Event Horizon

Personal Reflections on the Tragedy in Tucson

I remember wondering over New Year's weekend what the first big news event of the year would be. Major news events have a way of setting the tone, for better or worse, for a specific time in our lives. Last year began with the Haiti earthquake and it touched millions of us as we not only watched the aftermath of the disaster unfold on TV, but we also contributed to the relief effort using text messages, a novelty that will no doubt become standard in such disasters. So, naturally, I wondered what event would kick of this new year and frame it in our minds, setting the tone as our days march forward. Little did I realize that it would be an event in my own city.

A mass-shooting that focuses the attention of the entire country is something that I would normally not have any difficulty writing about. But this event, so close to home and so brutal, leaves me without words. I'm a resident and native of Tucson and although I've moved away for years at a time, I've always called this Southwestern town home. And it goes without saying, nothing like this has ever happened here before.

What can I say that hasn't already been said in our national news media? Should I comment, as so many have, on the need for civility in our national political discourse? Many have done that far better than I could. Should I comment on how as a country we used to have a system for dealing with the mentally unstable rather than just leaving them to their own delusions? The point has been well made by others. Should I comment on the bravery and courage displayed by those who took down the shooter? That has been done as well.

Perhaps the only thing I can really share is insight from my own experiences. As an undergraduate I served as a Congressional intern and that experience demonstrated to me that our elected representatives are a very hard working group of people, far more capable, compassionate and committed to this country than they are usually given credit for. Sure, there are some corrupt and self-serving politicians, but I hope it doesn't surprise you that the majority serve because they sincerely want to make a difference. And while I don't know Representative Giffords personally, I do know people who know her, and they have nothing but praise for her. The tragedy here is that one of the "good guys" was taken out of the fight. And while we hope that her recovery and convalescence will be brief, our greatest challenge is to make sure that dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of people step forward in her place with resolve and determination to make this a better country.

We talk a lot of about change in our slogan-dominated political culture, but it's time we realize that the change has to begin with us. We have the power to use words to encourage, to build-up, and not tear down. We have the power of choice to offer solutions and not merely criticize, or worse, demonize our opponents.  We can ask ourselves at the end of each day, "What did I do today to make this country a better place?" That, to me, is the only fitting response to this tragedy.

Image Credit: KVOA.COM

Finished Debates and Taxes

As you know, it's a post-election frenzy in Washington, partisanship is back and threatening to tear apart our tax system. Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration, but it's close. The Democrats want to extend the Bush era tax cuts for the poor and middle class, but not the wealthy. The Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for everyone and they are threatening to shut down the Senate to make their point. And neither party seems to grasp the idea that tax cuts mean less revenue for the treasury at time when we have record levels of national debt. What really bothers me is the idea put forth by Republicans that we should keep the tax cuts for everyone because that would be fair. Of course, our tax system strives to be fair by not treating everyone the same. We have a graduated tax system in this country, meaning the rich pay more taxes than the poor, this is by design and and it represents an effort at fairness. Having a graduated income tax vs. a flat tax is an idea that was debated - and settled - generations ago. It's a done deal. We don't strive to tax everyone the same in American and to suggest that we should is a gross misrepresentation of our system. I think the Republicans really just want to avoid the fact that under their plan some people benefit more than others. Take a look at this graphic from an economist and draw your own conclusions about how fair the Republican plan would be:

Internet Under Attack by Media Lobbyists

The free and open nature of the internet is under attack...again. On the surface, this looks to be yet another battle in the long running war against piracy and copyright infringement. But if you dig deeper you find that it's a power grab that will stifle innovation and directly effect consumers. As a blogger who frequently links to websites to provide the necessary citations that enhance and inform a well written post, this worries me. Why? There are those who don't accept our long established legal doctrine of fair use - the idea that you may use the content of others for limited purposes - and seek to exercise control over any and all use of their content. This bill, currently before the U.S. Senate, would allow the government to create blacklists of internet domains and order that they be taken down. It's a sort of draconian action that runs counter to the support for a free and open internet that President Obama says America stands for. 

In practical terms for bloggers, I see it as an attack on the link culture of the internet. How many of you think nothing of linking to online content, sharing a link on Twitter, sending a movie review to friends, sharing a news report on Facebook, or sharing a video on YouTube? Link culture is fundamental to our modern way of communicating, yet there are those in the old media industries who seek to exercise control of their content so that sharing it, excerpting it, quoting it or tweeting it without their permission would be illegal. In other words, if I provide the following text from CNet News, some may find that to be infringing:

Killing legislation that would enable the government to shut down Web sites accused of piracy was a top priority for many technology trade groups today. Last week, a Senate committee stunned the tech sector by announcing it would try to fast-track a bill designed to grant the U.S. Department of Justice wide authority to combat illegal file sharing and counterfeiting. The bill, which was introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee and backed by the committee's chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), could go to a vote in the Senate as early as tomorrow. Critics say the proposed legislation, known as the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, is nothing more than censorship and would heap the copyright-protection problems on companies that shouldn't bear the burden.

And, even more context from The Washington Post:

Some of the rock stars of Internet engineering (yes, they exist) on Tuesday protested a Senate bill aimed at fighting online piracy, saying the legislation could lead to censorship and destabilize the architecture of the Web. In their letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the 89 engineers said a bill proposed by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that would block the domain names for sites that engage in piracy and copyright infringement threatens to cause far-reaching harm. Specifically, early Internet systems creator David Reed and others said the bill could destabilize the domain name system used as an underlying infrastructure for the Web. The engineers said the measure could wipe out entire domain names, which are used to translate sites like www.washingtonpost.com into the Internet addresses used by computers to communicate with each other.

Will the Senate listen to those who actually created the internet, or will they listen to the well-paid lobbyists of the music and movie industries? It's time for some grass roots action before old media lock down the internet. Please join me in standing up for internet freedom and call your senators and tell them to oppose Senate Bill 3804.

Amazon Milestone Heralds Dawn of E-Book Era

Amazon announced this week that they have passed an important milestone in sales of their Kindle e-reader. As The New York Times reports:

Amazon.com, one of the nation’s largest booksellers, announced Monday that for the last three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, outnumbered sales of hardcover books. In that time, Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition [...] The shift at Amazon is “astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months,” the chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, said in a statement.

I've been a Kindle owner for about six months now and I'm not at all surprised at this news. I've found the Kindle to be very easy to use. Thanks to the wireless delivery system, purchasing books is a breeze (after all, if there's one thing Amazon does well, it's sell books) and the e-ink is easy on the eyes and holds up well in almost all light conditions, even direct sunlight. The selection of available e-books in the Kindle store is vast and is supplemented by a large library of free public domain books, so there's always another book to read. I really like how easy it is to change font size and change the orientation to landscape for when I want to read sideways. Now, I have to admit the most glaring shortcoming of the Kindle is that it's a dedicated e-reader, it's not a web browsing, e-mail checking, twittering tablet of the sort made by Apple. It doesn't even do color. And even though there may come a time in the very near future when the Kindle I own will look as antiquated as a black-and-white TV, I'm quite happy with it being very good at the one thing it does because it does it well.

Have I no critical comments? Well, yes, I do. Amazon has released some Apps for the Kindle that allow you to read your books on your PC or your mobile device and these are great apps. They probably contributed to Amazon's e-book sales figures because the amazing thing is, you don't need to own a Kindle to use the Kindle App. All you really need is an Amazon account and a PC or a mobile device and you can download and setup your Kindle App and you can begin reading e-books. You can even read Kindle e-books on an iPad because, yes, there's an app for that. It's genius! However, there is one major drawback that, if you are not aware of, may leave you feeling a bit shortchanged.

I downloaded the Kindle App for the PC for a very specific reason. I tend to read novels before going to bed, usually escapist fare as a distraction from the cares of the day, and I've been neglecting the newspapers and magazines that I'd subscribed to on the Kindle. Let's face it, the news is so depressing these days, who wants to read news right before going to sleep? So, I thought I'd download the Kindle for PC App and read the news on my computer during the day. Good plan right? Well, once I downloaded the app and opened up my archived library I found my e-books there, but none of the magazines or newspapers that I expected to find. I fired off an e-mail to Amazon to ask for help in fixing this problem and to their credit they replied quickly. Sadly, their reply said that only e-books are available by App. So, it's not an error or a glitch, it's a feature. Great. This really undermines the utility of the app for me and I doubt I'll use it much. I can't imagine why they would hobble their own app by not syncing the full library of purchased items, it seems like a bad move, but I'm sure they have their reasons. Still, I can't imagine why publishers accept their e-subscriptions being shut out of a such a worthwhile platform. If I have an interest in reading the e-version of a newspaper or a magazine and I'm willing to pay for it, they should not discourage my interest, that's just bad business, especially in this time of diminished ad revenue for the major print publications.

So, given that, would I still recommend the Kindle e-reader? Yes, absolutely! I've found it easy to use and convenient to take with me when I travel. It's a remarkable device that has contributed greatly to my reading pleasure.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com

Memorial Day

In Memoriam

In Praise of Taxes

I voted today to raise taxes. No, I'm not ashamed of it. In fact, I feel pretty good about it. See, my state, like a lot of states in these United States of America, is in trouble. See the below video if you doubt it. The politicians that run the state have convinced themselves that raising taxes is somehow wrong. They are cutting spending instead. At every level of state government they've cut spending and the budget cuts are gutting education (teachers are being let go), public safety (police, fire and EMS are all losing people and resources) and other government services.

I happen to believe that taxes are the only legitimate and moral way for a government to pay for those services we citizens are entitled to under our social contract with the state. You can read that contract, it's called the Constitution, and every level of government has one outlining the powers and responsibility of government as well as the means of funding them. For example, at the federal level, we are entitled to a national defense and at the local level, police protection, and legislatures are expected to levy taxes to pay for these services. My state legislature is controlled by people who don't understand the basic legitimacy of taxes and so they refuse to increase taxes even though the only alternative is to borrow money to pay for services. So, even though they are running a deficit and can't pay their bills, they actually believe it's better to borrow more money rather than raise taxes, and they feel some kind of perverse virtue about it. I suppose you have to be a politician to understand the logic of that. Many people agree this is wrong and a special election was called to vote on a ballot initiative to increase the state sales tax by $.01 to fund basic services like police, education and health care. So fearful were the organizers of the anti-tax sentiment that they made it a one cent increase...and it's temporary. Wow, bold stuff. Ordinarily, I'm against ballot initiatives because most of them mandate programs without providing funding, but in this case, it provides funding for necessary programs, so I voted for it.

Yes, I want there to be teachers in schools and police on the beat and emergency medical services in my community and I'm willing to pay for that. I voted for increased taxes...you betcha!

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Arizona Immigration Angst

I've been watching the national media coverage of the Arizona immigration law with a mix of amusement and dismay. As a resident of Arizona, I don't recognize the state they are describing and I'm shocked at how the national media and activist groups have been able to mischaracterize the law. The dominant narrative seems to be that this is a racist law that gives the police authority to question people - namely Mexicans or anyone who looks Mexican - about their immigration status. Take, for example, this statement in The New York Times:

Now, after passing the nation’s toughest immigration  law, one that gives the police broad power to stop people on suspicion of being here illegally, the state finds itself in perhaps the harshest spotlight in a decade.

Brian Williams told the national audience of NBC Nightly News that: Police can stop people just on the suspicion that they might be here illegally.

This is simply inaccurate, the law does not give police authority to do that. First, before I go any further, let me tell you that I'm a native Arizonan and have lived in three cities in southern Arizona, one of them a border city. I've had friends and family on both sides of the border. I'm telling you this so you will know that I'm an informed observer and I know this state. As a native of Arizona I've taken the time to read the law that has so changed public opinion about Arizona and I can tell you that the quotes above are 100% false.

So, what does the law do? Simply put, the law applies existing federal law to the state level. It was a federal crime to be an illegal immigrant in the U.S. and now it's a state crime in Arizona to be an illegal immigrant. You may have heard the law called "a tough new immigration law" or a "radical law" or some similar (and pejorative) terminology, but whatever they call it, apply that term to federal law, because it's the same law. Arizona did not come up with a brand new immigration policy, they are merely enforcing federal law at the state level. Specifically, the law:

• makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally
• the police can check immigration status if there is probable cause of a criminal offense having been committed
• foreign nationals must carry proper documentation (ie. a passport, green card)

Let me also tell you that I'm a civil libertarian, I take very seriously the notion that we need to protect and defend our liberties and so I looked into that second point, just to double-check what I really means. I found that the police, in the normal course of investigating a potential violation, can check immigration status if there is probable cause. In other words, if a cop pulls someone over for speeding and finds a van packed with 40 illegal immigrants, then there is reasonable suspicion that immigration issues may be involved. One of the drafters of the law uses this as an example of how the law would be enforced and you can't go to a better source than that. The law does not mean that the police will accost people who are walking down the street, minding their own business, and ask them about their immigration status.

The law is not a radical departure from existing law, it has not created new policy nor has it mandated any new kind of documentation or identification, foreign nationals are asked to show the same kind of documents that they would be asked to show a federal INS agent.

So, why all the fuss? I've concluded that the answer to that question rests with the media fixation on a sensational story and the rise of well funded activist groups out to promote their own agenda. The two combined to create a dominant narrative at odds with the facts but it makes for a good story.

As a resident of Arizona I can tell you first hand how life in border communities changed dramatically in the late 1990s when the drug wars started heating up. Well armed drug cartels now cross the Arizona border freely and ruthless human traffickers take advantage of immigrants, stashing them in safe houses by the hundreds and leaving hundreds more to die in the Arizona deserts without food or water. The dominant media narrative would have you believe that right wingers in Phoenix enacted a racist law because they don't like Mexicans, but the truth is it's the towns and cities on the border that most want protection. Those border communities are not anti-Mexican, their local economies are intimately tied to trade with Mexico, but they know the one fact that the national media is overlooking - the drug trade and human trafficking are a growing threat to the people of Arizona. That is why this law was enacted.

I know there are good people on all sides of this debate, it's my hope that we can move beyond media sensationalism and activist spin and get back to having the federal government enforce national immigration law and provide for border security, you know, like they are supposed to do.

Image Credit: The New York Times

Saluting National Grammar Day

In recognition of National Grammar Day, I'd like to call attention to the alarming rise of free floating parenthetical statements. This shocking and illegal activity is a national epidemic (you can catch it from doorknobs!) and needs to stop now. We all know that a parenthetical statement can be thrown into a sentence as an aside and is used to note a tangent that may be related to the subject of the sentence but is not the primary thought. By definition, a parenthetical statements is part of a sentence. I've noticed recently that editors are letting parenthetical statements appear outside the bounds of a sentence as if (perish the thought) it was a sentence that could stand on its own. Take, for example, the free floating parenthetical statement appearing in this report from The New York Times:

The journal Pediatrics has published its annual report on birth and pregnancy in the United States, and it found that the number of babies born in 2007 — 4,317,119 — was the highest ever recorded. The birthrate rose in all age groups, including teenagers, whose birthrate had been declining since 1996. (A Guttmacher Institute report last month came to a similar conclusion.) Rates for women in their 30s were the highest since 1964, the last year of the postwar baby boom.

The parenthetical statement noting the Guttmacher Institute report should be included in the sentence that comes before it. Why is this happening? Have editorial standards become lax or has some arbiter of taste and syntax decided that parenthetical statements have grown up and can stand on their own? Let's just all agree that parenthetical statements should go back to being safely ensconced in their sentences. No parenthetical statements outside of sentences! So say we all. Ok, I've done my part. Long live Conjunction Junction! 

Balloon Story A Hoax

Like many people I was riveted to the "Balloon boy" story as soon as I received an e-mail alert about it and followed it as it played out during the day, it was the talk my office. And like many people my emotions rocked from concern to relief to outrage now that it's been revealed that it was all a hoax. CNN reports:

Three days after the world watched a giant balloon fly through the air and a tearful family express fears that their 6-year-old boy could be inside, authorities announced what millions already suspected: The whole thing was staged. [...] "It has been determined that this is a hoax," the sheriff said, adding police "believe we have evidence at this point that it was a publicity stunt" by the family in hopes of "better marketing themselves for a reality show at some point in the future."

I'm looking forward to the news media dissecting the lives of this couple (which has to be unpleasant) and to the coverage of the charges that will be brought. I'm not really interested in "revenge" so much as justice for their selfish act of involving their young son in their deception. The kid is going to be known for the rest of his life as Balloon Boy and that in itself seems criminal. Poor kid.

Photo Credit: Reuters

Can Free Agents Save Marriage?

I've been thinking about the case of the Louisiana justice of the peace that refused to marry an interracial couple and I think it suggests the perfect solution to the culture war over gay marriage. First, a quick recap from CNN:

A justice of the peace in Louisiana who has drawn widespread criticism for refusing to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple says he has no regrets about his decision. [...] Bardwell, a justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish's 8th Ward, refused to issue a marriage license to Beth Humphrey, 30, and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond. [...] Humphrey and McKay received their marriage license October 9 from another justice of the peace in the same parish.

So, I'm thinking that either the state doesn't decide who can and can't get married, or it does, and allows each justice to act as a free agent. If a justice doesn't believe in interracial marriage or gay marriage, they can then decline to issue a marriage license and the couple is then forced to shop around until they find one that will. It's a free market based approach to a tired culture war that we would be better off putting to rest. In America, we can outlaw racist public policy, but we can't outlaw racists. A free agent policy means that a racist justice like Keith Bardwell will find himself pushed out of the market when he discovers that no one is buying what he is selling. Personally, I'm pro-marriage for people of all colors and sexes, but I do think this free agent idea has merit and deserves serious debate.