Looking at Democrats for 2020: Part 1

I know it has been a while since I've written here. I've been thinking a lot about politics lately and about how much I feel the need to get involved with the 2020 Presidential process. I want to make the time to look into this ever growing field of candidates. I want to really dig in and start the process of figuring out who I support most and who I have serious reservations about. This year the initial debates will have criteria for admission and one of the ways candidates can get on the stage is to gain grassroots donations. I want to figure out who best represents my values and who I want to support financially on their journey.

So here is the project. Every week or so I will determine a set of criteria before I start research. I will put it at the top of the post. Then I will randomize the list of current democratic candidates and start researching from top to bottom. Each will be given points based on the criteria I lay out for that week. At the end there will also be a ranking of cumulative points. What does this mean? I'm not sure yet but it strikes me as fun and a way for me to start thinking about these candidates over the coming months as we head towards the debate season.

So... we are going to start out slow here. I don't expect candidates to have it all figured out right now. I don't expect them to agree with me on how to fix things yet. Right now I want to see that they are committed, communicative, and are aware of many of the issues that matter to me. Candidates who don't find it easy to navigate the website to statements about issues will be at a disadvantage this week but this is my system and so I'm basing it on what I want to see. Feel free to make your own system if you don't think the candidates are getting a fair shake.

Committed:

1 pt for having launched an exploratory committee OR 2 pts for having officially announced.

Communicative:

1 pt for having a campaign website
1 pt for the website having a clear issues section
1 pt for having 2 methods to contact the campaign listed on the website

Awareness of Issues:

1 pt for Climate Change.
1 pt for multiple disadvantaged demographics mentioned distinctly
1 pt for healthcare
1 pt for voting rights and voting issues
1 pt for immigration
1 pt for foreign policy
1 pt for wealth disparity issues
1 pt for corruption
1 pt for taxes
1 pt for education
1 pt for police accountability
1 pt for gun safety

Total Points Possible This Week: 17

Random order of currently announced candidates at the time of this writing: Warren, Gabbard, Yang, Harris, Williamson, Castro, Klobuchar, Sanders, Booker, Delaney, Buttigieg.
*Ojeda not included because his website states that he is suspending his campaign.

Since these standards are pretty straightforward I'm going to just list the standards that they don't meet for this first week. This part may change as the standards for getting points in my system change.

Elizabeth Warren - 13 Points Awarded this week

Barely Qualifies:
- Climate Change: Makes only brief mention of Green New Deal and as a foreign policy concern
- Healthcare: Brief mention of Medicare for All and military benefits
- Education: Brief mention of Student Loan Debt and military benefits

Missing:
- Multiple Disadvantaged Demographics Distinctly: Race is mentioned a few times both African American and people of color. The only other group that almost gets partial credit in the issues section is "Workers" which for my purposes is not sufficiently distinct especially considering all the different type of folks that have concerns that could have also been mentioned.

- Immigration

- Police Accountability: While she does mention demilitarizing the police and she mentions generically "holding everyone accountable" when they break the law the connection to holding the police accountable specifically is not sufficiently clear to grant the point.

- Gun Safety

Tulsi Gabbard - 4 Points Awarded this week

Missing:
- Issues section of website and thus issues statements

Andrew Yang - 15 points Awarded this week

Barely Qualifies:

- Voting Rights: Wants to modernize voting by having voting via mobile phones and the block chain. I'm trying to not get into agreements or disagreements with the candidates at this stage but this, to me, does not show a sufficient understanding of the problem.

Missing:

- Wealth Disparity: While he advocates for redistributive policies, I'm not sure he sees the extreme disparity itself as a problem.

- Police Accountability

Kamala Harris - 4 points Awarded this week

Missing:

- Issues section of website and thus issues statements

Marianne Williamson - 15 points Awarded this week

Missing:

- immigration

- police accountability

Julian Castro - 4 points Awarded this week

Missing:

- Issues section of website and thus issues statements

Amy Klobuchar - 4 points Awarded this week

Missing:

- Issues section of website and thus issues statements

Bernie Sanders - 3 points Awarded this week

Missing:

- One option for contacting the campaign

- Issues section of website and thus issues statements

Cory Booker - 4 points Awarded this week

Barely:

- Contact methods: Social media icons are very small 

Missing:

- Issues section of website and thus issues statements

John Delaney - 15 points Awarded this week

Barely Qualifies:

- Disadvantaged groups. References financially depressed communities, women and youth in very isolated ways. Has a general statement for all Americans regardless of race, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation or heritage. 

Missing:

- wealth disparity

- police accountability

Pete Buttigieg - 3 points Awarded this week

Missing:
- Official Announcement: Buttigieg currently has only launched an exploratory committee
- Issues section of website and thus issues statements

Points Totals: 

(By total first, then alphabetically by last name)

Delaney - 15 points
Williamson - 15 points
Yang - 15 Points
Warren - 13 Points
Booker - 4 points
Castro - 4 points
Gabbard - 4 Points
Harris - 4 points
Klobuchar - 4 points
Buttigieg - 3 points
Sanders - 3 points

Takeaways:

It seems that I have over-estimated the amount of easily navigable policy information that would be available on the candidate's websites. Top points go to three of the underdogs. The highest scorer among the bigger names in the race at this point is Warren. It will be interesting to think about what I want to look for next week in the campaigns given this disparity in how the campaigns present information or don't present information.

Response to a friend on how he feels by the word feminism

Sometimes acknowledging that a thing is distracting is the best way to let it stop distracting you. The word is distracting to you, but you have a choice about whether it remains distracting.

I see these things as a pendulum. And as a sense of perspective.

On the pendulum front it is that in order for things to truly get to a place of equality that means the middle of the bell curve needs to be at 50/50. Which to me means that the easiest way to approximate that is that for every space that is purely patriarchal there needs to be a space that is purely matriarchal and similar proportions of spaces at levels of skew less intense but not 50/50. Until we get that the society is patriarchal. I think that when I've seen this achieved in micro scale it is when the pendulum of power at a local level shifts from one side to the other back and forth until it lands in the middle. We have a society that is so patriarchal that I don't think it will ever be allowed to swing far enough towards feminism that there can be a correction towards the middle. And so in that context I think that something that is "against patriarchy" being called "feminism" to mean the eventual goal of being equal makes sense.

This brings me to perspective. As a white person I've been working very hard to understand what it means to be white and how that has impacted my perspective. I only really see how toxic and skewed my perspective is on this front when I hang out with several people of color at the same time or with a person of color who feels safe enough to call me all my bullshit or call society on its bullshit in my presence. Many of their complaints can be felt on a few levels. On the first level a white person who is stuck in that perspective can either say "Of course but this should be true for everyone." or they can say "I don't see this as a big deal." When I am able to delve into the level of toxicity of how the power ascribed to whiteness has seeped down to the core of this society I can actually feel the harm that the latter seemingly minor things cause and I can understand how truly ridiculous it is the contradictions involved in the white discourse among the major things. Unfortunately I still find it incredibly difficult to express that understanding and even to hold onto it as I leave the presence of my friends of color. One training I went to called it the water we all swim in. And we swim in so much sludge and have for so long that we don't even see it.

Side joke so that makes sense: An old fish swims by some younger fish and says "how's the water today?" and the younger fish ask "what's water?" Sometimes things are so infused that we can't even see them without real effort. 

I feel the same thing about feminism. The patriarchy is the same way and it is very difficult to see it at the deeper level. The things you expressed for your views that make you a feminist could be at one of two levels. If they are at the obvious level it is likely that you can't understand how anyone feels differently and why this is even still a conversation we need to be having. If it were at a deeper level I think the word feminism would make more sense.

I believe there is a combat. Not between individuals but between ideologies. It happens along the gender line and it happens along the race line and it happens along the socio-economic line. The socio-economic one is the one that I feel has done the best job of stating the fight as I've seen it. "They only call it class warfare when we fight back." This can be applied to all the power structures. When we call it "race wars" it is when people of color get pushed by the bullshit to the point where they feel there is no other option. I think that feminism is the same way and why you feel somewhat attacked.

I also believe that it is not a dichotomy but a spectrum. I see the toxic water kinda being like those airport sidewalks. And the direction they go is the defaults of power. So in the absence of other actions we head towards patriarchy, white power, and a strong believe that the people with money all earned what they have and the poor are lazy. (among other things) When we start realizing that we are on a moving platform in society and that we are heading the wrong direction the first step is to turn around. The next step is to notice that we are moving away from the goal. And the final step is to start moving in the right direction.

Moving in the right direction though may not be enough if the rate of the moving sidewalk is faster than the rate of walking. Not only might we not get there or even stay put we might still be moving in the wrong direction. It can be super frustrating to be judged by your negative progress on this moving sidewalk, especially when you are actively moving in the opposite direction. But there will be people that do that because unless we get people to not just turn around and start moving and start putting in real movement nothing will change.

Personal Reflection on Racial Bias through the Book "The Ear, The Eye and The Arm"

Recently I read the book The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer. It is children's literature but it holds up well for adults as well. There are children who go out for adventure, learn about the world, become stronger in the process, and it is just all in all awesome.

What I want to talk about, though, is my personal struggle and experience through the book. This book is set in Zimbabwe. It very clearly delineates the people of English descent, so it should be a trivial matter for me to conceptualize correctly the racial images of the characters of this book.

The truth is that it was not a trivial matter at all. I didn't even recognize the problem until I was half way done with the book. I was visualizing all of the characters as white. This is ridiculous, and illustrates how messed up the subconscious can be. In order to make the characters more understandable to me, I visualized them as white. I was horrified when I realized that that is what I had been doing.

I took some time away from reading, just sitting there, thinking about the characters. I tried to recontextualize them in my head. Meditate on more accurate pictures of who they really were. Interestingly as well, I did not have a hard time conceptualizing the characters with body deformities. I probably under estimated She Elephant's size, but the detectives were deformed, which is how they got their names. I had no problem thinking about Arm's long arms when his character came to the page. Part of that might have been the fact that the name gave me a clue but to have no problem at all with it and find race so paralyzing felt revealing to me.

As I continued through the book. I tried really hard to keep race in mind, just so that I would visualize the characters correctly. It was actually very difficult. I had to stop myself frequently to recontextualize the characters and the story. This isn't for lack of writing skill either. I knew the whole time that the story was in Africa. There are frequent reminders of the culture, climate, and other aspects of the area.

I guess for me this post is about coming clean and reflecting on this challenge. I don't really want or need to talk to others about this. To burden others with my story, especially when they have to deal with the realities of people of color not being taken seriously on a daily basis. What I walked away form the book with, among other things actually related to the story, was that if I am working this hard and struggling this much and still failing, our society is seriously messed up in this regard. Many have called me a social justice warrior. I go out of my way to try to understand different people's experiences, to try to check my privilege and stop being an asshat. I am already deeply disturbed by the racial disparities in society. I put a lot of energy into this and have for years. And I was defeated by the exercise of visualizing african protagonist children as black in a children's book. Reflecting on this I feel like I've been climbing down a cliff to understand the depths and I just got a glimpse of the distance down this cliff. Just enough of a glimpse to know that it is impossibly deeper than I can possibly imagine.

In other news, for this article I had to look up the author's name because I suck at that. And I ran across her blog and a blog post about the book and why it can't become a movie. I'm just going to put that here: http://www.nancyfarmerwebsite.com/blog/movie-option

Anyway, this isn't the best writing I've ever done, but I'm sick and this has been bugging me for a while and I just wanted to put this out there and come clean about it. I am definitely adding this book to the list of books to come back to every few years. I'll probably seek out more work by this author as well.

Stop Bullying Elizabeth Warren

It seems everywhere I turn in the realm of progressive politics I am exhorted to join the mass of folks pressuring Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts, to run for president in 2016. I have a lot of respect for Senator Warren and if she wanted to run I would likely support her. She has stated repeatedly however that she is not running. It is severely disrespectful to continue badgering her on this point for several reasons.

Bullying Senator Elizabeth Warren disrespects her current power and goals. A quick scan through her wikipedia page reveals she has always cared about policies that effect ordinary Americans, particularly policies around finances and financial reform. This focus makes her attractive to the average person as a candidate for president but the average person doesn't know what the president does or what Senator Warren does on a day-to-day basis.

Senator Warren is on the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Within that she is on the Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development, the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, and the Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment. She knows what she cares about. She knows where her power lies. She has more power to change the things that she cares about where she's at than she would ever have as president. If you like her policy concerns, trust her to serve where she has the greatest power to fight for those concerns.

Bullying Senator Elizabeth Warren disrespects her judgement of her strengths and weaknesses. The office of the president is a very diverse job. Senator Warren, while very good at what she does, has not been a politician very long. During that time she has been very focused on the issues that she understands the best and that she is most passionate about. Do we know anything about how she would be in the other aspects of the presidency though. Do we have any idea what her foreign policy choices would be? She gets a lot of attention for her strengths but if she doesn't think she knows enough to take on the full responsibility of the presidency, I trust her judgment on that.

Bullying Senator Elizabeth Warren disrespects her choice on whether she wants to deal with the misogyny that will come from being the first female president. I don't know whether this concern is among the reasons why she doesn't want to run but I do know that racial tension has been on the rise under Obama. Part of this is because there are some folk who are angry there is a black man in the white house. Part of this is because there are some folk that think that because we have a black president that racism is dead and they don't need to worry about it any more. Part of it is because racism is still very much alive and Obama can't address these issues himself without losing political power he'd rather devote to other things. I don't see any reason why the same won't be true when we get our first female president. Issues affecting women will be things that either she would have to shy away from, or she would have to spend too much energy and political capital to make any headway on. As a woman, I'm not looking forward to this. Being president is hard enough. I will not bully someone with institutional disadvantage to put themselves in this position, though I will support them if they want to run and I believe they'll do a good job.

Bullying Senator Elizabeth Warren disrespects the power of the word "no." She is a grown woman who can make her own choices. I'm very uncomfortable with the fact that so many "progressives" are not taking "no" for an answer. This is coercive and disrespects her agency. Is this the message you want to tell your daughters. She may have ideas of what she wants to do but none of that really matters because people will pester her and pester her to do something else unceasingly.

With this I'm going to sign off. This issue has made me angry enough that I just needed to get my thoughts out in a place where I can just post a link whenever I see this bullying behavior and be done with it. Feel free to share your own thoughts about this in the comments.

How Starting Interactions Based on Difference is Problematic: A Reflection

You all probably know that I think a lot about privilege and oppression. You probably also know that I think a lot about harassment and intrusions on space. Lately, due to personal experiences, I've been thinking a lot about the sub-conscious nature of these intrusions and their relation to systems of privilege and oppression. So this post will be mostly story time and reflections and we think about how we interact with strangers and why we make the choices we make.

Recently I injured my back and then my foot in rapid succession. The result was that I was walking with a walking boot and crutches and often awkwardly. As a point of reference I tend to dress in a way to be as un-noticeable and/or standoff-ish as possible because I find comments from strangers to be highly unpleasant. This new and obvious difference changed everything though. Because I was now different I was stared at all the time. Additionally strangers felt the need to come up and talk to me about my health and my injury and how I got it. One man walked all the way across an empty field to talk to me about it, while I was sitting by a lake listening to a podcast with earbuds in. All of this seemed very strange to me.

Around this same time, I went home for my nephew's birthday. As a point of reference he is an 11-year-old white male in a relatively conservative small town with a relatively homogeneous population. He and I have a relationship of going for walks and I didn't want to let him down due to my foot so we walked to the extent I was able. What I found interesting was the comfort he felt in taking up auditory space while out on the walk. As an example, he yelled across a busy street at a man complimenting him on his dog. None of his outbursts were intended to be disrespectful, but they made me very uncomfortable and I didn't really know what to do.

It was very eye-opening to see this experience and try to understand it from the perspective of my nephew. He is lonely and wants to connect with his community. I know this because when we go out to eat he tends to know the waitress' name and talk with her as though she is a family friend. He likes to make connections with people but he doesn't necessarily know how or when and he doesn't know that sometimes people don't have that same reciprocal interest.

I realized that in many of the cases of people breaking through and engaging with me about my injury, it was coming from this same core value. A sense of connection. A sense of warding away loneliness. It is a part of humanity that I don't really value or understand but it is widespread enough that it should be considered as a thing that exists. Unfortunately it also has a very dark side to it.

The first thing to note is that when people approached me, I might have been the only person they approached so they didn't see it as a big deal. It was just a single interaction. It isn't like they go up to everyone they meet and pester everyone with questions or whatever. It was just a single time of trying to interact. The problem with that though is they singled me out based on a difference that they felt they could comment on. This results in a disproportionate amount of attention going to me while injured than me while uninjured. The average person will significantly fewer of these interactions. Perhaps if they were evenly distributed it wouldn't be so bad... but they aren't.

In reality people don't roll a die to determine who they will talk to. They talk to someone that they can think of something to say to. This means that there will be some display of a similarity or difference or something that they can comment on. This will result in certain populations getting a disproportionate amount of attention.

At the moment we are still only focused on the folk who are doing this with the best of intentions. The result however is that people with disabilities, people with children, people who are especially attractive or unattractive, and minorities are likely to have way more interactions of this sort than the average person. This constitutes way more of a person's social energy and time than the average person would think that it would when they embark on this intrusion.

The real dark side comes though when you combine that with the systems of privilege and oppression. The sense that women are public property. The sense that parents need advice. The sense that people in religious dress are oppressed. The sense that people of size need advice. All of the senses of racism that run rampant through our culture that I can't even begin to elaborate on and not completely change the topic of this post. And on and on through all of the other societal issues that exist. These issues mean that what would otherwise be just a statistically greater annoyance than average now gains the random possibility that someone is being ignorantly offensive or actively hostile to the mix of other intrusions.

It is these many layers put together that make me so passionate about the topics of street harassment and the concept of space. I still have a lot to work on myself with the space aspect. A big part of that is that due to my autism, I spent way too much time growing up not taking up enough space. Understanding myself and the gifts I can bring to situations really gave me the confidence to start being more truly present. The problem was then that I took up too much space. Space management is something that we all can work on. Making sure that quiet voices are heard. Making sure that we are authentically present but also only taking up our share of the current space.

What do you think?

Are you someone who talks to random strangers? What sorts of interactions do you have? Who do you tend to start these interactions with? Do you notice a pattern?

Do people interact with you or leave you alone? Do you like it that way or wish it was different?

I'm kinda working on a theory that if the well-meaning portion of this has to do with people being lonely, if there is some sort of way we can make these potentially positive interactions more evenly distributed. I'd be interested in hearing any thoughts you have on this front as well.

My Line in the Sand against Fat Shaming

"Smoking is ALWAYS unhealthy and it involves a substance that theoretically could be completely removed from the person's life. It also harms other people besides the person doing the activity.

Eating is something that EVERYONE must do in order to survive and doing so harms no one except for potentially the person doing the eating."


I started writing this response to a Facebook friend who had posted a picture with the following words:

"Tell a smoker that smoking is unhealthy and no one bats an eye. Tell a fat person that being fat is unhealthy and everybody loses their minds."

It seemed to me that I was not losing my mind, but rather that I was thinking remarkably clearly and synthesizing much of the information that I have gained in my life. It seemed like now was the time to bring it all together into a post that would articulate all my ideas on the matter. It came out better than I expected so I decided to make it a writing project, clean it up, and post it here.

Physical manifestation of weight is not always an indicator of health, though it is one indicator for medical professionals to look at. Average people think they know what is going on by looking at a person but in reality they have no idea unless they are close with the person or have studied it for a decade.

Many people would think that my partner is obese. The truth is that the way he carries his muscles makes him look that way. You wouldn't want to get in a fight with him however. It would feel like fighting a bear. I know about him because I am close. I see what he eats, I see the workouts he does, and I've seen the raw power. That wouldn't stop people from judging him for eating a doughnut in public. That doesn't stop him from getting a complex thinking that anything that Americans eat too much of in general are issues he has himself. He has made himself unwell before by inadvertently cutting too much salt or too much cholesterol.
Bodies are diverse, why can't we accept that?

In some industries and contexts the person on the far right would be seen as overweight. In most contexts the person on the far left would get comments or glares for what she eats in public.

Evidence is still out on the harms of fat. It is a question for scientific debate and research it is not a topic for hounding average citizens that aren't harming anyone besides maybe themselves.   
 
"Relative to normal weight, both obesity (all grades) and grades 2 and 3 obesity were associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality. Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality. The use of predefined standard BMI groupings can facilitate between-study comparisons."

As a translation, this means that people who are "overweight" are actually more likely to survive. People who are "grade 1 obese" are equally likely to survive. The only people who have statistically increased chance of mortality are those in grade 2 and 3 obesity.


Additionally, in the cases where being obese is to an extent and style that does cause health problems, there also needs to be psychological research work done to figure out how to best help these people. Like I said it is different from smoking because a person who smokes could just stop the activity altogether and not die. I believe this difference is the cause of the phenomenon discussed in this article on the effects of fat shaming.


In the society we live in right now most of us have big problems that are too big to face alone. In order to feel good about ourselves we judge others and this needs to stop. We need to start seeing everyone's struggles as interconnected. In a country with insufficient health care, combined with increased economic stress, commuting stress, and demands on our time in a go-go-go world, it is no surprise that our population is not healthy in a large variety of ways. The thing is that people who have a problem tend to know they have a problem. They tend to know how much it is hurting them. Pointing this out does no one any good.

Solutions would be helpful if we had them. The truth is though that we don't have them for many of these issues. Obesity for instance. We can't even agree on what health is, much less talk about healthy sustainable ways to approach it. Many of the ideas that people have had in this regard end up being harmful and I think that obese people have a right to seem skeptical when your plan seems either to be quackery, unbalanced, or not accessible to the necessities of our modern life. That skepticism can actually be good for them as many have been harmed by these methods or inconsistent pursuit of tactics that are inconsistent with their required lived experience. 

At the end of the day, unless you are the person's doctor and are willing to put in the time to get the background of their lifestyle and set up something that will work for them, you are not doing anyone any favors. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

It seems pretty logical to me: if you don't pay for things, you can't have them.  If you don't pay for your bridges to be maintained, they eventually fall apart.  If you vote for lower taxes every time the opportunity comes up, the amount of money that your community has to provide critical infrastructure decreases.

If you vote against all your transportation levies, your area will no longer be able to provide good support for transportation.  The number of bus routes that your community can feasibly support goes down and your service will degrade.

If you vote against all your educational levies, your area will not be able to provide materials that schools require, such as new textbooks, technical equipment, or pay for additional teachers when there is growth in the area.  Your extra-curricular programs such as music and art will get cut because they aren't central to the mission of teaching math and english.  Maybe you have enough money to provide support for these extra items for your children but the quality of your community as a whole will degrade because the children on average will lose opportunities to learn and grow.  It is not financially prudent to do these items individually, as they are more economical to provide in appropriately subdivided groups.  It is simple economics that you spend less raw money as a community if you take care of your children in groups together.

You can complain that the government is not using your tax money efficiently.  Please, do.  Help them find ways to use it more efficiently.  I'm sure that they would welcome any input you have on using the funds more effectively if it actually results in better service on less funds. But complaining about corruption and fixing the corruption are two different things. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, after all.

Members of the transportation department have a pretty good incentive to use your tax money wisely.  While some parts of the government may indeed be unlikely to get seriously cut for mismanagement, transportation departments that don't provide service that their communities value will lose funding. These people have plenty of motivation to use your money wisely, to keep the bus drivers and maintainers and road workers from getting laid off.  If you as a community decide not to fund public transportation or reduce funding, all these people lose their jobs.  So questioning their capitalist motivations and accusing them of relying on cushy government jobs is not going to get you very far.

None of us could get to work the jobs we do without some sort of transportion department.  It isn't reasonable to expect a modern society to provide the quality of life we enjoy without the ability to deliver goods and people beyond walking distance. Mass transportation is required to allow us to have all the things we take for granted every day, such as toilet paper and cereal and shoes.  We have to pay for road building and maintenance in order to make our society run.

So before you complain about your taxes, please consider that you wouldn't even have your job to pay your taxes without the society you live in providing the critical infrastructure necessary for your job to even exist.  And if this isn't true for you because you live in a commune and make your own shoes and milk and card sheep for wool and so forth - if you're reading this article on the internet, the internet itself wouldn't exist without community infrastructure.

Perhaps some day communities will be able to be truly self-sufficient with solar power and we can all move to a futuristic Star Trek world where things just work and everyone can survive without paying in to a central organization to manage infrastructure for the whole society, but we're not there yet and pretending we are because we want to believe that is the way it ought to be isn't going to keep our schools funded and our bridges from crashing down around us.

Vaccination is NOT Eugenics

I saw a post on the internet today that left me completely incensed.

Here it is.

Bill Gates is not in favor of eugenics, and his efforts to promote vaccine use also have nothing to do with eugenics. This is tin hat talk initiated by people who are either afraid of things they don't understand, or want to blame for the problems of the world on people who have the wealth and power to make vaccines possible.

Vaccines save lives and have improved the quality of life in the US over the last century by massive amounts, which is why Gates promotes them to 3rd world countries. Improving the quality of people's lives has a direct effect on the happiness and stability of citizen's lives, which in turn leads to better and more responsible family planning, which leads to an end result of less population growth. That is what he is going for with this statement, and interpreting it as anything else is purely malicious. Five minutes of research are sufficient to debunk this notion.

Here is some explanation of how he feels about vaccines.

It is wrong-headed to claim that people who promote vaccines are trying to _kill_ people, and it is maliciously incorrect. Vaccines have nothing to do with eugenics. They directly correlate with improved quality of life for children and adults around the globe.

If we truly are concerned about the safety of vaccines, we should be fully funding the FDA and sending in oversight teams to promote the safe development of all vaccines. Instead, we waste our time spitting on the morality of people who invest in the development of a technology whose sole point is to make lives better. I'm ashamed of the internet today.

The end result of a WAR ON VACCINES is NO VACCINES. Is that really what anyone wants? A return to a time when diseases rampaged because we had no defenses? Where your innate genetic defenses, or the fact that you happened to live with COWS leads to your survival, and people around you dying?

So stop the war on vaccines. If you don't think that our current vaccines are safe, clamor loudly to your senators and representatives for safe research! But you don't get to say (or imply) "ALL VACCINES ARE EVIL" or "PEOPLE WHO FUND VACCINATION HAVE EVIL MOTIVES" if the end result of "NO VACCINES" is a result you aren't willing to live with.

As far as I can tell, the anti-vaccination crowd has put scientific researchers into an impossible situation. Anti-vaccination literature says that vaccines cause all sorts of harms that there is absolutely no scientific research to support. All the positive research done by scientists is thrown out the window because of anecdotal evidence that is completely unverifiable. No court of law would grant a conviction on the kind of evidence that these people are putting out. If you don't like vaccination, put your science on, and do some quantitative research. Numbers or GTFO.

What I am, and What I'm Not

I have a confession to make.

I'm an atheist. And yes, I suppose that some people might say that by the way they define god, there is no way that I could make the determination that there certainly wasn't one, logically speaking. And that argument has some weight, but I also can't, for example, tell for absolutely certain that there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. So I'm pretty much fine with the label "Atheist".

But you know what labels I'm not fine with? Morally bankrupt, or unprincipled, or one who believes in nothing. Religion does not have the market cornered on ethical behaviors. People in the USA, especially fundamental religious people, are so fond of saying that America is morally bankrupt because of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Well, I have nothing to say about sex or rock and roll, and I'm not even certain that I entirely agree that America is all that immoral, but if we are?

You want to know why I think America could be considered morally bankrupt? We have outsourced our values to Christian radio talk show hosts and politicians. For thousands of years societies have been in a constant state of re-evaluation about what it means to be alive, and to live a good, moral, ethical life. We have the writings of so many different people across nations and millennia to learn from, to learn how to behave ethically, and we revert to having morality spoon-fed to us by someone else rather than thinking for ourselves. Shame on us for being so inordinately lazy.

We stand on the shoulders of giants scientifically but from an ethical standpoint we define ourselves by the cultural values held by one set of peoples from two thousand years ago. People who question whether those values might be right are ridiculed. People who question whether the beliefs of those people are right are shamed. People who suggest that other such beliefs be part of a public school education so that students understand other cultures end up regretting it six ways from Sunday.

I refused to be shamed anymore. I refuse to be forced to be lazy. I refuse to let one religion, even if it is the dominant religion in my culture, define my entire viewpoint and morals and what I consider to be ethical behavior. It is my right, my privilege, and my duty to question and learn and change.

What about you?

---

Now, I'm not suggesting that this is true of every religious person. And I think Rose can come and defend the good people who believe in our dominant religion and not being put into a mold. But I think it is true enough of enough people that it is time I come out and explain why I won't be ridiculed for my beliefs.

On Modern Sacraments and Religious Freedom

I would like to start with a personal memory. When I was young I would sometimes go to church with my maternal grandma. She was a devout Episcopalian. My sister and I would color in the pews and play with the kneeling bench during the service. As I got older my grandma would invite me up to receive a blessing. I didn't understand why I couldn't have a cracker and drink out of the cup like she did. I knew that it wasn't that I was a child as there were children younger than me who got crackers. Eventually as I grew older, and understood better the sacraments, I started understanding what was going on. I was not part of the community in that sense because I had not been baptized. I came to respect this position though my perspectives lean clearly on the side of anabaptism.

Baptism isn't really the sacrament that I am here to discuss. Communion isn't really the focus of this post either. Rather, I'm here to discuss the sacrament of marriage. Different churches have different standards, beliefs, and practices concerning the sacraments mentioned above. I'm okay with that. During my time at Pacific Lutheran University I really got an opportunity to explore the power of ecumenical fellowship. Churches are a safe place to come together with people of the same mind. Even so, the details of what distinguishes one christian from another in issues of faith does not change our common status as children of God.

In my grandma's church, I could have argued discrimination. I was excluded from the community sacrament due to my status as an unbaptized person. I didn't though and I think it would be unhelpful to think that way. It wasn't my church. It wasn't where I found like-minded people. I was an ecumenical visitor to their community. This discrimination was fine and justified to uphold the principles of faith within this church. The fact that I couldn't enter into communion there also did not impact my ability to receive communion at other churches. (And it certainly didn't prevent me from eating crackers and drinking grape juice either at home or in public spaces.)

This is very much how I feel about the sacrament of marriage. Marriage can have a personal, a civil, and a religious context. Religious rights need to be maintained. The sacrament of marriage is just that, a sacrament. It is sacred and its requirements vary from faith community to faith community. Churches should be able to maintain the right to choose whether or not to perform the ceremony, just like my grandma's church had the right to deny me access to communion before baptism. It is a matter of conscience, faith, and community.

Just like my grandma's church had no power to legislate the conditions of communion in other faith communities, so too the conservative faith communities that hold different biological sex to be a requirement for entering into the sacrament of marriage can't extend that requirement to other communities for whom same-sex marriage does not violate their faith and conscience. Same sex marriage does not violate the sanctity of marriage so long as churches maintain the right to perform or not perform marriage ceremonies according to their faith.

One thread thrown around concerning marriage sanctity from the left is about how a committed relationship is more sacred than the celebrity marriages that end in a matter of days or weeks. The right has claimed that the objective definition of marriage is one man and one woman and anything else is essentially something else. What I hear in these arguments is that there are real marriages and there are fake marriages. In my opinion it is not up to you to decide who has a real marriage and who has a fake marriage. It is none of your business. Discrediting other people's marriages doesn't actually make yours any more special. The fact that others have marriages that don't fit your marriage box doesn't mean that theirs is less special.

Not convinced? That's fine. Let's start from the presumption that there are in fact real marriages and fake marriages. The meaning attached is one of community and personal choice. A cracker and grape juice can be just that, or it can be a representation of the body and blood of Christ. If you believe in transubstantiation, it can be the actual body and blood of Christ. Each of these interpretations does not preclude the other interpretations. Perhaps you feel like marriage is more important than the distinctions here but let me remind you that these were issues over which christians of long ago would fight and die. We are peaceful and tolerant about it now but there was a time where people thought that a change in this sacrament would be the downfall of society.

Finally it is important to recognize that not all marriages are sacred by the technical religious definition. Many people get married without the sacrament being performed by a priest. People can get married by going down to the courthouse and filling out the paperwork. When people do this it is not a threat to the sanctity of your marriage because your marriage means something different to you. It is the same thing with same sex marriage. You can believe it is different if you want, because your church has a different definition but just like you wouldn't prevent people from eating crackers and drinking grape juice in a non-religious context, it makes no sense to prevent consenting adults from building a life together in a non-religious context or in a religious context that is separate from yours.

My Seattle May 1 Protest Experience

It is May 2, which means it is time to reflect on the events of the May 1st Occupy and Immigrant Issues protests I attended in Seattle. 

Breakfast

The day started bright and early at 9am in Seattle's Westlake Center with some donated breakfast. Standing around with our food, we had the opportunity to connect with others in the 99% Occupy Movement and exchange views and experiences. I approached a group that was intellectually grappling with issues of the day. I just jumped in and was instantly welcome as part of the group. We were a diverse group in gender, age, economic status, race, and educational background and we likely would not have crossed paths without a protest bringing us together. This is what Occupy is about. It is about conversation and connection. Occupy is about causing a recognition that not only do we know that the system needs to be fixed but we know that there are others who see it as well. Occupy is about reporting to others our experiences because our experiences are no longer truly covered in the media. The only way to actually find out what is going on in other segments of society is to talk with those segments, and nothing says "diversity is welcome" like "the 99%."

One of the biggest issues we discussed was the role of action within the system and outside the system. I believe that we were able to come to the consensus that neither set of actions by themselves will be able to stand up to those who want to horde power but that a combination of direct actions and involvement with the political process is our best chance to see the change we were sold in 2008 and that we have been needing ever-increasingly since trickle-down economics met multiple unpaid-for wars.

Signs and Interview 
Our group then briefly dispersed to gather information and make some signs. Mine said "Realize your Value, Fight Oppression." I believe that one of the biggest issues is losing our ability to bargain for fair wages and benefits. I believe that we are losing this ability because we no longer understand our own value in the equation. Capital, without labor, can produce nothing. Labor, without capital, can produce nothing. The big question becomes what is a fair division of the product of the labor with capital. As our population values the potential for their time and effort less, it is easier to convince them that they do not deserve fair wages and health care. In order to fight the extreme siphoning of wealth from those who labor to those who own capital, we need to stand up for ourselves and collectively bargain. This also means recognizing equality of all people. I talked with many disabled folk because of my sign. They found it inspirational to realize that their value is not determined by their ability or inability to get money from work their labor. The actions they can do, whether paid or unpaid, make a difference and benefit society, even if they are not recognized by society.

The core group of us from breakfast was then interviewed. I believe it was by Yes! magazine. I came by with my sign a little later as the interview was already in session. It was great to get the opportunity to discuss the purpose of the event with the media but it was also interesting to realize how very short the attention spans of the public have gotten. There wasn't time to really get into the nuance and details of what we are doing and why. It makes a lot of sense to me how Occupy can be so misunderstood. One cannot understand Occupy via sound bites.

During this rally and mingle time, I also appreciated all the people who came out to distribute literature for their various groups and perspectives. We need to share our ideas far and wide and consider a wide range of ideas as we look forward to how to best effect our society. Occupy is about only those values that benefit everyone. There are a lot of issues tied up within that that need their own space and movements because they are more specific and Occupy is a great place to get connected up with those groups.

Morning March

The morning march was an interesting experience. To some extent you don't really have a sense of scale of the movement until they are walking down the street. The relative disorganization really brought home the fact that Occupy is full of people who are just now waking up to the problems of our society. Many do not know how to protest, to herd crowds, to stay together, and to disseminate a clear plan. It was good to have the opportunity to march and voice solidarity but I also feel like more work needs to be done to ensure that such marches go well. Marches can be powerful to provide visibility to the movement but they must be properly planned.

The worst part of the whole day for me was the black bloc that infiltrated our movement. There is plenty to be angry about. And I understand that there are some that are angry to the point of violence. There is a time and place for everything. During time designated as Occupy, we represent the 99% and we need to act in a way that is consistent with that vision. The actions of the black bloc were not consistent with the message of Occupy. The second worst part of the day was probably the vigilante "super-hero" using tear gas. Given the destruction caused by the infiltrators I was not surprised to see the smoke behind us as we rounded the corner on our way back to Westlake. I had assumed that it was the police and that they had taken somewhat reasonable action against protesters that had chosen violence. But it wasn't, it was vigilante justice. He is not trained to apprehend and control people, he has no legal authority to use instruments.

One of the worst parts about the chaos that ensued was that it put people in danger, Namely our bicyclists who were controlling traffic. They would wait to enter an intersection until it was clear that we would be able to march through the intersection efficiently. Some of the chaos slowed our progress through intersections and at least once an occupied intersection was retreated from only to be occupied again later. When those bicyclists entered the intersection it was at great personal risk and to not follow through with the march was even more dangerous.

Debrief

While much of the early part of the Occupy morning march was inspiring the later part of the march really just made me angry. I took a break to walk around and process my anger at those who had co-opted the movement in order to get some cheap thrills, or to try to radicalize us.

I then made it back and reconnected with some of my new friends who had made it back to Westlake as well. Debriefing together about our frustration with the radical fringe helped us to process our anger and move on with the rest of our day.

Trek to Judkins Park

I then started our epic trek to Judkins Park with two of my new friends. The rally would start there at 3pm and it was several miles away. Along the way we stopped several times to ask for directions and connected with people who were just going about their day. We talked to some people who supported us and some people who had other ideas for how to fix our societal problems. It was a good day for conversation and exploration. It was nice to have some time to just connect with my new friends and random strangers on the street without being in a huge group.

Judkins Park Rally and March to Wells Fargo

The rally at Judkins park and the subsequent march was about immigrant rights and equality issues. This movement was well organized and involved. Although the Rally was in both Spanish and English, it held my attention. There were activists that went around registering people to vote, getting petitions signed, and collecting donations for the march. Many leaders of local faith communities spoke. At the rally the context was framed as it really is. A native leader blessed the march and welcomed us all as immigrants to share in the opportunity of this land. We heard a lot about the hopes, dreams, and struggles of immigrants today.

Before the march there was very clear conversations about what was and was not allowed and to cooperate with the police. That we were allowed to keep our messages but if the stakes they were on were deemed potential weapons the stakes could be confiscated. I really appreciated that little bit of extra preparation for the march. It also seemed that there was clear communication and understanding between the police, peace officers, coordinators, band, and marchers about what was happening. This march was completely peaceful to my knowledge and had broad community support. I think this extra preparation helped the event to run smoothly. The march concluded at Wells Fargo, a bank that makes significant profit over the detaining of immigrants waiting indefinitely for deportation.

Special Thanks

 I want to put a special THANK YOU out to the Seattle Police force and the Mayor for their restrained approach to protest management. I support the actions to confiscate weapons after the damage that was done in the morning. All my interactions with the police were civil and completely recognized our rights to demonstrate.

Note

This is my first time reporting on my experiences at a protest, Occupy or otherwise. Feel free to leave questions in the comments or notes about what you would want to see more of from my personal experiences in  the future. Thanks.

On Requiring Contraception as Part of Required Purchase Plans

A response to "The Leading Edge of Tyranny".

I'd like to say start off by saying that framing this as a question of "free contraceptives" would turn all health care debates into "free X". Health care is not about "free X". It's about paying and contributing to a health care system that supports the needs of its members.

Contraceptives are an absolutely integral part of health care for women, therefore any health care system that provides care for women needs to include them. Any woman age 12 to 50 may be in need of contraceptives, whether for actual conception prevention or managing their menstrual symptoms. Some women need contraceptives to keep from bleeding constantly and developing anemia, while other women need it because they are married* and their finances are not sufficient to support a child.

If you design a health care system that does not support this very important use case for women, or allow companies to remove this from their plan, you are taking away one of the most important features of health care for women under 50.

That's why this has been so irritating to the majority of women. Any woman who works at a company that provides health care but decides their religious beliefs don't support contraception will be forced to pay exorbitant fees to get their insurance elsewhere. It is a big deal for us.

Many people are reasonable and would agree that there are some cases where contraception should be a legal requirement for health care plans where purchase of a health care plan is required, regardless of the moral views of the employer, such as anemia or poverty.

I'd like to take this a bit further.

There are many other reasons than poverty that a married woman may wish to not have children at a particular time. For example, she may believe that she cannot be a good mother because her work requires her to travel all the time. Or, she may believe that she is too old to have children without too high of a risk of having a child with Down Syndrome. Or, she and her husband may believe that they already enough children, and they do not think they can provide sufficient love and attention to their children if they have more children.

At what point would it become the business of the employer to judge whether that reason is sufficient to allow contraception via their company insurance plan? I would argue that any attempt to give the company a voice in this matter adds a horrifying element to the work relationship. In fact, the discussion itself would likely cross into protected territory under federal harassment laws.

Can you imagine discussing with your boss or HR department that you and your wife have a healthy sexual relationship, but she travels too much to take care of children right now? That's preposterous.

If men are unwilling to consider that discussion for their wives, perhaps fathers would be more inclined to take care of their daughters? At what point does it become the company's business that their daughter has need of contraceptives under the company family plan that they pay into?

Admittedly, all this discussion is only relevant given the premise:

"Given that companies must provide health care coverage, must companies provide coverage that is against their stated moral beliefs?"

If we instead decided that that premise was an invalid place to begin because you think that companies shouldn't be providing insurance coverage in the first place, I believe that this issue becomes even more clear.

If we had coverage at the national level that we all paid into, it would be a given that some members may be providing coverage that other members don't believe in. In fact, this is the way of democracy. Sometimes people pay for things they don't believe in because we all have different beliefs. I carry around money that says "One Nation Under God" that was added in the 50s, and I certainly don't believe in that. This doesn't hurt me. Nor does it financially hurt a company to allow contraception in their health care plan for any of the above non-medical reasons. In fact, it would be cheaper on them to allow it because the medical costs of an additional person to take care of are far greater than the costs of contraception. So this debate can not be framed as "put your money where your mouth is", because it is cheaper for the company to allow it. It is about letting the company have control over their employees personal medical care, which is unacceptable to me.

No one is forcing people who don't want transfusions for religious reasons, or who don't believe in using contraception, to use contraception. Instead, we are asking that those of us who do want contraception not be punished for working at a company that believes differently than we do. If I went to work at Logos Bible Software, because I'm a software engineer who can make software that they can use, I expect not to be punished in my health care for doing so, or to be forced to have an awkward conversation with my boss or HR department explaining why contraceptives are medically relevant for me. (I'm not picking on Logos here, they seem awesome, and I have no idea what their health care policies include or don't include. I'm just trying to make this relevant for people who say you should just "work elsewhere".)

Similarly, a Catholic person at a non-Catholic company would not want to be forced to have a discussion with their boss or HR over why they are not making use of provided contraceptives, as their children are becoming so expensive to the company's healthcare policy. I would not want to be a Jehovah's Witness person at a Catholic company explaining to my boss, on my deathbed, why I would die rather than accept a blood transfusion. It's just not their business.

And here's the thing. Catholic women use contraception too. [1] There is no reasonable argument for allowing clueless male policy makers and exclusively male church leaders [2] to attempt to dictate conception and family planning policy to women employees, Catholic or otherwise. It is clear to the overwhelming majority of women, Catholic and otherwise, that natural family planning does not work. Contraception and abstinence are the only options that have a hope of working, and YOU try to tell your husband that he can't have sex with you tonight. If you are the husband, maybe you get it? But the point is, abstinence doesn't work either with humans, so...contraception is the only valid method for controlled family planning.

Ultimately it is the woman who has to deal with the fallout of a pregnancy or developing anemia, and women are overwhelmingly arguing that men should stop trying to legislate control of their bodies over to people other than themselves. Money dictates whether women have access to contraception, especially poor women and students, so that's why it is so important that it be included as part of the health care plan where health care plan purchase is required. If I was required to buy into a health care plan for my company, and that health care plan did not include contraception, I would be extremely angry. If I was forced to purchase a health care plan while in college (and I have been), and that health care plan didn't include contraception, I would also be extremely angry. I am in no way dictating that Catholic women should use contraception, but even for Catholic women working at Catholic companies, it should be available to them if they choose, and based on available data, they do largely choose to use contraception.


[1] http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf
[2] http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/07/420114/many-catholic-universities-hospitals-already-offer-contraception-as-part-of-their-health-insurance-plans/?mobile=nc

* Please note that I'm not making a personal judgement on whether or not women should be married to have sex. I just think it is easier to argue with religious people while staying in their moral boundaries. This debate is primarily happening between religious people, so I frame my examples in ways that they have absolutely no reasonable claim that you would be harming yourself by having sex.

Blaming the Victim('s Wardrobe)

This country has a tradition of blaming the victim. If you are poor, it is because you are lazy. If you are sick, it is because you didn't take good enough care of yourself. I believe one of the most insidious forms of blaming the victim comes when it involves harassment, assault, rape, and murder. Judging a victim's clothing is a ridiculous addition of insult to injury.

Rape

This conversation is consistently brought up in cases of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. Our traditional mythology is layered. It says that if a woman is wearing a short skirt or a tight shirt that she is intentionally signaling that she wants sex.  It also says that if she wants sex that she is okay having sex with any one at any time. This translates to judging any woman in a short skirt or a tight shirt as "asking for it."

This mythology has many major flaws. The core flaw is that rape is not about sex. Rape comes in three varieties: Anger Rape, Power Rape, and Sadistic Rape. The rapist is not overcome with sexual desire. The rapist is angry at the victim, wants power over the victim, or wants to hurt the victim. Rape is always caused by the rapist and not the victim.

The mythology also makes it seem like a rapist is a random stranger off the street. This is largely untrue. 73% of all sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows. And who are these victims? 1/6 of all women have been victims of rape or attempted rape. This is an epidemic and it is not the victims who are sick, it is the perpetrators.

If this mythology were true, wearing swimming suits would be dangerous and beaches would be danger zones where one should expect to be attacked at any moment. The thought of getting a swimming suit for a child would be abhorrent to all parents. 

Murder

Recently there have been two very clear cases of violent discrimination. Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager wearing a hoodie was killed on February 26th. Shaima Alawadi, an Muslim American wearing a hijab, was killed in her home on March 21st.

Trayvon Martin, 17, was attacked by George Zimmerman, a vigilante with a gun who was intimidated by the way Trayvon looked. The teen was carrying Skittles and iced tea. Amid the accusation of panicked discrimination at best and hate crime at worst an interesting alternate theory emerged. Geraldo Rivera propose that the hoodie was to blame. Blame the victim by blaming his choice in clothing.

Trayvon's case again comes down to a mythology around the meaning of clothing and how it intersects with discrimination. The dominant mythology is that a Black or Hispanic male is dangerous, especially if they have tattoos, if they have a hooded sweatshirt, or if they have baggy pants. They are instantly judged suspicious at best and a dangerous threat at worst. This mythology equates this appearance with criminal activity.

Again this blaming of the victim through their choice of clothing is ridiculous. Blaming the hoodie is ridiculous. Again, if this mythology were true, then high schools and colleges wouldn't brand them. Most companies wouldn't want their logo on them. Right now I am wearing a hoodie I got in high school to commemorate when my orchestra went to Carnegie Hall. This hoodie is in no way related to criminal behavior.

In the case of Shaima Alawadi, she was killed in her home while wearing her hijab. A hijab is a traditional head covering worn by Muslim women. The hijab ties in to the Muslim values of modesty, privacy, and morality. Her attacker left a note before the attack and afterward accusing her of being a terrorist.

Alawadi's attacker likely associated her as being Muslim because of her style of dress. Religion is often a private matter in America, so visible symbols of religion are the most likely way to identify someone's religious beliefs, unless they have a personal conversation with you about them. There are some who use this reasoning again to turn blame around onto the victim. It is not the head scarf that killed Shaima Alawadi, it was a person who hated her because of where she was from and what she believed.

In a country that has freedom of religion and freedom of expression, wearing a hijab is a protected right as much as wearing a cross is. If someone were attacked for wearing a cross the appropriate outrage would be against the attacker who was targeting Christians, not against the Christian who saw wearing the cross as a core part of their religious lifestyle.

Blame the Attacker, not the Victim, nor their Clothing.

Rape and assault are not about what we wear. It is about who we are. If we are women, black, Muslim, gay, or homeless we are seen as objects to be attacked, either because we are perceived as weak, or as threatening, or both. The problem is not how we dress. The problem is how those with power choose to see us and act toward us.

Consider the Bill: OSTA

I just joined OpenCongress.org to keep track of what's going on in this country by paying attention to what Congress is actually doing. There is a lot to do on this site. You can read the actual content of the bill, read news and blogs related to it, read comments from fellow citizens, connect with like-minded folk, vote on bills, check and compare voting records, connect with your representatives and senators, and track and share information that pertains to your interests.

While perusing, I came across OSTA (H.R. 3806: One Subject at a Time Act). The purpose of this act follows its own guidelines by covering only one subject and making that subject clear in the title. On face value this is a piece of legislation that the people have been wanting for a long time.

Congress has a problem with this and the people are getting sick of it. Senators and representatives will tack on completely unrelated legislation, called riders, in order to sneak changes into law that should have gone through their own process but would probably not succeed on their own. Sometimes these riders are even attached for the purpose of killing a bill that would otherwise pass.

The current system serves no one. Both sides of the aisle have times when allowing these riders will destroy work that they have done to promote what they believe to be the best for the country and for their constituents. It really isn't worth the periodic perks to have such a broken system.

That said, I am a little concerned about a couple of points related OSTA. Firstly, there is the clause "...and for other purposes" which concludes the introduction. By the rules of the OSTA itself there should be no other purposes. Secondly, the term "subject" is not well-defined. This may be why we have not yet passed this legislation, but it is a problem to consider. Despite this flaw, having only one subject would be a great step forward. Even if the subject scope were too broad like a hypothetical "Transportation Act," at least the American people would know that everything in the bill pertained to transportation. While not perfect, I believe that it would be a step in the right direction.

I encourage my senators and representative to support OSTA unless they have ideas for how to mitigate its flaws in which case I encourage them to take the time to craft a better bill with the same driving sentiment that is felt by so many Americans.

Raising Hell for Votes

I don't know everything about everything. If you ever catch me acting like I do, feel free to give me a reality check. It's just not feasible; the world is too big. I'm a software developer, and my job eats my life, and I love it.

There is something though, that I think I know a tiny little bit about. And I think you know something about it too. There ought to be a bit of a hullabaloo here.

Nuclear war with Iran is not a fucking joke. It is not a political toy. It is not something you ever talk about as if it's going to happen, or inevitable. This is not the 70s, and we're not in a Cold War with Russia.

Nor are we in the 1300s. Conservative leaders are acting like this is a righteous Christian crusade, and that they are protecting the world from the evil Muslim empire. I guess I thought that we were past this, as people. As humanity. I mean, how many thousands of years have we been killing people who don't have the same religious beliefs? And we still have politicians fear-mongering hate of those who aren't like their core constituency? We still trump up the behavior of a few radicals and say that an entire nation deserves to be treated like shit?

All I can feel is shame.