to more-conservative rural parts of the state, nearly won the primary, and could have won if she'd asked for a recount (she had every right to do so).

Before someone accuses me of being some unprincipled sell-out hack, I don't want to see fiscal conservatism or a strong national defense (things far more important to me than most social-conservative positions) being dragged into the abyss by a social-conservative millstone, especially if it's the kind of social conservatism contradicts the "leave me alone" sort of government that Republicans should in theory support.

(A government big enough to confiscate alleged "drug dealers" assets without trial or mow down a 95-year-old woman because some dubious informant said he saw drugs at her house is big enough to confiscate your stuff or ventilate you on some other pretext.)

A Brief Retraction Re: My Birth-Control Article

I posted the NYT link and the link to my blog in the Chat forum of my alternate-history site, in order to drum up discussion and hits for the blog.

The user whose handle is Blairwitch749 works in the health-care industry--and has gotten in some mighty battles with the pro-national health care contigent, which is mostly European--and he didn't think making hormonal birth control over-the-counter was such a good idea.

He went into a great deal of detail about how doctors do extensive blood-testing, calibration for the recipient's weight, etc. to ensure they've got it right when they prescribe hormonal birth control.  If a doctor's involvement is required to that degree, keeping it a prescription drug might be prudent, or at least the matter should be discussed more thoroughly first.

Due to the fact I am not 100% sure BW is correct on the matter (I have not independently verified the process) and the fact that a large thrust of my earlier comments were a defense of secularism in government from a Christian perspective, I will leave the older article up.

The Case for Making Birth Control Pills Over-the-Counter

I was reading the New York Times today and I came across the following opinion column:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22blanchard.html

I think it's time for my regularly-scheduled controversial opinion, so here goes...

I think it would be a good idea to make birth-control pills over-the-counter instead of requiring a doctor's prescription. 

In my opinion, drugs should be prescription-only if they're dangerous enough to need a doctor's guidance in their uses or if misuse would cause large-scale problems--think all these diseases we've thought we'd conquered becoming antibiotic-resistant because people don't finish their antibiotic prescriptions or badger doctors into prescribing them unnecessarily.

According to the article, which was written by someone who knows what they're talking about, the first situation is not an issue.  I've googled progestin, the one the author believes should be made over-the-counter first, and I can't really find anything about dangers from it.

Since there aren't any negative effects to the wider society I can think of, I do not think whether or not one can buy birth control pills over-the-counter or not is really any of the government's business.

Now I'll discuss something that will inevitably come up if someone proposes this--religion and its associated morality.  I'll stick with Christianity, since it's my own religion and the most influential religion in the United States.

If birth control were more widely available and people knew how to use it, there would be fewer unplanned pregnancies and thus fewer abortions.  If abortion is morally equivalent to killing (aka unjustified in most circumstances), it is imperative that abortions be reduced.  This will help accomplish that.  Fewer unplanned pregnancies means a smaller burden on both public and private charitable assistance, making more resources available for people in that unfortunate situation.  This in turn will make abortion--something few women contemplate with relish, based on the reports I've heard about women coming out of these clinics crying--less attractive.

Now, onto sex.  It is true that Christianity teaches sex outside of marriage is immoral and it is true that, if oral contraceptives were more widely available, I would imagine more sex outside of marriage would occur, since it would reduce the danger of unplanned pregnancy.

That being said, I don't think the number of people deterred from having sex outside of marriage by merely having to get a prescription for birth control pills is all that large.  It strikes me as more probable that people simply take the risk, which circles back to my point about abortion.  Basically, they're for the most part going to sin anyway and cause more problems for both themselves and others without oral contraceptives than without.  It's a lesser-evil argument; although an individual may choose to reject both the lesser evil and the greater evil and bear the consequences, this is not practical for governance.

Furthermore, it's not just people having sex outside of marriage who use oral contraceptives, but also married people who, for various reasons, wish to delay having children.  The Bible condemns sex outside of marriage; beyond 1 Corinthians 7:5 (in which spouses are told not to deny one another sex, lest the other partner be tempted to commit adultery), I do not recall any New Testament commandments pertaining to sex within marriage.

(There is the Old Testament case of Onan, who "spilled his seed upon the ground" and got zapped from on high, but he didn't want to father children in his brother's name AT ALL, not just at a more convenient time.  Claiming that story is a commandment against all birth control is reading too much into it.)

On a wider note, it is imprudent to have the government serve as an enforcer for our particular theology or moral code.  After all, someday we might lose our cultural and political dominance (some of the long-term trends don't look good) and we don't want the precedent we set to be used against us. 

The Founding Fathers created a secular government for this reason; they saw the wars of religion in Europe and the mutual persecution depending on which sect was in power (England, in which the Catholic Henry VIII persecuted Protestants until he became one himself and then began persecuting Catholics, comes to mind).  Unless it is a public matter--and for the reasons I've outlined above, oral contraception is not--the law should not be involved.

Let us remember that the secularly-governed United States is the most religious developed country, while the European countries that had state churches of one flavor or another have become extremely secularized.  It was our ancestors' tendency to use government to enforce the predominance of their sect that contributed to the decline of Christianity in Europe--let us remember that Deism emerged in the aftermath of the religious wars.

Furthermore, nowhere does the New Testament suggest that Christians should seek to take control of the government and use it to serve "Christian" ends.  In fact, in 1 Timothy 2:2 in which Paul exhorts his associate Timothy to pray for "kings and all those in authority," it is not so that they may become Paul and Timothy's enforcers, but so that they might leave the early Christians alone.

News Article Round-Up

I periodically send myself Internet links home to blog about, but they stack up in my Inbox because I find something else more immediately interesting before I can get to them.

So I'm going to put all of them together in this entry, with commentary.

http://www.slate.com/id/2255385/

This article compares the Drug War to Prohibition and does a good job proving why the Drug War, like Prohibition, is a bad idea.  The author also compares the end of Prohibition during the Depression--to get tax revenue from alcohol--and said the current economic climate provides an incentive to legalize and tax currently-illegal narcotics.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20006930-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

An offshore wind farm in the Great Lakes.  This would be a really good idea.  It might cost a bit in the short run, but it would reduce coal/fossil fuel consumption in the long run and provide high-tech jobs.  And luckily, there aren't any Kennedies to muck up this project like they did with Cape Wind in Massachusetts.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/17/lawmaker-warns-drug-cartel-danger-public-parks-intensifying/

Okay, this is getting ridiculous.  We can't go into our bloody parks because hooligans have taken it over.  Although legalizing and taxing drugs will take business away from the cartels, getting that accomplished will take far more effort than changing the laws to allow the Border Patrol and other law enforcement to use vehicles in national parks.  The criminals are already damaging the environment in the parks and are going to keep on doing it, so it's not like avoiding using vehicles in this scenario is going to be a net benefit for the environment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100617/wl_time/08599199697300

Some good news from Afghanistan.  The Iraq War was an unnecessary distraction from fighting al-Qaeda and other Islamists, but copying the successful "Sons of Iraq" model used to help quell the Sunni insurgency seems to be working in Afghanistan.

Of course, we need to be sure these militias are being integrated into the Afghan government as to ensure long-run stability after we leave.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20008016-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

This deals with one of the problems with electric cars--where to recharge--rather nicely.  Some privacy concerns, but electric-usage data is something the power company already collects (and the government could subpoena if it wished), so no need to flip out.

$1 Trillion Spent on War on Drugs, To Little Overall Benefit

Found this online Friday.  This is likely to grind some people's gears big-time, but here goes...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100513/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/failed_drug_war

I used to be a strong supporter of the War on Drugs, primarily due to the rather scary effects of PCP and other, harder drugs.

Then, when I was a senior in high school, I reached the conclusion that punishing non-violent drug offenders was just as morally bankrupt as punishing non-violent gun offenders (something I already opposed).  If you light up a joint in your basement or if you keep an AK-47 in your basement and it doesn't affect anyone else, it is nobody's business but yours.

Furthermore research confirmed my position.  Particularly galling is the fact that the drug war has been used to enable police abuses--if an officer finds drugs on your property, even if someone else put them there (say, some pothead toking up on your property when you're not there), they can confiscate your property and due-process doesn't apply, since it's allegedly the property being punished and not the person.

Here are some articles about the abuses of asset-forfeiture laws, typically done as the result of the war on drugs:

http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket

http://www.ij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3114&Itemid=165

http://www.fear.org/

Even worse is when the drug-war laws allow unethical government agencies to deliberately destroy people by framing them for involvement in the drug trade, something that's much easier than, say, framing them for illegally dumping toxic waste or for murder:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_n4_v25/ai_14171968/

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/camden_police_officer_in_polic.html

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

http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0510/733560.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-texas-profiling_wittmar10,0,6051682.story

(Lest anyone think otherwise, the above portion is not an attack on law-enforcement officers who are ethical and do not abuse their positions--the majority of the profession.  They are the thin blue line protecting decent folk from the hooliganry and it is in the interest of the police profession as a whole to end the WoD, both to prevent abuses of it from tarring their good name and to enable them to focus on things that are a greater danger to the community.)

One thing in the article in particular stuck out at me:

"To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," (former drug czar John P.) Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcment, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."

Is the government's Herculean effort to eradicate illegal drug use in this country so weak that mere criticism can "destroy everything we've done"?  Given the vast amounts of effort spent on it, the vast leviathans of governmental and law-enforcement power brought to bear on the problem, that's pretty pathetic if it's true.

(It's not.)

Furthermore, criticizing the drug war is not the same as criticizing drug treatment and prevention.  I don't think anyone sane who opposes the drug war also opposes telling kids not to start doing drugs or treating people who are addicted. 

Drug use is a destructive, nasty thing that ruins lives and in many cases kills people.  In an earlier Facebook note, I suggested making schoolkids watch the films Requiem for a Dream and Alpha Dog to open their eyes to the brutal reality of drug addiction and dealing.  Especially Requiem--that movie is scary.

My concern is that the cure is worse than the disease, especially given the abuses that it has enabled and the mind-bogglingly vast financial cost. 

And thirdly, Walters' argument comes off as really politically-correct.  "Don't say that, it's offensive!"  Other than his opening sentence, he makes no attempt to defend the drug war on factual grounds--instead, he resorts to claims that this is insulting to everyone who has tried to fight drug abuse.

Since I don't like to criticize without offering a solution, here is an idea:


The way the government deals with alcohol (destructive if overused) and cigarettes (destructive in general, and more addictive than some illegal drugs) might be better--regulate and tax to reduce the harm and generate revenue and use some of that revenue fund prevention and treatment efforts.

This could serve as a means of replacing the revenues law-enforcement agencies might lose if the drug-war-spawned asset-forfeiture ends. 

After all, legalizing and taxing marijuana alone could generate $40 billion to $100 billion per year.

http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2009/03/legalize_mariju.html

Imagine all the money currently flowing to the drug gangs instead flowing into the local, state, and federal governments.  That's a veritable river of cash that can be used to close the deficit, pay down debt, keep other taxes low, and invest in worthwhile projects.