Wallpaper Of The Day

Still busier than a one-armed paper hanger, so there's no Sunday Photo yet again. Still, you can go to today's APOD offering for some lovely wallpaper. It's one of those photos you could wait your whole life to be able to take.

Enjoy.

Just What Should We Expect?

Caption: The IRS building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. What evil are they up to now? Image credit: U.S. Treasury/Wikimedia

It's a day of the week ending in 'y', so it should be no surprise that someone thinks the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is up to no good:

Let’s be very clear: because the Internal Revenue Service holds so much private data, and because it can make people’s lives absolutely miserable, it is of paramount importance in our political system that it both is, and is perceived as, an apolitical entity. If it discriminated against tea party groups that attempted to register as 501(c)4 social welfare organizations, then that’s a grave offense, and it needs to be investigated thoroughly and dealt with severely.

The IRS was wrong to target the tea party. They should’ve gone after all 501(c)4s

Face it, anyone who has ever had to fill out a tax form, and perhaps gotten advice from the IRS that it is in no way to be held responsible for, is going to want to give the IRS the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, that's not a valid reason for assuming it's wrong.

Most of the folks I've seen criticizing this on Twitter, at least, haven't bothered to find out what is actually the norm here. To tell you the truth, I haven't either, but the difference between me and them is this:

I don't assume I know what's going on.

Let's try a thought experiment - suppose you have what you think is a winning strategy for picking lottery numbers, yet you don't ever win the lottery. Is the lottery commission conspiring against you? Of course not. The reality is that the numbers are chosen at random, so even if you understand how those numbers were chosen, the small sample size of winning numbers just about guarantees that you aren't going to win any particular lottery. Any honest mathematician would tell you that.

What we expect isn't necessarily the truth, even when we use logic and reason to arrive at that expectation. In order to understand what you should be expecting, you have to understand what's normal, and how the system works, and what's possible. How the system works in this case is that the IRS is expected to investigate claims for non-profit applications. If, as is the case with the Tea Party, there's a lot of money behind that applicant, then there's probably more reason to investigate.

But what's the norm? How often does the IRS investigate such claims? In a set of Twitter messages today, CNBC's John Harwood explained the IRS's position:

Twitter message(s) from @JohnJHarwood

I've combined the content of several messages into one screenshot graphic. As you can see, to some extent the IRS went beyond what it's expected to do, but there were a great many other organizations investigated for similar reasons.

Expecting the IRS to investigate all of these organizations, as Ezra Klein did in the article I quoted in that first block quote, may be somewhere between difficult and impossible. The IRS, too, will feel the sequestration crunch. Do we really expect them to investigate all organizations, whether they are known to have ties to big money or questionable people or organizations? My guess, and once again it's only a guess, is that we can't really. The number and type of such organizations is bound to increase, given that there is little legal framework for them at the moment. Plus, as we've seen recently, enforcing regulations and the law on those with power and money isn't a big government priority right now.

I can't say whether this is the norm or not at this point, but any serious investigation of this claimed discrimination needs to include a discussion of that point that involves actual evidence. That may take a while, which is probably beyond the attention span of the American public. Meanwhile, though, I'd say if there was any political organization in this country better able to take care of itself, it's probably one of the two major political parties. I suspect they'll soldier on somehow.

Meanwhile, what we should learn from all of this is to ask those basic questions with any story, both of ourselves and the press. What is normal? What is possible? How is the system supposed to work? Ask those questions, and at least you'll have some credible notion what the problem is.

The Free Market Fairy Strikes Again

Image credit: Still dunno source

Al Jazeera reports that Texas law enforcement may be looking into the causes of the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion:

Texas law enforcement officials are launching a criminal investigation into last month's deadly fertiliser plant explosion.

Investigators had largely treated the West Fertiliser Co blast that killed 14 people and injured about 200 others as an industrial accident in the northern rural town of Waco.

But the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement on Friday that the agency has instructed the Texas Rangers and the McLennan County Sheriff's Department to launch a criminal probe into the explosion.

Texas launches criminal probe into Waco blast

What could they be looking into? Common Dreams notes:

The fertilizer plant in West, Texas that exploded on Wednesday night killing 14 people was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1985, and had failed to disclose to the Department of Homeland Security that it was storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would bring oversight from that agency.

Little Oversight at Texas Fertilizer Plant That Exploded Killing 14

[I added that first link to replace a broken one at the original article]

Lack of inspections led to this situation, as reported by RT:

Fertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 pounds or more of ammonium nitrate due to its widespread use in the manufacture of bombs.

However, at the time of the blast, at least 540,000 pounds (270 tons) of ammonium nitrate was in a storage building, according to recent filings with both the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which were not passed on to the DHS. The plant was also holding anhydrous ammonia and several other agriculture chemicals.

Texas fertilizer plant flew under Dept. Homeland Security radar

Image credit: Mark M./Occupy Together

To some degree, this looks like the usual conservative agenda - make government so incompetent at enforcing regulations and laws on businesses that it might as well not even be there. As Texas Governor Rick Perry tried to explain away:

The deadly fertilizer plant explosion in West wouldn't have been prevented had the state earmarked more money for industry inspections, Gov. Rick Perry said Monday.

Perry told The Associated Press on Monday that he remains comfortable with the level of state oversight after last week's blast at West Fertilizer Co.

He said Texas residents have sent the same message through their elected officials.

Investigators say they have yet to determine what caused the explosion that killed 14 people and injured 200 others.

Perry: More Oversight Wouldn’t Have Prevented Deadly West Explosion

You need to have some kind of chutzpah to say something like that after such a colossal failure of government, but this is the state of governance in America these days. "What can we do? Our taxpayers don't want to pay taxes for things that make them safer", they seem to be saying, as if they have no responsibility to explain to the public what they're doing with our money.

Of course, the people who vote for these clowns, and the "progressives" who go along with this behavior so as not seem liberal (otherwise known as "being realistic"), are as much to blame. There's lots of waste in government, and more than a little abuse of power, but the answer isn't to stop governing. The answer is to fix the waste and prosecute the abuse of power, not to let the magic "free market" fairy take care of it for us.

That's because this is how the free market fairy takes care of things.

Whatever Texas law enforcement finds, and they're sure to find something if they bother to look, I'm pretty sure that neither the governor nor Texas voters generally will be among those blamed. That doesn't mean they are blameless, though.

Afterword: If you want to learn more about the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion, I'd suggest reading Joyce Arnold's analyses of the blast here, here, and here. She lives in the region, and understands the players pretty well. Those articles were the sources for several of the links you see here.

Robert Reich On Fiscal Folly

This interview from Monday between PBS host Tavis Smiley and Robert Reich is definitely worth watching:

Watch Former U.S. labor secretary Robert Reich on PBS. See more from Tavis Smiley.

Reich explains clearly and understandably why the current budget priorities of our government are contrary to both good sense and America's self-interest. In particular, he notes:

Tavis: Why is this [current economic depression] so stubborn?

Reich: I think largely because America is suffering something that people don’t talk enough about in my view, and that is widening inequality. Most of the gains of economic growth – in fact, all of the gains of growth since the recession have gone to the top, the very top, the top 1 percent, the top 1/10th of 1 percent.

The middle class and everybody aspiring to join the middle class, it just doesn’t have the purchasing power to go and keep the economic going. You can’t have a strong economy without a strong and growing middle class.

Interview With Robert Reich: May 6, 2013: Transcript

This quote from Reich neatly nails the foolishness of our government's current fiscal policy:

Austerity is not the answer. In fact, austerity economics of the kind we’re practicing right now has shown to be a huge failure. If you look what’s happening in Europe, they are moving into – in fact, most European nations are already into recession because they decided that cutting their budget deficits was more important than creating jobs.

Now when you have a lot of unemployment, that’s the worst time to cut your budget deficit because the government has got to be the spender of last resort. This is something we understood and learned during the 1930s, 1940s. World War II actually got the economy back going.

I don’t want to suggest or have anybody read me as suggesting that we need another war, but that mobilization, that government spending on such a grand scale, got us out of the Depression and finally into prosperity.

Our budget deficit, in fact, our budget debt at the end of World War II as a percentage of the overall economy was much, much greater than it is now. But instead of hunkering down and cutting the budget, what we did in the 1950s was invest in our workforce, invest in college education, invest in retraining.

We created the interstate highway system. We invested in infrastructure. We built the middle class and helped poor people get into the middle class. That’s what we’re not doing now.

Interview With Robert Reich: May 6, 2013: Transcript

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the foolish notion it was war itself that finally got us out of the Great Depression. In fact, had we spent similar amounts of money on our own needs, we would have been at least as well off, and maybe could have avoided the recessions of the immediate post-war years. After all, when Japan surrendered, most of that war machinery we built became useless junk. It took us a few years to reorient our economy, but wise investments in education and infrastructure eventually paid off.

That's the lesson we seem to have forgotten in the years since. We've been telling ourselves all sorts of fantasies about how "free markets" work, but the reality is that free markets don't exist. What exists is a society and its commerce, and that can go better or worse depending how well it uses its opportunities. We're doing a really lousy job of that at the moment.

Trouble With Numbers

As recently as Monday, I was receiving e-mails like this one from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), regarding the special election in South Carolina's first congressional district:

From: Democrats 2014 <dccc@dccc.org>
To: <Name and address withheld>
Subject: latest reports: (Elizabeth Colbert Busch)
Date: May 6, 2013 3:20 PM

<withheld> -- The math is pretty simple:

Right now, Elizabeth Colbert Busch is down by just 1 point. But 
close isn't good enough. We want to win.

So here's the deal: If we can contact enough voters, fight 
Republican lies with the facts, and run the best damn 
get-out-the-vote operation that South Carolina's ever seen, 
we'll win tomorrow.

If not, we'll lose.

Name: <withheld>
Supporter record: <withheld>
Suggested Support: $8.00

Almost too close to call, as many other e-mails had said earlier. What was the result?

It was a solidly Republican district in South Carolina, and the Republican candidate won. By a wider than expected margin, too - 54% to 45%, with all precincts reporting.

Mark Sanford beats Colbert Busch in South Carolina special election

How did that "too close to call" election turn out to be so easy to call that they called it within an hour or so of the polls closing?

Here's what Real Clear Politics had to say about the polls and the outcome:

RCP: South Carolina 1st District Special Election - Sanford vs. Colbert Busch (screenshot by Cujo359)

What I get from this is that the only polling was done by the Democratic Party's polling firm, and it was, shall we say, very flattering to the Democratic candidate. Assuming that they at least got the trends right, what PPP's results suggest is that Colbert-Busch started out more or less even with Sanford, and went downhill from there. I wonder how they would have spun poll results that reflected reality - "We're going to get our butts handed to us, but send us money anyway"? Hard to think that would have been a good fund raising theme.

On a positive note, at least I'm not out that eight bucks.

Let's just add this to the many reasons I don't trust the Democratic Party further than I can spit into a hurricane.

Islam And The Notion Of Race

Caption: From left, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and Dzohkar Tsarnaev. None of them "look Muslim", and two of them aren't. (see NOTE 1)

Image credit: Wikimedia. See expository links for details.

Recently, I've noticed a trend among atheists to deny that their discussions of Islam and its dangers are not motivated by racism, because Islam isn't a race. Both Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne have recently expressed this view, which as that first link notes, Richard Dawkins has also supported in Twitter messages. To which I can only reply: Horse pucky. Perhaps that's not erudite enough given the caliber of folks I'm arguing with here, so allow me to rephrase:

It's smug nonsense.

Let's start with definitions, shall we? Here's what Websters, generally considered the reference on American English, has to say about what racism means:

1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary: racism

As you can see from the italic emphasis, all it takes to be a racist is to like your race over all the others.

Just to avoid accusations of parochialism, here's the Oxford Dictionary's online definition of racism:

The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

Oxford Dictionary of English: racism

Once again, I added the italic emphasis.

Belief that one's own "race" (a term I have to put in quotes these days for reasons anyone familiar with how arbitrary the notion of who belongs to what race can be) is the one with better qualities is, in fact, racism. This is a point made in at least some of those articles decrying "racism" against Muslims. Most Muslims are not white. Many Westerners, including Dawkins, Coyne, Harris, are. Christopher Hitchens, often mentioned along with Dawkins prior to his death, was white as well. They're right to wonder whether it's some subtle manifestation of racism, especially when Harris' deeply unfortunate comment that we know who "looks Muslim" is taken into account.

I don't believe for a second that Dawkins or Coyne are racists. I've read their writings for too long to think so. I have my doubts about Harris at times, but he and Hitchens strike me as more xenophobic than racist, with the "xeno" here implying a strange religion and culture, not just the looks of people. Nevertheless, this is a reasonable thing to wonder if you're not familiar with their work. Preference for one's own "race" is as much racism as is prejudice against another.

Plus, as this unfortunate young woman found out while trying to attend a cocktail hour at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, sometimes that racism isn't subtle at all:

As I left the hotel and my husband went to the ballroom for the dinner, I realized he still had my keys. I approached the escalators that led down to the ballroom and asked the externally contracted security representatives if I could go down. They abruptly responded, "You can't go down without a ticket." I explained my situation and that I just wanted my keys from my husband in the foyer and that I wouldn't need to enter in the ballroom. They refused to let me through. For the next half hour, they watched as I frantically called my husband but was unable to reach him.

Then something remarkable happened. I watched as they let countless other women through -- all Caucasian -- without even asking to see their tickets. I asked why they were allowing them to go freely when they had just told me that I needed a ticket. Their response? "Well, now we are checking tickets." He rolled his eyes and let another woman through, this time actually checking her ticket. His smug tone, enveloped in condescension, taunted, "See? That's what a ticket looks like."

When I asked "Why did you lie to me, sir?" they threatened to have the Secret Service throw me out of the building -- me, a 4'11" young woman who weighs 100 pounds soaking wet, who was all prettied up in elegant formal dress, who was simply trying to reach her husband. The only thing on me that could possibly inflict harm were my dainty silver stilettos, and they were too busy inflicting pain on my feet at the moment. My suspicion was confirmed when I saw the men ask a blonde woman for her ticket and she replied, "I lost it." The snickering tough-guy responded, "I'd be happy to personally escort you down the escalators ma'am."

My Racist Encounter at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Seema Jilani is, as she noted, a native-born American. She is also a Muslim, but if her description of events is not complete fiction, it's hard to imagine that the guards would have questioned any of those white women about whether they were Muslims. Appearance alone seems to have determined her treatment. She could have been an atheist, or possibly even a Christian, and received the same treatment.

That's what "looking Muslim" means in America these days. And yes, that's racism. I can't blame American Muslims, many of whom "look Muslim", for wondering if what all those white folks believe about their religion might not be motivated by racism, too.

That's why I termed the attitude of these particular atheists as "smug nonsense". The world looks a lot different when you're the one who is treated like shit just because of the way you look.

NOTE 1: Tsaernov's guilt has yet to be demonstrated in court, and thus should be considered a possibility rather than a certainty. Let's face it, though, he doesn't "look Muslim", either.

Afterword: Anyone who has taken more than a cursory glance at the atheism or religion keywords here ought to realize that I think all religions are nonsense. Most have a bit of wisdom wrapped up in that nonsense, but you'd probably do better at finding wisdom by reading comic books or watching television. Still, in America we don't have freedom from religion, we have freedom of religion. That means that, as long as they are functioning and law-abiding members of our society, all people are supposed to be treated equally no matter what their beliefs. As I've mentioned before, the Constitution only mentions religion in two places, and in neither place does it say that there's a right or wrong choice in that realm. It just says we all get to be Americans, and government officials, no matter what our convictions are.

Which, as long as people are as they are now, is how it should be.

I've also objected in the past to the over-use of the word "racism", as this article and this one, among others, should make clear. That over-use cheapens the word. It has been used to characterize just about anyone who criticizes President Obama, for instance, as a racist. That's not what's going on here. Right or wrong, this is a different conversation. It's about people being mistreated, if not demonized, because they look a certain way. To say this isn't helpful to either our country or its relations to the rest of the world is beyond obvious.

Quote Of The Day

Bill Maher shows once again why he deserves the title "The Mark Twain Of Our Generation":

Our mania about terrorism reached a crescendo with the Boston Marathon bombings, where a couple of disaffected young men with little or nothing in the way of military training (or common sense) were the focus of a massive manhunt that shut down a major city for a day.

As Maher said in the clip:

After 9/11 we were shell shocked. We didn't know what kind of enemy we were dealing with, but twelve years later, we have a much better idea: Losers, fuckups, idiots!

...

Bin Laden's plan wasn't to kill us all. It was to scare us into overreacting, and destroy ourselves. Because if there's one thing those terrorists proved they can blow up, it's our balance sheet.

I've mentioned this thought before, but bin Laden succeeded brilliantly. The best thing we could have done to persuade them to try something else would have been to, as the old British war posters said, "Keep calm and carry on". Instead, we reacted like Daffy Duck on his first hit of methamphetamine. Not only did our reaction encourage more efforts from the more-or-less professional terrorists, but it showed the losers that this was one sure-fire way of getting attention.

Nothing about this recent bombing gives me hope that we'll be getting over it anytime soon.

Guns And Atheists

I've largely given up commenting at blogs recently. The reason is that most of the conversations I have these days remind me just how many mindless individuals use computers, not to mention how many of them are progressives. So, you might wonder why I still watch Twitter. It's an interesting question, particularly on days like today.

I first noticed this Twitter message from Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist some morons call a "professional atheist" despite his having had a successful career in a far more demanding profession:

Twitter Message by @RichardDawkins, May 3, 2013

This had to do with a recent tragedy in which a two year old girl was killed by her five year old brother with a firearm his parents gave him. Needless to say, Dawkins' remarks didn't sit well with everyone:

Twitter Message by AKgunpimp, May 3, 2013

Since I don't have armed guards ringing my residence, I wondered just what the heck this guy was talking about (you can see this coversation at the attribution link, by the way). His response:

Twitter Message by AKgunpimp, May 3, 2013

After I explained that we weren't talking about disarming police or military people, he responded:

Twitter Message by AKgunpimp, May 3, 2013

On its surface, this would seem to be the ultimate trivial assertion, and foolish just on that basis. Unfortunately, just about anyone in any minority recognizes the subtext here. This probably isn't even the tenth time I've encountered this sort of argument - that there are all those brave, Christian folks out there protecting our sorry atheist asses, and why aren't we just shutting up and being grateful for what they do for us? We atheists need to be constantly reminded of this, on account of our huge egos. In this case, it's even more pathetic, in that it's supposed to be the guns themselves that are the real protector.

There are many, many people in our society who don't use guns in their professions who make our society safer. The lawyers who prosecute and defend criminals don't use them, nor the judges and juries. Firefighters and paramedics don't need them. Foreign Service officers like Chris Stevens and Anne Smedinghoff don't use them, yet they make the world a better place, and keep us safer doing it. Frankly, if every Tom, Dick, and Harry who was out of his mind or a criminal couldn't get hold of a firearm any time he wanted, even the police would have a whole lot less need for them. But here this guy is, explaining how much my life depends on firearms being possessed by law enforcement professionals.

Of course, that wasn't even remotely the conversation. It was about living in a society where idiots can have guns, with little or no training, because it's our right, dontcha know? How letting some dimwit who doesn't understand that five year olds aren't good at understanding things like how dangerous firearms can be have the things makes me safer, I have no idea, however many times these folks try to explain it. It always sounds more like they want their metal sticks, and the rest of us should just shut up, because they're well armed.

That the world is so full of people like this, who think that violence, or being willing to commit violence, is the only thing that keeps us "safe", is a thought so depressing that there are days I wonder how grateful I should be for all their valiant efforts to keep me alive. If it spares me from having to read or listen to the rantings of these pathetic little men, there is at least one thing to be said in favor of dying.

UPDATE/Afterword: Coincidentally, Joyce Arnold wrote an article explaining why LGBT people have been coming out of the closet lately:

This is one of the classics: “Why do you want to talk about your homosexuality all the time? We heterosexuals don’t!” No, you just go through your day completely oblivious to how often you mention and simply take for granted your very public and legally supported opposite gender spouse, or girl/boyfriend, life.

Another favorite from the anti-LGBT side: How dare you be intolerant of my intolerance as law of the land!? The “tolerance” here is about civil rights, not some choice about, say, who has the best radio talk show. Or the best flavor of ice cream.

Queer Talk: Jason Collins, Limbaugh “Rams,” Samuel “Flaunts”

People like AKgunpimp are the reason. When religious and sexual minorities don't come out and make themselves and their opinions known, people like this clown assume we have everything we need, and whatever opinions we have must be the ones they think we should have. Why? Because they won't actually bother to find out by getting to know us or read what we have to say. They'll just ignore us, shout at us, or wave their metal sticks at us.

Ahem, sorry. Meant to say they'll exercise their Second Amendment rights in our general direction.

Oh, and if enough of us "come out", they just might get it through their thick heads that lots of firefighters, paramedics, etc. are atheists, too.

Another Cost of War: Getting Ready For War

Image credit: Lieutenant Hugh Randall Syme/Wikimedia

Democracy Now discusses another cost of war, which is the environmental cost of training for war:

On the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, thousands are commemorating the 10th anniversary of when the U.S. Navy stopped using their home as a bombing range. Since the 1940s, the Navy used nearly three-quarters of the island for bombing practice, war games and dumping old munitions. The bombing stopped after campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience, but the island continues to suffer. At the current cleanup rate, the Navy says, it will take until 2025 to remove all the environmental damage left by more than 60 years of target practice. A fisherman recently discovered a giant unexploded bomb underwater. The island of about 10,000 people also lacks a hospital to treat illnesses such as asthma and cancer that may be attributed to the military’s former bombing activity.

Punishing Vieques: Puerto Rico Struggles With Contamination 10 Years After Activists Expel U.S. Navy

The explosives and fuses used in munitions are often made from volatile chemicals. Burying these chemicals in the ground can create toxic chemical hazards for decades afterward, as this Puerto Rican island knows all too well. Given that, it's not surprising that there's increased incidence of cancer in this area. Given that Puerto Rico is a part of the United States, it's not too surprising that those people can't get much in the way of medical care, either.

That's what you have to expect from a country that's more interested in blowing things up than it is in the health and welfare of its own people.

Those Other Mountains

The last week or so I've been involved in a project that seems to consume all available time and energy, which is one reason for the recent lack of posts here. Today, on my way to that project, I managed to snap this photo of the Olympic Mountains out the window of my vehicle as I was waiting at a traffic light:

Image credit: Photo taken and processed by Cujo359

Click to enlarge. I was in a hurry, so it's not a great photo, but it will give you some idea why this is one of my favorite intersections in the area.