Smoking Barrels

The U.S. must address its problematic gun culture to stem out-of-control violence.  There is a clear case for implementing stronger controls such as safety training, psychological evaluations, and comprehensive background checks for gun owners.

A gunman killed 27 today at a Connecticut elementary school, most of the victims young children.  This tragedy is the latest in a sad history of high-profile massacres, which have recently included shootings at the Aurora movie theater and Oak Creek Sikh temple.  Gun violence in America is an issue where the numbers are actually even more depressing than the occasional attention-grabbing headlines.  Per the CDC there are more than 11,000 deaths from firearm homicides in the U.S. per year.  Even accounting for our large population, our ratio of firearm-related death rates (9.00 per 100,000 people) is astronomically higher than the rest of the developed world -- more than double neighboring Canada's (4.78), 40 times the United Kingdom's (0.22), and 128 times Japan's (0.07)!

Yet no major national-level political leaders (NYC's billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg comes closest) have asked Americans to challenge the gun lobby's sick fetish for unfettered gun access, more guns, more powerful guns, and carrying guns in more locations.¹  In increasingly vocal terms, the American public is fed up with inaction.  Highlighting the absurd is a post I saw on Facebook: "ONE jackass tries to light his shoe on fire, and every air traveler has to remove their shoes at airport. A gunman, like many before him, shoots up a ton of innocent people and there's nothing that can be done?"  (For all the hype that terrorism gets, keep in mind that in the 10 years after 9/11, only 16 Americans were killed from terrorist attacks in the U.S.)

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Heated political rhetoric about abortion and a "war on women" obscure the dismal reality that is gender inequality in America

We've heard ad nauseum for months that women¹ will decide this election, and both Republicans and Democrats are trying hard to court their votes.  And yet the most memorable episodes in recent weeks relating to women have been Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (R) describing pregnancies from rape as "something God intended", Rep. Joe Walsh (R) stating that "modern technology and science" have eliminated threats to pregnant women's health, and Rep. Todd Akin (R) -- who sits on the House Science Committee! -- positing that the female body can terminate pregnancies from "legitimate rape".

Despite what the debased and disgraceful dialogue of this election season would have us believe, gender issues go far beyond rape, abortion, and reproductive rights.  Although there's a tendency to think we're set because women now outnumber men in the workforce and in the ranks of college graduates, proclaiming "The End of Men" remains hyperbolic.

We live in a society where women earn less than men even in the same field, where they are shut out or opt out of leadership roles in the workplace, where they are considered unprofessional if they do not paint their faces and wear health-ruining shoes, where the custom is to take their respective husband's last name at marriage, and where pointing out these incongruities is considered radical (the word "feminism" having somehow taken on negative connotations).²

Stings & The Police

Sting operations by law enforcement have identified individuals who hate America, but using undercover agents to help aid these aspiring terrorists until the point of arrest artificially creates a bigger threat than would otherwise exist.

This week, 21-year-old immigrant college student Quazi Mohammad Nafis was arrested for "allegedly trying to detonate what he thought was a bomb from a hotel room near the Fed in Manhattan's Financial District".  The Nafis case, like the aspiring Portland Christmas bomber, Dallas skyscraper bomber, and others in recent years, involved a would-be terrorist caught by an undercover FBI or NYPD operation, and whose plot was from start to finish created by the law enforcement agency.

My initial reaction, like many Americans, is relief that one of these nutjobs has been stopped before they hurt someone.  But upon further reflection, I've wondered why these "sting" operations seem to always catch a resourceless loner immigrant who has turned radical, but whose every step toward executing an attack is only possible thanks to his handlers.  I worry that these wannabe terrorists have been pushed into committing acts they never had the capacity for -- having previously lacked the knowledge, resources, and connections to carry out a serious attack against America.

Secretary of Explaining Things

The first presidential debate between Messrs. Romney and Obama affected the media's election narrative but did little to provide the average voter with a substantive understanding of key issues.

The widespread and bipartisan media consensus is that Mitt Romney won Wednesday's first presidential debate.  A somnolent President Obama spent most of his time on stage looking down at his podium, handing an easy victory on appearances to the guy who dissed Big Bird. What was reinforced to me, though, is that these debates -- barring the emergence of a popular caricature of one of the candidates -- are aimed at influencing the media's election narrative, not at voters.

These debates are supposed to elucidate a candidate's positions and to help voters distinguish between their choices.  But in practice, we're not given much to work with.  The candidates present what seem like "Mad Libs", random numbers without context or explanation ("4 million jobs" from energy independence; "2 million more slots in our community colleges"; a "$5 trillion tax cut"; "$2 trillion in additional military spending"; a "$4 trillion deficit reduction plan").  The result is empty speechifying, not debating.  And in a generally polite encounter without memorable "zingers" from either man, my eyes were glazing over.

America's Forgotten Poor

Scant attention has been paid to the record rise of poverty levels in America.

Click graphic above to see a detailed breakdown on poverty in the U.S. (Source: NPR)

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama and their campaigns have spent much of this election season tripping over themselves to appeal to all-important middle-class voters.  During the political conventions, Ann Romney spoke about how she and her husband once lived in a tiny apartment using an ironing board as a table.  She didn't note that they were living off of Mitt's investment income -- hey, he was the son of a multimillionaire governor -- while Mitt finished his studies.  Michelle Obama told a story about how when she began dating Barack his car was "rusted out" and had a hole in the door.  She skirted the fact that the pair met while working for a prestigious Chicago law firm.

The point here isn't to attack either candidate for their typical stretched "we're just like you" spiel, but to draw attention to the entire large segment of the populace that no one is overly concerned with winning over: the poor.  Over 15% of Americans, nearly 50 million people, live at or below the poverty line, defined as $23,000 for a family of four.  While much election-year rhetoric concerns the tax burden of the rich, or who is the real champion of the middle class, little more than lip service is paid to the lower rungs of our society.