Those are hard words, but I believe they are true.
An interesting problem has arisen in connection with compensation for those who have lost money as a result of the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Some of them can't document their losses.
Because they did their business in cash.
Specifically, they can't even produce income tax returns showing how much they made.
Think about that for a moment. They can't produce tax returns because they didn't pay taxes on their income.
As it turns out, there seem to be a significant number of businessmen - fishermen, oystermen, shrimpers, some of those who buy their catch. some others - who conducted all or major portions of their business in cash, didn't keep records of their cash transactions, didn't report their incomes to the Internal Revenue Service or the Lousiana or Alabama Departments of Revenue or the Mississippi State Tax Commission, and didn't pay taxes on their incomes. Not just federal taxes, but state taxes, too.
So, those folks - those who didn't pay their taxes - have been getting all the benefits of all the things those taxes pay for - transportation systems, national defense, justice systems, police, fire, and emergency protection. and responses to emergencies - but they haven't been paying for them.
To be clear, those of us who have paid our taxes paid for all those things and those who haven't been paying their taxes didn't pay for them, even though they got the benefits of them. Even more importantly, those of us who have paid our taxes had to pay more than we would have had to pay for those services and infrastructure if everyone else had been paying their share.
So, that fisherman in the Gulf who didn't pay his taxes took money out of my pocket to pay for services he needed and used, but he didn't want to pay for himself. But, honestly, I'm well off. Not rich, but well off. So, I'm not hurt that much. But, he also reached into the pockets and purses of the single moms working at a fast food restaurant trying to support thier kids, the worker at the manufacturing plant that made his boat, the trucker who carried his fish, and many, many other honest folk who paid more taxes than they should have because that fisherman wanted to skip out on his obligations.
He stole from them.
Now, before all the tax protesters out there get up on their soap boxes and start raging against paying taxes in general, that fisherman, or oysterman, or whoever, wasn't a tax protester. He was a cheater. More specifically, he was a thief. He stole money from honest people and put it in his pocket. Just like any thief does.
Now, he wants us to feel sorry for him because he can't document his income so he can be compensated by British Petroleum. The reason he can't document his income is because he was hiding his income so he could steal from the rest of us.
I am outraged at British Petroleum and all the other oil companies and all the other types of companies who are willing to and are allowed to put all of us at risk, and put our world at risk, so they can make more money. I am pretty damned pissed off at all the legislators who have opposed regulations that would have protected the rest of us from those companies' greedy recklessness. I am very upset at the government regulators who did not take seriously their obligation to enforce what paltry regulations we managed to get in place.
And I am terribly, terribly concerned for the honest folk, who have worked hard, played by the rules, and tried to build honest, decent lives for themselves who now will lose what they have worked so hard for, because British Petroleum didn't care as much about them as it cared about making as much money as possible on an oil well.
But, I am not one bit sorry for those cheats and thieves - criminals - who can't document their income now because they've been hiding their income in the past so they could steal from me and from millions of other honest folk.
Not one bit sorry.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
One Last Benjamin Franklin
In his biography, Benjamin Franklin, An American Life, Walter Isaacson wrote a short summation of Dr. Franklin's belief in compromise that I thought was worth passing on.
"[Benjamin Franklin] believed in having the humility to be open to different opinions. For him that was not merely a practical virtue, but a moral one as well. It was based on the tenet, so fundamental to most moral systems, that every individual deserves respect. During the Constitutional Convention, for example, he was willing to compromise some of his beliefs to play a critical role in the conciliation that produced a near-perfect document. It could not have been accomplished if the hall had contained only crusaders who stood on unwavering principle. Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies."
"[Benjamin Franklin] believed in having the humility to be open to different opinions. For him that was not merely a practical virtue, but a moral one as well. It was based on the tenet, so fundamental to most moral systems, that every individual deserves respect. During the Constitutional Convention, for example, he was willing to compromise some of his beliefs to play a critical role in the conciliation that produced a near-perfect document. It could not have been accomplished if the hall had contained only crusaders who stood on unwavering principle. Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies."
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
More Benjamin Franklin
In 1757, Benjamin Franklin narrowly escaped a shipwreck as he neared the English coast. Later, he wrote his wife, Deborah.
"Were I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should on this occasion vow to build a chapel to some saint; but as I am not, if I were to vow at all, it should be to build a lighthouse."
"Were I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should on this occasion vow to build a chapel to some saint; but as I am not, if I were to vow at all, it should be to build a lighthouse."
Monday, June 21, 2010
The Law of Unintended Consequences
The Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy
The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can change its form.
The total quantity of matter and energy available in the universe is a fixed amount and never any more or less.
The Law of Unintended Consequences
The law of unintended consequences is an adage or idiom that warns that an intervention in a complex system invariably creates unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes.
When I was in the 6th or 7th grade, sometime around 1962 or 1963, I began to wonder what happened to all the smoke that came from burning fossil fuels - car exhausts, factory smokestacks, that sort of thing. I knew that smoke was toxic. I mean, after all, I knew that breathing tail pipe emissions could be deadly. It seemed to me like it would just accumulate in the atmosphere until it finally got so thick it would kill us all. It didn't seem like it would go anywhere.
I remember going into the kitchen and asking my mother about it. She said that, yes, it did accumulate in the atmosphere, but the atmosphere was so huge and the amount of smoke was so small that it would never matter. For many years that satisfied my concern.
Of course, she was wrong, but so was just about everyone else. Most of us were looking at it from the perspective of just what was happening at the time, not considering how the population of the planet would grow, and how the burning of fossil fuels would escalate dramatically, and few of us ordinary people imagined that growth and escalation would happen so fast that it would become a major, possibly world-ending issue in our lifetimes. We didn't really think it through and, frankly, it was convenient for us to not think it through. At least, convenient in a short-term sense.
I am concerned now that we may not be thinking through "clean" energy sources all the way to their long-term logical conclusions.
Which brings me back to the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy. There is a sum total of all the energy and matter in the universe, and it never gets any bigger. It can change forms, even changing from energy to matter and back again, but it never goes away, and no more ever gets added.
Which is another way of saying that all energy goes somewhere. It doesn't just exist for a time and then go away, wasted or lost if it isn't used. It goes somewhere. And, wherever it goes, it has some effect. If something happens and it doesn't go where it normally goes, the effect doesn't occur. A different one does.
So, let's take solar energy, just to randomly pick an example. When sunlight strikes the desert, the light energy doesn't just dissipate. Some of it gets reflected around as light, but some of it gets converted into heat, both in the air and in the sand. That heat has an effect on the air and the sand. I'm not sure what the heat in the sand does, but it probably adds to the overall heat in the air, among other things.
The heat in the air causes the air to rise. That sucks more air in to take the place of the rising air. That causes wind, not just over the desert, but over the territory at the edges of the desert. That wind itself causes effects, including more wind in other places. But, it also affects the weather patterns, keeping it dry on the desert, but, ultimately, wet in other places.
Now, let's suppose, just for example, that we intercept some of that light energy before it strikes the desert floor, with solar panels, for example, and convert some of that light energy into electical energy. That means, necessarily, that there is less light energy to convert into heat, both in the sand and in the air. Less heat, less wind. (Or maybe we take kinetic energy directly out of the wind with wind turbines, that convert that energy into electrical energy, instead of letting it go wherever it goes and have whatever effect it has now.) Less wind, some change in the weather, somewhere. I'm not at all sure we can figure out what that change will be, or the extent of that change, or whether some tiny little change will snow-ball, like the fluttering of a butterfly's wings that causes a hurricane, or even if we know what changes, besides weather, will occur. But, we do know that some change will occur.
Now, it is tempting to dismiss this line of thought with the comforting idea that there is so much desert (or so much wind) and the number of solar panels (or wind turbines) will be so small that the relative amount of heat energy we will be taking out of the desert (or kinetic energy out of the wind) will be so small that it won't really matter.
That, however, is the thought with which we comforted ourselves for all those years we were pumping smoke into the atmosphere and thinking the atmosphere was so big and the amount of smoke was so small that it wouldn't ever wind up mattering. We were wrong. And we were wrong much sooner than most folks ever imagined we would be.
So, I'm thinking we ought to be thinking about the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy and how it just might interact with the Law of Unintended Consequences as we develop all this "clean" energy instead of learning to live on less energy.
And I wanted to say it. Now.
The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can change its form.
The total quantity of matter and energy available in the universe is a fixed amount and never any more or less.
The Law of Unintended Consequences
The law of unintended consequences is an adage or idiom that warns that an intervention in a complex system invariably creates unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes.
When I was in the 6th or 7th grade, sometime around 1962 or 1963, I began to wonder what happened to all the smoke that came from burning fossil fuels - car exhausts, factory smokestacks, that sort of thing. I knew that smoke was toxic. I mean, after all, I knew that breathing tail pipe emissions could be deadly. It seemed to me like it would just accumulate in the atmosphere until it finally got so thick it would kill us all. It didn't seem like it would go anywhere.
I remember going into the kitchen and asking my mother about it. She said that, yes, it did accumulate in the atmosphere, but the atmosphere was so huge and the amount of smoke was so small that it would never matter. For many years that satisfied my concern.
Of course, she was wrong, but so was just about everyone else. Most of us were looking at it from the perspective of just what was happening at the time, not considering how the population of the planet would grow, and how the burning of fossil fuels would escalate dramatically, and few of us ordinary people imagined that growth and escalation would happen so fast that it would become a major, possibly world-ending issue in our lifetimes. We didn't really think it through and, frankly, it was convenient for us to not think it through. At least, convenient in a short-term sense.
I am concerned now that we may not be thinking through "clean" energy sources all the way to their long-term logical conclusions.
Which brings me back to the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy. There is a sum total of all the energy and matter in the universe, and it never gets any bigger. It can change forms, even changing from energy to matter and back again, but it never goes away, and no more ever gets added.
Which is another way of saying that all energy goes somewhere. It doesn't just exist for a time and then go away, wasted or lost if it isn't used. It goes somewhere. And, wherever it goes, it has some effect. If something happens and it doesn't go where it normally goes, the effect doesn't occur. A different one does.
So, let's take solar energy, just to randomly pick an example. When sunlight strikes the desert, the light energy doesn't just dissipate. Some of it gets reflected around as light, but some of it gets converted into heat, both in the air and in the sand. That heat has an effect on the air and the sand. I'm not sure what the heat in the sand does, but it probably adds to the overall heat in the air, among other things.
The heat in the air causes the air to rise. That sucks more air in to take the place of the rising air. That causes wind, not just over the desert, but over the territory at the edges of the desert. That wind itself causes effects, including more wind in other places. But, it also affects the weather patterns, keeping it dry on the desert, but, ultimately, wet in other places.
Now, let's suppose, just for example, that we intercept some of that light energy before it strikes the desert floor, with solar panels, for example, and convert some of that light energy into electical energy. That means, necessarily, that there is less light energy to convert into heat, both in the sand and in the air. Less heat, less wind. (Or maybe we take kinetic energy directly out of the wind with wind turbines, that convert that energy into electrical energy, instead of letting it go wherever it goes and have whatever effect it has now.) Less wind, some change in the weather, somewhere. I'm not at all sure we can figure out what that change will be, or the extent of that change, or whether some tiny little change will snow-ball, like the fluttering of a butterfly's wings that causes a hurricane, or even if we know what changes, besides weather, will occur. But, we do know that some change will occur.
Now, it is tempting to dismiss this line of thought with the comforting idea that there is so much desert (or so much wind) and the number of solar panels (or wind turbines) will be so small that the relative amount of heat energy we will be taking out of the desert (or kinetic energy out of the wind) will be so small that it won't really matter.
That, however, is the thought with which we comforted ourselves for all those years we were pumping smoke into the atmosphere and thinking the atmosphere was so big and the amount of smoke was so small that it wouldn't ever wind up mattering. We were wrong. And we were wrong much sooner than most folks ever imagined we would be.
So, I'm thinking we ought to be thinking about the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy and how it just might interact with the Law of Unintended Consequences as we develop all this "clean" energy instead of learning to live on less energy.
And I wanted to say it. Now.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Hypocrite Alert
I'm sorry. I usually try to limit myself to one article a day, but I have to add this little tid bit.
On June 2, Bobby Jindal wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to lift the federal moratorium on deep water drilling.
The same Bobby Jindal who, on May 24, held a press conference wherein he castigated the federal government for failing to adequately respond to the disaster at the British Petroleum well drilled by the Deep Water Horizon rig.
On May 24, in criticizing the federal response to the British Petroleum disaster, he said, "We're literally talking about defending a way of life down here in Louisiana."
On June 2, in requesting the President to lift the moratorium on drilling more wells like the one in the British Petroleum disaster, he said, "The last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more."
Really, Governor? Is that really the last thing we need.
I'm not actually sure what "the last thing we need" would be on my list of last things we needed, but way up close to the top of my list of first things we needed would be for our leaders to stop being hypocrites.
Goodness, don't these folks ever stop? Doesn't anyone ever listen? Do we all have such short memories that they can say anything they want, and change it whenever they want, whenever it suits their interests, and none of us even notice?
Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees! Hypocrites!
On June 2, Bobby Jindal wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to lift the federal moratorium on deep water drilling.
The same Bobby Jindal who, on May 24, held a press conference wherein he castigated the federal government for failing to adequately respond to the disaster at the British Petroleum well drilled by the Deep Water Horizon rig.
On May 24, in criticizing the federal response to the British Petroleum disaster, he said, "We're literally talking about defending a way of life down here in Louisiana."
On June 2, in requesting the President to lift the moratorium on drilling more wells like the one in the British Petroleum disaster, he said, "The last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more."
Really, Governor? Is that really the last thing we need.
I'm not actually sure what "the last thing we need" would be on my list of last things we needed, but way up close to the top of my list of first things we needed would be for our leaders to stop being hypocrites.
Goodness, don't these folks ever stop? Doesn't anyone ever listen? Do we all have such short memories that they can say anything they want, and change it whenever they want, whenever it suits their interests, and none of us even notice?
Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees! Hypocrites!
Always Behind, Always Blind
In the last few days, the news media has been expressing outrage over the fact that the British Petroleum well that blew out on April 20 has been gushing far more oil into the Gulf of Mexico than British Petroleum said it was (80,000 to 100,000 barrels a day v. the BP claim of 5,000 barrels a day). In fact, British Petroleum claims to be siphoning off three or four times as much oil as it said was gushing out (16,000 to 20,000 barrels a day siphoned off v. the BP claim of 5,000 barrels a day leaking). And still the oil gushes.
And the media is now wringing their collective hands saying, "Oh, my! We just can't trust British Petroleum!" as if this were news.
It is not news. If you examine this blog you will find an entry on May 18 where I commented that independent experts had viewed the video feed of the leaking well and estimated that it was leaking from 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day, not the 1,000 to 5,000 barrels a day that British Petroleum was currently admitting. This wasn't some secret that only I knew. It was reported in the news media, once, then forgotten.
Similarly, in the last few days there has been media outrage over the fact that the spill response plan filed by British Petroleum with the Minerals Management Service when they applied for the permit to drill this disastrous well was obviously cut and pasted from some other response plan, not designed specifically for this well or even this region.
The response plan includes information for how British Petroleum will handle walruses and sea otters who are affected by a spill from this well. There aren't any walruses or sea otters in the Gulf of Mexico. Or anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico. Furthermore, the plan indicates that, if there is a leak from the well, British Petroleum will call upon the services of an expert who had been dead for years before the plan was filed. It includes telephone numbers for experts they planned to use that are wrong - numbers that have never been right. They include a reference to a website that is defunct, but when it was active it was for some goofy thing in Japan. Not even related to the oil industry.
This also is not news. Weeks ago, Rachel Madow announced on her show that her staff had looked at British Petroleum's spill response plan and found references to walruses. She made a big deal about it. Weeks ago.
This poor reporting, poor investigating, general lack of workmanship, and, in some cases, downright ignorance and stupidity on the part of the media is characteristic. It is reminiscent of the reporting by the media leading up to the war against Iraq.
In that case, when the media began to report that there were not, in fact, any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I found myself screaming at the CNN television screen, "You had the head of the weapons search team on your network saying definitively that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that his team had been there for months, if they'd been there his team would have found them - months before we went to war! And you idiots just dismissed him as some sort of crank! What on earth were you thinking back then?" Obviously, they weren't thinking. They weren't investigating, they weren't analyzing, they weren't even doing a very good job of reporting. They were just repeating.
Then there was the whole "Mr. President, it's a slam dunk" thing. When they started reporting that, I was jumping up from my couch screaming, "You idiots! It was in Bob Woodward's book published a year ago! And you all just yawned! Where were you then? Where are you when we really need you?"
So, don't say I didn't tell you so. 'Cause I did. Pay attention.
And the media is now wringing their collective hands saying, "Oh, my! We just can't trust British Petroleum!" as if this were news.
It is not news. If you examine this blog you will find an entry on May 18 where I commented that independent experts had viewed the video feed of the leaking well and estimated that it was leaking from 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day, not the 1,000 to 5,000 barrels a day that British Petroleum was currently admitting. This wasn't some secret that only I knew. It was reported in the news media, once, then forgotten.
Similarly, in the last few days there has been media outrage over the fact that the spill response plan filed by British Petroleum with the Minerals Management Service when they applied for the permit to drill this disastrous well was obviously cut and pasted from some other response plan, not designed specifically for this well or even this region.
The response plan includes information for how British Petroleum will handle walruses and sea otters who are affected by a spill from this well. There aren't any walruses or sea otters in the Gulf of Mexico. Or anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico. Furthermore, the plan indicates that, if there is a leak from the well, British Petroleum will call upon the services of an expert who had been dead for years before the plan was filed. It includes telephone numbers for experts they planned to use that are wrong - numbers that have never been right. They include a reference to a website that is defunct, but when it was active it was for some goofy thing in Japan. Not even related to the oil industry.
This also is not news. Weeks ago, Rachel Madow announced on her show that her staff had looked at British Petroleum's spill response plan and found references to walruses. She made a big deal about it. Weeks ago.
This poor reporting, poor investigating, general lack of workmanship, and, in some cases, downright ignorance and stupidity on the part of the media is characteristic. It is reminiscent of the reporting by the media leading up to the war against Iraq.
In that case, when the media began to report that there were not, in fact, any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I found myself screaming at the CNN television screen, "You had the head of the weapons search team on your network saying definitively that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that his team had been there for months, if they'd been there his team would have found them - months before we went to war! And you idiots just dismissed him as some sort of crank! What on earth were you thinking back then?" Obviously, they weren't thinking. They weren't investigating, they weren't analyzing, they weren't even doing a very good job of reporting. They were just repeating.
Then there was the whole "Mr. President, it's a slam dunk" thing. When they started reporting that, I was jumping up from my couch screaming, "You idiots! It was in Bob Woodward's book published a year ago! And you all just yawned! Where were you then? Where are you when we really need you?"
So, don't say I didn't tell you so. 'Cause I did. Pay attention.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
All Men
"'All men,' said Samos, 'and all women, have within themselves despicable elements, cruel things and cowardly things, things vicious, and greedy and selfish, things ugly that we hide from others, and most of all from ourselves.'"
***
"'The human being,' he said, 'is a chaos of cruelties and nobilities, of hatreds and loves, of resentments and respects, of envies and admirations. He contains within himself, in his ferments, much that is base and much that is worthy. These are old truths, but few men truly understand them.'"
John Norman, Raiders of Gor, An E-Reads Edition, page 315
***
"'The human being,' he said, 'is a chaos of cruelties and nobilities, of hatreds and loves, of resentments and respects, of envies and admirations. He contains within himself, in his ferments, much that is base and much that is worthy. These are old truths, but few men truly understand them.'"
John Norman, Raiders of Gor, An E-Reads Edition, page 315
Monday, June 7, 2010
An Honest Question
I am confused. This is not tongue in cheek. I am genuinely confused.
It is about the Israeli navy boarding the Turkish vessel which resulted in nine people on the Turkish vessel being killed.
As I understand the agreed facts, the Turkish vessel was sailing toward Gaza, but still in international waters, when the Israeli navy contacted it and asked it for its destination. The Turkish vessel responded that it was headed for Gaza. Whereupon, the Israeli navy forcibly boarded the vessel, a fight ensued, and nine people on the Turkish vessel were killed. The Israeli navy then took possession of the Turkish vessel and forced it into an Israeli harbor.
I'm not asking about the moral or legal right of Israel to defend itself, or the moral or legal right for it to impose a blockade on Gaza, or the moral or legal right for Israel to board a ship that is in the waters of Israel or the waters of Gaza.
I'm not even asking about Israel's moral right to board a Turkish vessel in international waters after that vessel has admitted it was headed for Gaza, then commandeer the vessel and take its cargo.
I'm asking about the legal right for the Israeli navy to forcibly board a Turkish vessel in international waters.
If I understand the international law of the sea, no nation has the right to board the vessel of another nation in international waters without permission. As I understand that law, if a private vessel or person does it, it's piracy. If a nation does it, it's an act of war.
But, I don't hear anyone saying, "Wherever the moral or ethical chips may fall in this matter, Israel did not have the legal right to board a vessel flying the Turkish flag in international waters." And I don't understand why I don't hear anyone saying that.
What am I missing here?
It is about the Israeli navy boarding the Turkish vessel which resulted in nine people on the Turkish vessel being killed.
As I understand the agreed facts, the Turkish vessel was sailing toward Gaza, but still in international waters, when the Israeli navy contacted it and asked it for its destination. The Turkish vessel responded that it was headed for Gaza. Whereupon, the Israeli navy forcibly boarded the vessel, a fight ensued, and nine people on the Turkish vessel were killed. The Israeli navy then took possession of the Turkish vessel and forced it into an Israeli harbor.
I'm not asking about the moral or legal right of Israel to defend itself, or the moral or legal right for it to impose a blockade on Gaza, or the moral or legal right for Israel to board a ship that is in the waters of Israel or the waters of Gaza.
I'm not even asking about Israel's moral right to board a Turkish vessel in international waters after that vessel has admitted it was headed for Gaza, then commandeer the vessel and take its cargo.
I'm asking about the legal right for the Israeli navy to forcibly board a Turkish vessel in international waters.
If I understand the international law of the sea, no nation has the right to board the vessel of another nation in international waters without permission. As I understand that law, if a private vessel or person does it, it's piracy. If a nation does it, it's an act of war.
But, I don't hear anyone saying, "Wherever the moral or ethical chips may fall in this matter, Israel did not have the legal right to board a vessel flying the Turkish flag in international waters." And I don't understand why I don't hear anyone saying that.
What am I missing here?
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