Election Night

 I am deliberately writing this post before looking into the results of today's election.  I dropped off my absentee ballot yesterday, so I don't have any direct involvement in "election day."  I have been working outside all day and have heard nothing of the news.  All elections are times of uncertainty, but this one more than most.  It seems likely that the outcome will be contested, probably more-so than the issues in Florida in 2000, so it one sense, it seems preferable that one side wins decisively.  But after polling failures in the 2016 race, not predicting the winner with any degree of accuracy, it is even harder than usual to know what to expect.

I would prefer Trump winning, as I see nothing overwhelmingly bad resulting from that, especially if the Democrats control the House, and possibly the Senate.  If Biden wins, it is likely that the Democrats will control Congress as well, leading to few restraints on their publicly promised abuses of Federal power, to attempt to control the pandemic, the climate, the economy, and the culture.  I for one, do not want to see America "transformed."  It is possible that nothing terrible would happen under Biden, but it is also possible that Harris would end up in power, which is not a pretty picture.  The Democrats could pack the court, ignore or overturn the 2nd amendment, control people's healthcare, surrender sovereignty to the UN, and a host of other terrible things for American freedom.  Trump may be far from perfect, but he has limited government growth in the face of the biggest crisis of a generation, which is more than can be said of George W Bush's department of Homeland Security after 9/11.

At the present, both sides appear to expect their candidate to win, and fully expect the other party to riot in the streets when they lose.  I suppose it is possible, and we will only discover the truth of one side of those claims.  If Trump is declared the winner, we will never fine out how his supporters would have reacted to his loss.  Same goes for Antifa, BLM, and others if Biden wins.  I don't really want to find out either way.  But it is is sign of the unstableness of our society.  I haven't been stocking up on food and ammo like some people I know, but I will be less anxious once the result is settled.  Even if the result doesn't go my way, then we can deal with those potentially stressful repercussions as they come.

When is it Justifiable to Shoot Someone?

The shooting in Kenosha Wisconsin is the latest in a series of controversial violent events in the upper Midwest this summer.  This is the first one not to directly involve a police officer, meaning that the rules which govern who is responsible are different.  Just a quick recap, 17 year old Illinois resident Kyle Rittenhouse traveled to Kenosha with an AR-15 to protect businesses from rioters.  He was allegedly guarding a gas station when he was attacked by a group of rioters, some armed with guns.  He showed enough restraint to allow one close enough to knock him over and club him with a skateboard.  In an impressive recovery, we was able to shoot three of the rioters, two of whom died from their injuries, and make his escape.  One of the victims was clearly armed with a pistol, but it is not clear who started shooting first.  Kyle is currently charged with first degree murder, presumably to placate rioters.  It appears that the DA should have the latitude to rule this as self defense with no charges, or charge anything up to murder one, but what charge is justified?

While we don't know the exact circumstances, nor the details of what happened, it is still worth examining the principles we would use to determine who is at fault, once the facts of the matter are established.  I can't speak to what is legal, only to what I believe is right or wrong, and therefore I believe "should be" legal.

First off, he is a minor, and apparently not legally allowed to openly carry a gun.  I think that is a reasonable guideline that should rarely be enforced for its own sake.  Minor's have a right to self defense, but one could argue it is their parent's responsibility to protect them, not their own responsibility, and therefore they shouldn't need a gun.  Regardless, I think the fairest way to handle the issue, is that if anyone over 14 or 16 is openly carrying a firearm, they automatically be treated by the justice system as an adult.  If you want to run with the big dogs, you have to play be the same rules.  On the other hand, if you want to charge him as an adult, you can't reasonably charge him with possessing a firearm that is otherwise legal for him to have.

Now that the age 17 issue is set aside, they are all out after curfew, meaning that they are shouldn't be on public property.  I don't know what the legal rules around curfews are, but they shouldn't apply to people on private property with the owner's permission.  This conflict started at a gas station, which is private property.  If Kyle had the owner's permission to be there to defend the location from rioters, the curfew should not apply to him.  The curfew would apply to the rioters, as they were either on public property, or trespassing on private property without permission.  If Kyle didn't have permission to be there, this becomes a non-issue that cancels out, but if he did have permission, this should weight heavily in his favor.  If the conflict started on private property (the gas station), even if he was pursued onto public property (running down the street), that should be in his favor.

Then there is the issue that someone was clubbing him with a skateboard.  We don't know for sure who threw the first punch, or initiated the violent contact, but it seems unlikely that it would be the guy holding the rifle.  What we do know is that Kyle is not afraid to shoot someone if he feels it is justified.  Knowing that to be the case, and that he was clearly outnumbered, it doesn't seem reasonable that he would set aside his rifle and initiate a hand to hand confrontation.  We know that he showed enough trigger discipline to let the guy who knocked him over get within reach.  At some point after that, the shooting started, and one of the people he shot was holding a pistol.  If he didn't shoot first, I can't see how this wouldn't be a clear cut case of self defense.  If someone is shooting at you, I can't imagine a case where it wouldn't be totally justified to shoot back.  This was the premise of dueling back in the day, if I understand correctly.

If Kyle shot first, how do we determine if this was a case of legitimate self defense, or murder?  I am sure that there are some established legal thresholds for this, that vary between states, and some of which are probably ridiculous, based on the 80 year old charged with killing a home invader who had already beat him and left him for dead.  He was outnumbered by violent attackers, some of whom were armed with guns as well, and they were actively assaulting him.  And on top of that, other people have been killed by rioters in other locations recently, further making that a realistic possibility.  So it appears to me that his life was clearly in danger.

So unless there is some major revelation that changes the basic facts that have been shared with the public, I see no reason that this shouldn't be considered a case of self defense.  He would have to have been there without permission, and been the aggressor, threatening those who were not threatening him, and have fired first, for it to be reasonable to charge him with murder.  If any of those three things aren't true, I think he is justified in his actions, primarily because he was outnumbered and on the ground, regardless of the fact that his attackers were armed.

It takes true courage, or true stupidity, to attack someone who is holding an AR-15.  So the person who was beating on him with a skateboard is either a hero for attempting to subdue a homicidal maniac with his bare hands, or deserving of death for beating on a kid who got the best of him.  The DA clearly sees it as the former, but I don't think that is likely, unless a lot of new information comes out.  Other people seem to agree with him in demonizing Kyle without that other information, so I doubt anything like that will be forthcoming.  The reaction against him is all based on feelings, not on the actual events as they have been reported, similar to a number of other recent incidents that have set people off.

States Rights

The tension between the individual states and the federal government, over who has authority over what aspects of society, has existed since the constitution was ratified.  The short version is that the states have constantly losing ground to the expanding federal government, ever since states rights reached their peak at the signing of the tenth amendment.  Traditionally Republicans have favored maintaining as much authority at the state level as possible, while Democrats have been in favor of shifting as much of that authority to the federal government as possible.

Now that there is a Republican president, we hear less about states rights, because neither side of the aisle benefits as much from advancing their traditional position.  But this week, we have seen a big shift in how the Democrats are approaching that issue, with two separate compacts being agreed to by multiple states, to work together outside of the federal government, to coordinate the re-opening of America as the corona virus lock-down restrictions get lifted.  This is in direct defiance of the President's assertion that he has the authority to determine when the lock-downs get lifted.  I was originally encouraged by this conflict between the states and the federal government, as it weakens the overall power of government (think checks and balances) and would lead to getting things open sooner.

I favor easing the restrictions progressively over time, but starting immediately, since the peak has passed.  And two entities competing over who has authority creates a race for one of them to pick a date that the other has to respond to.  If someone throws out May 31st, it will be hard for the other to extend past that, putting them in a weak position, but they could push it forward, so that it will be visible that they were the one responsible for re-opening the economy.  This probably leads to an earlier release than otherwise would have happened.  I still think that is possible, but most of the talk is still about things over a month out, which I think is ridiculous.  It is unnecessary and unsustainable, both economically, and politically.  There will be a rebellion before then, and rightfully so.  And the economic damage increases at an exponential rate over time, just like the virus did.

The longer the lock-downs are in place, the more force will be required to maintain them, especially as it becomes more obvious that they are not necessary.  That application of force is the main problem, both it its implementation, and in the precedents that is sets.  We are already seeing all sorts of abuses of power that escalate as the situation deteriorates, and those are more concerning to me than the virus ever was.  I would prefer to risk losing 2% of our population, to losing a higher percentage of our freedom.  There are all sorts of ways to illustrate that freedom is more valuable than life, but in this context, the best one might be to point out that even the most oppressed beggar in Asia has life, but very few of earth's inhabitants have freedom.  And scarcity is one measure of value.  That scarcity will only increase, based on the direction we are headed, further increasing the value of the freedoms we have.

Big Decisions

I continue to be more worried about the response to the virus, than the virus itself.  While it is still spreading, it is slowing, which is a positive sign.  Fewer new infections each day than the day before, same with hospitalizations.  But that has not led to the loosening of any of the virus related restrictions.  Hopefully soon.  Trump had a conversation with reports about how big of a decision it was, to determine when to re-open the economy, the biggest decision he has ever had to make.  I could make the case that it is the biggest decision anyone has ever had to make.  If we look at other big individual events, like D-Day, "only" 150K people were involved in that, and 3.5K died, at least that day.  Many more over the next year of that invasion of Europe, but that was still small in comparison to 300M Americans, which could lead to up to 2M deaths if the virus is allowed to spread undeterred.  Determining when to re-open the country is a big decision, but only because the government got so involved in shutting it down in the first place.  That is a lot of responsibility, and it didn't have to be that way, and still doesn't.  Re-opening can be as voluntary as closing down should have been in the first place.  And the decision making can and should be done at more local levels, by states and counties, because they each have different situations, so they won't be prepared at the same time for the same steps.  Trump could encourage areas that are less impacted to loosen restrictions, while leaving the specifics to local officials, and could override certain decisions making certain aspects of the response voluntary, or declaring certain things essential, and immune to local regulation.  Church is the main one that comes to mind, as we are seeing the most conflict there, not because of the virus, but the response.  He could also ban all enforcement of the health recommendations, telling people to follow them at their own discretion, but that they are responsible for the results.

It occurred to me while watching the county health directive video, put together by the county's health officer, who is "responsible for the health of all citizens in the county" that it would be good to have an official who was responsible for the freedom of all citizens of the county, who could weigh the recommendations of the health officials against the other interests that are impacted.  Then I realized we do, or should.  They are called mayors, county supervisors, governors, judges, etc.  Their job is to protect our freedom, and they seem to have all been intimidated by the media into playing along with the "we should save lives from the corona virus at all costs" narrative.  I came across a statistic that the government usually values a single human life at around $5M, which makes a $25K hospital ventilator that only saves 1 in 6 of the patients that are put on it, a bargain.  But if we value a single life at $5M, and just spent $9T in the last month, so far, on the shutdown, we better have saved 2M lives to make it worth it.  Ironically 2.2M was the number being thrown around when the federal government started taking this seriously, but I think that is inflated, and could have been easily lowered by earlier intervention.  The total cost has yet to be scene, but I am confident that it would be best to start loosening restrictions in areas that are past the peak of infections, even though I recognize that risks increasing infections going forward.  There is a balance that can only be found by trying.  Different states can try different things, and learn from each other, as that is the benefit of the decentralized power of federalism.

I just hope that we can see certain restrictions loosened soon, which should relieve some of the tension of the situation.  The instability and high tension is what has me concerned that it will lead to bigger problems.  Certain social distancing techniques can continue with little cost, but we need people to get back to work, for their own good.  Hopefully they can grow from the positive aspects of the recent pause to normal life, and recover from the negative aspects.

Corona Virus in the Moment

We are about two weeks into the Corona virus lock-down, and while we have far surpassed my initial estimates of 50K infections and 1K deaths, we are still nowhere near the millions that certain people were predicting.  Some people want to lift the restrictions, while others want to tighten them,  Some are convinced it will eventually infect nearly everyone, and we are just slowing it down.  But viewing the progress in foreign countries, whether Europe or Asia, indicates that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, as things seem to be improving there.  Auburn never took the shelter in place orders as seriously as our more densely developed neighbors, but so far seems no worse for the wear.  I am much more concerned about the precedents set by enforcing those orders than I am about the spread of the virus, but both are potential problems, that have the possibility of getting way out of hand.

Personally, I have been focused on installing my own solar panel system for the last few weeks, but now that it is up and running, I will have a bit more time on my hands to try to use wisely while stuck at home.  And I am fortunate enough to have the resources to stay home for the time being, and just make preparations for the future, as we all try to determine what that will look like.  I still think is in likely that things will improve within a month, but I am planning for the eventuality that it does not.  The garden becomes the next focus, as things warm up, as an alternate source of food.  Might be time to expand the chicken flock as well, since that has been an under utilized resource.  But those things are longer term investments, that we have to make it through the short term in order to benefit from.

Current totals are 270K infection and 7K deaths.  At this point I think we may see 1M infections, and 50K deaths, but it is hard to know who to trust, as both the media and the government are incentivized to exaggerate the extent of the issue.  It will be interesting to see with hindsight how many people had minor infections early on, without realizing it.  Lots more people think they have COVID-19 than actually do (<80% of tests are negative) and lots of other people thing they have already had it.  It will be really interesting to see the blood test results when searching for anti-bodies in a random selection of the population.