Quote(s) Of The Day

A couple of quotes regarding the ongoing NSA surveillance scandal that are worth considering. What makes these quotes interesting to me is the expertise of the people quoted.

The first is from Susan Landau, a computer engineer formerly with Sun Microsystems, on how intrusive government possession of phone meta-data can be:

[F]or example, if you call from the hospital when you’re getting a mammogram, and then later in the day your doctor calls you, and then you call the surgeon, and then when you’re at the surgeon’s office you call your family, it’s pretty clear, just looking at that pattern of calls, that there’s been some bad news. If there’s a tight vote in Congress, and somebody who’s wavering on the edge, you discover that they’re talking to the opposition, you know which way they’re vote is going.

One of my favorite examples is, when Sun Microsystems was bought by Oracle, there were a number of calls that weekend before. One can imagine just the trail of calls. First the CEO of Sun and the CEO of Oracle talk to each other. Then probably they both talk to their chief counsels. Then maybe they talk to each other again, then to other people in charge. And the calls go back and forth very quickly, very tightly. You know what’s going to happen. You know what the announcement is going to be on Monday morning, even tho

More Intrusive Than Eavesdropping? NSA Collection of Metadata Hands Gov’t Sweeping Personal Info

I could think of a couple of alternative hypotheses in both of those cases, but a little digging, particularly in the second case, would reveal pretty clearly that Ms. Landau's company was about to be bought out. Meta-data may not mean much on its own, but combined with other information it can be very revealing.

She also notes in that Democracy Now interview that cell phone calls can be used to find out where you are, or have been.

The other quote is from Richard Clarke, former terrorism advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush:

I am troubled by the precedent of stretching a law on domestic surveillance almost to the breaking point. On issues so fundamental to our civil liberties, elected leaders should not be so needlessly secretive.

The argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant of what their government was doing.

Secondly, we should worry about this program because government agencies, particularly the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have a well-established track record of overreaching, exceeding their authority and abusing the law. The FBI has used provisions of the Patriot Act, intended to combat terrorism, for purposes that greatly exceed congressional intent.

Why you should worry about the NSA

With all the references to it in popular entertainment that originates in the US, it's hard to believe that international terrorists don't assume this already. They certainly remember that the Bush Administration did similar things after 9/11. If they don't realize this by now, they're probably not that much of a danger.

Afterword: As this article notes, back in 2006 then-Senator Joe Biden knew how sensitive telephone meta-data could be.

Cenk Uygur On Domestic Surveillance

In plain language and a loud voice, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks explains what's wrong with letting the NSA collect whatever it wants without any meaningful checks:

The video is reduced in size here to fit into this blog's page format. Go to the YouTube page for more viewing options.

What he says about the relative ease of finding information after the fact versus predicting and preventing acts of terrorism is absolutely true. I had a similar job once upon a time - figuring out how network performance can be improved by recording all the data sent over it and categorizing it in various ways. Specific questions about things that were wrong were usually easy to answer. Predicting bottlenecks, slowdowns, or malfunctions was nearly impossible.

There is no need, and no justification, for the sort of surveillance that we are currently being subjected to. As for the concern about us eavesdropping on the rest of the world, I think that as long as only the US has that information, it shouldn't be a big problem for those peoples' freedoms. We do share that information, though, and there should be serious restrictions placed on how and when that is done, as well.

Afterword: While we're embedding videos, here's The Daily Show, on substitute anchor John Oliver's inaugural show, making some excellent points on the surveillance issue:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

Yes, it's basically a coin toss whether the NSA will consider your information to be of foreign origin or not. Officially, at least - who knows what they're actually doing?

(h/t Taylor Marsh)

UPDATE: When you're done watching, go read Tom's Dispatch.

The Illusion Of Safety

Due to commitments I made a long time ago, I've been largely unable to discuss much about the ongoing NSA surveillance revelations. Basically, when I see something that says "Top Secret/NOFORN" or the like on something, I'm not allowed to discuss it. I signed up for that, and I don't mind that much. What I mind is the people who abuse that system, who are the folks in the Obama Administration and Congress who are talking about how "gut-wrenching" it is that some of those slides were released to the public. I don't have grief with the whistle blower who released this stuff. He clearly didn't do this for personal profit. At worst, he mishandled classified data, which is a serious offense. I think it's more accurate to say he did this country a big favor. My beef is with the folks who created a system of surveillance that has no meaningful oversight or control, and who make it their priority to punish anyone who reveals anything about it - other than them, of course.

So, I can't discuss the details much, which is too bad. The details are pretty fascinating. I can, however, offer some observations about the public's reaction to this news. I'll start with my favorite Abe Lincoln quote:

“All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, … with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

He spoke those words in 1838, regarding the lynching of a black man. He worried that if we lost our respect for law that we would quickly lose our freedom as well. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and it quite clearly says that among other things, we should be secure from government in our persons, our papers, and effects. If we ignore that principle in the interest of “defending ourselves” from some crackpots halfway around the world, we have truly become a pathetic shadow of a free nation.

Those who maintain that somehow all this intrusiveness and secrecy is necessary to keep us “safe” have clearly never considered what it’s like to not be safe from your own government. They haven’t considered what the cost is of corruption that can’t be punished because it can’t be revealed, or how many lives bad policy and bad government can cost. If they had, they’d know that what they were saying is utterly foolish. We lose more people every month for lack of health care, and for letting people who shouldn’t be near them have guns. We lost more people in Iraq and Afghanistan than we did to terrorism. We lost way more in Vietnam. All that death is due, at least in part, to foolish government policy. While we spend vast sums of money on surveillance equipment that may not even work, we don't educate our young well enough to operate all those whiz-bang weapons we always seem to have money to build.

Nearly everything our government does affects lives and livelihoods. Not being able to discuss that, because we know that if we do the government will use the data it collects against us, will be the price we pay for these absurd priorities. If you think otherwise, ask yourself who watches the watchers? Who makes sure those people are doing what they’re supposed to, and is there anyone outside of government who can make sure that watching process, in fact, is happening as it’s supposed to? The answers, in order, are "who knows?" and "nobody".

And if you think that the only people who have something to fear are those who have nothing to hide, think again. Or maybe I should just say “think”.

Giving our rights over to our own government isn't safety. At best, it's the illusion of safety. there is no such thing as perfect safety. There is only the hope that we can make things safer, through informed debate and the actions of citizens who feel empowered to make change. Neither will happen if the government can collect whatever information it wants, and use it with no oversight or accountability.

Quote Of The Day

PZ Myers reviews a movie:

I went in with low expectations: I’d heard it was just a fun action movie, mere mindless entertainment. The reviews underestimated the movie; it wasn’t just mindless, it was in a vegetative state. This movie was so stupid it was stillborn with acephaly. This movie sucked so bad it was a miracle that the Hawking radiation didn’t kill the audience.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

What makes the quote for me is he's a biologist who thought of using Hawking radiation as part of a black hole metaphor.

I don't share the world's fetish for J.J. Abrams. Something about incoherent story lines that never quite end just doesn't appeal to me. So it's unlikely I'll be subjecting myself to whatever bad radiates out of this one. If I just stick to reading the reviews, I suspect I'll find that at least as entertaining.

From The E-Mail Inbox

Image credit: National Cancer Institute/Wikimedia

This little gem arrived this morning:

From: Democrats 2014
To: Abfxvrhxdue
Subject: this is CRAZY
Date: May 29, 2013 9:14 AM

BREAKING NEWS: Michele Bachmann Quits!

Friends --

Late last night, Michele Bachmann released a crazy web video announcing that she's leaving Congress next year.

THIS IS HUGE! Now that the Tea Party's ringleader has called it quits, Boehner has to be wondering who's next to go. If we can sweep up 17 Republican seats, we can take Boehner's Speaker's gavel and win a Democratic House for President Obama!

In 48 hours, our FEC fundraising deadline hits and we'll report how many supporters we have standing behind us. Will you help us reach 500,000 strong standing behind our campaign to kick out the Tea Party House?

Name: Not Confirmed Abfxvrhxdue
Supporter record: XXXXXXXXX
Suggested Support: $8.00

As you can see, they've modestly suggested I send them $8.00 to help celebrate Ms. Bachmann's departure from the House of Representatives. They haven't picked a better pseudonym for me than "Abfxvrhxdue", but they think I should send them $8.00. I think there's a better way to celebrate, which is to give them no money at all.

After all, what does it matter to me if the Democrats are the ones who cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? What's more, why would I pay them to screw me and every other working class American? Supreme Court Justices? Are you kidding me? As Robert Reich noted today:

Now the President is nominating judges to fill all three of these crucial D.C. court of appeals vacancies at once. He’s also looking ahead at the strong probability that at least one Supreme Court justice, most likely Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will retire within the next two years, and he’ll need to get a replacement through the Senate.

Senate Republicans under the cynical direction of Mitch McConnell have abused the filibuster system, preventing votes on almost everything the President has wanted.

A Time for Harry Reid’s Backbone

Once again, as that title implies, Dr. Reich has given us the wrong diagnosis. Harry Reid's title isn't Majority Leader For Life. It's just Majority Leader. That's a post he could be voted out of. Yet even after failing to deal with the filibuster issue for three Senate terms, he still has his job.

It's pretty clear that he's doing his job well enough to satisfy Senate Democrats.

Ironically, if there's one thing that Michelle Bachmann was good at, it was at least attempting to do what her supporters wanted. Granted, what they want her to do is insane, but they insist on it, and Bachmann's work is, at least in part, a product of that insistence. I respect her more than I do the average congressional Democrat these days, despite her bigotry and bone-headed rhetoric (see NOTE 1). At least she had enough integrity to not take a dump on her supporters every chance she could.

This is yet another reason I'm going to make support for any political party contingent on its actually exercising the power we've given them on our behalf. The Democrats haven't done that. In fact, they seem to have gone out of their way to be useless. When we reward failure, all we will get is more failure.

Maybe when we progressives find our backbones, Harry Reid will remember he has one, too.

NOTE 1 In keeping with modern website design methods, users of Javascript filters like NoScript won't be able to see the photos on this page until they allow the buzzfeed.com and buzzfed.com domains to execute Javascript.

If I find a better collection of Bachmannisms that doesn't require this nonsense, I'll change the link. Lousy website design shouldn't be rewarded, either.

Quote Of The Day

Juan Cole discusses the relative threat of Islam versus the West:

Listening to Newt Gingrich, the great bloviator, go on this morning on the alleged Muslim threat, set me off. Gingrich did his dissertation on Belgian educational policy in the Congo, where he managed to miss the genocide perpetrated by the Europeans. Gingrich knows better, he is just hate-mongering. But since he brought it up, it is Westerners like Gingrich (who supported illegally invading and occupying Iraq, which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths) of whom one might justifiably be a little afraid…

Who’s the Threat? Western Powers have invaded and Killed Millions of Muslims

He then presents a short table showing a rundown of who has invaded or attacked whom since the end of the 18th Century. Let's just say it doesn't look good for our side, unless you think that killing more people is winning. I can't think of any Muslim invasions to add to that list, that's for sure.

Islam, as a religion with some incredibly intolerant adherents and leaders, is certainly a source of evil in the world. But when I'm almost simultaneously presented with a Foreign Policy article extolling the virtues of signature strikes, and Secretary of State John Kerry lying his ass off about how America isn't bombing targets where civilians are present (see NOTE 1), I have to say that Muslims aren't the only ones who can go to extraordinary lengths to avoid admitting the human costs of what they're doing.

NOTE 1 Since when have we refused to bomb valid targets that don't happen to have civilians in the area? In World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, our clear policy was that, while we might try to minimize civilian casualties, that wouldn't stop us from destroying something we thought was important enough to send planes to bomb.

And for those not familiar, please note, I've defended some of those bombings in the past. I just recognize those statements of Kerry's as the utter horse shit that they are.

Twitter Message Of The Day

What more needs to be said?

Twitter Message by @TheTweetOfGod: May 21, 2013

When you accept the ideas that there is an entity who is all powerful, and that human beings are made in this entity's image, there's really no room to argue with this one.

Progressive Idiocy: Missing The Obvious

Updated May 15, with new observations by Marcy Wheeler. Scroll to bottom of article to see.

The recently revealed targeting of Associated Press phone records by the Justice Department, which appears to have been both far reaching, unexplained, and possibly contrary to DoJ policy, is becoming yet another chance to see which liberal and progressive commentators have been asleep at the wheel these past few years.

First up is Steve Clemons, who wrote this in a Twitter message today:

Twitter message by @SCClemons

What's sad about this is that I've always thought of Clemons as being an astute observer of what's going on in DC. Yet here he is, basically without a clue as to what the Obama Administration have been up to these last five years regarding leak investigations and other actions against whistle blowers. Glenn Greenwald attempted to set him and others with this point of view straight today:

The key point is that all of this takes place in the ongoing War on Whistleblowers waged by the Obama administration. If you talk to any real investigative journalist, they will tell you that an unprecedented climate of fear has emerged in which their sources are petrified to talk to them. That the Obama administration has prosecuted double the number of whistleblowers under espionage statutes as all previous administrations combined has already severely chilled the news gathering process. Imagine what message this latest behavior sends to journalists and their sources: that at any moment, the phone records of even the nation's most establishment journalists can be secretly obtained by the DOJ, which has no compunction about doing so even in the most extreme and invasive manner.

Justice Department's pursuit of AP's phone records is both extreme and dangerous

[link from original article]

Even more sadly, Clemons is one of the smarter liberal pundits on this issue. At least he recognizes it as a problem. For an example of a journalist who doesn't seem to understand the problem, there's inveterate Obama-explainer Josh Marshall. After publishing an anonymous e-mail defending the DoJ's actions (which, as several of those links have said, the DoJ refuses to explain), he wrote:

I think there’s still a very live question of whether this was a prudent action on the part of the DOJ, as maximal restraint should always be used when subpoenaing journalistic records. But I do think he’s at least on to something that such an article would definitely have included more and different context if AP weren’t the party at issue and the ‘secretly’ phrasing does perhaps knowingly mislead.

A Conflict of Interest?

When a government agency retains records it obtained without notifying the target of those records long after its own guidelines say it should have, then that is as "secret" as I ever want to see it get. The DoJ is still refusing to purge or return those records, too. What does that tell you, Josh? Let's just say I find that article title more than a little ironic.

This is just the latest in a rather disturbing pattern of trying to control leaks that it doesn't want through any means at its disposal while freely making use of leaks it wants by the Obama Administration. As Greenwald points out, the Obama Administration has attempted to use the Espionage Act against whistle blowers more than all other presidential administrations combined. That such a longstanding and obvious policy could be such a surprise to people engaged in the profession of journalism is astounding. At least, it would be if I had been in a coma for the last few years. As it is, this is really just another example of the ability of progressives to not see what they don't want to see.

UPDATE: Kevin Gosztola notes that the AP may not have been the only news organization targeted:

“The Justice Department did not respond to a question about whether a similar step was taken in the other major government leak investigation Mr. Holder announced last June,” according to [New York] Times reporter Charlie Savage. So, it is unknown if the Times has been subjected to a similar fishing expedition. Regardless, the Justice Department engaged in this unprecedented act because people like Feinstein declared, “The leak really did endanger sources and methods,” and, “The leak, I think has to be prosecuted.”

No justification for Obama’s war on First Amendment

Like most of the links in this article's first paragraph, Gosztola's article is a good one for background on this issue.

UPDATE 2 (May 15): Marcy Wheeler makes an interesting point and a compelling one at her blog Emptywheel. First, the interesting one, concerning the subpoena the DoJ used to grab the AP's phone records:

[A]s this great piece by the New Yorker’s counsel, Lynn Oberlander on the issue notes, one of the worst parts of the way DOJ seized the AP records is that it prevented the AP from challenging the subpoena — and the details that are now being disputed — in court.

The cowardly move by the Justice Department to subpoena two months of the A.P.’s phone records, both of its office lines and of the home phones of individual reporters, is potentially a breach of the Justice Department’s own guidelines. Even more important, it prevented the A.P. from seeking a judicial review of the action. Some months ago, apparently, the government sent a subpoena (or subpoenas) for the records to the phone companies that serve those offices and individuals, and the companies provided the records without any notice to the A.P. If subpoenas had been served directly on the A.P. or its individual reporters, they would have had an opportunity to go to court to file a motion to quash the subpoenas. What would have happened in court is anybody’s guess—there is no federal shield law that would protect reporters from having to testify before a criminal grand jury—but the Justice Department avoided the issue altogether by not notifying the A.P. that it even wanted this information. Even beyond the outrageous and overreaching action against the journalists, this is a blatant attempt to avoid the oversight function of the courts.

I obviously don’t know better than Oberlander what would have happened. But I do suspect the subpoena would have been — at a minimum –sharply curtailed so as to shield the records of the 94 journalists whose contacts got sucked up along with the 6 journalists who worked on the story. Moreover, I think these underlying disputed facts — as well as the evidence that the gripe about the AP story (as opposed to the later stories that exposed MI5′s role in the plot) has everything to do with the AP scooping the White House — may well have led a judge to throw out the entire subpoena.

There’s a Place for Resolving Disputes, and the Administration Chose Not To Use It

So, the DoJ was trying to get around having to prove its case in court, which it quite probably would have lost. That brings us to emptywheel's compelling point, which should have been obvious to the Obama apologists in the press. That point is embodied in the article's title - there's a place to resolve such issues, and it's the courts. The Obama Administration simply went around that process and did what it wanted.

We're becoming more removed every day from being a government of laws.

IRS Scandal: Some Answers

Caption: The IRS building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. Evildoers or overworked public servants?

Image credit: U.S. Treasury/Wikimedia

More information has come to light concerning how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) dealt with the rising tide of supposed "social welfare" organizations that were actually political front groups applying for 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. The first bit is from Dave Levinthal of Public Integrity:

Amid withering accusations the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party and other conservative groups with enhanced scrutiny, the agency faces another problem: it’s drowning in paperwork.

The IRS’ Exempt Organizations Division, which finds itself at the scandal’s epicenter, processed significantly more tax exemption applications in fiscal year 2012 by so-called 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations — 2,774 — than it has since at least the late 1990s, according to an analysis of IRS records by the Center for Public Integrity.

Compare that to 1,777 applications in 2011 and 1,741 in 2010, federal records show. Not since 2002, when officials processed 2,402 applications, have so many been received.

Meanwhile, Exempt Organizations Division staffing slid from 910 employees during fiscal year 2009 to 876 during fiscal year 2012, agency personnel documents indicate.

IRS nonprofit division overloaded, understaffed

Levinthal goes on to add:

During the 2012 election cycle, however, numerous 501(c)(4) organizations — most of them conservative, a few left-leaning and all endowed with new spending powers thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision — together spent tens of millions of dollars overtly advocating for or against political candidates.

IRS nonprofit division overloaded, understaffed

When the vast majority of organizations that are misusing this tax-exempt status are of one political persuasion, it stands to reason that most of the organizations investigated will also be of that persuasion.

Chris Hayes provides some historical perspective about how this scandal came about. As he put it, there are two scandals really, the scandal involving the IRS targeting groups who used particular key words, like "Tea Party" in their applications, and the scandal that brought that one on - the flood of applications by clearly political groups for 501(c)4 status:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As Hayes mentions, this scandal arose because the IRS has been put in the position of having to arbitrarily decide what constitutes an organization that is "primarily political". It has done it in a way that is, at best, somewhat ham-fisted, in that keywords belonging to one particular ideology were identified as flags for further investigation. Was any thought given to what might be similar keywords coming from libertarian, liberal, socialist, or green organizations? That's a question we should be asking as this is investigated. Even though most of the organizations applying were conservative, that's no reason to assume they'd be the only ones abusing the system. As Hayes also mentions, at least one such organization is a progressive one.

To me, the picture that is emerging here is of a government agency that was snowed under by a sudden and poorly-defined workload, which it then made mis-steps in addressing. That doesn't mean it's not the only possible explanation, of course. It's the one that rings truest with me, though, particularly since I spent much of my career working for one government agency or another.

We should also bear in mind that one of the reasons we're hearing about all this is that these organizations are trying to create more wiggle room so their applications won't be scrutinized so carefully. This is a rather obvious point, but one that we should keep in mind when listening to the expressions of outrage from various and sundry politicians and political operatives like Karl Rove. Still, there is a clear possibility for abuse here, and no one in his right mind could simply assume that such abuse is not happening here.

UPDATE: Thanks to a question by a reader, I tracked down the source of that assertion about most of the 501(c)4 applicants being from conservative groups. It's a paragraph about three-quarters of the way down at that link.

What If It Was Terrorism?

Image credit: Aaron Tang/Flickr

A few weeks ago, I'd written about the misuse of the word "terrorism":

In the context of the bombing in Boston last Monday, whether or not it's terrorism depends on the motivations of the bombers, not on whether or not people were frightened by it. That is why I've avoided using the term, and will continue to until such time as the people responsible have been found and tried for what they've done, or until they admit what they've done and explain why in some other circumstance that doesn't involve duress.

Any opinions expressed using the word "terrorism" should, I think, be viewed in that context. Words mean particular things. When people use those words in other ways, then their opinions should be viewed more skeptically.

Word Use: Terrorism

[unless otherwise noted, all links are from original articles]

Today, Gawker's Hamilton Nolan looked at how we view terrorism from a different angle. Suppose the Tsarnaev brothers' actions actually were terrorism, in the proper meaning of that term. What does that say about our reaction to it, relative to Sunday's shooting in New Orleans?

The shooting of nineteen innocent people, including two children, at a Mother's Day celebration in New Orleans yesterday was an act of violence only gaudy enough to hold the nation's attention momentarily. Shortly after the bodies were cleared, the FBI said they "have no indication the shooting was an act of terrorism. 'It’s strictly an act of street violence in New Orleans.'" At that, we were free to let our attention drift. In America, all villainy is not created equal.

Terrorism and the Public Imagination

All too true, I'm afraid. For instance, how many people are up in arms about the mayhem occurring in some of our major cities, that often involves victims who are children under the age of 19? The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) noted back in 2009:

Gang homicide victims were significantly younger than nongang homicide victims in all five cities [that were included in this report] (Table 1). Whereas 27%–42% of the gang homicide victims were aged 15–19 years, only 9%–14% of the nongang homicide victims were in this age group. Approximately 80% of all homicide victims were male in each city; however, Los Angeles, Newark, and Oklahoma City still reported significantly higher proportions of male victims in gang homicide incidents compared with nongang homicide incidents. In Los Angeles and Oakland, a significantly higher proportion of gang victims were Hispanic and, in Oklahoma City, a significantly higher proportion of gang victims were non-Hispanic black compared with nongang victims. In at least three of the five cities, gang homicides were significantly more likely than nongang homicides to occur on a street and involve a firearm (Table 2). More than 90% of gang homicide incidents involved firearms in each city. For nongang homicides, firearms were involved in 57%–86% of the incidents. Gang homicides also were most likely to occur in afternoon/evening hours in the majority of the five cities; however, comparisons were not examined because the data were missing for 23% of nongang homicide incidents. In Los Angeles, Oakland, and Oklahoma City, gang homicides occurred significantly more frequently on weekends than did nongang homicides.

Morbidity and Mortality: Gang Homicides — Five U.S. Cities, 2003–2008

While this information is five years old, I doubt it's gotten that much better since then. Besides, does anyone remember seeing live television feeds all across the country of police shutting down Los Angeles to hunt suspects in a drive-by shooting? Me neither.

I've excerpted the stats from the CDC report's Table 1 below for Los Angeles:

Age group (yrs)	No.	(%)
0–14	15	(2.3)
15–19	199	(30.8)
20–24	185	(28.6)

Morbidity and Mortality: Gang Homicides — Five U.S. Cities, 2003–2008 (Table 1)

In one major U.S. city alone, almost 400 young people under the age of 25 were killed due to gang-related violence. Of course, L.A.'s gang problem is among the worst, but once again, we see no huge outcry about this. Why is that? Part of the reason is undoubtedly that the victims are mostly poor and non-white, but partly it just seems to be what we expect in some parts of America. Yet it kills far more children than terrorism has in the last decade.

Now that I think of it, there was a much greater stink about the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, wasn't there? In L.A. alone, the equivalent of one Newtown happens every three years or so due to gang-related violence, if we just look at the first line of that table. If all other forms of homicide whose victims that age are included, there's one a year there.

To me, this seems utterly irrational - obsessing about something that has proven to be pretty harmless in comparison to the things that are really killing us, and ignoring or downplaying the things that do, but could be prevented. It's the state of American political discourse these days.