Racism is Enshrined in the Constitution of the United States

A conservative friend of mine recently complained.

Loudly and with great passion.

My friend said that a certain person should just "Get the f%@& out of the country!"

My curiosity was piqued, so naturally I asked why they thought that the person should leave the country. His response was, "They said that racism is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and that's bullsh*t!"

My curiosity was piqued even more, so I decided to actually read the U.S Constitution. In its original form there are two relevant passages in Article 1 and one in Article 4.

Article 1, Section 2: "Representative and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states [...] according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons."

To elaborate, this section says that for purposes of determining how many representatives each state gets in the House of Representatives:

• free people count as a whole person
• indentured servants count as a whole person
• Indians don't count
• slaves count, but only as three fifths of a person

Note that section 2 wasn't modified until the 14th Amendment (1868), at which point 21 year old males were allowed to vote and people (except Indians) count for apportionment. It wasn't until the 19th amendment (1919) that women got the right to vote and the 26th Amendment (1971) that the voting age was changed to 18.

Article 1, Section 9: "The migration or importation of such persons as any states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person."

To elaborate, this section says that congress cannot prevent states from bringing in more slaves until 1808. Until then they may impose an import duty of $10 per slave.

Article 4, Section 2: "No person held to service or labor in one stat, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on a claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

In other words, slaves who have escaped to free states must be returned to their owners. This clause wasn't modified until the 13th Amendment (1865) when slavery was abolished.

In summary, racism was and still is enshrined in the constitution (Article 1 Section 9 still stands after all...). Its constitutional vestiges are mostly historical at this point, but its societal impacts are still very real.

This does not mean that as a white man you're to blame for this history, but it does mean you have to understand this history and not perpetuate further racism.

The Flag

It's not about The Flag.

It's not about The Anthem.

It's also not about what our servicewomen and men have sacrificed. They didn't sacrifice for The Flag or The Anthem.

It's about what each of those represent.

What they represent includes, but is not limited to, the right of free speech. To give one example, the freedom for people to express their concern for the way segments of society are treated.

In other words, to dissent.

Expressing one's dissent is not expressing disrespect.

Respect cannot be compelled; it can only be earned.

If one attempts to compel respect, that respect is not genuine. It is a farce and a facade. It is merely a bunch of people doing what they're told, because they are told and not because they believe it.

Rather than living in a country that requires people to respect the flag, I want to live in a country that inspires people to respect the flag.

Conflicts

Golf.com, that great bastion promoting communism and world-renowned for attacking the American Way Of Life, has another nifty article criticizing our president.

"Yet another unseemly conflict of interest that would result in a benefit to Trump properties [...]"

Really.

A golf magazine highlighting politics.

I don't see it as a bad reflection on the magazine, rather a reflection of what a train wreck his administration has become.

Apologies

Anything that contains the word "if" is not an apology.

Here's an example from a Golf.com article (emphasis mine):

Bernhard Langer said President Donald Trump called him last week and apologized for involving him in a bizarre story used to bolster his unverified claims of widespread voter fraud.
“We talked on the phone, and he was very clear ... if there was anything that hurt me, he apologized," Langer told reporters at the Allianz Championship on Thursday.

That's not an apology.

Apologies are not conditional.

You are either sorry you did something or you're not.

You are not sorry if you offended someone.

You're not sorry that someone took offense.

You're sorry you did something that offended someone.

See the difference?

Apologies are about you taking responsibility for your actions.

Who Am I

Like my profile says, I'm a middle aged, middle class, white guy in middle America. I'm pretty much average in every way.

I'm fiercely independent politically and have never been a member of any political party.

Since coming of age as a voter, I've voted for Republicans, Democrats, and candidates from other parties.

As an analytical person, I study the data first and make decisions based on that data. I don't start from a policy stance and look for data that confirms it.

Natural Cycles

I was chatting with some friends over the weekend.  They said they don't believe in climate change because there have always been warm periods and cold periods.

Yes, there have been two periods over the past 60 million years where the world warmed by 4-6 degrees.  Those naturally occurring warming trends happened over thousands of years.

And here's what's different this time.

The the warm period we're currently experiencing is happening over a scale of a couple hundred years.  We've already gained nearly 2 degrees in the past 100 years and the warming trend is accelerating.

There aren't any naturally occurring phenomena that explain the drastically different and much faster rate of change. There are cool visuals that demonstrate the point at Bloomberg Interactive.

Real data doesn't lie.

There isn't any scientific controversy; 97 out of 100 climatologists agree that global warming is happening and that it is caused by human factors.

But it's OK if you don't agree.  Every time there's been a rapid dramatic change in the earth's climate, the dominant life form has been wiped out.

It's been nice knowing you...

Revealing

There's an interesting post on truthexaminer.com that shows some revealing behavior about our new president.

I don't really care about the text of the post. Nor am I interested in whether the site is a reliable source of news or commentary.

What I'm most interested in are the photos and videos.

They show a distinctive pattern. Or perhaps I should say reveal a pattern.

That pattern is one of self-centeredness.

It's not mean.

It's not disrespectful.

He's simply not thinking about anyone else but himself.

It's his basic, instinctual behavior that's revealed when he's not thinking about behavior.

The same pattern is revealed in other ways on a pretty consistent basis.

Think about how often he speaks about how great he is, how smart he is, how he's the only one who can save us, etc. even when he ought to be talking about other things.

It's more often than not about him and his self-aggrandizement, not about us.

So for my friends who say he has a good heart because he loves his family, you may want to look at these photos and videos from a new perspective. Do these look like someone who thinks about his wife first or himself first?

It was Cold Yesterday - Global Warming Is a Lie

Global warming is about climate, not weather.

That is, just because it was cold yesterday where you live doesn't mean that global warming doesn't exist. It's about the temperature of the world as a whole, not just your town.

In case you hadn't noticed, the temperature is not the same across the earth's surface. With global warming there are still hot spots and cold spots (and they may move around a bit and some places might actually get colder), but overall the earth is getting warmer.

Still having trouble understanding it?

OK, let's try a simple example.

Let's say you have a two-story house with a basement. Since we're in America, let's also assume our temperatures are measured using the Fahrenheit scale. Your house has a thermometer on each floor: the basement, the first floor, and the second floor.

In the past the thermostats read 68, 70, and 72, respectively. So the average temperature in your house was 70 degrees.

Lately though the thermostats read 70, 69, and 74 degrees.  It's warmer in the basement and second floor, but cooler on the first floor. The average temperature is now 71 degrees.

The people in the basement might be happy now that they can stop wearing a sweater. But the people on the first floor are angry because it's too cold to grow their house plants now. And the folks on the second floor are constantly cranky because they can't keep their beer cold.

Won't be long before the various tenants start an altercation and the cops get called...

Climate Change

In one area the media has done a pretty poor job of explaining climate change. In the mainstream traditional media outlets they really do try to be fair and balanced. But in the attempts to be so, they don't always represent the proportions of the opposing sides.

In most stories where they talk about the proponents and skeptics, they make it seem as though the debate is evenly split.

It's not.

In fact there's not really even any debate among climatologists.

Among climate scientists, 97% believe that not only is there climate change, but also that there is overwhelming evidence that it is caused by human activity.

So don't let your ideology could your thinking on policy. Instead of looking for anecdotes that fit your ideology, look at the data first then make a policy decision.

I'm glad to see that Arnold doesn't let ideology get in the way of taking the right policy stance.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch his video:

Let In The Terrorists

If my conservative friends are to be believed, liberals want anyone - including terrorists - to wander into the country whenever they want.

So, yeah, I can explain that.

What they describe is not what liberals want.

They want immigrants to be vetted using the existing, quite rigorous process. The current screening process, by the way, takes 18 to 24 months on average. it includes a number of tests, interviews, and database checks and is carried out by both the UN and US government agencies. If there are improvements that need to made to the process, by all means let's make them.

Let's also make those changes using actual data to make our decisions. For example, if we want to protect Americans from foreign terrorists, what countries would we focus on?

Oops, looks like our President missed the mark a bit.

One has to wonder what criteria was used to determine the countries included in the ban...

My Friend, Bernhard Langer

It gets weirder all the time.

Seriously, Trump lies constantly. And about the stupidest things.

His need for affirmation doesn't just border on ridiculous, it's an obsession.

Why would a guy like Trump need to name drop Bernhard Langer? And especially in a way that's so easily checked for accuracy? Langer's not his friend and didn't personally relate the story to him. Further, as a German citizen, Langer couldn't have been in the voting line.

What I find especially disturbing is Trumps explicit comment that the people in line "didn't look American."

I'd ask what he means, but I don't have to. He's now let the cat out of the bag with all the voter registration and fraud angst in the Republican party.

It's really about people who don't look like me being able to vote.

That's what made America great...

The fact that originally only white male landowners could vote.

Cracking Down On Illegal Immigration

We've been cracking down on illegal immigration for years. In fact, Bill Clinton called for a crackdown in 1995, and so did his successor, George W Bush.

Given all the noise about Obama's ineffectiveness regarding immigration and Trump's calls for renewed crackdowns, it made me wonder what the illegal immigrant population has done over the past twenty years.

So I looked. And here's what I found about the number of illegal immigrant workers:

It looks like when Clinton and Bush cracked down on illegal immigrants, their population increased. When Obama was "ineffectual" - according to his critics at least - the population leveled off or actually decreased...

Further, the same research showed that the number of illegal immigrants peaked in 2007 at 12.2 million. Since it has dropped to 11.1 million.

So if the trend is flat or down, why all the fuss?

If we kill trade with Mexico, all the decent paying jobs will disappear from Mexico and we'll have more people from Mexico trying to come here to get jobs.

The end result is the opposite of what Trump says he wants.  Seems like he has trouble understanding cause and effect...

The Dramatic Expansion of the Federal Workforce

On Monday, January 23, 2017 President Trump issued an executive order which institutes federal hiring freeze.

At a news conference also on Monday, Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer said the freeze "counters the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years."

The statement caused me to wonder, has there been a dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years?

So I did a quick Google search and stumbled upon the federal government's Office of Personnel Management website. Yes, there is such a thing. And, in fact, they have regularly gathered statistics about the size of the federal workforce since 1962.

Here's what it looks like in graphical form:

There doesn't appear to be a "dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years".  In fact, after an increase in 2008 (1.9%), 2009 (5%), and 2010 (.2%), by 2014 the workforce had already shrunk down to 2004 levels. Note that in the 2009 and 2010 increases, more than half of the increase came in the form of an increase in uniformed military personnel.

Presumably the 2011-2014 trend continues and the data for 2015 and 2016 show similar rates of decrease.

Also note that every ten years there is an increase in the federal workforce to perform the decennial census.