Politics, Theology and Stuff: 2012

Monday, 24 December 2012

A tribute to Daniel Inouye

This is just a brief entry but, I feel, a necessary one.

It was with great sadness that I read last night of the passing of Daniel Inouye, one of Hawaii’s Senators. If you’re from the UK you probably haven’t heard of him but he did great things for his country, both on the battlefield and then in Congress.

A Japanese-American, Inouye was at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and was initially subject to the ban on people of Japanese origin serving in the US forces. However he signed up in 1943 and served with distinction, being promoted to Sergeant within his first year and losing his right-arm in combat in 1945, for which he would be given the Medal of Honor (originally he was given a DSC due to racism in the armed forces but this was upgraded by Bill Clinton). I sadly don’t have to time to write out what he did but it was a ridiculous act of bravery and you can learn more about it here.

Inouye went on to serve in the House of Representatives as Hawaii’s first federally elected representative and then joined the Senate in 1962. During his time as a Senator he took part in the Watergate investigation, chastised Oliver North in the Iran Contra affair and was elected for 9 consecutive terms.

His last office was to become President pro tempore of the Senate, the third on line to the Presidency after the VP and the Speaker of the House. Admittedly Inouye gained this position by being the most senior member of the largest party (as is tradition) but he had still risen to incredible heights. In taking on the role Inouye became the highest appointed Asian-American in the history of the US.

He died on December 17th, with his last utterance reported to be ‘Aloha’. He was held in such respect that he lay in state at the US Capitol (only the 31^st person to do so) and then at the Hawaii State Capitol, before being interred in the graveyard where so many friends from his old unit were buried after falling in battle in Italy.

Two quotes to finish with. The first is from historian Richard Norton via PBS. "The fact of the matter is he distinguished himself on behalf of a country that had not always accepted him." Secondly Harry Reid (D- NV), the Senate Majority Leader, speaking at Inouye’s internment, said "Daniel was the best senator among us all.....whenever we needed a noble man to lean on, we turned to Sen. Dan Inouye. He was fearless."

Friday, 21 December 2012

US gun laws and the massacres we will have to deal with in the future

It was a tremendous shock to hear the news last Friday that a gunman had got into a school in the US and killed upwards of 25 people. I remember hearing the news and feeling physically sick at the thought. We have since found out of course that the gunman was 20 year old Adam Lanza and that he killed 20 children and 6 of their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School (having already shot dead his mother) before turning the gun on himself. We know as well that the teachers there, those who died and those survived, performed acts of incredible bravery to ensure that others were not killed. And finally we know that America is in grief and in a period of introspection because the massacre was carried out with 3 legally acquired guns.

Many are hoping that this could be a turning point, a moment when gun laws in America will change for good. I hate to type this and I hate to be a prophet of doom, but I fear that is naive and that any law changes will be minimal. Massacres like that at Sandy Hook last week, like the one at Colombine in 1999 and like the one that took place today in Pennsylvania will sadly go on.

We’ll have a look at the wider situation in a minute but lets first dwell on Sandy Hook. Adam Lanza had 3 weapons on him, all again bought legally. The first was a semi-automatic (and as far as we are aware unmodified) MX-15, essentially a rip off of the AR15, the civilian version of the M16. He seems to have only used that weapon, but he also had two pistols on him, a Glock 20 and a SIG Sauer. He killed his mother with a fourth weapon, a .22 Merlin rifle. I’m sorry to put all this so clearly but it is important we engage with events.

The question is therefore why does a civilian need to have access to these kinds of weapons? And the answer, put out today in a feeble and wretched statement by the National Rifle Association (NRA), is because there are so many guns around. I find my brain doing cartwheels of rage. That they go on to promote the idea of armed guards in all schools almost makes me explode.

Their mentality is of course that guns are legal and so crime will exist and so the best way to protect people is to have guns. Remarkably (though understandably when you are ‘pro’ something) they don’t think about taking guns away, which would help solve the problem and make the tracking of illegal weapons and illegal weapon modification much easier. They claim their right to these weapons is found in the 2^nd Amendment to the US Constitution and have developed a powerful public following and (crucially) a powerful influence in State legislatures and in Washington D.C.

So lets now review the legislative status of guns in the US very briefly. For those who don’t know, the ‘right to bear arms’ is in the US Constitution, the very bedrock of the Republic. Whilst not in the original document it was enshrined as the Second Amendment along with the Amendments that number 1-10 as ‘the Bill of Rights’ in 1791. The actual text of the Amendment is unclear, and it is a little known fact that the phrasing that the House of Representatives approved was ever-so-slightly different to that which the Senate approved. However, the text that appears in the Constitution is this:

‘A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed’

Basically, if you will forgive me for being trite, ‘we need a militia so the people need guns’.

Now you probably don’t need me to tell you that there has been A LOT of wrangling over the meaning of this statement. People have raised the issue of the defining of ‘militia’, the meaning of ‘the right of the people’ and even the importance of the comma between the words ‘state’ and ‘the’.

I’m not going to go into all of that because it is technical legal speak and therefore boring and complicated. However, the important thing to note is that all this arguing has led to the rise in gun sales and the radicalising of the NRA, which many people forget was quite a normal organisation until the 1970s (in short the moral build up caused by the assassinations of two Kennedys and MLK plus 2 attempts on Gerald Ford and the Brady Law after the Reagan assassination attempt led to the NRA being a major polarising force by 1990).

So where does that leave the US now? Well in short gun technology has moved on from the 1790s so instead of single-shot musket gun owners now have revolvers, pistols and semi-automatic assault weapons in their houses (see footnote). Then there is the open-carry phenomenon and the movement of so called 'preppers' plus right wing militias and even more right wing white supremacist groups and 'border guards', all of whom are fanatically pro-gun and anti-government.

I cannot help but thinking that this is a situation that the leaders of 1791 could not even have imagined. The ability to (putting it bluntly) rapidly kill several of anything with a firearm was simply not there when they said people have the right to ‘bear arms’. Gun technology has changed so much in the last 221 years that it seems remarkable that this law still stands unchanged. But the reality is that it hasn’t.

Obama however has a plan. VP Joe Biden (a man only slightly more useful than a dead salmon at a steak eating contest) and others will look into changes in gun laws. A Democratic Senator has vowed to introduce a new Bill when Congress meets again in January. Even some INCREDIBLY pro-gun Senators are supporting some sort of change.

So it all seems positive. After all, laws can be changed and assault weapons can be made illegal. But I would argue that won’t solve the problem. I hope to high Heaven that all assault weapons will be made illegal, but I fear the NRA will put up a fight and that any such Bill won’t get passed. Sadly the NRA is too powerful and the interest is currently only really in assault weapons. Very little has been said about revolvers and pistols, of which there are many more in circulation and which to me are just as dangerous.

Banning assault weapons won’t end the massacres. Further massive steps need to be taken, so let me play my little version of dreamworld for a moment. Whilst it may never happen, to me one obvious and very important step is that the US needs to repeal the Second Amendment.

If you think that sounds easy, it is not. Amendments cannot be changed. The most famous Amendment is the 18^th, which brought in Prohibition, but this hasn’t been removed, merely repealed by the 23^rd Amendment in 1933. So the 2^nd Amendment could only be ignored by passing another Amendment. Not unsurprisingly, the Constitution lays out the method of passing an Amendment - a new Amendment needs to be proposed to the states by a two-thirds vote of both houses (Representatives and Senate) of Congress or by a convention called by two-thirds of the states, and then ratified by three-quarters of the states or by three-quarters of conventions, with Congress outlining the method of ratification at the time of the proposal (for geek points the 23^rd Amendment is the only one to be proposed and passed by conventions as well as the only one to repeal a previous Amendment).

Basically, whilst not impossible, it is incredibly hard. However, this is my dreamworld and so that would all happen and the 28^th Amendment would repeal the 2^nd. I would then allow bows, bolt-action rifles and double-barreled shotguns to be owned with proper licenses for hunting purposes and would take in all (now illegal) pistols, revolvers, semi-automatic rifles and shotguns and all assault weapons. I am not completely anti-gun. They have a purpose, but in a civilians hands that purpose is (sustainable) hunting and target shooting. Any weapons that go beyond these strict purposes are unnecessary.

Let’s step out of dreamworld though because there is one more thing that is very important to emphasise, and that is that it is not just guns that create massacres like Sandy Hook. It is the mental state of the individual who holds a gun. For whatever reason, Adam Lanza rationalised the shooting dead of children and their teachers. That is not right. Gun owners must recognise the need for proper mental health checks and guidance if someone is going to own a weapon. Counseling must be offered to those who need it. And guns must be registered so that if necessary the State can take away firearms if a person is deemed to be dangerous and/or unstable.

This last point is crucial and it applies to the UK as much as it does to the US. Many people in the UK do not realise that British gun licenses (although much better than the US) do not involve psychiatric test, that a gun owner simply has to tick a box to say they are of sound mind in order to have a gun (along with lots of other checks of course). This is simply wrong, and its flouting was most clearly proven in Derrick Bird’s rampage in 2010. Gun owners need to be checked out regularly and at random and friends and relatives should have a free hotline where they can report people they are concerned about.

With guns of all sorts in circulation in the US at the moment, massacres like Sandy Hook will happen again. The moves against assault weapons are good but might not happen and, if they do, will still leave many dangerous weapons available. Only with much tougher legislation and with tighter regulation of gun ownership and gun owner welfare and health will the world see a large fall in civilian deaths due to firearms.

Debate warmly encouraged

Footnote: not to defend the gun lobby in any way but PLEASE remember that when the US media talks about ‘assault weapons’ they mean weapons that could be used in a war zone but that can only fire one round per trigger pull. The fact that they can be illegally modified so one trigger pull fires 30 rounds is of course dreadful, but I know several British reports that have got this wrong and so some Brits think Americans can basically legally play Call of Duty in their backyards.

Monday, 10 December 2012

Challenge yourself!!

It’s been a few weeks since my last post. Apologies to all of you who have missed a regular sedative, Uni work has been all-encompassing. Just to spice things up, I’ll post on why I oppose women bishops and gay marriage and what I think about the Leveson enquiry before Christmas. Tonight will be a quick and easy effort though.

First a bit of back story. I spent a lovely few days in Sheffield last week seeing my sister, brother in law and niece. The trip was marred only by an altercation with a drunk Geordie on the journey home. I won’t go into it as it is the subject of an angry letter to Cross Country Trains at the moment (oh, how I love writing angry letters!) but in short I asked him to be quiet and he thought it was okay to threaten me in terms a Police Officer later told me would be grounds for a prosecution under a Public Order offence. It’ll go no further as (and this is the point of this blog) I had a killer line. I was like ‘zing’ and he was like ‘ow’. People nearby were like ‘BOOM’ whilst a nearby 1930s era jazzman was totally ‘swank-y’ (that last one might not be true).

Faced with this guy who wanted to hurt me I simply said ‘are you only annoyed with me simply because I said you might be wrong?’ It had a weird effect on him. I’m not going to claim it changed him (he mooned me on his way out – not pleasant) but he did leave me alone. I remember the words purely because it then got me thinking – how happy are we to stay in our camp, our way of thinking? How likely are we to go and find new things that challenge us? And by that I don’t mean read or listen to something that we know we’ll like. By that I mean go out and engage (not just listen to, or read, but actually engage) with something which we know will present a worldview or an idea that we find wrong, or abhorrent.

Let me give you a couple of examples. I remember often talking to individuals during my (first) time at University who had conclusively decided that God didn’t exist. However when I asked them which miracle of Jesus they liked least or which part of the Bible they found most disgusting I would be met with plain ignorance. They liked to think they had done the research but the reality was they really hadn’t.

Another example, this time from totally the other side of the tracks. I have many friends who are convinced six-day creationists, who would say that the world is, give or take, 6-10,000 years old. Now I happen to disagree with them but, when I would talk to them about the issues raised in biology and the difficulties of biogeography to their thinking, or the topic of speciation, they would look lost. They, like the students above, didn’t know their stuff.

Now I’m not here to blow my own trumpet (Blackadder joke here) and I certainly wouldn’t claim to know much about anything. However I would like to think that I do read around topics, looking into different points of view and trying to understand them (hoping through that to rebuke them of course!).

My point is not to focus on me though. Instead, it is to challenge myself and everyone else to go out and look at other options to the way you think, written by people you completely disagree with. Through engaging with their ideas we will all become more informed individuals. We may even change our viewpoint on something because of what we discover. But that is the wonderful thing about learning – we should all be prepared to do it and we should all be prepared to be changed through it.

I’m a bit of a quote fan, so here are two quotes that I love, the first of which I had stuck on the wall of each of my rooms during my undergrad years. It is from a 13^th century Arab named Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, who simply said ‘he who has not endured the stress of study will not taste the joy of knowledge’. Put simply, learning must be worked at. The second is from the biblical book of Proverbs – ‘An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge’. The wise do not stop learning. None of us should gain wisdom and then sit still, but instead we should go on to learn more.

To go back to the train and the man with a desire to show me his bottom, we should be willing to accept we might be wrong and listen to other points of view. That man thought he could resort to threats, and to be fair to him he probably doesn’t know anything different. We should be able to listen and engage, disagree and move on, respect differences and understand points of view as we learn more about each other and the diversity of opinions we all hold.

Debate warmly encouraged

Monday, 19 November 2012

The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ and why it needs solving

If you’ve been following US politics the last few days then you’ll have heard the term ‘fiscal cliff’ bandied about like it was going out of fashion. If you haven’t, it’s the media term (along with the much more exciting ‘Taxmageddon’) for the impending end of the Bush-era tax cuts and beginning of automatic Federal budget cuts, the combination of which will almost certainly lead to the US re-entering recession in 2013.We’ll obviously have to go back a bit to explain how we got here, then we can look into the future and try and work out a way of sorting it all out. As normal, Mark has to come and save the day.....

Surprisingly, I’m not going to start with George W Bush and his nonsensical tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. We’ve got to look a bit further back in order to see where things could go in the future. Back in Clinton’s Presidency he was being badgered so hard by the Republicans in the House of Representatives (led by Newt Gingrich, who ran for the GOP nomination against Mitt Romney) that the Federal budget wasn’t passed in time to pay government employees and so the government literally shut down. Nothing but essential services ran for 28 days spread between November 1995 and January 1996 in what is (imaginatively) known as the ‘government shutdown of ‘95 and ‘96’.

Why is this important? Well, firstly, (on a tangent, naturally) it heightened the role of fiscal conservatism in the US and inspired the likes of Paul Ryan and Rick Santorum, who will carry that torch for the next generation. Secondly (more tangent fun) it weakened the power of the GOP with them losing several seats in the House election (though retaining a majority) and helped Bob Dole to lose the 1996 Presidential election to Clinton.

But it is the third area that this become most important (sorry, I didn’t need to include the other two but I couldn’t help myself and, on reflection, aren’t you a better person for reading them?) because it showed the need for good relations between the President and a hostile Congress to bring about a budget both sides could agree on. The fact is that the US government really could cease working if a budget agreement isn’t reached. This wouldn’t look good to foreign investors (the markets are already worried) and it also wouldn’t look good for either a Republican Party recovering from a drubbing at the polls or for a President wanting to reassure voters for trusting him with 4 more years.

So what about President Bush and his tax policy? Well, in short, GWB brought in some tax codes that ensured the rich paid less without the poor gaining much in turns of life improvement (i.e. the rich and the poor both ended up paying less tax BUT the poor did not benefit because less Federal money could be spent on improving their situation in life). Before we go any further though lets not put all the blame on Bush – Obama ensured the tax cuts continued by signing an extension to them in 2010 that kept the legislation in force until December 31^st 2012.

So why is this an issue? Well, apart from there being very little tax legislation to fall back on (though most analysts think that without action the average income tax level will return to the pre-Bush 39%) Obama now has to hack out some new tax legislation with a hostile Congress that is made up of Republicans who near-religiously oppose any form of tax increase. He has to wrangle out of them an agreement to replace the current tax laws with new ones without promising any change in the tax rate, something that Obama himself is explicitly opposed to. To fail to do so will lead to Taxmageddon, with a limited tax policy and limited government operations until funding issues are resolved.

To summarize, the most obvious ‘solution’ for Obama is to agree with Congress a plan of some sort that will keep taxes at the current level, which will therefore increase spending and the budget deficit. But I think there is another solution for Obama to play with. It is a long shot but it is worth a go. Plus, once he reads this he’ll let me know all the problems with it.

Basically, Obama needs to get John Boehner (pronounced ‘Bay-nor’. I don’t know why), the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the GOP Big Dog (and third in line to the Presidency.......TANGENT) and the rest of his party to agree to a minor increase in tax revenue through closing loopholes in tax legislation. This would allow Obama to take in more money, especially from millionaires, but would also allow the Republicans to keep their election promises and avoid an overt tax rise. I don’t know the figures involved, but it would certainly bring in a bit more money and allow the amount of money borrowed to fall.

Obama, Boehner and co need to come to an amicable, face-saving decision for the good of the US and its economic muscle. Failing to do so would be irresponsible and would lead to them being perceived as weak and ineffective.

Monday, 12 November 2012

US Election Analysis

Hot off the press and constantly up-to-date (!!), here are my thoughts on the US election.

Firstly, the right candidate won......sorta. I put down on my blog before the election that Obama was going to win and that if I had to support one candidate, it would be him. However, as I said at the time, do not think of that as a ringing endorsement. There I many things which are objectionable to Obama in the White House. He is in favour of gay marriage, he opposes any further limits being put on abortion, he lied his way to victory in his first presidential win and he did the same this year.

However, there are plus points to an Obama Presidency that I just didn’t see in Romney, and those are on the economy, where he acted bravely to support a motor industry which would have crumbled without Federal support, and internationally, where he is able to hold his own and where a man with 4 years experience will do much better than a fresh-faced newcomer with no idea what to do. On both these things Obama was a better candidate than Romney, who opposed the auto-bailout and was going to brand China a currency manipulator on his first day in office, an empty gesture that would only incur the wrath of China’s new leadership.

Secondly, the politics of the US has shifted. The polling data has been showing this for a few years but it is only with a Presidential election that these issues can really be seen. The average voter in the US is happier with single ‘moms’, happier with gay rights, willing to support abortion rights in some form and more open to immigration and the changes in racial demographics this will bring to the US. All these issues were covered by the candidates, and on most of them they took opposite views. Obama took the victory narrowly, but even that victory is a sign of change in US society.

Thirdly, demographics. It is easy to forget that some people were predicting a Romney landslide in 2012. Now I think they were misguided, but they weren’t just plucking those figures out of nowhere. These were people who know their stuff and were willing to predict a GOP win. And they were BADLY wrong. Like, really, really BADLY wrong. Florida’s vote is now in and it went with Obama (along with Colorado they clearly didn’t read my memo – 2 states of a correct prediction, grrr), give the President a win of 332 to 206 in the Electoral College. That landslide is revealed in the breakdown of voter profiles.

As an example, Obama didn’t just beat Romney in getting the black and Latino vote. He thrashed him, winning 90% and 70% of their votes respectively. Romney lost the single woman’s vote by 36 points. His only main demographic wins were the white vote (60%) and married women (7% over Obama). But these simply reflect the values that are diminishing. Marriage rates are falling, the numbers of white Americans are falling year on year to Latino, black and other racial backgrounds and roughly 65% of Americans are in favour of loosening immigration laws (though I’m a tad sceptical of that poll and the way it was conducted).

Fourthly, the future. All this shows that a shift is coming to US politics as the Republicans seek to embrace new views whilst keeping to their foundations. As I’ve mentioned before the Latino vote will continue to grow, to the extent that Texas will be a swing state within the next 20 years. The GOP will need to find ways to reach out to this community, whether that’s by changing views on immigration or the economy (though I hope and pray they don’t change on gay marriage or abortion).

But the Democrats will need to change as well. They had the demographic boost this year and as long as they can keep to that they can win. But they will not be able to play racial politics for too many elections without people seeing what they’re doing. They will need to deliver on policies they promote, they will need to attract people to them because of firm ideals and not just because of stereotyping. All this could take a long time to come to fruition but it will need to take place.

And so, in talking to the future, we come to the obligatory random guess as to who should run next time. I banged the drum for Chris Christie to run this time round but in the Lord’s good providence he didn’t (maybe he doesn’t read this blog.....nah, that’s crazy talk) and so was able to deal with Superstorm Sandy and the needs of the people of New Jersey. I think that will boost his credibility and enable him to reach across the party divide in the years to come. He has a gubernatorial election next year which he will win (before Sandy he was still mid-50s in approval ratings), so he will have to decide whether to run or not and then if he runs and wins whether he leaves early to launch a White House bid. It is all awkwardly timed for him – not standing will announce SUPER early that he is going for the White House, stepping down as Governor could be a bad PR move. Paul Ryan (Romney’s running mate) would also be a strong candidate but I fear he may lead to an even bigger defeat for the Republicans than this year with his strong hardline economic views.

And what about the Democrats. One thing is for certain, Obama won’t be running as a President is limited to 2 4-year terms (under the 22nd Amendment for all you geeks out there). SO who is a rising star? Well Hillary Clinton could run, especially as she won’t be Secretary of State in Obama’s second term. But I think that she might be a long shot as she’ll be 69 by 2016. For me the more likely choices are Andrew Cuomo or Michael O’Malley, Governors of New York and Maryland respectively or, from the lower tier of government that is Mayor-dom (is that a word?), Antonio Villaraigosa of LA or Julian Castro of San Antonio, both of whom gave great speeches at the Democratic National Convention in September. His twin brother Joaquin is also a good candidate for the future and currently serves as one of Texas’ Congress members. If I had to pick out of that list, it would be for O’Malley, closely followed by Villaraigosa.

So, another exciting US election down and a phenomenal result for Obama, captured through excellent campaigning and a good tactical get out the vote campaign. It was a tremendous victory as Obama fought against every statistic to stay in the White House, even beating the never-fails-except-when-it-fails Redskins rule. Interestingly he made far less outrageous campaign promises this time round so we shall see where things go in the future.

For those who care, the next election in the world is in Sierra Leone on November 17^th. There has already been significant controversy over candidates not turning up for debates and rumours of bribery and vote-rigging. Join with me in praying that election goes smoothly and that the candidate there is as gracious in defeat as Romney was.

Debate warmly encouraged

Tuesday, 6 November 2012

Final Attempt – US Election Predictions

As before, below are 3 tables. The guesses are the same as last time, I’ve just removed ‘Predictions’ and ‘Leanings’

My conclusion is a win for Obama with 281 votes, just over the 270 votes needed