Mortgage Crisis

I found myself arguing, with someone, as I so often do. Their contention was that they borrowed responsibly and they don’t think they should have to pay for someone else’s mortgage. A lot of their argument boils down to: “I was responsible. I should not have to pay taxes to bail out ‘those’ people who were irresponsible and stupid.” As it happens, the ‘those’ people they are referring to are generally poor and black. The speaker feels that ‘their’ taxes will be subsidizing ‘those’ who did not earn or deserve what they are getting.

When I see something like that, I understand that the person does not really understand what really happened with the mortgage and housing crisis. There were a number of causes for the crash, and some part of that does indeed rest on stupid and irresponsible borrowers, but not all of it does. To say that the only reason people ran into trouble with their mortgages was because they were stupid or irresponsible, is a rewriting of history, at the very least.

There was predatory lending by the mortgage companies. There was irresponsible lending by the mortgage companies. There was fraudulent lending by the mortgage companies. All of that has been proven. The banking company of J.P. Morgan Chase paid $13 billion to settle claims of improper activity in mortgages, while Bank of America is paying almost $10 billion for improper mortgage activity, and they are only two examples, albeit the largest to date. 

What did those companies do? First, they issued mortgages without making certain the borrowers had sufficient income to pay. Second, they pushed borrowers into variable rate mortgages, even when they qualified for fixed rate mortgages. Third, they encouraged the borrowers to borrow more than the property was worth, then getting appraisals to ‘validate’ the property value.

At the time, property values were climbing steadily. So the mortgage issuers figured they would either dump the shaky mortgages on someone else, or when they foreclosed the property would be worth more than the mortgage anyhow. What did the mortgage issuer have to lose? The borrower, that is a different story, but they were not concerned about the borrowers as long as they made their profits. Then they insured those mortgages, to make it even harder to lose money on them – look at AIG, etc. 

What about the complicity of the borrowers? Didn’t they know they were getting in over their heads? Well, in many cases, they were not getting in over their heads, as the mortgage began. The variable rate mortgages, started with a lower interest rate, and they could quite often make their payments with no problems. The problems came down the road, after a few years, when the initial rates were jacked up by the mortgage holders. At that point, folks began to have trouble continuing to make their payments – even though they had often been just fine previously.

But weren’t those borrowers complicit for taking on variable rate mortgages with the possibility of interest rate increases? Often they were suckered into those mortgages, for the simple reason that those mortgages are more profitable for the lender. Shouldn’t they have known or been more savvy? Perhaps we are blaming the victim. Do we hold people responsible when they are taken in by con artists? Should we tell the victims of Bernie Madoff that they should have known those returns were not reasonable? These people were dealing with major banking and lending organizations when they took out those mortgages. Should the borrowers be held responsible because they were being suckered?

But that is the setup. That is how we got into the problem. That is not the solution, and it is the solution that some people seem to object to. So, what is our solution, and what was being proposed? The protestors seem to think that what was proposed was to take ‘their’ tax money either to make mortgage payments for those folks, or to pay part of the mortgage balance for them. To my knowledge, that was never the proposal – it was certainly not anything I endorsed. 

What then should have happened? I say ‘should have’ because it should have happened six years ago before all the damage was done.  First, we have to remember that the government spent hundreds of billions of dollars to buy ‘troubled’ mortgages. Your tax dollars were already being spent – to bail out the crooked bankers who contributed to the problem in the first place. When the government bought those mortgages, instead of simply allowing defaults and foreclosures to proceed, they should have intervened. The intervention should have consisted in rewriting many of the shaky mortgages. Issue fixed rate mortgages at more reasonable rates. There should have been write off of penalties and back interest, not necessarily of principle.

I know some folks are saying that we are bailing out irresponsible people. What though do our bankruptcy laws do? They allow people to walk away from most indebtedness. And the fact is that we had already bailed out the irresponsible bankers. Further, I suspect the loss from doing what I recommend is less than the loss on the defaulted mortgages. Think about it – first, you keep a lot more people paying on those mortgages, instead of defaulting. Second, you reduce the number of foreclosed properties. 

So how does reducing foreclosures benefit taxpayers? We ended up with something of a snowball effect. As more properties were foreclosed, more properties were put on the market, which pushed down the sales prices and values of those properties. As the values dropped, some folks who might have been able to hang on until they could sell, instead could not sell for enough to cover the mortgages, if they could find buyers at all. It pushed down the value of everybody’s homes. 

Where we had an upward spiral in home prices before that, then we had a sharp downward spiral in home prices. By renegotiating the mortgages, we reduce the downward pressure on home prices, benefitting everyone. When home prices collapsed, new home construction collapsed with it. Why build new when so many bargain properties were on the market? As home construction collapsed, it pushed unemployment up, putting more people in financial trouble who would not otherwise have been in trouble. 

As more people became unemployed, more homes and mortgages went into default. The downward pressure from the ‘bad’ mortgages created even more bad mortgages. By turning some of those bad mortgages into good mortgages, we cut the losses on the bad mortgages, and reduce unemployment, which means even fewer additional bad mortgages. Folks didn’t want to bail out ‘those’ people, but caused more people to become ‘those’ people who need not ever have been. Further, we ended up with everyone’s home values dropping more than they need to have dropped, and ended up with more foreclosures and unemployed people than we otherwise would have had.

It is economics. We did not pay to bail out ‘those’ people. Instead we paid because we did not bail them out, and paid a lot more than bailing them out would have cost.

Why I Am a Jew

"Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding." — Martin Luther

I was raised as a Christian. In fact, I was raised as a Lutheran. I don't ever recall hearing the quote above at that time, but I seemed to sense that feeling as an undercurrent to much of the Christianity that I saw, both in my church and outside it.

Being a thinker and a rationalist, I found myself repelled by the dictates of faith. I seemed to perceive that following Christianity meant throwing aside reason and rationality. Acceptance of Christianity meant accepting: that Jesus was G_d; that Jesus was born through the miracle of virgin birth; that Jesus performed miracles through his life; that he rose from the dead; and that he was the ONLY route to G_d. These were the elements of faith.

I had little quarrel with the ethical and moral teachings of the man. I had little problem with belief in a single unknowable G_d. What pushed me away were the other things. The final break was over Jesus being the only path to G_d and salvation. I remember arguing with someone from the Campus Crusade for Christ about it. He insisted that however moral or righteous a person had been, if that person did not accept Jesus, that person would not be 'saved'. A far less moral person who did accept Jesus was fine, but not the righteous one who did not.

Christianity is a religion of faith and not of deeds. Your deeds do not essentially matter - if you sincerely accept Jesus and repent your sins you are saved almost regardless of what you have done, while if you do not accept Jesus you are damned, regardless of what good you may have done.

At that point, I felt I could no longer in good conscience consider myself a Christian.  I spent many years studying a variety of religions, including Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Sufism, and Hinduism-lite (Alan Watt's "The Book").

For a time I considered myself a Buddhist. I found myself in an emotionally painful situation from which I felt unable to extricate myself. I asked why I was suffering so. In the middle of my mental torment, I recalled the Buddhist teaching that desire was the source of all pain. That sort of set me back, and I wondered how desire could be the source of the pain I was undergoing. I realized that my own vanity had caused me to make choices that led me to where I was at that moment, and that had I chosen otherwise, I would not have undergone that pain.

What I found in studying Theraveda Buddhism, was that the Buddha said that there was no G_d, and that there was no soul (Atman). While there was much good in Buddhist moral and ethical teachings, that was a leap that I was not willing to make. Taoism gave a sense of the mystery and the unknowable, along with some good moral and ethical guidelines, but was also ultimately unsatisfying.

I was wandering around in a bookstore one day, and picked up a book, "Understanding Judaism" by Rabbi Benjamin Blech. Something in the book 'clicked', and what clicked was that in Judaism, it DID matter how you lived your life, and it did NOT matter whether you were Jewish. You were not expected to accept the irrational simply based on faith. The stories of the Tanach (the Old Testament, to Christians) contain some part history and some part parable - stories that may not have been literally true, but which taught an underlying truth.

One need not believe that the world was literally created as Bereshit (Genesis) says, as that story was not meant to provide a scientific explanation of the creation, but rather was meant to show the underlying truth that G_d is the source of the universe and the world as we may see it, and by whatever mechanism G_d may have used. Those articles which drove me from Christianity, were not a part of Judaism, but I was left with the G_d of Abraham, and many of the teachings that I grew up with.

Accepting Judaism meant giving up some things which were forbidden to Jews - pork, shellfish, etc. After thinking and studying, including six months study with each of two rabbis, I chose Judaism. Each religion asked me to give up something. What Christianity, Buddhism, and the others asked me to give up, I could not - reason, rationality, or belief in G_d. What Judaism asked me to give up, I could, and did gladly.

Liberal Agenda

I can tell you what this liberal's agenda is:

There will be no discrimination and all people will be given fair and equal treatment and opportunity regardless of race, gender, religion, sexuality, etc. 

Everyone who wants to work will be able to get a job that will pay enough to live on. 

Those who cannot work will have food, clothing, and housing provided. 

Poor and minority people will no longer be singled out for harsher criminal sentences. 

Repeal of laws banning the possession and use of most drugs. 

Free people previously incarcerated for non-violent and drug offenses. 

Restore the civil rights of felons automatically after they have served their time. 

Free education through college, though college education may require community service to offset. 

Higher taxes on the wealthy & corporations, along with the end of most corporate subsidies. 

The end of tax breaks for exporting jobs from this country. 

Banning of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, including assault weapons, along with banning high capacity magazines for weapons. 

Universal health care.

Same Sex Marriage

The Supreme Court will, before too long be hearing a number of cases where courts have thrown out state bans on same sex marriage. It is hard to tell for certain exactly how they will rule, but we can make some guesses. They threw out the California law against same sex marriage because the state chose not to defend the law, and it ended up being defended by a private group. The Supreme Court ruled that group had no standing to defend the law. Several of the states whose same sex marriage bans were overturned are also not having those bans defended by the states. Those laws are gone. 

The Supreme Court may dismiss the rulings overturning the laws without prejudice, for those states defending the laws, at least where the states would otherwise be compelled to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. 

A second related issue is whether states could refuse to recognize same sex marriages performed in other states. There I suspect the Supreme Court may say that refusing to recognize marriages that were valid in those other states would violate equal protection, and may throw out those laws. No, the states that choose not to would not have to issue licenses to same sex couples, but neither could they refuse to recognize same sex marriages performed elsewhere.

Effectively that would spell the end of state bans on same sex marriage, without overturning all the laws directly. I am hardly a Supreme Court maven, but I doubt they would effectively reverse part of their prior ruling by letting everything stand as is. Neither do I think they will immediately sweep it all away. Public opinion is moving sharply towards allowing same sex marriage, at least across the country as a whole. The former confederate states will hang onto their same sex marriage bans a little longer, along with some more right wing Rocky Mountain states. The confederacy will be the last to fall, but fall it eventually will.

States have considerable latitude in setting rules for issuing marriage licenses, but that is not absolute. The Supreme Court overturned state laws against interracial marriage, and have the power to eventually do the same for same sex marriage. I just don’t think they will take that big a step at this juncture. Neither will the Supreme Court nor the states force churches to perform same sex marriages, where they feel it violates their religious values. As to non-religious organizations, who knows. 

I suspect it is in the interest of same sex couples NOT to patronize those establishments which are hostile to same sex marriage. Seriously, would you want your wedding cake baked, or your reception food catered by someone who was hostile towards your marriage? I would not trust the vendor to provide ‘unadulterated’ food. Those folks will become well known very quickly among their potential clients. In truth, if I were to remarry (and I am straight), I would not patronize an establishment that was hostile to same sex marriage. If they found I supported same sex marriage, they might treat me poorly as well. Beyond which, I try to make my money support my values, so I am less likely to want to patronize people with that viewpoint.

911 Conspiracy

I found myself exchanging messages about conspiracy theories with a gentleman, using the term very loosely, considering his propensity for calling me names and making accusations against me. Apparently, I am ‘close minded’ and ‘not willing to question anything’, among other things because I consider 911 conspiracy theories to be utter nonsense.

Let’s take a good hard look at conspiracy theories in general and 911 specifically.

Start with the fact that Kennedy could not keep secret his affairs with a number of women, or that he had the CIA and the Mafia both try to assassinate Fidel Castro. Johnson could not keep secret the fact that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was bogus, nor My Lai or similar massacres of Vietnamese by US soldiers, nor the Pentagon Papers. Nixon could not cover up Watergate, nor the various tapes of conversations in the White House. Reagan could not hide Iran-Contra, nor the sale of chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein. Clinton could not hide his Oval Office sexual escapades. Bush could not hide the falsified evidence of WMDs in Iraq, nor could he hide Abu Ghraib. The US could not stop Wikileaks from publishing embarrassing Iraq and Afghanistan docs, nor stop Snowden from releasing tons of material on NSA spying.

Why could these things not be hidden or covered up? Because there are people with a conscience who feel compelled to disclose what they feel is illegal or immoral activity.

Yet we are supposed to believe that in spite of the scope of action around 911, that no one has stepped forward with solid evidence of wrong-doing? All we have is rumor-mongers and people who say ‘but there are unanswered questions’. So why don’t we look at some of what they propound?

First, supposedly the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, not by the airplane crashes. This brings up some questions. First, how could the amount of explosives need to bring down those buildings be brought in and placed in the buildings without some of the thousands of workers in those buildings being aware of it? You aren’t going to bring those buildings down with something small and easily hidden. A suitcase explosive would not bring down any of the WTC buildings. The 911 conspiracy proponents claim controlled demolition, but can’t explain nor provide evidence of that quantity of explosives being brought in.

Second, watch the video footage of the collapse of either of the two major WTC buildings, and watch it in slow motion – even a frame at a time. You can see the collapse starting in the section of each building where the airplane hit. If it was controlled demolition, how is it that the collapse begins where the airplane hit? The collapse should begin where the explosives are, which is where the damage causing the collapse is. So we are forced to believe either that explosives in another part of the building triggered the collapse of the buildings at the point where the airplanes hit, or that the explosives were in the part of the buildings where the airplanes hit. If the latter, then we are forced to believe that somehow the airplanes hit the buildings exactly or almost exactly where the explosives were placed. The 911 conspiracy folks provide no hard evidence of why the buildings collapsed where they did.

Regarding the Pentagon attack, many 911 conspiracy buffs say that it was not an airplane but a missile that hit the building. This is despite evidence of airplane debris in and around the Pentagon, including Flight 77’s black boxes. It is also despite eyewitnesses on a nearby major highway who saw an airliner fly into the building. The 911 conspiracy people have no reasonable explanation for either of these.

The question arises about the people on board the airplanes that the 911 conspiracy proponents say were NOT involved in 911. Some of them say those people were murdered or relocated. Mind you, there is zero hard evidence of these murders or relocations. If they indeed relocated that many people, you would think that some of them would have contacted loved ones, and there would be hard evidence that the person was still alive. If the people were murdered, we are forced to believe that none of the people involved in the murders had enough of a conscience to speak out, and that the remains of those victims were hidden so carefully that no trace has been disclosed or found. How many people and how much time would it take to murder and dispose of that many people? Again, there is zero hard evidence of this, only claims.

So what do we have? In the 911 ‘Truth’ movement, we have a group of people who claim to only be interested in the ‘truth’ and who claim to be examining the evidence in a scientific manner. Yet they predetermine their conclusions, then only look for evidence which seems to corroborate those conclusions, and ignore any conflicting evidence, while leaving many unanswered questions regarding their own theories.

Am I interested in reading more true believer 911 conspiracy accounts? No, but that does not mean I am not interested in the truth. It means I have looked at enough of the evidence to come to the conclusion that the 911 conspiracy movement is trying to sell a lot of crap in the name of truth.

You are free to believe whatever you wish – even if it is total nonsense. I have no more interest or time for 911 or other conspiracy theories until someone has serious solid evidence, not more fears or speculation. And I have no interest in discussing conspiracy theories any further.

I Earned This Money...

There is an ultra-right wing / libertarian meme to the effect that ‘I earned this money, the government should not have the right to take it away’. That hearkens back to the neo-con line that they want to shrink government down to the size where they can drown it in a bathtub. Clever line, I suppose, but stupid ideology. They seem to have forgotten that government has a purpose, and that purpose is laid out in the very first American document – the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

We live in a democracy – an imperfect democracy, where money seems to speak far louder than ordinary individuals, but a democracy nonetheless. That means that we elect the people who create the laws. We elect the people who levy the taxes. We elect the people who decide where those taxes are to be spent. If we do not like the results of the actions of those elected officials, we have the option to elect someone else.

None of us agrees with all the actions of the government. It serves the interests of so very many people and so very many groups. Some of those interests may be contrary to our personal interests. That does not make government some evil entity imposed on us against our will. It also does not leave us without recourse. We can either change the government, or we can move somewhere that the government is more to our liking.

Based on the statements of the right wingers, you would think taxation was some new evil imposed comparatively recently on citizens. Taxes go back as far as recorded history. As far back as there were governments, those governments levied taxes to pay the cost of the government. Why did they do that? Was it because they were evil? It was because the government provided services, and taxes were deemed to be the fairest pay to pay for those services. That is still the case.

Not every individual will use every service, and not every individual will use every service equally. The attempt is to be fair to the greatest number of people, both in the levying of taxes, and in the spending of tax revenues. In any given year, some people will pay for more than they get, and others will get more than they pay for. Unless we want to spend far, far more to create a pay-as-you-go for all government services, that is inevitable. Do you really want to have to pay for the road every time you drive to the store? If police patrol a neighborhood to reduce crime, do you want to have to pay every time they drive past? We could, perhaps, but it would be far more expensive and far more cumbersome than the existing method of levying taxes.

So when some fool asks why they should have to pay for something they don’t use, my response is because they receive some other service partly paid for by others. It should all work out reasonably fairly in the end, despite their protestations. Part of the problem comes with progressive income taxes, particularly among some of the highest income people. Yet in many ways, the highest income people receive the greatest benefit, though they choose not to recognize it.

The wealthy own large amounts of personal property and business property that are protected by military, police, and fire services. Their businesses use public roads to transport workers and perhaps customers to and from the business, as well as raw materials to and finished products from the business. They indirectly use public schools to educate their workers. They use courts to protect their legal rights in doing business. They may use the patent or copyright offices to register and protect their legal rights to original work.

We all benefit from most of those things, even when we don’t use them directly. Something like the patent office protects innovations, making it more advantageous for people to innovate and release the details of those innovations. That means we all have newer, better, and more innovative products than we might otherwise have. As patents expire, other companies can then use that technology to compete and reduce the cost of those innovations.

We also have groups like FDA food inspectors, who try to ensure the wholesomeness of our food, and force companies to make corrections when they don’t produce wholesome food. We have local and state health inspectors who check restaurants to try to make sure they comply with cleanliness requirements. Are those groups perfect? Far from it, but too often there are too few inspectors for the number of places needing inspection. Are we all better off – even the very wealthy - because of these ‘governmental’ efforts? I’d have to say so.

What about schools, though? Only a limited number of people are in school at any given time, and only a limited number of adults are parents of kids in school. Yet we all have to pay for the school system. Still 89.5% of the students in America go to public funded schools, and 85% of the private school students go to religious schools. So perhaps 2% or less of American K-12 students go to private non-religious schools. I don’t have hard statistics, but in talking with people about schooling, even most parochial school students don’t spend their entire K-12 schooling in them, but spend at least some time in public schools.

What that boils down to is that over 90% of Americans spend at least some of their schooling in public schools.

Sexual Politics?

I was born male, and would be considered cis-gender by most who meet me. I am comfortable being male, and am quite used to being male and comfortable conducting my life as a male. Perhaps the first inkling that I was other than a ‘normal’ male was when I took a personality profile in college. It had a masculinity-femininity index scored from 0 to 99. I could not tell you which end was which, but my score was 49. The counselor who spoke with me hastened to try to tell me that was not an indication of sexual orientation, which I understood anyhow. I find myself sexually attracted to females, both physically and emotionally, and have been married to a woman for over 20 years. I have little or no attraction towards males, and feel no emotional ‘payoff’ from attraction to males. I feel a warmth and tenderness towards women that I do not feel towards men. 

I have generally considered myself to be an androgynous, straight male, though I now lean towards the description of ambi-gender, since androgynous has taken on so many other meanings. More recently, I have on more than one occasion taken another type of ‘sex role inventory’. I tend to score about equally high on male, female, and androgynous. As a rule those who choose to transition from male to female tend to be quite uncomfortable as male. I am not uncomfortable as a male, and do not at all feel inclined to want to elect a path which followed to its conclusion is not fully reversible. At the same time, I feel that if I were to find myself as a female, that after a period of discomfort, I would adapt to that. I could be wrong, and don’t expect ever to put that theory to the test, but that is my feeling.

Perhaps as a result, as far back as college, I found myself attracted to a 'feminist' agenda. I read some of the standard introductory books: Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique', Germaine Greer's 'The Female Eunuch', Kate Millett's 'Sexual Politics', and Simone de Beauvior's 'The Second Sex'. I subscribed to 'Ms' magazine and joined the National Organization for Women. I went to a few local NOW chapter meetings, and took part in a 'Take Back the Night' march. A few of the women in the chapter wanted to fix me up with a 'nice guy', which offers I politely declined.

Abortion

I have positions on abortion, which will be hated by the true partisans of both sides. I do not like abortion, and would not ban it, but am in favor of some restrictions on the practice, as I will explain.

I would not ban abortion. I am all too familiar with the situation, both in the U.S. and some other countries, when the practice was illegal. Abortions did not stop, just because they were illegal, they were merely driven underground. By being driven underground, that meant they were performed by every sort of quack who was willing to take the risk. Then again, the risks for the abortionist were minimal compared to the risks for the woman.

Why did women get abortions, even though they were illegal? For much the same reasons that they get them today. Some women find themselves pregnant due to rape, quasi-rape, or incest. What do I mean by quasi-rape? Sex in which the woman was in some way, coerced, compelled, rendered unconscious, or otherwise was not genuinely consenting to sex.

Also, a young woman may find herself facing ostracision by family and friends because of an unwanted pregnancy. This may particularly be the case when the female is in early or mid-teens. It may mean the end of whatever life the person has previously known. Admittedly, unmarried pregnancy is less taboo now than it was thirty or more years ago. It started to change in the sixties, but prior to that, extramarital pregnancy was something that did not happen in ‘nice’ families.

Sometimes, you might find a young single working woman, who when she found herself pregnant, also found herself abandoned by the man who she thought was going to marry her. If you know you cannot go to your family for help, and also know you cannot support a child as an unwed mother, you may turn to abortion in desperation.

In the days when it was illegal, women did not turn to abortion lightly, but they still turned to abortion. It is easy for some to condemn – to spout platitudes about ‘the consequences of one’s actions’, to throw out adoption as an alternative. When you’ve walked a mile in the shoes of those young women, then maybe you have some right to talk – otherwise, you just don’t know.

Dr. Waldo Fielding was a gynecologist, who worked in New York City hospitals in the period before Roe vs. Wade. He wrote an article, published in the New York Times, entitled “Repairing the Damage, Before Roe”. He talked about the aftermath of illegal abortions, including women showing up in an emergency room, literally with hangars “still in place”. He talked about a woman who appeared to have a partly delivered umbilical cord, which turned out to be her intestines which had come through a hole poked in her uterus.

No, illegality did not stop abortions, but it sometimes killed or maimed the women who were so desperate as to resort to illegal abortions. I could not and cannot advocate returning to those days of horrors.

I would not advocate putting any limits on a woman’s right to abortion for the first nineteen weeks of pregnancy. Why nineteen weeks? That is the period during which it does not seem possible for the fetus to survive outside the body of the mother. In some instances, starting in the twentieth week, it is possible for a child to live. The odds are slim until after the twenty-sixth week, but still it is possible.

My position is that at that point when the fetus or child can survive outside the mother’s body, it has a right to try to do so. (As it turns out, this is quite in line with the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs Wade.) I would say that from the twentieth week, any abortion which is performed, has to be done in such a way as to give the fetus a chance to live, except where doing so would present a clear danger to the life of health of the mother, and a greater danger than the continued pregnancy would be to the average woman.

That leaves four and a half months, where the woman is free to end her pregnancy, with no limitations. If she has not chosen to do so in four and a half months, then she and her doctor need to take the potential life of the fetus into account. While the fetus has no chance to live outside the mother’s body, the mother is paramount. Once the fetus has a chance to live outside her body, it has rights which should also be preserved.

Die hard ‘pro-life’ advocates, I’m sure, will be incensed that I would allow free and unfettered access to abortions for nineteen weeks, and also that I would not ‘ban’ certain abortion methods. Die hard ‘pro-choice’ advocates, I know, will be incensed that I admit any limitation to a woman’s abortion choices.

I admit to being conflicted over the question of under-age women having access to abortion without parental consent. There is certain hypocrisy to saying that a sixteen year old female cannot get a tooth filled, or a ruptured appendix operated on without the consent of her parents, but she can get an abortion. Why is one okay, but the others not?

No. I do not want to return to the ‘bad old days’. I’d say that if an under-age female is adult enough to choose to abort, she should be adult enough to face her parents, with that knowledge. Yes, that is parental notification, not parental control, and there can be some repercussions. I know that will get the die hard ‘pro-choicers’ steamed yet again. Then again, I am not trying to kiss up to any side. I am trying to craft a policy that is as reasonable as possible, under the circumstances.

Gun Discussion

I own a rifle and a pistol. While I am in favor of stricter gun laws, I do not want to outlaw guns.

Like some 74% of Americans, I am not in favor of banning handguns. I don’t think that banning handguns would work. First, we have too many handguns already in circulation to make a ban feasible. Second, I see valid needs of individuals to own handguns, for sport, for personal protection, and for hunting.

 I do believe, like 92% of the American people, that we need stricter background checks on people purchasing guns. Right now, even a felon can walk into a gun show, hand over cash, and walk out with a gun. Right now, a suspected terrorist, who we won’t allow to fly on an airplane, we will nonetheless allow to legally buy a gun. Someone with a history of mental illness, can go to a licensed dealer and buy a gun or ammunition, as long as he or she has not previously been committed. To me, there is something wrong with that.

As with 62% of Americans, I am in favor of banning high capacity magazines. Adam Lanza fired 154 rounds in three minutes, because he did not have to stop often to change magazines. The Aurora theatre movie shooter killed 12 and wounded 58, and would have killed more if the gun with its 100 round magazine had not jammed. Seriously, I would like to know what sporting purpose is served by a 100 round magazine.

I am in favor of banning military style rifles – what has been called assault rifles. How often, either in hunting or personal protection, is an assault rifle markedly superior to a standard pistol or rifle? I’ve been deer hunting, and if I can’t kill a deer with 2 or 3 shots, then ten shots in as many seconds probably won’t do it either. I have not faced either, but I can imagine that a charging bear or boar could be dangerous and intimidating, but 5 to 10 shots from a decent rifle will do about as well in the vast majority of instances as an assault rifle with a 30 round magazine.

The gun aficionados have a new poster child, in the form of a sweet faced 16 year old girl, who talks about her gun training, and her shooting skill, and how that shooting skill won her college scholarship offers. I am happy for the young lady, and do not begrudge her either her training or her gun ownership. However she contends that stricter gun laws would have made that impossible. How? If all we do is what I have recommended, she could still get her training, she could still hone her marksmanship, and she could still likely get her shooting scholarship. Seriously, do you think the scholarship is based on firing 154 shots in three minutes? I suspect the scholarship is based on her ability to hit the target a very high percentage of the time, which has nothing whatsoever to do with assault rifle ownership, using high capacity magazines, or having background checks on purchasers of guns or ammunition.

The girl talks about how the same week as Adam Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary, that someone walked into a Chinese school and stabbed over 20 children. That is quite true, but what she omitted was that everyone Adam Lanza shot, died, while everyone the Chinese man stabbed, lived. Let me give you a scenario – you have a choice, you must go through one of two doors. On the other side of one door is Adam Lanza with a Bushmaster and high capacity magazines. Through the other door is the Chinese knife assailant. Both will try to kill you if you come into the room where they are. Which door would you choose? Call me crazy, but I’ll take my chances with ‘knife guy’ – any day. Two reasons, first for him to stab me, he has to get close enough where I could get my hands on him. Second, I have a far better chance of surviving being stabbed than being shot – the evidence being the Chinese attacks versus Sandy Hook.

The young lady talks about how often people are assaulted and killed by weapons other than guns. True, but the Journal of Trauma did a six year study of injury admissions in Seattle hospitals. “The mortality rate for gunshot wounds was 22% while that for stab wounds was 4%. Even among patients that survived, gunshot wounds were more serious…” and “...other studies mostly looked at equivalent wounds in equivalent locations. Without exception, gunshot wounds were more serious and more likely to lead to death.”

Our young gun lover repeats the old maxim, ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. No kidding. Why do you think people like me want more background checks on gun buyers? We need more background checks to minimize the number of felons and mentally unstable people who have easy access to guns. Most of us are not interested in keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens – apart from the aforementioned assault weapons. She also talks about how gun laws would make it very expensive for poor people in crime ridden neighborhoods to buy guns to protect themselves. Why would background checks, assault weapon bans, and high capacity magazine bans push up the cost of a .22 pistol, for instance? We are not talking about making ordinary pistols and rifles unavailable or even significantly harder to get, except for criminals or the mentally ill. Licensed gun dealers already have to conduct these background checks, and it does not seem to have materially pushed up prices through them. I suppose if they don’t sell as many assault rifles, their profits will be down a bit, but they seemed to survive nicely during the previous assault rifle ban.

Our petite spokesperson says that only 1% of gun deaths in the United States are committed with assault rifles. Probably true, but in mass shootings, some 28% involve assault weapons, and when assault weapons were used the death toll was significantly higher – 8.3 deaths for mass shootings with assault weapons versus 5.4 deaths for mass shootings with other guns. Assault weapons are demonstrably deadlier than other types of guns, and guns are demonstrably deadlier than other types of weapons.

The young woman talks about the sacredness of the constitution and its guarantee of the right to bear arms. It is arguable as to the meaning of the Second Amendment, but even if we take it as guaranteeing any law abiding citizen the right to weapons, that right is not unlimited. Machine guns have long been legally banned, and the previous assault weapons ban was found to be constitutional. The right to bear arms clearly does not mean the right to own any weapon one chooses.

Our pretty shooter was claimed to have demolished the arguments of those proposing gun controls, but her arguments have holes that I could drive a Hummer through.

I heard a story from another gun proponent about a mother whose home was invaded. She took her children and went to the attic, only to have the criminal follow. She shot him 5 times, after which he left the house and was captured later, wounded, but still quite healthy. The argument was that the woman needed a weapon with a high capacity magazine because she would have been safer if she could have fired more shots. First, the proposed laws allow up to ten shot capacity, twice what she used. Second, what the woman needed was not a higher capacity magazine, but training on how to aim and fire the gun. If she fired five times and only wounded him, she is a lousy shot – her aim is the problem not her weapon capacity. If my family is in danger and I fire five times at the perpetrator, they will be taking him out in a hearse, and it has been many years since I took target practice. As I said, I have guns. I am also willing to use them if need be, though only as a last resort.

Abominations?

I love the hypocrisy of the buffet religious right. There are quite a number of things in the Bible which are listed as 'abominations'. Yet somehow, the buffet religious right only seem to focus on a few, and blithely ignore the many other ones. 

Eating pork and shellfish are abominations. How many of the buffet religious right care one flip about that? Remarrying a woman who in the interim was married to someone else is an abomination. How many care about that? Using false weights is an abomination. Though most would agree that is wrong, is there the same outrage over that? 

According to Ezekiel, the abominations of Sodom consisted primarily of the following: "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy." Yet the buffet religious right are quite happy to cut food assistance and unemployment compensation to needy people. There is zero outrage over what Ezekiel said was G-d's outrage in this instance. 

Yet the intolerance of the buffet religious right should be tolerated by others? The Jewish Rabbi Hillel summed up the Bible as "What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your neighbor." Jesus later reworded this slightly as what is known as the Golden Rule. Yet gays are singled out for hatred and denouncing by the buffet religious right. It seems to me these folks have missed a teaching that is central to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, and many other religions. 

To them I can only repeat the statement from the book of Matthew: "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."

Introduction

Maradnu – in Hebrew מרדנו – We have rebelled. That begs the question perhaps of what exactly are we rebelling against. In my case, at least, I am rebelling against orthodoxy and dogmatism. Just as fair warning, I am somewhat left of center, though I don’t accept the dogmatism of the ‘left’ either. I am male and straight and white, though I will discuss things related to those and other things along the way.