Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

If I asked you the question, “How can the government create jobs?”, what would you answer?  It’s an important question.  More and more people are out of work. Many have given up looking for work.  Many others have taken jobs that are completely out of their fields in an effort to keep food on the table and not rely on government hand-outs.  This question of how the government creates jobs is pivotal in the coming elections this November.  Each candidate says they have the key.  The question is, do they really?

In order to figure out what the key is, we need to ask a simple question:  What would the conditions for maximum employment look like and how do they differ from today?  To answer this question, we need to come up with a baseline scenario – a ‘test-world’, if you please, to experiment on:

1.       In our world, the people need the products and services that the companies (small businesses, large businesses, self-employed people, farmers, ranchers, factories, bakeries, retail sales, etc) produce.

2.       There is zero influence coming from outside of the company by any governmental agency.  In other words, the only influencers of the company’s products and services are from its own internal governance and from the people who purchase the product or service.  This means no regulations, no taxes, no OSHA, no EPA, no working conditions requirements, no healthcare mandates – the only outside influence or impact on the company is the customer.  The company produces the products/services and the people either buy or don’t buy the product.

3.       Companies hire people based on the need of the company to produce the goods or services.  In our perfect scenario, they hire good people with the appropriate skills and abilities, and pay them fair wages to make sure they keep those good people.

4.       A company that does not pay a fair wage or treat its workers well will lose its workers to other companies that do.

5.       If a company produces a product or service that isn’t needed, they will either go out of business or have to change their product or service into something that is needed.

6.       If the companies want their product or service to sell, the people need to have enough money to buy the product or service.  Competition between companies and demand for the best people leads to good salaries.  This leads to people buying more products and services, thereby driving the output of companies to whatever level the economy will sustain.

7.       None of the money that the company makes is sent to any government agency.  No lawyers are needed to deal with regulations, rules or mandates.  Lawsuits related to product issues are strictly handled between the customer and the company through the court system.  No government interference or fines.

In this world, driven completely and totally by demand and supply (of products and people), we can imagine pretty close to maximum employment.  Companies have only a single goal that they need to deal with:  getting more customers with their products.  This is the basis of a capitalist system.  I either need a product or want a product or am convinced by someone that I need/want a product, and someone produces this product for me and I pay them for it.  As any kid who has mowed lawns in the summer can attest, the system works pretty well.  My neighbors have yards.  I have a mower.  I want money.  They want their grass cut.  I undercut the competition or offer some other incentive for them to use me to cut their grass.  I trade my time and effort and resources (my lawnmower and gasoline) so that I have money to spend for the products and services that I want.  If I do a good job, money continues to come my way and life is good.  If I do a bad job, my competition will take over for me and get the money.  It’s simple and it neatly falls into the description above.

So let’s take my example lawn service and play with it a bit.  Let’s call it “Doug’s Lawn Care”.  I start out with a single employee:  myself.  Let’s say that I can comfortably mow 3 or 4 lawns per day by myself.  I’m charging a fair price and providing a good service.  Let’s say that I’m charging $20 per lawn.  People really like how I mow their lawns.  They tell their friends and pretty soon, I’m completely maxed out on lawns.  I’m now mowing 4 lawns per day, 7 days per week.  I really don’t want to mow any more lawns since I want to have time to spend with my friends and enjoy the money I’ve made.  However, demand for my services is so high, I hire a friend to help me.  This friend and I agree about how much we will each get along with a small amount of each lawn charge going into a savings account that we can use for growing the business (advertising, parts for the mowers or new mowers, and that kind of thing), and our goal is to double the number of lawns we cut, since there are now two of us.

This works well.  Now, instead of 28 lawns per week, we are able to cut 54 lawns per week and still be able to enjoy life.  Things are great!  Pretty soon, we are able to hire more friends and we are now mowing nearly every lawn in the neighborhood.  We have achieved maximum employment!  There are no more lawns to be mowed (demand) and we have exactly enough people to mow them all (supply) and our cost of doing business (maintaining the mowers) is managed by the money we put aside.

At this point, the neighborhood association comes to Doug’s Lawn Care and says, “We don’t like the fact that you’re using gasoline powered lawn mowers.  It’s too noisy and the smell makes us sneeze.  Also, the planet gets sick when you use gasoline.  To cut the grass in our neighborhoods, you must use these special electric mowers that cost 5 times as much but are environmentally friendly.”

Whoa.  Now we have to buy a bunch of expensive electric lawn mowers and extension cords?   The electric mowers don’t last as long, are more expensive to maintain and have to be replaced regularly.  The electric mowers are smaller and much harder to use, so we won’t be able to cut as many lawns anywhere near as fast.  Our savings money isn’t anywhere near enough to deal with these new costs.  These regulations and ‘taxes’ reduce the ‘pool’ of money that we have.  To meet the new requirements, we will either all have to take a pay cut to pay for the new equipment or we’ll have to reduce the number of people cutting lawns.  Nobody wants to take less money, so the only way to deal with this is to reduce the number of people cutting yards and/or increase the cost of the yards we cut, but still cut the same number of yards.  We can’t get more yards, since we already have all of the yards.  Hiring more people in other neighborhoods to cut more yards isn’t possible, since we already don’t have enough money to cut the yards we have. 

Pretty soon, to meet the requirements, I’ve reduced my staff by half, raised the price of a yard to $30 and we’re each cutting 8 yards per day and it’s taking a lot longer per yard.  Nobody but the Association is happy.  The workers hate the longer hours and less play-time, the laid-off workers are unhappy since they don’t have any money and the homeowners don’t like the higher cost and their electric bills are going up.  Some of them begin to cancel their contracts with Doug leading to even more layoffs and fewer yards mowed.

The neighborhood association gets together and says, “We know what the problem is!  Doug’s company is greedy and they don’t hire enough people.  We want them to hire more people.  We need to figure out how we can stimulate the number of jobs that Doug’s Lawn Care provides.”  They come up with all kinds of answers:

1.       We’ll ask each homeowner to give us some money and we’ll ask Doug’s Lawn Care to give us some money that we can give to a bank, so that Doug can go borrow the money to pay for the new employees.

2.       We’ll ask each homeowner to give us some money and we’ll ask Doug’s Lawn Care to give us some money that we can give to a bank, so that Doug can go borrow the money to pay for the new lawnmowers.

3.       We’ll ask each homeowner to give us some money and we’ll ask Doug’s Lawn Care to give us some money so that we can create a fund that is managed by the association that can be loaned out to Doug so that he can pay for new employees.  Of course, some of that money has to be paid to the managers of the fund.

4.       We’ll ask each homeowner to give us some money and we’ll ask Doug’s Lawn Care to give us some money so that we can pay the difference in cost between the original $20 and the new $30 lawn fee so that everyone’s lawn looks nice and nobody has to go without lawn service.

5.       We’ll make rules that all lawn mowers must be union workers so that Doug can’t lay them off and so the amount of money they make can’t be reduced and so the amount of work they do is not too high.  Doug will have to make homeowners pay more.  As more homeowners cancel their service, Doug will have to raise the price on the other homeowners to keep paying the people he can’t afford to keep.

6.       Oh.  I guess one other option might be that we could eliminate the electric mower requirement, there-by reducing the cost of doing business, but this makes us sneeze and polar bears are drowning!

Of course, all of the options they come up with, with the exception of the last one, require the homeowner to pay.  The difference is that the homeowner can decide he doesn’t want to pay Doug and he can cut his own grass.  However, they can’t decide to not pay the homeowner’s association!  They break kneecaps!  Ultimately, Doug goes out of business and files bankruptcy since he can’t pay the loans off that were given to him to keep him afloat.

I think you can see the point I’m trying to make:  the ONLY reason government can improve on the jobs numbers is because the government is the one that limited the jobs in the first place.

During this economic downturn, the response of our elected officials is that there must not be enough regulations, taxes, fees and such on the corporations and job creators.  Therefore, the fix to the problem is to tax and regulate everyone more (especially those companies and small businesses that won’t/can’t hire) so that the money can be given or loaned to ‘stimulate’ hiring.  In what world is this sane?

Ironically, the politicians are at least partly right:  Government does have a role to play in creating jobs (or perhaps more accurately, in RE-creating jobs), but only in-as-far as they created the loss of jobs in the first place.  Unfortunately, like our fictitious homeowners association, they keep coming up with the wrong answer.  Thinking that you can increase the cost of doing business and that somehow that will ‘punish’ or push companies into doing more hiring is not just wrong-headed – it’s stupid.

The answer to the jobs problem is simple and it involves several approaches:

1.       Reduce the burden on the company.  This means fewer regulations, lower fees, less taxes

2.       Reduce the burden on the customers.  This means reducing taxes on the people who would buy the products and services and reducing government interference in the market overall.

3.       Create a stable environment for business.  This means adopting a pro-business attitude in all aspects of government oversight.  It means not demonizing corporate profits, which ultimately are the main reason a company is in business!  Ideally, most business regulations would roll over to the states.  Most issues can be dealt with at the state level without federal interference.

Politicians like to make us think that what they do is way above us mere mortals; that we just don’t understand the issues or the complexities.  I think they are at least partially right, in that I really do NOT understand the politician’s response to most things.  However, just because I can’t understand their moronic ideas doesn’t mean I don’t understand the issue or how it can and should be handled.   If you think about it, it really is simple:  If the number of jobs is reduced because government has imposed costs and restrictions on companies, then the only way to improve the jobs numbers in any meaningful way is to get government out of the way.  Unfortunately, since doing this does not benefit government, it’s likely to be an up-hill battle.  It requires them to reverse the things they did to limit the jobs in the first place and accept responsibility for screwing things up initially.

One last thing:  I have heard several democrats make the same idiotic charge lately:  Reducing taxes on corporations will reduce the money coming into the government thereby imperiling social programs and other vital needs.  Why do we accept such drivel?  If we accept for a moment that all of those social programs are actually needed (and I don’t), then think it through:  If we reduce the cost and difficulty of doing business, then business will grow.  When business grows, people are hired.  When people are hired, consumerism/demand increases.  When consumerism/demand increases, companies have to produce more.  When companies produce more, they have to hire more people.  Voila! It’s the great circle of prosperity.  Everyone, including government, benefits, because:

-          People are hired – they pay taxes

-          People have money to buy things.  The things they buy are taxed at every point from raw materials through point-of-sale.  More things made and sold = more taxes paid

-          Companies produce products and services – they pay more taxes and hire more people

-          More people hired, better pay for work =more taxes

Finally, I can hear some of you screaming at your monitors: “We don’t want the government to get all that money!  You’re playing into their game!”  Trust me:  I believe we are ALL over-taxed.  We need a fair tax system (as in everyone pays – even the poor.  We all need some skin in the game and an understanding of what government costs us).  In my ideal world, it would be a flat rate tax established in the constitution and only changeable by a constitutional amendment, with zero deductions.  In my less than humble opinion, it is NOT the job of government to incentivize or penalize any person’s legal behaviors.  But this is a discussion for another day.

It's Finally Time for the Fix!

For a long time, I’ve struggled with the question of term limits and reelection questions.  For years I’ve heard conservatives (and even some liberals) saying some variation of “we need term limits – Senators and congressmen should serve no more than 2 (or 3 or 4) terms!  This will solve the problem!”  The belief seems to be that if we can limit these guys to two or three terms that we will fix the problems since, of course, that means someone else will have to take the seat of power that they have and that crony-ism will disappear.  And, to a certain extent, this is true.  However, I have come to believe that this is actually playing into the problem and doesn’t go anywhere near far enough.

 As I see it, there are several problems endemic to our current structure:

-       Politicians can get in office, do favors for big donors, shower their district with money, and ultimately use name-recognition to stay in power for decades, if they’re good at playing the game

-       Long-time office-holders have huge power based on committee membership, tenure in the office, personal favors and the like.  If you are a young, idealistic member and cross a powerful Senator or Congressman, your ability to do anything other than warm your seat is nearly zero

-       Re-election campaigns take huge amounts of time and money.  Politicians who are in office, immediately start figuring out how to stay in office.  I mean, it’s a sweet gig, if you can get it!  Decent salary, money from lobbyists, deals that can make you very wealthy and powerful, health-care, and a retirement program that is next to none.  Are our politicians really being productive if their number one objective is keeping all that stuff and their position?

-       When an office-holder leaves office, frequently there are a cadre of unelected ‘handlers’ that stay behind for the next person coming into the office to make their transition into the job easier and to make sure they know their place

Let’s see if I can find a way to express the problem in one sentence.  Let’s try this:  Running for re-election is at the core of most of the problems in politics.  Yep.  It may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.  Name just about anything that you dislike about someone in elected office, and it almost certainly is at least to some extent, impacted by the need for re-election.

My solution is very simple.  I’m advocating the complete elimination of more than one consecutive term for ANY federal elected politician.  Imagine it…  A president comes into office, works from the day he is inaugurated until the day he leaves, and doesn’t spend a single minute working on re-election since he can’t be re-elected.  Members of Congress – same thing. They have nothing to do but their jobs! 

Simplicity is the key to success, so here are the key elements I’d like to see in this reform:

1.    One and only one term in office for all federal elected offices including the Presidency

2.    A maximum of two Non-consecutive terms are allowed

3.    If you are elected to an office, you can’t be elected to any OTHER office until a minimum of two years after your last term ended

4.    Elimination of any payment or benefit (health insurance, retirement, etc) to elected officials after their term of office ends (with the possible exception of the Presidency – we’d have to talk about this one)

5.    Sitting elected officials would not be allowed to campaign for or publicly support ANYONE running for any office

6.    Anyone who has held public office cannot participate in any campaign or be a part of any government office (including as a staffer for another elected official) for the equivalent of one term of office after they leave office.

7.    Terms of office should overlap by 30 days.  This gives the outgoing official time to transition everything to the incoming official.  Generally, power would be shared during that time, but only the incoming official has the power to vote, sign legislation, submit bills, etc.  The outgoing official is in an advisement capacity only.

8.    Staffs are equally not allowed to serve beyond the term of their boss and will assist in the transition, but cannot be part of the next term.

In addition, I’d like to see these changes implemented around this concept:

1.    Reverting election of the Senate to the original intent in the constitution:  Senators would be selected by the legislatures of the many states and would serve up to a six year term.  Keep in mind that they would serve at the pleasure of their legislature and could be recalled and replaced at any time, if the state so desired.

2.    The House would serve a two year term and be elected as they are now

3.    The President would serve a four year term and be elected as happens now, via the electoral college

These changes would, of course, involve amending the constitution.  However, these changes would, in my opinion, change American politics forever for the better.  Throughout history, the professional politician has mangled and destroyed more nations, people, wealth, and prosperity than anything else.  Remember:  No war begins without a politician.  No trade or embargo happens without a politician.  No foreign policy happens without a politician. These things are crucial to a nation, and politics, especially fearing re-election repercussions, cause people to make decisions that are not always in the best interest of the nation as a whole.

I can see lots of up sides to doing this.  For example…

-       Offers of support (i.e. – money) for their next campaign would be non-existent once they are in office since they can’t run again

-       Actual representation of the states that sent them starts to actually happen

-       I bet we’d see third-party candidates start to have more influence

-       No real need for redistricting – that’s just a tool for re-elections

-       Since a sitting politician can’t support anyone running for office, there’s no need for fund-raising trips, stump speeches, rallies and other things to get in the way of their work

-       The politician can be 100% focused on their work

-       Since we are eliminating all of that time spent stumping and pumping for re-election, perhaps the Congress can once again be a part-time entity – hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

-       Since everyone would be new every few years, the ‘good-old-boys-club’ becomes almost impossible to maintain.

There are probably LOTS of other positives.  I'm sure there are some negatives as well, like maybe the loss of all of that experience would be bad.  Or that we'd wind up with a bunch of amateurs that don't know how to legislate running things.  Hmmm - I don't know why, but neither of those scare me as much as a bunch of deep insider, crony jack-asses playing with my future and the future of my children.

I like to dream, and although the chances of this ever happening seem absolutely invisible, it is fun to imagine a presidential campaign where all of the candidates were private citizens.  Imagine not having to pay for the re-election campaign of the president, who has to fly around on Air Force One or drive around on Greyhound Bus One while he or she should be dealing with a faltering economy or unemployment or wars in multiple countries.

All of this dreaming got me to thinking about other things I’d like…

In my ideal world, I’d kind of like to see these changes as well:

-       First and foremost:  Case law and foreign law should NEVER be used to evaluate the constitutionality of anything. The constitution IS our country.  It is the document that establishes the form of our Federal government, the restrictions on it, the makeup of our republic and the limits on its power as relates to the states and the people.  Any law or court case that hinges on a constitutional matter MUST be evaluated against the constitution itself and not some other person’s opinion about it.  The problem with using case law is that it assumes that the last guy or last court got it right.  That may be fine with laws that are challenged outside of constitutional grounds, but when it comes to the foundational documents that say who we are as a country, each and every challenge MUST be evaluated on its own merits against the standard.  Using case law as the comparison for constitutionality is like the old VHS video-tape problem of a copy of a copy of a copy.  The original still looks good, but the copy stinks.  It is crucial that the evaluation of anything as being constitutional or not must be in comparison to the standard itself, and not to a copy in the form of someone’s opinion.

-       Lawyers would NOT be allowed to run for any political office in the legislative branch of the government.  Let’s face it:  it’s a conflict for those writing the laws to also be in the position of using those laws in the private sector.  I refer you to wolves guarding the henhouse.  It seems to me that the possibility of writing law to benefit other lawyers is just too great.  Not to mention, if we get rid of lawyer/lawmakers, maybe we, the people who have to live under those laws, will understand the laws that are written.

-       For a period of 10 years from the time this law was passed, extendible in 5 year increments, for every law that is written, 5 laws must be eliminated.  This is SO needed.  There are so many laws on the books – so much duplication and contradiction.  To make things worse, there is a huge mass of case law surrounding this mountain of laws, and on top of all that, there is another mountain of rules made by each of the Federal departments that the law pertains to (Ever seen the Obama-care legislation?  Any idea how many times “…as deemed appropriate by the secretary” or words to that effect appear?).  This makes it impossible for the citizen to pretty much do anything in life without breaking some law, somewhere.  Turning us all into unwitting lawbreakers is NOT a good thing and not what we would expect from a free society.

What do you think?  Any of that make sense?  Hey, while we’re dreaming, I’d like to see these as well…

-       Go to a single standard of proof for civil and criminal cases.  This would prevent the silliness caused by someone being found innocent of a criminal complaint, then being sued by the victim for the crime they were found innocent of, and being found guilty.  It should not be possible to be innocent of something and then be found guilty under a different standard.  Whether you agree or disagree with the ruling on O.J. Simpson, once he was found innocent, he should NOT have been able to be sued into poverty for the crime he was found innocent of committing.  That is not justice.

-       Loser pays.  Period.  If you are accused of a crime by the state or sued by someone else, and you win, the loser, no matter who it is, pays.  This MUST apply to even criminal cases.  I would go so far as to say that if you are found guilty and later determined to be innocent, that the state or feds must repay all costs to the innocent party and recompense them for all lost wages, loss of status and for any suffering they had because of that bad ruling.  There MUST be consequences for bad decisions.  The state must be held accountable if the rest of us are going to be.  A person can be utterly ruined by a lawsuit that they win.  Example?  When I was going through concealed carry class in Missouri, at that time there was no castle doctrine.  The instructor made it clear that if you defended yourself against someone trying to kill you, even if you weren’t charged with a crime, the average person would have to pay between $80,000 and $200,000 in legal fees to fight the lawsuits that would certainly be brought by the family of the criminal.  Can you afford that?  Sure, it beats being dead, but not by much.

So, that’s my vision for America.  What do you think?

Just drop me a line...

I’m worried.  I’m very, very worried.  I’m worried for two huge reasons.  First, I’m going to have to agree with Democrat Dennis Kucinich about something.  Second, and almost as troubling, I believe the U.S. Postal Service has been set up to take a fall.  Someone wants it dead.  This is a huge problem.  First, though, I have to give some props here:  I wouldn’t know about this issue if it were not for John C. Dvorak and Adam Curry on the No Agenda podcast.  John nailed this and he deserves the credit for scaring the patootie out of me.

Before I tell you why I’m so scared, let’s take a short trip down history’s lane.

Article I, section 8, clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress “To establish post offices and post roads”.  Congress did this by passing the Postal Service Act of 1792, which created the Post Office Department.  To protect the mail, the Postal Inspection Service was established.  It is made up of sworn federal law enforcement officers who carry firearms, make arrests and serve federal search warrants and subpoenas.  It is a federal crime to use the U.S. Postal Service mail to facilitate fraud against consumers, businesses and government.  This includes mail fraud, bank fraud, identity theft, credit card fraud, wire fraud and internet/computer fraud.

This past week, the Postal Service was set up to default on a $5.5 billion payment to the treasury to pre-pay their retirement benefits fund.  I can hear you yelling at your monitor, “Hey, what do you mean ‘set-up’?  They should pay for that, right?  I mean, we’re talking about retirement benefits, right?”  Um… well… here’s the beef:  Congress mandated in law back in 2006 that the Postal Service pre-pay their benefits 75 YEARS in advance.  That’s not a typo.  No other company, department, group or organization in the United States has this mandate.  As bad as that is, Congress has gone even further.  To keep them from being able to stay afloat, they made it illegal for the Postal Service to set up retail outlets (where they might be able to be a bit profitable), and they also barred it from charging the full cost of providing the service it is required by Congress to deliver.  To complete the jump to ludicrous speed, Congress requires that the Postal Service break even, but they can’t break even since Congress won’t let them.  And remember:  that’s before you even get to this idiotic pre-funding mandate!

So what happens if the inevitable happens and Congress decides that “To establish post offices…”, they will do away with the Postal Service give that work to a private company like FedEx or UPS?  Normally, I’m a big fan of privatization – it falls clearly within my libertarian-esq thinking.  In this case, though, once again I have to bow to the founder’s wisdom.  For one thing, I would bet money that we would get a lot less mail.  Have you sent anything via UPS or FedEx lately?  Notice how much it costs?  If you hate paying 45 cents for a letter, you’re gonna go absolutely ape-hanging crazy over the Fedex Express Saver rate of $37.52 for a 1.6 ounce letter (which was the cheapest rate I found on FedEx.com for a package from Detroit to my mom’s house outside Atlanta)!

But believe it or not, there is a much bigger problem.  Mail privacy and fraud.  The US Postal Service is pretty much the last bastion of privacy we have.  Cell phones, computers, email, Twitter, Facebook – all of these are ultimately compromised and are not protected anywhere in our Constitution.  Private mail carriers do not have to abide by mail fraud laws and Postal Inspection laws.  Let me set it up for you this way:  If I send you a letter via the postal system I can anticipate that unless the Postal Service has cause to believe that my mail is violating law or hazardous in some way, they cannot open it.  They cannot read it.  They must, by law, make every possible attempt to deliver that letter intact, unread and in a reasonable timeframe.  In addition to the laws that the Postal Service must follow, there are laws that you and I must follow.  If my bank sends me a letter and intentionally lies in the letter in an attempt to defraud me, whether they are breaking any other laws, they are absolutely committing mail fraud.  If someone sends you an invoice and overcharges you on that invoice with the intent to defraud you, that is mail fraud.  This is one of the things that makes the mail a ‘trusted’ source.  Most businesses do not want to be shut down for mail fraud.

Now what happens if all of those protections go away?  If the U.S. Postal Service was shut down and the work was outsourced to a private company, as it stands today those laws would no longer apply.  For the black-helicopter lovers amongst us, that means that not only can the government read your email, but now every letter and package can be opened.  Sure, we all have a right under the 4^th amendment to protection from unreasonable search and seizure, but lately that’s been pretty much wiped off the face of the map by the National Defense Authorization Act, the Patriot Act and other so-called protections.  Don’t believe me?  Been through an airport lately?  Were you ever stopped by a VIPR team?  Do a Google search for Stop-and-Frisk.

What about your bank or your employer or anyone else you would receive correspondence from, including advertisements and sales pitches?  The protections of the U.S. Mail do not exist if the mail arrived via a non-U.S. Postal Service carrier. As an aside, you should keep this in mind the next time you get a FedEx, UPS or other non-USPS package or letter:  The contents do not fall under postal regulations.  If your bank normally sends you letters for something, then one day you get a FedEx envelope with a letter in it, you may want to ask yourself why.  Is it possible it could be to avoid mail-fraud issues?  Probably not, but it bears considering.

Am I exaggerating the issue?  No.  Here’s where the other frightening bit comes in:  Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) made it clear on the floor of the House of Representatives what is at stake. He believes that Congress is actually de-establishing the Post Office.  Check out this article on Democracy Now.

The bottom line here is that not only is a private mail service a bad idea financially for all of us, but it erodes even more of our constitutional protections.  What makes this even more abhorrent is that it is being manufactured and directed by our elected leaders in contravention of the U.S. Constitution.  We the people need to stop this now.  Congress needs to change the law to allow the USPS to fund its retirement and benefits funds as everyone else does and it needs to change the laws so that the USPS can at least break even.  Drop these idiotic and destructive requirements.  If we don’t get this fixed soon, we will lose the last pseudo-secure option we have for communication.

Aurora Colorado and Honesty about Guns

It’s time for a little honesty.

On July 20th, 2012, a young man walked into a late night screening of the latest Batman movie at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, killed 12 people, injured 70 others and walked outside to get into his car where he was arrested by police.  He leaves broken families, broken hearts, and broken dreams in his wake.  Now the questions start:  how did it happen?  Who is at fault?  Who can we blame?

Now I’m watching a news conference where public officials and police are congratulating each other for a great job.  While I’m sure they all were very heroic, based on what I’ve seen and heard in the reporting, the police were not involved in ending the shooting or preventing any of the deaths inside the theater.

I’m thinking it’s time to lay it all out and see if we can make sense of it all and see if there is a solution that will work.  The only way to get to a solution that can actually work is to look at this with honesty, so here goes:

In 2010, there were around 309 million people in the United States₍₁₎.  There are somewhere in the region of 270 million guns in the United States₍₂₎.  Since 1999, 19.79 Billion movie tickets were sold in the United States₍₃₎.  Being honest about this requires that we acknowledge that when 20 billion people go to movies over 13 years, and that during that entire time twelve people are killed by violence at movie theaters, it does not require changes to gun laws to make them harder to own and get.  Why not, you ask?  Let’s take an honest look at the situation.

In 2010, 8,775 people were killed by firearms₍₄₎.  That is tragic.  The loss of any life is devastating. However, honesty requires us to do the math:

8775 (gun deaths in 2010) divided by 309,000,000 (population of the US in 2010)

This means that less than 3 thousandths of a percent of the population was killed by guns in 2010 (keep in mind that 1 percent of 309,000,000 is over 3 million people).

In 2010, the NHTSA reports 32,885 people were killed in automobile accidents₍₅₎.  That’s four times as many as guns, although that still represents 1 one-hundredth of a percent of the population

The CDC reports that 443,000 people die from smoking and second-hand smoke every year₍₆₎.  That’s 50 times the rate of gun deaths.  Now that’s a lot of people, right?  Well, not really compared to the total number of folks alive in the US.  It’s still only .14 percent of the population.

More perspective?  Over the course of your life, you have a 1-in-5 chance of dying from heart disease, a 1-in-7 chance of dying from cancer, a 1-in-100 chance of dying in a car accident, a 1-in-246 chance of dying from falling down.  You have a higher chance of dying from suicide than you do from firearm violence.  You are 10 times more likely to die of an accidental injury as from firearm assault₍₇₎.

So if all of this is true, then why is it that every time a shooting happens, we hear that guns should be banned.  Why don’t we hear calls to ban automobiles?  Why not make cigarettes illegal altogether instead of just taxing the poo out of them?  Why isn’t movement outside of the safety of our beds banned?

Ok, so now for more honesty:  A few minutes ago, I heard a reporter say that there have been 27 ‘mass’ shootings since the 1999 Columbine attack_{(Fox News Channel – 7/20/2012 – no source given)}.  Chicago nearly equaled the violence of the theater shooting over the Memorial Day weekend with 10 dead and more than 40 injured in gun violence.  If you include homicides that did not include guns, 21 people were killed in Chicago alone ₍₈₎.

You may be surprised to learn that there is more gun crime in places with more gun laws.  Illinois has some of the toughest laws on the books.  Chicago is even more restrictive than the rest of Illinois.  However, for some reason Chicago is rampant with shootings.  Same thing with Philadelphia – Pennsylvania has fairly liberal gun laws, but Philly heavily restricts those freedoms.  Both Chicago and Philly are extremely dangerous places, gun-wise.  Why is it that St. Louis gun violence per-capita is lower than East St. Louis, just right across the river in Illinois?  Tiny East St. Louis had two murders and 3 other shootings following a ‘Stop the Violence’ rally Memorial Day weekend₍₉₎.

Some more honesty:  Did you know that in Chinese grade schools, 51 people (mostly children) were killed and 207 injured in attacks in the last 10 years?  Did you know that none of these attacks was done with guns?  In one of these attacks, the killer killed 12 people and injured 5 with a machete₍₁₀₎.  They involved knives, meat cleavers, machetes, gasoline, hammers… it seems that in the absence of guns, people will still kill each other.

So this brings us to the real meat:  What would have stopped this idiot in Colorado?  We know exactly what the result of a disarmed citizenry is, so we can discard that option first:  12 people dead and nearly 70 injured.  We know that if you have a room full of disarmed people and someone comes in and wants to kill them, whether with a gun or a machete or a meat cleaver, that there isn’t much that can be done to prevent it.  That’s what happened in this case. 

So if disarming isn’t the solution, what is?  More gun laws?  Remember, we’re trying to be honest, now:  There are currently more than 20,000 gun laws on the books nation-wide₍₁₁₎.  Gun laws do not stop gun crime.  By definition, a criminal is someone who commits a crime.  If someone wants to kill another human being and makes the decision to do it, more gun laws won’t prevent the murder any more than a sign saying ‘no swimming’ will keep kids who really want to swim from swimming.  If laws and signs could stop crime, there would be no crime.  In the case of murder, the laws may change the method, but ultimately the penalty for committing murder is worse than the penalty for using a gun or a machete, so the gun is only the tool used to do the more serious crime.

What about banning guns?  If this is your choice, you should consider moving to another country.  Utterly banning guns is not an option in the United States:  The 2^nd amendment gives the citizens the right to be armed.  Most politicians seem to think that the next best thing is to make more laws.  Making it harder to get a gun is what usually is suggested.  We know that this shooter spent months buying his guns, stockpiling ammo and whatever.  We know he had no criminal history.  He was legally able to own firearms.  Would more laws have stopped him?  Only if you believe that a kid really won’t run away from home because he was told he isn’t allowed to cross the street.

Ok, so more laws won’t work.  Banning guns won’t work.  What will?  More police?  Can we afford that?  Especially when you consider that out of the 300+ million people in this country, less than 9,000 are likely to die from gun violence?  How many police would be needed to ‘up’ visibility by 100%?  Is that enough?  Do we need 10 times as many police?  100 times?  This is like saying that since the fire department can’t stop all fires, we need 100 times as many firemen.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach people to deal with fires so you only need the firemen for the really BAD fires?  If we treated house fires the way we treat guns, a house burning down would lead to laws making it harder to get and use fire, not requirements to learn how to use an extinguisher.

Ultimately, then this is the solution to the gun problem.  The current solution is to affect the lives of the innocent.  We need to shift that focus to affect the lives of the guilty.  Unofficially ‘deputize’ the public through training, common sense laws that allow law-abiding citizens to carry legally owned firearms anywhere (no exceptions) and harsh, mandatory penalties for people who commit crimes.  You may not like guns.  You may not like to even consider guns.  But for just a moment, imagine these scenes:

-       Scenario 1:  A young man is considering attacking a crowded theater with guns and smoke grenades.  His plan has a lot of variables.  Will anyone in the crowd be armed?  If he thinks it’s a possibility, it complicates his plan.  So he wears body armor.  When he comes in and begins shooting, the crowd realizes that it is NOT a stunt.  In that crowd, nobody is armed.  The shooter is able to kill people with impunity.  Nobody will stop him.  He fires so many rounds that it may take days or weeks to figure out how many shots were fired.  The police arrive 2 minutes after the shooting starts, but still aren’t able to stop him until he is getting into his car in the parking lot.

-       Scenario 2:  A young man is considering attacking a crowded theater with guns and smoke grenades.  His plan has a lot of variables.  Will anyone in the crowd be armed?  If he thinks it’s a possibility, it complicates his plan.  So he wears body armor.  When he comes in and begins shooting, the crowd realizes that it is NOT a stunt.  In that crowd are 5 to 10 people carrying legal firearms they are trained to use.  The shooter doesn’t know who the people are that have guns.  Since the training of the armed citizens includes knowledge of body armor, at least one of the armed citizens fires, hitting him in the head, killing the shooter, saving many people.

Or what about this one:

-       Scenario 1:  A group of terrorists board airplanes and partway into the flights pull out knives and take over the aircraft to crash them into buildings.  The terrorists kill several passengers and flight crew, and take over the aircraft.  The passengers on one of the planes try to re-take the plane and fail.  Over 3000 people are killed in the aircraft and in buildings.

-       Scenario 2:  A group of terrorists board airplanes and partway into the flights pull out knives and guns and attempt to take over the aircraft to crash them into buildings.  On board each aircraft are several citizens legally carrying their personal firearms.  The terrorists don’t know who has a gun or if anyone does.  The citizens draw their fire-arms and open fire, killing the terrorists and saving the aircraft.

Some of you may be saying that there is a third scenario for the above events, so in the interest of honesty, here it is: 

Let’s assume that the citizens who are armed in my scenarios above fail to bring down the people threatening their lives.  What would be different about the outcome from what actually happened?  Probably virtually nothing.  The planes would still have been flown into the towers, the Pentagon and that Pennsylvania field.  The 12 people who died in the theater, probably would still have died.  The difference is that if the citizenry was armed, there is at least a CHANCE that the passengers on those planes, the people in those buildings, the folks at the Pentagon and some of the movie-goers in Colorado would have survived. 

So honestly, what’s the downside?

Doug Fitler

US Air Force Retired

References:

1.    http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb10-cn93.html

2.    http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/us-world-firearms-idUSL2834893820070828

3.    http://www.the-numbers.com/market/

4.    http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state

5.    http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

6.    http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/aag/osh.htm

7.    http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html

8.    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/29/chicago-shootings-10-dead_n_1552297.html

9.    http://www.kmov.com/news/local/East-St-Louis-erupt-154880015.html

10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_related_to_primary_schools

11. http://www.saf.org/default.asp?p=gunrights_faq