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Context Matters!

Preventing global food security crisis under COVID-19 emergency ...

By Mike Cronin

There are some folks who seem to think that because COVID-19 cases and death rates are roughly similar to the annual flu, that we are blowing the disease out of proportion or dismissing it.  While there is some out-of-proportion fear-mongering AND some unwarranted dismissiveness going on, and while COVID-19 may indeed turn out to be of similar menace level as the annual flu, the flu is still there. COVID-19 is happening ON TOP OF the flu, not instead of it, and there is no vaccine yet. That’s why there is genuine concern over the number of hospital beds and respirators, and that’s why COVID-19 can’t be easily dismissed.

Concurrently, panic-pushers, America haters, and political opportunists are giddily touting that the US now has the most reported cases of COVID-19.  There are a few things they are omitting:

The US has the most REPORTED cases. What about UN-reported cases? Do you think all of the countries not as transparent or as capable as the US really have lower case numbers and lower infection rates?

China has nearly five times the population of the US, and most Chinese citizens live in dense urban sprawl. The Communist party would have us believe China had a peak of only ~80,000 cases. Do you really think the disease is done there, or that the Communist government is reporting accurate numbers?

Do you think Iran or Russia even know how many cases they have, let alone are reporting accurate numbers?

Our reported cases have recently exceeded Italy’s (105K cases vs 85K). But Italy has roughly one-fifth the population of the US.  In other words, Italy has fewer absolute cases, but their infection rate is over four times higher than ours. (Infection rate = cases/population. Italy = 85K vs 60M or 0.14%. US = 105K vs 325M, or 0.032%). Worse, the COVID-19 death rate in Italy is almost 10 times higher! (10.5% in Italy vs 1.6% in the US.) https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

So, what’s the upshot?

The truth is in the middle:

  • As ever, news outlets are trying to sell airtime to advertisers. They do that by getting ratings. Breathless coverage and ominous alerts will induce alarm, and that will keep the ratings higher than dispassionate, in-context reportage.
  • COVID-19 is a slow-moving natural disaster that is affecting the entire planet – but it’s not the worst such thing that could happen. It won’t wipe us all out, not by a long shot; but we do need to address it.
  • Absolute numbers of reported cases don’t tell the story very well. Infection rates and death rates are better indicators.
  • Criticizing anyone for what has already happened won’t solve the crisis – but it may be a fun diversion!
  • Social distancing and attending to surface and hand hygiene are effective in slowing the spread of disease, but it rankles and induces fear to be commanded by government to all but shut down the economy.
  • Our politicians would all do well to remember that the USA was born when our Founders penned the most eloquent “F*ck You!” ever written in response to too much government intrusion (the Declaration of Independence).  Americans are not the most obedient lot in normal times, and just now there is an up-welling of  F*ck You brewing. Politicians must tread very carefully indeed.

We are going through some scary times, but the fundamentals of our geography and the political system our Founders instituted will have us come out of this thing in better shape than any other country.  Stay strong.

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Corona-nomics

By Mike Cronin

Have you decided to hate on the folks who hoarded toilet paper and are now selling it for $5.00 a roll? DeBeers did that with diamonds about 80 years ago, then followed it up with decades of shrewd market manipulation and marketing. We bought the diamonds with nary a peep.

Have you decided to hate stores that are “price gouging?”  The stores that aren’t gouging are out of everything you want.  Maybe if stores were allowed to set prices based on supply and demand without incurring uninformed moral outrage, the hoarders wouldn’t have been so keen to hoard, and now there would be more of everything available for the rest of us.

Do you think having the government step in to ration things would be a better solution?  Or maybe just takeover everything? The Soviet Union did that. The Soviets didn’t have some empty shelves during a short crisis; they had virtually empty stores for ~80 years.

Think the government should bail out companies and spend trillions to stop the stock market slide and “stimulate the economy?”  If the value of something goes way up when it’s scarce, like TP for $5 a roll, what happens to the value of a thing, such as the dollar, when it becomes ridiculously abundant?

Let me know when you get your $1000 check from the government.  I might have some toilet paper for sale.

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A Little Truth Bomb

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By Mike Cronin

Our public education system has done little to truly educate our public. Since the Department of Education was signed into existence 44 years ago, and after spending a trillion dollars or so, test scores have remained roughly flat and educational rankings have stayed middling compared to other developed and developing nations. This is abysmal news – if the goal is truly to educate the populace.

But what if genuine education is not the goal?

Our primary and secondary education systems are always referred to as “free,” yet they have cost Americans something like $1 trillion over 44 years (just at the Federal level). Indeed, we spend more money per-pupil than any almost any other country. Our FREE, $1 Trillion, among-the-most-expensive-in-the-world system is mediocre at best, worthless at worst – to you.

When college is free, it will also be mediocre-to-worthless – to you.

When healthcare is free, it will also be mediocre-to-worthless – to you.

When generations of Americans have been taught how and what to think by the state (for example, that the one of the world’s most expensive education systems is somehow “free”) from preschool age to the Ph.D. level, and when Americans’ lives depend on the state “giving” healthcare (provided by graduates of the mediocre-to-abysmal, “free,” expensive school system), then such systems will have proven quite valuable to the elites who run the state – they will have given the elites control over you.

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Destruction from Within (and from Without)

Image result for America tearing itself apart

By Mike Cronin

President Lincoln once said: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

That’s not quite catchy enough for meme culture, so it was “massaged” by netizens into a more digestible tidbit: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.”

So now there is talk of Russia interfering with our presidential politics again. The difference: This time Russia is supposedly seeking to help Bernie Sanders, currently the front-running Democrat, AND President Trump.  You might be wondering which side has it wrong – after all, Russia wouldn’t support opposing candidates, would they?

They might indeed.  Russia can’t defeat us conventionally, and there would be nothing to rule over if we nuke each other. If you are Russia, how can you get what you want with the mighty USA always in the way?  How can supporting both sides of the presidential power struggle be of any benefit?  If they are doing it, it’s probably because it helps us to destroy ourselves from within. Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev both openly proclaimed that destroying us from within was on the table.

Destroying America from within is probably the favored strategy for any enemy or competitor of the US. Since the US has the most powerful military, most powerful economy, and controls the global commons, asymmetric strategies are all that’s left to enemies or competitors.  Where we are united, turn us against ourselves.  Where we are divided, drive the wedge in further. Where we have moral weakness, stoke it.  Use memes, fake news, cyber intrusions, donations, corrupt business deals, blackmail, identity politics and the like to taint our politicians, influence our media, corrupt our institutions, and keep us bickering among ourselves. That way, we won’t have as much energy to spare watching and worrying about what the Russians or any other bad actors are up to. And if the US has another Civil War, or has a wave of successions and breaks up into several smaller countries?  So much the better.

The Russians have a name for this doctrine. They call it Reflexive Control.  In the ancient Chinese volume, The Book of Qi, an essay called “The 36 Stratagems” refers to it as “Let the enemy’s own spy sow discord in the enemy camp.”

The moral: Whenever you feel like we are coming apart at the seams over Trump, immigration policy, gun rights, free speech abortion, LGBTQ issues, race, religion, wealth and income gaps, and so on, just know that Russia, China, Iran, Islamic Fundamentalists, and/or other enemies and competitors have the motivation to keep stoking the flames.

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Trial and Error

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By Mike Cronin

The Senate trial of President Trump is fertile ground for misinformation and disinformation. We can’t fix the politics here, but at least we can examine the battlefield and the likely outcome. While the proceeding is a “trial,” it’s as much political theater as it is a legal hearing. Certainly, it does not operate under the same rules and standards as a criminal trial:

  1. The judge (Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts) may bang the gavel and make initial rulings on evidence and witnesses, but he has little or no standing to make final rulings on case law, facts, objections, and so forth. He is basically reduced to facilitating. His presence is essentially ceremonial. The Senate is “borrowing” the prestige of the court.
  2. The alleged offenses don’t necessarily have to be violations of any specific US Code. The House of Representatives can attempt to align almost any charge as a “misdemeanor” in order to meet the constitutional standard for impeachment:  “Treason, Bribery, and High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In effect, this is what the House did by charging the president with “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress.”
  3. By the same token, the Senate can acquit the president on the grounds that the charges in the Articles of Impeachment are not Treason, Bribery, High Crimes, or Misdemeanors, or indeed crimes at all, and thus are not impeachable offenses. As of press time, all indications are that this is what will occur.
  4. The Standards of Evidence are whatever the Senate agrees they are. Witnesses can be called, or not, according to the whim of the Senate. (Indeed, the Senate did not call witnesses.)
  5. The standard for conviction is not “proof beyond reasonable doubt,” or even “the preponderance of the evidence.” It is whatever 2/3rds of the Senate says it is.
  6. Jurors at trial are supposed to be impartial. However, Senate Jurors don’t don’t take the same oath us regular folks take to sit on a jury. The Senators’ oath says the following (emphasis added): 

“Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you god?” 

Jurors for cases in a US District Court take an oath to decide the case “upon the law and the evidence.”

Senators are compelled to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.”  Note that they are not precisely compelled to actually be impartial about the facts, the evidence, the the defendant, or the allegations, only about doing “justice.” You might think that the distinction is hair-splitting. You might even be right – but meticulous adherence to the exact meaning of words and phrases – hair splitting – is the bread-and-butter of lawyers, no? 

So what does that bode for the trial?

The safe bet is that 100 Senators will split into two camps as to what “do impartial justice according to Constitution and laws” means. One camp will see “doing justice to the Constitution and laws” as “requiring strict interpretation of the standards for impeachment,” while the other side will interpret “doing justice” to mean something more along the lines of “disposing of something offensive.” 

In other words: All but a handful of Republican Senate Jurors will vote to acquit the president. They will justify their action by asserting the Speaker of the House initiated the impeachment investigation without consent of the full House, which alone has sole authority to conduct impeachment proceedings; and that the House did not follow its own rules during the impeachment investigation, did not provide the president with due process, and failed to even allege the president committed actual, citable violations of US Code, let alone prove he committed impeachable offenses. Meanwhile, all of the Democrat Senators and perhaps the aforementioned handful of Republicans, will vote to convict, justifying that decision with their belief that the president is an offense who deserves to be convicted of something, and that the allegations in the Articles of Impeachment were impeachable and were already adequately “proven” by witness testimony in the House investigation. The votes to convict are highly unlikely to meet the required threshold of 66 (2/3rds of the Senate), so the president is all but sure to be acquitted.

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Things that Make you go Hmmm.

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By Mike Cronin

Recycling reduces waste and saves energy! How much energy do we save by making and distributing twice as many plastic bins and running twice as many diesel-guzzling, CO2-spewing, traffic-increasing, infrastructure-damaging collection trucks?

Zero emission vehicles have no tailpipes. They have smoke stacks and cooling towers. They emit CO2 remotely – from the power plant that generated the electricity to charge them, and from the heavy mining equipment used to extract the rare earths and other metals needed to produce their batteries. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Donald Trump needed Congressional permission to attack Soleimani, and he didn’t get it!  How much Congressional permission did any previous president have to get to attack fleeting opportunity, high-value terrorist targets?

If a woman is drunk, she cannot consent to sex, on account of her judgement is impaired. Ergo, a man that has sex with her while she is in such a state is guilty of sexual assault or rape, even if he, too, is drunk.  Why is impaired judgement a compounding factor of victimhood for a woman, but not exculpatory for a man? Why does inebriation constitute inability to consent to sex, but endeavoring to become inebriated carry no onus?

An exercise in double-speak: The Constitution compels Congress to fund a military. It is silent about funding retirements and health care. Yet, somehow, defense spending is considered part of the “discretionary” budget, while Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a few other programs comprise the “mandatory,” or “non-discretionary” budget.  It’s accurate enough to say the Constitution is silent on how much is to be spent on the military, so the amount is discretionary, but the basic requirement to fund it is not.  The so-called “mandatory” budget items have no such sanction.

How far back do you think we have been involved in the Islamic world of North Africa and the Middle East?  The first Gulf War? The 1986 raid on Libya? The 1979 Iran Hostage crisis?  Supporting the overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister in the 1950s and supporting the Shah until he was overthrown? What if I told you our involvement goes back almost to the founding? In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson sent the fledgling US Navy to protect US mercantile shipping from the Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean.  The Barbary Pirates were the “naval forces” of client states of the Ottoman empire (e.g. Tripoli, as in “…to the shores of Tripoli” referenced in the Marine Corps Hymn). From the perspective of more than a few Muslims in the region, Americans are simply modern Crusaders who have been meddling in their affairs for centuries.

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War Wears On

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Today marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could celebrate the end of all war?  I’d love it if my day job ceased to exist because war became a thing of the past.  Of course, that’s not going to happen any time soon. There are too many groups with irreconcilable differences and different valuations of human life. And let’s face it, war is good for business.  Even if we discount the obvious, such as the war against ISIS, or the threat of war against North Korea, China, or Russia, our politicians like a good war to keep the gravy flowing.  If there isn’t one handy, they’ll make a problem into a pseudo-war in order to generate a little fervor: The War on Poverty. The War on Obesity.

When I’m feeling cynical, I find it too easy to believe that our politicians actually create problems in order to give the appearance of solving them. The solutions never seem to end the problem, only “combat” it.  We are supposed to keep reelecting the politicians so they can keep perpetuating working on the problem. For example:

The “War on Drugs.”  It’s arguably worse for the country than the drugs themselves. Let’s compare:

Legalized Drugs

The War on Drugs
Some people become addicted to harmful substances Some people become addicted to harmful substances
Addicts immiserate themselves and those close to them Addicts immiserate themselves and those close to them
  Drug prohibition causes prices to skyrocket, incentivizing organized crime
  Gangs take over urban ghettos, immiserating entire communities
  Turf battles yield higher gun violence & homicide rates. More misery
  Many addicts must turn to crime to obtain funds to afford their drug – yet more property and violent crime, often with guns, sometimes including homicide. More misery
  No taxes are collected on drug sales
  More police are required
  Police must become more militarized in order to do their jobs – and get killed in the line of duty more often, immiserating their friends and families
  Courts get clogged with possession cases
  Prisons get clogged with non-violent offenders. America tops list of incarceration rate among developed countries. Overcrowded prisons – here and abroad, harden convicts instead of rehabilitate them. More misery
  Cartels form in source countries and often outgun the local and national government – and/or they corrupt same. Homicide rates soar, immiserating the country
  Illicit trafficking networks multiply in transit zones – drugs, weapons, people, & money get moved “underground.”   More misery
  Illegal immigration and other border crime issues multiply. More misery
  Politicians take a “tough” stance and promise to increase funds to “win” the war on drugs – with better equipped and/or more police, stronger sentencing laws, more prisons, asset forfeiture laws (which violate the 4th Amendment), gun laws (which violate the 2nd Amendment AND disarm the innocent), border walls, surveillance states, and so on – year after year, election after election.

I don’t have any desire to use drugs for recreation, and I don’t want my kids or other loved one to use them, either.  But making the drugs illegal has done nothing to reduce the chances of that happening. The chance that my kids will be exposed to drugs still exists, but now it’s in the shadows. I have fiends and family in law enforcement – I don’t want them harmed in no-knock raids, or shot by a panicking addict. I work for the Air Force.  I’ve met and worked with fellow Airmen from Latin American air forces.  I’d much rather partner with them to help disaster victims that to learn they’ve been killed by cartels.  Perhaps the best way to end the War on Drugs is to stop fighting it.

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Media Manipulation?

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By Mike Cronin

This week has provided us with yet another example of how the mainstream media has given up on political neutrality. How?  We’ll get to that in a minute, but first a very quick recap on what journalism schools and editorial boards generally deem to be “newsworthiness criteria:”

1) Impact

2) Timeliness

3) Proximity

4) Human Interest

5) Conflict

6) The Bizarre

7) Celebrity

With those criteria in mind, let’s look at the fast one the media pulled this week:

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s ploy to embarrass President Trump with regards to her claimed Native American ancestry backfired.  When Senator Warren’s announcement that her DNA test showed her to indeed have Native American ancestry, the mainstream media were falling all over themselves to capture the “see, I told you so” moment.  Then more of the story surfaced.  The DNA test revealed that Senator Warren’s native ancestry was a minuscule percentage. Worse for her, the Cherokee Nation announced that the test didn’t tie her to a North American tribe at all, let alone the Cherokee tribes (which she had claimed previously), and denounced her. The entire episode has revealed Warren’s true character: She is a white woman unsatisfied with the supposed privileges thus bestowed, so she appropriated some grievance entitlement from a more disadvantaged group and tried to leverage it into political clout.

When that information came out, the media cranked up the emphasis on the Jamal Khashoggi story.  Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist/activist who entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, supposedly for business related to marrying his fiancé. He didn’t come out alive.  After “investigating,” the Saudi Government offered the dubious explanation that Khashoggi died in a fist fight inside the consulate.

The assumption in the media is that Khashoggi was killed by agents of the Saudi government for his “dissident” writings. Why is the alleged murder of a foreign journalist half-way around the world more newsworthy than a US Senator’s political blunders and character self-destruction during election season?

While there is no doubt a certain amount of “wagon circling” going on among journalists in response to the probable murder of one of their own, there is another reason: The Khashoggi affair can fill the void caused by the failed Warren gambit: To make Republicans look bad right before the midterm elections.  How?  By attempting to paint the picture that the Trump Administration is taking it easy on the Saudi government over the Khashoggi investigation because looming sanctions against Iran threaten to upset oil markets. The reasoning is that President Trump needs the Saudis to increase oil production to replace whatever Iran will not be allowed to inject into the global market. This will theoretically keep oil prices stable before the election, benefiting Republicans.

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The alleged blasé attitude of the administration towards the Khashoggi case couldn’t possibly stem from the fact that the US has absolutely no jurisdiction in the matter, could it?

The Warren story meets several, if not ALL, of the newsworthiness criteria, but the media de-emphasized it as soon as it lost its potential value to benefit Warren or damage Trump. Then they inflated the Khashoggi story – which normally might rate a short mention under the “conflict” or “timeliness” newsworthiness criteria – and are making it out to be an international crisis that the administration is mishandling.

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The Ford Focus

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By Mike Cronin

We were supposed to believe that Judge Kavanaugh’s questionable interpretation of the Fourth Amendment was worth barely a ripple to his consideration for Supreme Court Justice, but a weak and uncorroborated sexual assault allegation should completely disqualify him.  We were supposed to ignore the convenient timing of Dr. Ford’s accusations and the lack of evidence supporting them. Democrats succeeded in giving the country a “Ford Focus,” but failed to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Ironically, they might have turned a few Republicans against Kavanaugh had they gone after him on Constitutional interpretation!

We’re supposed to believe due process is a tool of “rape culture.” We’re now supposed to “believe women” when they accuse another of a sexual crime – and convict the accused in the court of public opinion, if not actually in law, simply on the accuser’s say-so. This is somehow OK, even if an innocent man were to be convicted.  This is the essence of “social” justice: Conviction and penalization of innocent individuals solely based on their characteristics, served as cosmic retribution for the crimes committed by others of “their kind.”

Lest you think I’m being unfair to Ford; the right wing would have us believe that Kavanaugh is innocent simply because there is not enough convincing evidence to prove his guilt.  He might be completely innocent, as he stipulates, and legally we must grant him that benefit of the doubt- but that doesn’t mean we have to trust him utterly.  We should be on our guard.  Just because radical leftists created the “white privilege” boogeyman so it could mobilize an army of aggrieved SJW snowflakes doesn’t mean there aren’t cases and circumstances where high-status white males get away with criminal conduct.

There is an old Roman saying: “Do justice, and let the skies fall.”  “Social” justice is unjust, and so is getting away with criminal conduct owing to one’s status.  Impartial investigation and due process are the best tools available to ascertain the facts and act accordingly.

 

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There’s a lesson here somewhere

By Mike Cronin

Teachers in my state are currently pushing for higher salaries and better funding. For they most part, they do deserve higher salaries.  But there are some education and teaching realities that our governments, our public education system, and teachers’ unions would rather we not notice.

We are supposed to believe that public schools are the best place to put our kids, yet homeschooled and private school kids generally do better on the SAT.

We’re supposed to believe that public schools have such a dismal record on test scores because they are so under-resourced, yet public schools have the highest average per-student spending of the three. And federal spending, which went up 375% over 30 years, has done nothing to improve test scores. And private school teachers make less money and have fewer benefits.

We’re supposed to believe that only a qualified, professional teacher is capable of teaching our children, but we’re supposed to ignore that parents can and do teach their own children just fine – else the kids wouldn’t generally be speaking or potty-trained before they get to pre-school or kindergarten. We’re also supposed to ignore that “Research over the years has indicated that education majors, who enter college with the lowest average SAT scores, leave with the highest grades.”

We are supposed to lament that a teacher might pay a few hundred dollars out of her own pocket for materials she desires in her classroom, but we’re seldom informed that a mechanic, welder, plumber, or electrician fresh out of trade school has to spend $7-10,000 or more on tools, or that a new cop might have to spend $2-3000 for her body armor, weapons, footwear, and leather gear. And an independent trucker? A new semi runs $115-125,000 off the lot, but runs to $400,000 for parts, tires, and service over a 15-year expected lifespan. And that doesn’t include fuel, taxes, insurance, or other expenses. Our independent trucker may have to gross $180 K in order to bring home less than a teacher’s salary!

We’re supposed to believe that public school teachers deserve more money – but we aren’t supposed to suggest that yes, the good ones do…but the mediocre ones don’t, and the bad ones need to be fired. We aren’t supposed to suggest that merit-based versus tenure-based compensation and career progression might stimulate performance and hiring, even though it works quite well in almost every other occupation.