Keeping Secrets

I tried to think of a card game where opponents display all of their cards, and I couldn’t think of one. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any; I just don’t know of one. So why do the opponents keep their cards secret? Well duh, it wouldn’t be much of a game if your opponent knew your hand! Of course! You wouldn’t want to give your opponent unfair advantage over you by revealing your hand. But it’s just a game. If you lose the game the worst case may be a loss of money.

The game of governments is far more serious than a game of cards, and secrecy is even more important. If our government reveals its hand and loses the game, our people suffer.

There are some who promote the likes of Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange as heroes for revealing our government’s secrets. It’s like playing a high-stakes game of poker with someone standing behind you displaying cue cards of your hand to all of your opponents. While the others at the table may consider the person with the cue cards a hero, I doubt you would.

On the other hand, when we were kids on the school playground and saw others whispering, did we not suspect it was about us? This could easily be considered a form of paranoia. Are we paranoid that our government is keeping secrets about us? If they are is there anything they might know that would harm us as individuals? Was any of that revealed in the recent spate of leaks?

I can think of a lot of private information we willingly give the government that ultimately goes into a database somewhere – private financial information, party affiliation, gun ownership, health information, the list goes on. I’m sure none of us would like that information to be made public. Yet, we willingly reveal this information to our government. Do we trust our government? About 80 percent say no. Do we trust our government enough to willingly give them our most personal information? Apparently, we do.

If Bradley Manning had posted our names, addresses and social security numbers on Wikileaks, would people be so quick to pronounce him (or her, or it) a hero? Yet leaking state secrets can be far more devastating to a wide number of people than the inconvenience of ID theft. People could lose their lives.

I am amazed that the revelation by Edward Snowden that our government is spying on us comes as such a shock. No, I am not attempting to defend his actions; they are equally despicable as Manning’s. I am just astonished that someone, anyone, didn’t already believe the government was collecting data on us. The FBI has been using their Carnivore software to snoop on our email and Internet usage since 1997.

Regardless whether you were surprised by Snowden’s leak, the simple fact that someone with access to secret NSA data would globally publish information labeled as being any level of secret is an appalling, treasonous act.

These are dishonorable people who have violated numerous oaths they have taken and committed acts of treason. They no longer deserve to breathe the free air of the country they have betrayed.

Manning will pay for his betrayal with anywhere from seven to thirty-five years in a federal prison. (Thank God it won’t be in California, where he might get to choose a women or men’s prison.) Snowden is living a self-imposed exile, probably in Russia. I say good riddance to both of them. To my way of thinking, they have both gotten off light.

The big question now is, will they be pardoned? Manning’s attorney was shown wearing a Tee shirt emblazoned with the words, “President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning.” A lot of illogical pardoning usually takes place when presidents and governors leave office. We need to keep a sharp eye out in January 2017, if Obama doesn’t pardon them sooner.

Census and Nonsense

“Vee haf vays of making you talk. You vill tell us efry tink.” Sounds like an old NAZI spy movie with a greasy Gestapo interrogator in a bad German accent salivating over the prospect of torturing the hapless hero for information. But wait, that’s not the Gestapo, it’s… it’s…the US Census Bureau! And they are here to make me fill out the mandatory American Community census survey.

That’s right folks; it is MANDATORY. Section 221 of the US Code Title 13 states:

“Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or

    willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any

    other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce

    or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the

    Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his

    knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in

    connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I,

    II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to

    the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or

    farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not

    more than $100.”

I guess they figure they’re giving us a break. Until 1976, that section carried a $250 fine and sixty days jail sentence. The penalty jumps to $500 if you get any of the answers wrong -- and I thought college exams were tough.

Title 13, enacted on Aug. 31, 1954, chapter 1158, 68 Statute 1012, seems reasonable enough. The US Constitution calls for an “enumeration” every ten years. That would certainly give congress authority to enact a law that pertains to taking the necessary head count. After all, we are a republic. A head count is necessary to fairly allocate the required representatives.

In true government fashion, though, they seem to have taken their authority a step beyond what was intended in that pesky Constitution. No longer do they just want to know how many people live where. They can ask absolutely anything that comes to their narrow little minds, and they can do it whenever they want. Here’s the real kicker, it’s required by law!

I’m no lawyer, but I can read. The language in the US Constitution is clear on this matter. An enumeration is to be taken every ten years for the express purpose of determining the allocation of representatives in congress. There is nothing in the Constitution about requiring the populous to divulge the number of toilets in their house or any other personal data whenever the bureaucrats decide to squeeze us for information.

This law is right up there  with removing tags from mattresses in the asinine factor. At a time when our government is surreptitiously collection our phone information and requiring Internet companies to reveal data on their subscribers, it is difficult to believe they don’t already know everything about us from our birth date to our sock size.

I, for one, have nothing to hide, but the idea that our government can REQUIRE me to divulge personal information without the constitutional authority to do so cuts against my grain.

The Census form is still sitting in my office. The Census Bureau continues to send letters and emails prodding me to fill it out. The other day a nice lady from the local Census Bureau office showed up at my gate to “help” me fill out the form. As politely as I could, I informed her that I needed no help, and am not inclined to divulge my personal information to her or the Census Bureau. I gave the necessary information on their head count in 2010. There is no constitutional requirement to volunteer any other information until 2020.

She was very nice, and told me she doesn’t enforce Title 13, but that participation in all censuses is a requirement.

Maybe they will send the Gestapo to interrogate me. I’ll grant them this much though, they are persistent. For all the tax dollars they wasted on trying to squeeze information out of me, they could have help fund another Obama vacation. Gee, I hope he doesn’t suffer because of me.

Global Warming: The Cause of All Evil?

The headline in a German news article from Der Spiegel read, “Scientific Feud: Does Global Warming Make Us More Violent?” I couldn’t pass this up. Global warming is being blamed for a lot of things, but violence? Are the pseudo-scientists at it again?

Apparently, Der Spiegel isn’t the only news magazine to pick this up. The article spoke of other news reports that displayed headlines such as; "Hotter Weather Actually Makes Us Want to Kill Each Other," a headline chosen by the Atlantic, "Rise in violence 'linked to climate change,' wrote the BBC, "Global Warming Is Greatly Increasing Crime and Other Conflict," it read in the Huffington Post. According to Spiegel, several German outlets have run variations on the "Climate of Violence" theme with Focus Online leading the way sporting the headline, "Agro-Heat Turns People into Killers."

Okay, now I’m worried. Is he old boogey-man, Global Warming responsible for everything bad that happens? I couldn’t find my keys the other day. Was it the fault of the weather? Is Obama missing the boat by blaming his troubles on his predecessors instead of placing the blame on Global Warming? Are we really as gullible as the pseudo-scientists believe us to be?

Deeper in the article we find that this frenzy of misinformation was set off by a study from a team led by Solomon Hsiang from the University of California, Berkeley. Other scientists accuse them of, “using questionable statistical methods, of arriving at dubious conclusions and even of a tendentious selection of data.” Those familiar with my column may recall that I have demonstrated the fallibility of statistics. Repeating a lie enough times may make people believe it’s true but a much faster way is to use statistics.

Sports scores don’t lie; they are a direct outcome of a competition. Recorded temperature measurements are likewise reliable; they are the record of calibrated instruments. It’s when you selectively plot the recorded measurements over time and plug them into mathematic equations that you can make them “prove” whatever thesis you want. Now take the results of skewed statistics and correlate them with a selection of events biased to your desired outcome and you have the Big Lie destined to be accepted as truth.

Is the earth in a warming period? Some credible scientists say it is. Equally credible scientists say it is not. It’s enough to make us all neurotic. Now take this ambiguous data and mix it with a selected set of violent events and voila you have “proved” Global Warming causes violence. But wait…no; it “proves” no warming causes violence.

Now mix in the other ambiguous data on greenhouse gases and you find that we are actually responsible for global violence. Throw in more “data” and you find your car, lawnmower, barbecue, and fireplace are causing your neighbors to be violent. And here all along you may have thought they were just jerks.

All right, that issue is solved. What else can I “prove” for you? How about “Proving” Global Warming causes obesity, or maybe how Global Warming causes politicians to say and do dumb things? That one, I might actually believe.

Crime Now Pays

The old adage “Crime doesn’t pay” obviously no longer applies to California. It appears that Governor Moonbeam would rather spend our tax dollars on a bullet train than apply them toward confining lawbreakers. The Attitude of the courts used to be, “We sentence them, you figure out what to do with them.” It appears that is no longer the case. The courts want those they sentence to be housed in the equivalent of the Hilton rather than Motel 6. Are the jails crowded? Probably. There are a lot of crooks and criminals in California, some aren’t even in the legislature.

When you commit a crime, you are remanded to a penal institution. The key word here being penal. A wrongdoer must suffer a penalty. The people in prison have all committed a felony. Lesser crimes don’t get prison time. That is the penalty they must pay for crimes ranging from drug dealing to armed robbery and even murder. In every instance there were victims that were at the very least inconvenienced. Is it not reasonable that those committing the crimes should also be inconvenienced? In some countries, they simply throw a prisoner in a hole without even considering how many other prisoners are confined there.  As long as they can shoehorn another one in, they’re good.We are more civilized than that, but do we really need to assure convicts a cushy room with three gourmet meals a day — plus snacks and cigarettes and television? Sure makes honest homeless people look like chumps.

“America’s Toughest Sheriff," Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona has no overcrowding problem in his facilities. Each prisoner is assured a spot in an non-airconditioned tent and a fresh set of pink underwear. When he gets too many prisoners, he just buys another tent. Here’s a clip from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s web site:

Arpaio has between 7500 - 10,000 inmates in his jail system. In August, 1993, he started the nation’s largest Tent City for convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in a canvas incarceration compound. It is a remarkable success story that has attracted the attention of government officials, presidential candidates, and media worldwide.

Of equal success and notoriety are his chain gangs, which contribute thousands of dollars of free labor to the community. The male chain gang, and the world’s first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs, clean streets, paint over graffiti, and bury the indigent in the county cemetery.

Also impressive are the Sheriff’s get tough policies. For example, he banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs between 15 and 40 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers $20,000 a year.

Another program Arpaio is very well known for is the pink underwear he makes all inmates wear. Years ago, when the Sheriff learned that inmates were stealing jailhouse white boxers, Arpaio had all inmate underwear dyed pink for better inventory control. The same is true for the Sheriff’s handcuffs. When they started disappearing, he ordered pink handcuffs as a replacement.

Another web site quotes Arpaio on the quality of the food:  …Other prisons in the State [Arizona] and around the nation will average a dollar to a buck and a half per meal.  But Arpaio says he doesn't do it to save money...he does cause "the prisoners deserve to be punished."

Maybe the courts figure that if they require the state to release a bunch of prisoners, they won’t be inclined to arrest so many criminals and the court case load will drop. Unfortunately that logic does nothing to reduce the number of crimes committed. It just means we will have more criminals in our neighborhoods that have learned a very valuable lesson — crime pays.

Instead of turning felons lose on an unsuspecting — we are no longer allowed to suspect, that would be profiling — public, Brown could take just a few of those dollars he is wasting on the high-speed rail and invest in some tents at Big 5 Sporting goods. He might even be able to go in with Maricopa County, Arizona and get a discount on some pink underwear and handcuffs. Are you listening, Jerry?

Racial Hyprocrisy on Trial

Here’s an interesting word from the New Oxford American Dictionary – hypocrisy, noun ( pl. -sies): the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

You are probably wondering why I would choose to highlight this word. The truth is, I’m afraid there are far too many people in this country who pretend to know what the word means, but either neglect or choose to ignore it when it comes to their own actions. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised coming from a nation where personal responsibility is an increasingly rare commodity.

The concept of racism is one that is way too often molded from the point of view of the accuser that has created a distinct dual standard. When a person not sharing the genes of the black race uses the “N-Word” in describing another, he or she is considered racist. No matter when or under what circumstances, a person uttering something that even sounds like the “N-Word” will have their life destroyed in perpetuity – they are branded as racist. If you attend a show with a black comedian in it, the chances of not hearing the “N-Word” used are astronomical. It’s also a common street language in predominantly black communities – nothing racist about it.

The irony of the “N-Word” is that it originated in the 17^th century to describe people with black (French: nègre and Spanish: negro, Latin: niger) skin. The “N-Word” was purportedly associated with slavery in the pre-civil war south, and therefore today should be strictly taboo when referring to black skinned people. Okay, let’s purge our vocabularies and dictionaries of the “N-Word”.

“Cracker”, on the other hand, is a term very closely associated with slavery. A cracker was an over-seer who used a whip to keep slaves in-line and working. Even though there were also black over-seers with whips, the word is somehow associated only with the white ones.

Nobody even raises an eyebrow then a black person uses the word “Cracker” in any company to describe a white person. They don’t even bother to disguise the word with a euphemism such as “C-word”. That’s not racist? If not, then it’s at least hypocritical.

During the George Zimmerman trial, there were thinly veiled attempts to cast Zimmerman as racist. Were there reports of him uttering the “N-Word”? If so, it must have been censored in the news, because I didn’t hear or read about it. On the other hand, a witness stated she had a conversation with Martin right before the altercation that took his life where he used the word “Cracker” to describe the man following him. Let’s see, Zimmerman must be a racist but Martin is what, a choirboy?

The left wing news media are always portraying any opposition to Obama’s policies as racist. But while Obama gives $7 billion of our tax dollars to improve African electric power, and simultaneously cuts our National Guard and furloughing people at the pentagon, there is nothing racist about that it’s just plain wrong.

Universities notoriously lower standards for blacks so they can admit them over much higher qualified students of what? Other races! Nothing racist about that (wink-wink).

Now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted of murdering Travon Martin, our black head of the justice system, Eric Holder, is scrambling to find a way to charge this innocent man with some violation of the civil rights law, an act signed into law in 1964 aimed specifically at ending discrimination. I suppose if a non-black person kills a black man in self-defense, it must be discrimination. After all, why couldn’t he have chosen to shoot a white passer by instead of the black man that was pounding his head into the concrete? Was Martin discriminating when he said a “Cracker” was following him? If this isn’t racism, it surely is hypocrisy.

You can bet the farm that if this had gone the other way – Martin killing Zimmerman – there would have been two short paragraphs in just the local newspaper, and most of the country would have never heard of George Zimmerman.

How many Hispanics are killed every day by any race, without high profile news reporting? How many blacks are killed each day by other blacks without even a hint of protestation? How many whites are killed by any race with only back-page coverage in the local newspaper?

In 1995, a black man was acquitted of killing his white wife and white houseguest. White people took to the streets in hoards destroying property in protest of the injustice done to the white woman and man. No wait, that’s wrong! The white people did nothing, while the black people rejoiced at the acquittal of O.J. Simpson. What did reverend Al Sharptongue have to say about that? Do you hear crickets chirping? Or is that the sound of hypocrisy?

Although it’s not, I am certain there will be some people calling this column racist. There is no way anyone can call it hypocritical, though.

You Are a Winner!

So I go to the mailbox to retrieve my daily allocation of bills and junk mail, and neatly stuffed between the odd-sized grocery store papers and Penny Saver there is a window envelope with a very official sounding return address: Records Div. Payment Information Dept. Above the address window, a line says, “Check Payment Reference.” I know this has to be important, because it has the word IMPORTANT all over it.

The “important” letter enclosed has the heading, “Report of Payment to be Rendered.” The letter appears as official as any I have ever seen before, so I read further. There are ID numbers, Filer numbers, and impressive forms buried in the letter, but the part that pops right out is where it says, “Awards Payment -- $2,500,000.00.”

Yep, someone wants to give me two- and-a-half-million dollars. Who would ever say no to that? Of course, there is always fine print – the part they hope everyone skips over, and usually printed on the back. I only have to send them twenty bucks and the two-and-a-half- mill will be mine! After, all you can’t expect someone giving away $2.5 million to be able to afford to process the form for nothing.

We get several letters like this every week. They don’t send them to me, though. They are all addressed to my dear wife. Years ago, she bought into the Publisher’s Clearing House scheme. Yes, she keeps sending her forms in and even buys something now and then. Unfortunately, Dick Clark and Ed McMahan are both long dead and we still haven’t had a knock on our door from anyone bearing a giant check.

What this did, though, was put her name at the top of a list of people prone to taking the something-for-nothing bait. They are the same adults that still believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. They’re the ones you can always find headed to one end or the other of a rainbow in search of the Leprechaun with the pot of gold.

Are these “notifications” real? Again, in the fine print, they all offer to make a list of winners available. I haven’t taken them up on that offer either, but no one I know has ever won anything on these schemes.

I find it hard to believe that somewhere in this country there is a One-percenter that feels so guilty about being rich that he or she wants to give large sums of money way to complete strangers. And he or she has built a whole organization to come up with random names of recipients. Naturally, we can’t expect him or her to foot the bill for the organization, so those on the (sucker) list will need to pay to find out if you are actually on the short list to get “your” check.

I am old enough to remember back in the ‘50s there was a television show called The Millionaire. If I remember the theme correctly, some guy named John Baresfoot Tipton sent Michael Ansara out to give complete strangers a check for a million dollars. The only hitch was that they had to spend it. Back then spending a million dollars was actually difficult. Today that might make a substantial down payment on a house in an upscale subdivision. Maybe this same guy is now sending letters to strangers since Michael Ansara is dead. Nope, it was just a TV script – darn.

“Everybody loves a winner,” goes the song. Everybody would love to be a winner, is more appropriate. No body wants to be a loser, and they believe they are endowed with that ethereal quality called luck. Casinos make billions from these people. Desperation fuels the belief in luck, and in far too many cases those least financially able to send $15 or $20 every time they get one of these letters are the ones supporting this scam.

One of the wisest people in the world, my grandfather, once told me, “You do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.” I have always remembered that sage advice.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to answer an email from a poor Nigerian widow with a dilemma. She wants to shelter her dead husband’s millions in my bank account. Maybe there is an Easter Bunny after all.

The Short Form of Impeachment

It’s nothing new. In most third-world countries impeachment comes at the end of a gun barrel. It’s quite efficient, actually – no prolonged discussion or trial over the wrongdoing of a leader – the military just shows up one day, and presto, a new government is formed.

No, I’m not advocating coup de’etat as always the best way to change government leadership. I do, however, marvel at the efficiency of the process.

President Bill Clinton’s philandering and lying during his administration got him into hot water resulting in impeachment proceedings against him. The House of Representatives had no problem voting for impeachment but the democrats and RINOs in the Senate just couldn’t get the job done. As a result, we were constantly bombarded with new revelations of sexual escapades and cover-ups in the news for most of his term in office.

By contrast, in Egypt, democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi provoked the ire of the Egyptian public by not making good on campaign promises and using his close association with the radical Muslim Brotherhood to inch closer to increasing Sharia law. As the numbers of protesters demanding Morsi step down climbed to hundreds of thousands, Army leaders gave the president fair warning then stepped in to replace him.

This was a real and incorruptible vote of the public – no inked fingers, no stuffed ballot boxes or hanging chads, no vote from graveyards, and no political shenanigans. The number of Egyptians protesting in the streets against Mohamed Morsi outnumbered those in support of him – mainly those in the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Someone had to listen to the voice of the people and do something else risk a civil war, ala Syria. It is unfortunate that the army had to be that someone, but they got the job done and without a lot of bloodshed.

By contrast, this style of impeachment voting has had a negative effect in Syria. Despite the departure of many high-ranking figures in the Syrian Army, they have turned against the people of Syria in unwarranted defense of the despot in charge, president Bashar Assad.

Government overthrows are nothing new. They were old-hat when Brutus and his Senate comrades hacked Caesar to death in Rome. But what I find interesting in the Egyptian process is the rejection of a leader once elected  -- albeit in a questionably free election by a mostly Islamic influenced vote -- then rejected for moving ever closer to Sharia law.

Radical Islam take note! Once a people have tasted freedom, even in a highly Islamic country as Egypt, they are not likely to be shackled under the oppression of strict Sharia rule.

Our own beloved third President and author of the US Declaration of Independence once advocated the short form of impeachment when he said, “The tree of liberty must from time to time be nourished by the blood of tyrants.” The situation in Egypt should serve as a reminder to all tyrannical despots of Jefferson’s words.