Trusting our Leaders

I recently read an article about a senior stock broker in London, who has been banned from finance for life by the British equivalent of our SEC.  His offense was failing to pay his train fare for his daily commute into London.  Now while this may seem extreme, it wasn't a one-time mistake, but a deliberate systematic scheme to avoid paying full price for his commuting trips, because the system was based on trust.  He settled the civil part of the case with the train company for over $60K, based on the cost of 20 years of commuting.  But then when his identity was publicly revealed months after the settlement, he lost his job managing a hedge fund, and was banned for life from trading in the London market.  Now the question at hand is, was that the right reaction and consequence for his offense?

Most of the sources quoted in the article thought it was an outrageous over-reaction, but I have no problem with the idea that "a single lapse in judgment could ruin someone's career or life."  I am not creating that idea as a new rule, I am merely recognizing that it already exists as a rule.  If you, in a lapse of judgment step in front of a train, you die.  Our actions have permanent and irrevocable consequences.  So it stands to reason that other decisions you make should have the potential to destroy your professional career, or your financial well-being.

Now to be clear, there is a difference between a mistake made out of confusion, and a deliberate action for one's own gain.  Filing the wrong tax form because the system is more complicated than you understand, is totally different than filing the wrong tax form, and pretending to be confused by it, to avoid paying so much.  They are both mistakes, but one is a deliberate mistake.  One indicates that you are incapable, the other that you can't be trusted.  Since the financial industry is based on trust, the fact that someone can't be trusted to act with integrity in small financial matters, should disqualify them from being trusted in large financial matters.  The same is true for lawyers misrepresenting their clients, or doctors who act against their patient's best interests.  If they can not be trusted, they should not be trusted.

Where does forgiveness fit into this?  Forgiveness does not remove the natural consequences of one's transgressions; it just releases the need for revenge.  Banning someone for life is not done out of vengeance, but to protect the integrity of the system, and ensure that those involved are people who can be trusted by both investors and the public at large.

This is similar to the questions we frequently face in regards to the personal lives of our political leaders.  Should their personal indiscretions affect their positions in the world of government and business?  My answer is "of course," but there is currently a lot of public debate about this.

I was a big fan of Gen. Patraeus as his career took off after his successes in the war on terror.  At the rate he was advancing in Washington, through the Pentagon and CIA, it was anticipated that he would soon be a presidential candidate, and stood out as a beacon of integrity in a corrupt system.  But it was eventually revealed that he was cheating on his wife with the girl who was writing his biography.  I still agree with his politics, and know that he has accomplished a lot for this country, but I can't support him as a leader.  If his wife can't trust him with their relationship, how can we trust him with our country?

Obviously Bill Clinton is a prime example, and the public ruled in his favor in the election process, but I still think they got it wrong.  It just reflects how much our culture has abandoned any sense of accountability or holding people responsible for their actions.  And it is not limited to sexual issues.  In the same vein, his wife was running the State Department during the Benghazi crisis, and it was handled poorly, resulting in the permanent death of multiple Americans.  She didn't resign, but left office at the end of that term.  It seems pretty that their deaths should have ended her career; it was her responsibility to protect them, and she and/or her subordinates failed to do so.  With her rise as a presidential candidate, that issue is being dismissed, because "it took place years ago."  The victims are still dead, so I don't think that the issue has been fully resolved.

Our decisions and actions matter, and have real consequences.  We need to recognize that, and shouldn't try to create a system that minimizes those consequences and accountability.  People should not be isolated from the consequences of their actions, especially those in positions of power.  Doctors, lawyers, and stock brokers are governed by committees that set standards for their conduct and enforce those rules.  But with elected offices in our political government, we the people set the standards, and enforce the rules, based on who we vote for.  So we need to vote for people we can trust to act with integrity, as that is the only way to fight corruption within government.

Hollywood is a Comedy in International Relations

There has been a lot of talk in the press recently about the hacking of Sony's network, with many different reactions.  It appears that forces originating in North Korea were able to breech Sony's network, and steal massive amounts of data.  This potentially valuable or embarrassing data is being held hostage, with the threat of publicizing it if they don't cancel the release of a movie that is very offensive to the North Korean government.  The movie is rumored to graphically depict the assassination of Kim Jong Un, the country's dictator.  There was also a public threat of physical violence against the company and its employees if demands were not met.

After weeks of debate, and a progressive series of data leaks, Sony has canceled the release of The Interview, the movie in question.  This has resulted in further widespread criticism of Sony, which has been mounting as the leaks revealed issues within the company and its leaders.  Now in as much as canceling the movie is caving to terrorist demands, and encouraging attacks like this in the future, I oppose their decision.

But many people are bringing the freedom of speech into the situation, as an issue at stake.  And I think that is the wrong approach, and not really relevant anyway.  The principle of freedom of speech (and/or "expression") applies to government intervention, and nothing else.  The government has not required Sony to cancel the movie, at least not publicly, so their freedom or rights have not been violated, at least not by the government.  They have clearly been violated in some form by the attack, but their "rights" have not been.  And just because we have the right to do something doesn't mean that it is right to do it.

Now let's look at it from the other side.  Someone in North Korea deserves a huge promotion at this point.  Not because what they did was right, but because it was seemingly impossible.  Early on, I found it hard to believe that North Korea could be to blame for this, because I didn't think they were that competent and capable.  Most of what I hear about North Korea supports the idea that the country is led by people who live in their own deluded fantasy world, with no grip on reality.  I could easily imagine Kim Jong Un demanding that his military put a stop to this movie by force.  I could not imagine them ever coming close to succeeding at that task.  But it appears that they have, against all odds.  The North Korean government tried to settle the issue peacefully, lodging an official protest with the UN, which was totally ignored.  So they moved on to more extreme measures.  Now regardless of the means they used, let's look at their objective.  Would we allow a movie to be released that portrayed the assassination of Obama?  I can assure you that we would not, and there are actual rules about that, enforced by the secret service.  We have movies about assassination attempts, against fictionally US Presidents, but the assassins are never the protagonists, and we would never graphically portray their potential success.  So I think the North Koreans have justification for being upset about the movie itself.

So should it be released?  We can ignore the freedom of speech argument, because even in the US, the freedom of speech does not extend to advocating killing political leaders.  And a movie production in the US would be shut down by the government if it was about killing the current president.  And while North Korea seemed like a safe and politically correct target for a comedy spy movie, it is not the same as using a fictional enemy.  And actually portraying the killing of a real political leader, who is still alive today, as a desirable outcome, is clearly inappropriate.  So do the filmmakers have the "right" to do something like that?  Possibly under existing US law, but not if it was a US President.  Is it the right thing to do?  Surely not, but it is outrageous enough to garner more attention and therefore more profit.

So not showing the movie might be the right thing to do.  The issue is that they are making that expensive decision for the wrong reasons.  They are canceling the movie to avoid being liable for the consequences of showing it, not because it is an inappropriate thing to show.  It is unfortunate that the current outcome promotes hacking and terrorism as a viable way of accomplishing legitimate objectives in the future.  And the responses from both the media and the public to that decision just illustrate how out of balance their values and priorities are.  They are almost as out of touch with reality as the North Koreans are usually portrayed as being.

Climate Change

The weather has been in the headlines a lot recently.  There were two major stories yesterday.  The first was that the Pineapple Express storm was supposed to bring the heaviest rainfall in 6 years.  Second, linked from the same page, was a study claiming that the current drought is the worst California has experienced in 1200 years.  So the one thing we can safely conclude, is that we can't believe everything the media is telling us.

We would have no idea of many of the current pressing issues we are facing, if the media wasn't constantly telling us about them.  They are "pressing" because that means we need to stay updated on them as they develop, and therefore need to continue using the media.  But humans have a terrible memory, and this has nearly always been true.  Half of the Old Testament is saying "don't forget what the Lord your God has done to bring you out of Egypt," and the people constantly forgot anyway.  Things always seem more extreme in the present than in our memories of the past, even if they are factually identical.

Daylight savings time is a great example.  Every fall, I always feel like "I know it is supposed to get dark earlier, but it never used to get dark THIS early."  And every spring I hardly notice as it changes back.  If I didn't fully understand how this worked, I would probably believe a news story about how the increase of the tilt of the earth's axis was making the seasons more extreme, and the days even shorter than usual in winter.

The same is true of weather: it always FEELS hotter this summer than last year, and colder this winter than last year.  It didn't rain this much last year.  It hasn't snowed here in years.  So nearly any weather forecast can be fabricated into a plausible pressing issue that we should all be concerned about.  And my favorite part, that many of these fabricated issues are supposedly caused by our actions.  They ARE caused by our actions, not necessarily from pollution, but they are created for political reasons.  From the global cooling scare in the 70s, to the global warming scare of the 90s, it is something that the government can claim to be protecting us from, if we give them more control over things.

The current "climate change" issue was a rebranding on global warming after it became obvious to even the most gullible that the earth wasn't always getting hotter.  It's a brilliant marketing plan, because climates DO change; it's a fact of life, look at Greenland.  That became un-farmable and froze over hundreds of years before the industrial revolution brought measurable pollution from man.  It isn't always bad change either.  The current polar melting has led to valuable new navigable water routes that the world is beginning to fight over.

This week, the flooding proves that it did rain, although not as much as the hype would lead you to believe.  Our reservoirs are still very low, which is the primary statistic used to measure the drought, but we control how much is retained there, at least to a degree.  If there is no water, we can't divert it, but when there is water, we can choose to let it flow, or store it.  Folsom Lake was empty this summer, but I drove to LA two months ago, and saw Pyramid Lake on the way there.  It is filled to capacity, within a foot of the top.  So there is water, but it is being sent to LA, to meet the growing needs there.  And the drought scare is used to support the $8B proposition to fund more water delivery to LA, to alleviate the man-made drought in NorCal.

Cancer Treatment

So I guess I do some pretty random things.  I spent 12 hours yesterday with someone I hadn't seen in six years, driving through the traffic and rain in the Bay Area.  He needed someone to accompany him to his cancer treatment in San Francisco on short notice, and since I was free that day, I offered to go.  We have had pretty much no contact over the last few years, but once a camp friend, always a camp friend.  And Facebook has a strange way of facilitating those random connections at unexpected times and places.  I met up with another friend from Arizona a few years ago, when we both happened to be visiting PA at the same time.

Anyhow, the long gap in communication didn't present an issue, and we struck up a conversation as if it had only been since last week.  But luckily we had a lot to talk about, since rainy traffic left us on the road for hours longer than expected in each direction.  When we actually got to his appointment, it felt a bit strange to me to be in a cancer research center, realizing that most of the people sitting around me had serious forms of terminal cancer.  Everyone I know is dying to some degree, but most of us at a much slower rate than certain others.  That is a lot more clear in an environment like that.

I was actually sitting right there for an hour and a half as they drew blood and gave him chemical transfusions, as he drifted in and out of consciousness due to the effect of the drugs.  I was trying to read a book the whole time, but was frequently distracted from that by people coming and going, both the patients moving to the overstuffed chairs overlooking the city while they got their transfusions, and the staff that attended to them.

As we were leaving, I overheard an elderly gentleman talking to someone else in the waiting room, "this chemo process can be rough, but it is better than the alternative.  Back in the day they just sent you home to wait to die."  Most of the patients were much older than my friend, and I hope the only younger person I saw was there for his parent.  But many of them appeared to be in their forties and fifties, and looked fairly "normal," not as I would have anticipated a cancer patient to look.  It makes you wonder how many other people are dealing with that, and just not sharing it with others.

I also came to realize that the drugs they were dealing with in that facility are very expensive, to the point of shipping one dose at a time, and ordering what is needed for every appointment they schedule, instead of drawing from a stockpile on hand.  The pharmaceutical industry involves a lot of money, because the cost of the equipment they use, and the amount of testing they do.  So it is to be expected that the drugs will be expensive.  And I don't think there is much issue of abuse of these items, since no one is going to get addicted to the "kick" of chemotherapy.  Hopefully we will have better solutions in the future, as further research is developed and ideas are tried.

A Skin Problem versus a Sin Problem

I am usually not a very big fan of professional athletes.  But one today appears to stand out from the crowd.  I have never heard of Benjamin Watson, who plays for the New Orleans Saints, but a cursory examination of his Facebook page reveals that he is very open about his Christian faith, which I think is commendable.  His faith doesn't appear to have gotten him the level of attention that Tim Tebow had to deal with, but his most recent post is getting a lot of well deserved attention.

He has posted a reaction to the situation in Ferguson, both the legal proceedings and the violent reaction to the outcome.  He expresses emotions of anger, sadness and fear, acknowledges that he doesn't know all of the facts or the answers.  He writes a very balanced but emotionally honest reaction to the situation, which is good to see in contrast to the endless inflammatory remarks that are flying around on both sides.  But the real kicker is in the last paragraph.

"I'M ENCOURAGED, because ultimately the problem is not a SKIN problem, it is a SIN problem. SIN is the reason we rebel against authority. SIN is the reason we abuse our authority. SIN is the reason we are racist, prejudiced and lie to cover for our own. SIN is the reason we riot, loot and burn. BUT I'M ENCOURAGED because God has provided a solution for sin through the his son Jesus and with it, a transformed heart and mind. One that's capable of looking past the outward and seeing what's truly important in every human being. The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner tragedies is not education or exposure. It's the Gospel. So, finally, I'M ENCOURAGED because the Gospel gives mankind hope."

I am quite impressed that his message is gaining traction, to the tune of half a million likes, and a quarter million shares on Facebook, considering that it is openly Christian.  The first thing that catches my attention is that he uses the word "SIN" in all caps.  I have been becoming increasingly aware that this word has fallen out of favor in our modern society.  It doesn't appear to be politically correct to use it in any context at all, since that would imply that morality may not be entirely relative.  And he is using it repeatedly and emphasizing it, but his message is not being dismissed out of hand, which gives me hope for the future.  He also addresses the solution to SIN, from God in the form of Jesus Christ.  And because the SIN problem can be dealt with, that is the source of hope.  Because if the SKIN problem were the true underlying issue, there would be no solution short of genocide.  But it is not the problem, SIN is the problem, and that, thanks to Jesus, is a solvable problem.  And Watson comes out and actually says this directly, and it is well received.

So hopefully something positive may come out of this fabricated crisis, instead of all the negative that the devil (and the media) intend.  Any further circulation of this message can only help the situation, but I hope that it is not drowned out by the overwhelming roar of hatred and ignorance that we have been hearing in response to the situation over the past few months.  Identifying the real problem is the first step to solving it.

An Interest in Interest

Most people seem to be unaware of the fact that lending money with interest is forbidden in the Old Testament.  Most of the prohibitions are technically aimed at the lender, who it is implied, should lend without interest.  “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him." (Exodus 22:25)  “You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest." (Deut 23-19)  Most Christians view many Old Testament rules as replaced by the New Covenant, which supersedes the Law.  But many of those Laws were put into place for external reasons, and many of those reasons are still valid today.  God has recently been showing me how ignoring this particular principle at a massive level, has led to many of the issues that we find in American society.

I am not trying to say that lending or borrowing money for interest is still inherently morally wrong.  I am just pointing out that it may still be a bad idea, with consequences that God was trying to protect us from.  Many of those consequences of ignoring that idea only apply to the larger picture, which is why they are more difficult to directly connect to monetary lending.  Others are more personal, and directly affect those involved in the transaction.  I have long been aware that the prevalence of huge mortgages enslaves most homeowners to their jobs.  That is why I bought a much smaller house, with money I had available at the time.  I realize that most people can't do that in the current economic climate, but that is a result of that principle being ignored for so long in the past.  Widespread availability of high value mortgages has artificially increased the price of property across the country.  So now the regular price of an average home is far out of reach of the normal consumer.  Might this be what God was warning us against?

But the issue is larger than that.  Our entire economy is based on credit.  Credit is foundational to most modern business practices, and is the underlying force that drives the stock market.  The same principle that drove up home prices to artificial levels is one of the factors raising the cost of healthcare, and as a result, raising health insurance costs.  There are many economists who believe that a reasonable level of national debt is health for a country.  But this seems to be at odds with the ideals of a free society.  We need a government controlled by the people, and not by those it owes money to.  Modern credit scores are based on financing costs being paid, and therefore reward those who are borrowing money, penalizing those who settle their debt promptly or even immediately.

So what is the best response to this problem that we can make as individuals?  It may be impossible for many people to avoid having a mortgage, but is your house bigger than you actually NEED, regardless of what you can actually afford?  Beyond that, I would avoid getting into debt at all.  What about the flip side, with money we do have?  That is the aspect that is directly addressed in the Bible.  I don't necessarily think it is wrong to store money in the bank, and was raised with a high value on saving money.  And accruing interest in savings accounts seems like a null issue at the moment.  But should we invest in stocks and bonds?  I don't think that is inherently wrong, but there may be a better way to use your resources, which honor this Biblical principle.

If we instead invest in income generating assets that can help other people, we retain the aspect of our resources working for us, while providing a service to others.  In my own case, that may end up looking like purchasing and rebuilding homes to sell or rent to others.  Then my resources are invested in hard assets, which still produce increase, but not based on the extending of credit, or profiting from the existing financial system.  It may look like something else if God shows me a better way, and it will certainly look like something else in other people's lives.  And having our wealth in less liquid forms increases our awareness of our dependence on God's provision.  We are no longer under the mistaken illusion that we can take care of ourselves based on the balance in our bank account.

The Value and Cost of Higher Education

I am realizing that I am a huge fan of growth and learning, but not necessarily of education.  Formal education can be good, but only to a point, and it always comes at a cost.  The question to ask is: at what point does the benefit cease to justify the cost.  Most any knowledge that can be acquired can be useful in some form, but some is more valuable than others.  Basic education should be widely applicable to daily life, and to develop critical thinking and analysis skills.

But beyond that, I do not think that education is inherently valuable.  If learned for a reason, anything can be valuable.  But the same things learned for their own sake are not inherently useful or valuable.  I am all for someone pursuing a degree if they feel called to be a lawyer or a doctor.  But if they are just going to college of grad school because they aren't sure what else to do, that isn't necessarily good.

There is a debate about how much the government should be subsidizing higher education.  On the one side, there are those who think that the government should help pay for college costs, because an educated population is good for society as a whole.  On the other side are people who think that people should pay for the costs of their own education, because they are the ones who stand to benefit the most from that opportunity.  And they are the ones who have to be responsible to put in the effort to actually succeed and learn in that environment.

I usually favor independent responsibility, and less government intrusion in the lives of its citizens, so I am not in favor of government funding, and therefore control, in education.  But I have been seeing some articles pointing out how Europe has successfully publicly funded their University systems.  And that caused me to wonder: if they have succeeded to do that, why can't we?  That doesn't seem like such a bad thing to do, instead of hordes of graduates with excessive debts flooding into the job market.  What is wrong with that idea?

I also saw another article comparing foreign exchange students to Americans in our universities.  The basic premise was that immigrants were seen as too busy studying to have any fun, and Americans were too busy drinking and partying to do any studying.  So I found myself wondering, how do we solve that problem.  And that is when some conversations I had with foreign students in college began to come to mind.

They had explained that they qualified and were chosen for the foreign exchange program, the same way they were selected to attend public university.  They had to pass certain tests in high school that determined if they would be given a spot at university, and if not they were not allowed to advance in their education.

In America, as a free country, we want people to have freedom and options.  That means that the government doesn't choose who is allowed to attend university, but to increase those potential options, we currently subsidize that option, with loans and grants.  So most individuals have the freedom to attend college, with fewer financial limits than would be natural.

So what if we copied a different aspect of the European system, and tied government financial assistance to ongoing academic performance?  Suddenly the issue of the average American college student wasting their time drinking and partying would be solved.  Some would wise up and work harder, and the others would be removed, where they could do their partying and drinking after they get off work from doing something loosely productive instead of pretending to learn.  Our tax dollars would get a much better return on investment, with those we do pay for actually learning more, for the benefit of society.  With fewer college graduates, who actually learned something in school, a degree would actually be meaningful in getting a good job.  And that would incentivize the whole system, to encourage it to improve, instead of devolve into the current mess.

Now there are some students who can afford to pay for their education without government assistance, and in a free country they shouldn't necessarily be excluded the opportunity.  And they may be ones who are partying it up, but that is less likely when they are spending their own money on the classes they are skipping.  And even if they aren't learning, they are paying into the system, so their irresponsible behavior is no more of a burden on the system than if they weren't there at all.

So we find that as usual, irresponsible government spending with no accountability is not only wasteful, but leads to much larger problems than they were originally intended to solve.  But the process of changing it will be very unpopular due to the fact that Americans don't understand the difference between the right to freedom of access to something, and deserving to have it blindly provided to them free of charge.

When Does Life Cease to be Valuable?

We recently saw the conclusion of what was probably the highest profile assisted suicide case in history.  A young woman who recently moved to Oregon to legally acquire a prescription poison, deliberately ended her life before her terminal brain cancer destroyed her mind on body.  She not only committed suicide, but she publicized the entire process leading up to it, in an effort to encourage other people to do the same, and for the rest of us to fully support and condone that process.  But should we?

Clearly there is no denying that God gave us the ability to commit suicide.  But he gave us the ability to do all sorts of things we shouldn't do.  Not everything we have the ability to do, we have the right to do.  Nearly everyone has the ability to commit suicide, but do we have the right?  And more to the point, should we as a society be facilitating that process, or trying to prevent it?

Should we allow assistance to those committing suicide, or consider that to be akin to murder?  And beyond that, should we give people the right to assistance, compelling medical professionals to provide that service, regardless of their beliefs on the issue?  The Hippocratic oath, which has been a tradition honored in the medical profession for thousands of years, clearly conflicts with idea of doctors prescribing deadly poisons, or doing any other harm to their patients.

Should you need to have a terminal illness before suicide is legal?  That is why the medical profession is involved in the first place.  Otherwise it could be something that you get at the hardware store, like rat poison.  Should you need a prescription to kill yourself?  Obviously you don't really need one; there are lots of unsanctioned ways to kill yourself.  But the medical profession offers a solution that is "peaceful" and "dignified," in the form of some specially formulated drug.  Who develops these anyway, and how do they test them?  Probably the same people who develop drugs for lethal injection, designed not to be "cruel or unusual" punishment.  Which leads to another important question: "How do we reconcile the two views that a lethal overdose is the ultimate punishment for a convicted murderer and, at the same time, the ultimate blessing for an innocent terminally ill or disabled person?"

The opposing view, is that people who seem fated to die a long painful death based on medical prognosis, should be given the merciful option to end things quickly.  And if you believe in the value of freedom, then it seems to logically follow that the opportunity should be made available to them, to allow them to make their own decision and deal with the consequences.  I would concede that if you remove the religious belief elements from the equation, from an individual perspective, one could make equally strong cases either way.

But I have been learning recently how over focused Western culture is becoming on individuals and their rights as opposed to the good of the society at large.  If we look at the issue from a social perspective, we see a totally different picture.  Should any nurse or doctor be forced to provide a "treatment" that they personally believe to be unethical.  Even if they weren't opposed to the concept, what would their participation due to them at a psychological level.  What would happen to the Hippocratic oath?

Should insurance companies cover that "treatment?"  Should they be able to promote that option over a painful $100K operation with limited potential for success?  Will making that option available eventually create a social pressure for the terminally ill and disabled to remove the burden of their care from their families?  Does this place within society the value that our personal convenience is more important than the lives of other people? (As with abortion)  How far of a step is it from assisted suicide, to removing the decision from the patient and to the doctors or insurance company?  Europe has legalized various forms of euthanasia, which are unquestionably wrong.  So if we look at the larger picture, it is easy to see that an issue that could be argued either way from a personal rights point of view presents a significant potential cost and risk to society at large.  What kind of world do you want to live in?

Taxes, Authority, and Control

Taxes are usually a pretty controversial issue, which few people seem to give much thought to beyond "higher" or "lower."  What are the purpose of taxes?  And how should they be levied.  Originally, taxes were created to fund the government.  In modern times, they have become one of the main tools for the government to encourage or discourage behavior.  IRAs encourage retirement saving, alcohol taxes discourage drinking, etc.  Recently the Supreme Court upheld the fundamental parts of Obamacare, because it was only enforced through taxation.  That explicitly endorsed this method of implementing change, and got around the existing constitutional limitations on government power.  But how should we be taxed?

Mathematically, there will be an optimal tax rate that generates the most revenue for the government, but not one can accurately determine what that is, due to the complexity of the equation, and the numerous variables involved.  The conservative claim that lowering taxes stimulates the economy enough to increase total revenues is not always true, nor is the liberal claim that raising taxes is a good idea.  A 0% tax rate raises zero revenue, as does a 100% tax rate. (Removing all incentive for a currency economy.)  If we were to graph that, it would give us a Y-value of 0 for input values of 0 and 100, and various positive results in between, forming a curve.  The peak of that curve would be the tax rate that returns the highest total revenue to the government, but the precise shape of that curve is impossible to know with certainty.  Conservatives usually believe that we are past it, while liberals believe we have not yet reached it.

That leads to the next question, which is should the government be trying to receive the maximum possible revenue.  On principle I would say no, only enough to cover the necessary expenses.  But given the $16Trillion debt, I think that at this point that is a reasonable point to aim for.  I don't claim to know what the ideal rate is, I just want to hear a decent debate about it, which would never include the phrases "(raising/lowering) taxes ALWAYS (increases/decreases) tax revenue," which is never a true statement.

Personally, I'd like to pay less in taxes, but I am not opposed to paying "my fair share," whatever that in reality actually is.  But I oppose expanding government, which would lead me to advocate lower rates if it weren't for the fact that the US government never hesitates to borrow money to cover whatever expansion the existing tax revenues don't cover.

But there is one area in particular where I have been examining the effect of the level of authority taxation gives the government.  Churches have traditionally been tax exempt in America, to prevent the government from using excessive taxes as a way of influencing of controlling churches.  But as taxes have become more extensive and valuable, that has had some interesting side effects.  Typically, church donations are tax deductions for the donor, income tax free for the church, which also doesn't pay property taxes, sales taxes, or employment taxes to ministers, who are exempt from income tax as well.  There is nothing necessarily inherently wrong with this, but it leads to an interesting paradox.

The value of these exempted taxes is quite high, and if the government was to change the rules, that would alter the budgets of churches drastically.  The threat to revoke certain church's tax exempt status is now being used by the government to exert authority over them.  I consider this to be a huge threat to the independence of the church, and the separation between church and state.  All anyone needs to do is look to Europe to see the result of that line being blurred.  The Queen of England appoints the leaders of the Church of England, without regard for God or any other spiritual factors.  So how can we remove this threat to the independence of churches?

Ironically the answers seem to be to make what is threatened actually happen.  The original threat appeals to the greed of the church leadership, who don't want to see their church growth limited by tax expenses.  But if churches were already paying the same taxes as everyone else, this wouldn't be a potential threat.  I am not advocating getting rid of tax deductions for donations, just the tax exemptions that churches have.  They could pay property taxes, and sales tax, and employment tax just like everyone else.  There shouldn't necessarily be an income tax for it as a non-profit institution, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for ministers could pay income taxes.  They receive the same citizenship benefits as everyone else does.

I was very opposed to this idea when I first heard it suggested, since it doesn't initially appear to promote church independence from government intervention.  But after pondering it for a while, I began to see the wisdom in it.  And Mark 12:17 could be used to support it from a Biblical perspective.  Now what if the government tries to abuse this power we give them to collect taxes from churches, to influence or control the church?  Well then we fight it as a violation of the separation of church and state, just like we would fight anything else.  But our case would be much clearer in that situation, and it is not like they aren't already trying to abuse the current exempt status to influence churches and their leaders, so we would be no worse off in that regard.  But any abuse of churches would be much more obvious if churches were on the same playing field as all other non-profit entities.

Healthcare and Freedom

The American Revolution was started under the slogan "give me liberty or give me death."  So we can safely conclude that our country was founded on the idea that freedom is more important than survival itself.  But freedom inherently entails a certain level of responsibility for one's self, and one's decisions freely made.

Enter modern healthcare, which has become increasingly expensive, as newer treatments and drugs are developed.  Higher prices have made healthcare prohibitively expensive without insurance.  Inflated prices allow companies to overcharge each other for "out of network" services.  Individual consumers are always "out-of network" and therefore always overcharged.  On top of this, insurance costs have gone through the roof, both for patients, and doctors who fear massive lawsuits if they make a mistake.

So what is to be done about the problem?  One approach is to look to the government to solve the problem.  Now this is necessary to an extent, since they are part of the existing problem, but that doesn't make them the solution.  We do need some changes in regulation that will bring down the cost of healthcare, not just health insurance.  I wouldn't be opposed to banning health insurance for regular preventative care. (Only covering injury and catastrophic illness)  Limiting the costs of liability litigation would be helpful as well.

Instead we see a solution being brought about where the government is being looked to to pay for the costs of healthcare.  This idea is kind of ludicrous since the US government is already the most indebted entity in the history of the world.  So what is the rest of the world doing to solve this problem?  Many have implemented a socialized medicine solution, where the government manages and pays for the entire healthcare system.  So why not do that here?

Because none of those are free countries, not a single one.  How do I know this?  It is impossible for a country to be free if the government runs the health care system.  If the government is paying for your healthcare, they control your healthcare.  If they control your healthcare, they control you.  And therefore, you are no longer free.  Being a free citizen will inherently require that you take responsibility for your own health and healthcare.  And this is why we see such fierce debate about Obamacare and the ACA.  Something much more important than healthcare is at stake here.  Because so many Americans have been willing to die for freedom, we see that freedom is more valuable than health, and it would dishonor their sacrifice to give up our freedom to improve our healthcare.   It's really very simple.

God's Favor Resting on his Followers

I heard an interesting teaching a while back, which isn't explicitly biblical, but that doesn't make it untrue.  It is difficult to prove, and may be self fulfilling at the anecdotal level, but still worth examining.  It relates to God's favor, and how it rests on his followers and is shared by them.  Traditionally certain aspects of God's favor and calling have been shared with others through prayer, and direct contact through the laying on of hands.  But can that favor be shared in other ways?

Someone proposed the idea that we can bring that favor to places we go to, or where we do certain things.  The basic claim was that choosing one option over another either led to, or was a result of, God's favor of that option.  If you are travelling, and stop to get something to eat, there are usually multiple fast food options in a given area.  Besides habitual preference, which one do you choose?  And then what happens?  Have you ever showed up at a business that was totally devoid of customers, and gotten served at once?  And then as you were receiving service looked behind you to find that a line had formed?  The intuitive and natural response to that is: "wow, I got here just in time, before it got busy."  But that assumes that you have no effect on the world around you.  Is it possible that your conscious choice to go their affected others and their decisions of timing?  You definitely didn't force them to, as that would violate free will, but what determines which options occur to us or feel favorable at any given moment?

Once you have been conscious of this possibility for a few months, you will observe all sorts of possible applications of it, but each individual one could easily have been a coincidence.  But being familiar with the principles of blind probability, I would be inclined to think not, even accounting for the fact that people usually ignore the number of examples that don't illustrate their point.  But the most extreme case happened to me last week.

I needed to get my car smogged, and had no idea where I should get it done.  I had coupons to two places, but was discouraged from one option by a former employee.  In the same conversation, another option was recommended to me, because the owners went to my church.  I think choosing it for that reason may have magnified the effect, if it exists at all.  The same place was recommended on a random FB feed from an unrelated friend the next day, so I figured that might be a good place to check out.

I showed up without an appointment, late in the afternoon, fully prepared to come back later if I needed a prior appointment, but hoping that I could get it taken care of all at once.  When I arrived there were no other customers there, and the employees were all sitting around waiting for something to do.  When I went inside I realized the owners were a couple who usually sit right next to me at church, but we had never really talked past basic introductions.  Within minutes people started arriving, and their cars were lining up.  By the time my car was finished 15 minutes later, at least eight other customers arrived, some of whom had to be deferred to future appointments since it was late in the afternoon.  I don't claim to have caused that to happen, but it seemed like a pretty solid illustration of that idea of God's favor resting on his followers, if there is any truth to it at all.

What is Left Behind

I went to see this movie last weekend, only because I was invited as a family outing.  I normally avoid disaster movies because they tap into a deep seated fear I used to have of the rapture and tribulation.  And that is directly what this claims to be addressing, but I agreed to go anyways.  That aspect wasn't as bad as I feared it would be, but only because the movie was so bad, and disconnected from any real discussion about the rapture.

I am not convinced that the rapture is going to happen, because the Biblical evidence to support that idea is pretty weak and vague.  And the very idea is not very consistent with most of the other stories and principles found in the Bible.  But I am aware of the fact that what I believe about the rapture has no effect on whether or not it actually may happen at some point in the future.

The movie was widely panned by critics and viewers alike, and I don't disagree with their assessment of its quality and message, but there are a few points that it brings up that I think are worth examining.  First off, all of the children disappear as well as the Christians.  It doesn't get very detailed about where the age cutoff for that is, but the idea is that "all children go to heaven."  This is fairly contrary to the Catholic idea of original sin, but fits with the protestant idea of the "age of reason" being the point at which people are capable of sinning.  It is the "feel good" way of approaching the issue in that context.

It also assumed that most people had no idea what was actually happening, even when it took place in a very dramatic fashion.  I would have assumed that most people have some inkling of the idea of the Christian rapture, but then maybe I am "sheltered" in that regard.  I am aware that based on our education system, there is a lot that most people graduating high school don't know. (Recent example: "What is 4th of July celebrating?")  But I have always assumed that enough people are aware of the idea, that it would quickly become clear what really happened, if it ever took place.  It would be hard to deny that reality if it happened in the way people claim it will, but people find ways to deny all sorts of things regardless of the evidence, and God doesn't usually do things the way we expect he will.  So those two concepts can easily account for the reason why everyone wouldn't necessarily repent immediately after observing the rapture taking place around them.

I was introduced to an incomplete knowledge of those types of ideas at too young of an age, resulting in an overly strong preoccupation with the fear of it happening.  That has eventually faded away over time, for a couple of reasons.  One is more confidence in my own faith in God, while another is a better understanding of various alternate interpretations of prophesy.  Getting older has an interesting effect on one's perspective on that idea as well.  I have talked to some people who look forward to it happening, an attitude I still can't account for.  But others have explained to me that it eventually seems like a positive alternative to dying.  I view the concept with dread because it seems in all practical ways to be identical to dying at a young age, which I am not in favor of.  The older you get, the less you have to lose in that regard, because the more of your life you have already lived.  Having hope of positive things still to come in the existing world is what makes the end of the world such an unattractive proposition.

I read "Win the World or Escape the Earth" a while back, which contends that God probably won't bring the world to an end in the way the church has traditionally expected him to.  Instead he will be refining and purifying it, similar to the way metal is refined in fire, and that the new creation will take place here, in the same way that Christians are made into a new Creation by Jesus, without actually replacing their physical bodies. (At least not immediately)  Basically it foresees the Christians as the ones "Left Behind" as God's Kingdom.  This approach to eschatology is much more conducive to trying to overcome evil in the world we live in, instead of just abandoning it because "it is all going to burn anyway."

Voting to Solve Problems

Reading the ballot guide for November's election was as depressing as usual.  Our government is in terrible shape, and no one has any idea how to even begin to fix it.  This is clearly true at the national level, and some states are worse off than others.  California is larger than most other countries, so with a system of government that doesn't scale well, we naturally are in worse shape than others.  Nearly everything they do seems to pretty clearly be making things worse.  Most of the measures on the ballot are to amend previous measures that have not worked as designed.  And most bills in congress seem to be the same as the state measures.  They are all convoluted combinations of regulations that are designed to be as confusing as possible, either by their creators, or by their detractors who were able to amend them with something that deliberately makes them terrible.  If we want to have measures on the ballot for voters to exercise authority over their representatives, how about requiring that no bill can be over 100 words in length, and all legislative votes are recorded by name and published within 24 hours, so we know what our representatives are actually doing to represent out interests in government.

I am watching the HBO series John Adams this week, for my third time.  It is very good at illustrating the types of negotiating and compromise that are required to successfully lead and govern a free people.  Representatives are held accountable by the people, and are not isolated from the real consequences of their decisions.  And even back then, on that scale, it was still difficult to achieve much, and the biggest complaint was that congress would not act.  Even that level of compromise and negotiation is unheard of today, and it is getting worse as the political landscape gets more polarized.  But that divide is based on the serious divergence of morals and values that has been taking place for quite some time.  And because the political divide is rooted in a moral divide, the opposing side can’t be compromised, and its followers aren't really respected enough to be negotiated with or listened to.  And so nothing ever really gets resolved.  And the country is too big for people to really notice that as it is taking place.

Criticizing the President

So the latest thing Obama is being criticized for is his "latte salute" to his Marine guards.  I am no fan of Obama's administration, but this is just ridiculous.  There are lots of things going on in the Whitehouse which are bad for America's future as a free country, so let's focus on those instead of some minor faux-pas.  But if we want to scrutinize that insignificant moment, let's do so fully.  Did the President break any rules by doing that?  Is he required to salute?  Actually, it would appear not.

Saluting is usually reserved for military members in uniform showing respect for one another and "the uniform."  (For example, this why in Top Gun, when the civilian specialist is introduced, the pilots are reminder not to salute her.)  Presidents used to never salute their military guards, including Eisenhower, who had been a general, and must have deliberately broken the habit once he left military office.  Reagan started the tradition, and encouraged Bush to continue it, and it has lived on.  Initially there was some concern over the practice, but the position of the military was that the president could salute whoever he wanted to.  Constitutionally this makes sense, because the President is supposed to direct the military, not the other way around.  It is good to have respect for existing traditions, but if the military had made a big deal about trying to prohibit Reagan from saluting, it would have set a bad precedent for the military dictating the president's actions in more important aspects of their relationship.

So it became a tradition for the president to salute his guards, and Obama is under fire, not for not saluting, but for doing it sloppily-one time.  Now I am all for the principle of "if you are going to do something, make sure you do it right," and I see all sorts of fallout from the American government making a habit of ignoring that maxim.  But it is a stretch to apply that principle to this situation.  Clearly Obama's detractors will jump on anything he does to criticize him.  It led me to wonder, would it be possible for him to do something they would actually support?

I couldn't think of anything he could do that would be above criticism from somewhere.  If he promised to give everyone free money, which he pretty much has, there are those who know where that is coming from.  What if it wasn't coming from taxpayers, like if he announced that he had convinced a few billionaires to voluntarily pay off the entire national debt as an act of patriotism?  There would be complaints about how that would affect the economy, and that the money could have been put to better use elsewhere, as well as the reasonable concern about what he may have secretly promised them in return.  Anytime a decision they agree with is announced, people will assume it is a political tactic to make it easier to swallow something much worse that is coming.  So if everything one does will be met with criticism, it leads to the logical conclusion that criticism should be ignored, which is a dangerous place to be.

Part of the problem is the scale to which the country and the government have grown.  The old solutions just don't work as well at that order of magnitude.  Then there is the constantly increasing number of existing laws and regulations that have to be navigated.  And then there is the media, especially independent journalism and social networks, which allows a wider and faster spread of news and ideas than ever before.  This can be good, in that it prevents important things from being hidden from public view.  But it also is the mechanism that allows the "latte salute" to rise to the top of the stack, as an emerging important national issue that we should all be aware of.

Recognizing your Enemy

In the world of diplomacy, modern states have this intriguing approach of officially refusing to even recognize the existence of their enemies.  I don't know how far back this trend goes in history, or where it started, but it is being applied to current conflicts with increasing frequency.

Most of the Arab countries in the Middle East refuse to recognize Israel, or at least it's right to exist, which is not the same thing.  Refusing to recognize that it currently does exist seems like the most immature reaction possible.  In refusing to recognize an entity's right to exist, at least in that case they are acknowledging the reality that it does exist, and stating not that is doesn't exist, but that it shouldn't.  That is an equally disturbing, but much less irrational reaction to the situation.  In turn Israel refuses to recognize Palestine, and all negotiations have to be done through numerous intermediaries.  This a huge stumbling block to diplomacy.  Pretending someone doesn't exits doesn't make them any less real.

We now see the same thing happening in the US in reaction to the rise of ISIS.  The Whitehouse is the only entity on the globe still calling it ISIL, because the name "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" calls attention to the administration's two biggest foreign policy failures, in Syria and Iraq.  The US government does at least acknowledge that the group calling itself ISIS does exist, but they refuse to acknowledge that it is Islamic, and that it is a state.  There does seem to be some grounds for not labeling them a state, but they do control their own territory.  If they are not a state, we don't have to declare war on them before attacking them, which seems like a political technicality.

Part of the issue is coming to terms with the fact that we are at war, whether we like it or not.  They are attacking us, regardless of whether or not we choose to defend ourselves or strike back.  Refusing to recognize that fact only makes the problem worse, since they continue relatively unchecked.

But it is not a traditional war, so many of the regular rules and standards don't apply.  We aren't facing uniformed combatants, and they have no state of citizens to defend.  They appear to have no honor, not hesitating to take advantage of the traditional rules of war, by hiding in hospitals, faking surrenders, using human shields, and all sorts of other atrocities with no regard for the consequences to themselves of others.  It basically begs the question: “Can they even be defeated by civilized means?”  But not recognizing them, and the threat that they present to peace and freedom, does not in any way diminish that threat.

In the same way, many people today, both inside and outside the church, refuse to recognize the existence of Satan.  He is out there, whether you believe it or not.  And even those who do believe he exists don't always recognize him at work.  He is the enemy, and he wants to destroy us whether we recognize it or not.

Religious Freedom

I am very much in favor of religious freedom, as well as freedom in general.  But we must determine where to draw the line.  There needs to be some limits to nearly everything in life, healthy boundaries.  How much religious freedom is too much, and who should determine that?  I think most of us would agree that child sacrifice crosses the line, but then again, abortion exists.  But for the sake of argument, let's assume that there was a religious sect that sacrificed all their male infant children in fire, as part of their religious beliefs.  I think we can agree that it would be acceptable for the US government to outlaw that practice, but making something illegal doesn't prevent it from happening.  So what should our response be when it does happen.  If the perpetrator doesn't deny the crime, and has no remorse for their actions, what should be done with them?

No fine or other basic penalty will prevent them from continuing that practice.  We could lock them up forever, which would stop them from continuing to kill infants, but what purpose does it serve for them to be alive in jail?  If we release them in the future, they would openly return to their previous ways.  Killing them seems harsh in our zero consequences culture, but logically seems fitting, based on their crime.  But that would amount to genocide if all strict followers of the religion were found and convicted.  And we have been taught to assume that is bad, but what are the alternatives?  (Endless conflict, violence, and suffering)

We have a similar situation with the rise of radical supporters of the Islamic State.  Their openly confessed religious beliefs are that God wants them to kill all infidels who do not join their cause.  This is different than Al-Qaeda, because in that case the challenge was identifying those who supported them in secret.  Once they were identified, we didn't hesitate to lock them up or kill them.  But now we have many people who are openly aspiring to follow that violent path, like the American recently apprehended in Turkey.  What should be done with people like that?  They haven't necessarily committed a crime yet, but they openly hope to take part in all sorts of brutal activity.  How should we respond to situations like that?

Should he make it a capital offense to advocate or promote killing Americans (also known as terrorism)?  If someone's anti-American beliefs are so strong that they won't recant them under threat of death, should we just kill them?  Faith is not an inherently good thing, apart from truth.  God condemned faith in false gods in the Old Testament.  Strong faith in ideas or principles that are false is dangerous.  But how should we respond to the misplaced faith of others, especially if it is too strong to be broken?  We can’t prove that we are right and they are wrong.  But shouldn't the right to self-defense over-ride the right to the free expression of religion?

The Rise of ISIS in the Modern World

The monumental rise of ISIS really confuses me.  How does a group that openly slaughters any who they don’t approve of, get so many supporters and followers?  How is it that no one has stood up to them militarily after months of open threats and demonstrations of cruelty and brutality?  They have picked fights with the US, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and so many other nations and people groups.

 

Being so opposed to the world community at large, where do they get their support from?  How are there so many people out there capable of supporting what ISIS stands for?  And do those people have a right to live?  How far should the freedom to believe what one wants extend?  Is there a limit to the types of beliefs that we should respect?  I do wonder how much of what I hear about ISIS is actually true.  There are constantly stories circulating about them executing hundreds of soldiers who had surrendered.  Now I am not a soldier, so it may not be my place to say this, but after the first week, it was well known that they were doing this.  Anyone who surrenders to ISIS at this point deserves what they get.  Failure is clearly not an option, and you need to defeat them or die trying.

 

US involvement will be very interesting to observe, due to the political issues surrounding the Middle East.  US leaders have to choose between what is clearly “right” (protecting thousands of innocent lives) with what is “popular” (no further US casualties in the Middle East).  And if they do the “right” thing, who are the right people to do it with?  It is pretty ironic to see the US aligned with Iran and Syria, in this conflict.  Those are the people we usually blame the existence of these kinds of terrorists groups on.  Can they exist without support from rogue states?

Based on the politics of American involvement in Iraq, this also leads to the question of whether elected leaders are supposed to do what their constituents desire, or what they believe is right.  And at what cost to themselves? (In their next election)  Getting re-elected should never be the primary goal of any politician.  But those who are facing term limits, like our re-elected president, don't have that to worry about.  Their only concern in that regard seems to be the legacy they leave behind, which can be both good and bad.  Public perception is not necessarily linked to reality, so decisions made now could be condemned of vindicated far in the future.

 

But it seems pretty obvious that something needs to be done, and it is pretty stunning to me, that it has taken so long for us to respond to what is happening.  And while international cooperation will help in solving the problem, I will admit that is a bit scary to me, centralizing too much power and control.  The principle of the separation of powers can be applied to different countries as easily as it can be applied to different branches of government, to keep things in check.  We just have to figure out where we believe those lines should be drawn, and fight to maintain them.

Diplomatic Solutions to Overt Aggression

Before I even get into examining ISIS, I totally overlooked another major issue in my last post, the conflict in Ukraine.  My first note about that is: has no one in the media read Tom Clancy's last book, Command Authority?  He predicted the initial conflict with a startling level of detail, as is his pattern.  How does that get no mention anywhere?


But our response has been pretty weak.  There are all sorts of commentators debating about whether we have a responsibility to get involved, since Ukraine is not technically a member of NATO.  There was very little press about The Budapest Memorandums, where both Russia and the US guaranteed to respect the borders of Ukraine, and never threaten them with force or economic coercion, in return for Ukraine giving up its stockpile of USSR's nuclear weapons. 


If our goal is to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we have to honor our commitments, and support those who give up their nuclear weapons or development programs.  No country will ever agree to give up their nuclear weapons after what has happened in Ukraine over the last six months.  Not only did Russia invade Crimea, and not Ukraine itself, but the US has done nothing to stop them.  I am not saying we should go launch ICBMs at Moscow tomorrow, but if we are unwilling to use nuclear weapons first in any circumstance, why have them?  Some would argue that it is the threat of retaliation that prevents a foreign nuclear attack.  But under that logic, we would stand by idle while a nuclear armed foe takes over the whole world, as long as they only use their conventional forces.  Not only have we not threatened to use our nukes to defend Ukraine from foreign invasion, but we haven't even threatened to use our own conventional forces to defend them either.  And they even killed American citizens with the downing of Malaysian Flight 17, which is an act of war that traditionally would have been legitimate grounds for a military response.


But similar to the endless situation in Israel, since we don't "recognize" the rebels, we can't declare war on them.  What does "recognize" even really mean?  Not acknowledging something, doesn't affect whether it exists.  (See atheists on God)  There is a similar problem in a much more extreme context in Syria and Iraq, but that is for my next post.  In the mean time, whether or not the US recognizes them, there are a bunch of Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine.  And despite Putin's claims otherwise, they are taking control of the area, whether we like it or not.


Not only have we not taken any action to stop them, but we haven't even accused Russia of the invasion that they are publicly denying is taking place.  So if we don't "recognize" it, and they deny it, does that mean it is not "really" happening?  And people aren't "really" being killed.  Our method of diplomacy, where in we don't even talk about the problems, is the worst possible approach.  And where does the UN fit into all of this?  Aren't they supposed to mediate these disputes, and can Russia's veto on the Security Council be used to prevent any response from them?  If so, what is the point of that organization?  Once again, victory is the only way to diffuse the numerous developing hotspots around the globe.

Things in the News

It is time to take a break from my long series of autobiographical posts.  A lot has happened in the last six months, and there are many topics to examine.

 

Robin Williams’ suicide has sparked a very interesting debate about the role of mental illness in our lives.  It has given tangible shape to a debate that has been going on for a long time.  Are people responsible for their actions?  Some claim that his suicide “happened to him” as a result of his chronic depression, while others focus on the fact that each step, including the last one, is a conscious choice.  And people are responsible for the choices that they make?

Taking responsibility for one’s self and their actions is fundamental to having a free society, so it should be clear where my perspective falls.  If people are no longer responsible for the results of their own decisions, they are no longer free.  Among other reasons, this is why you can’t have socialized healthcare in a free country.  It automatically ceases to be free.  Once government controls your health, what else do they need to control you?  If they control you, where is the freedom?

 

In another government control related story, the Ferguson issue seems to be winding down, but got a lot of press over the last few weeks.  The lasting effects I am most interested in, are the impact that it has on the over arming of our police forces.  I have been concerned for a while about the fact that Homeland Security has been providing all sorts of high-end military weapons and armored vehicles to police forces across the country.  Hopefully the outrage over the recent misuse of that equipment will be strong enough to cause a review and change in those policies.  "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

 

It is fortunate that the conflict in Gaza seems to be calming down as well.  There was no clear winner, although all sides walk away unhappy, but claiming a limited victory.  The inhabitants of Gaza were killed by the thousands, while it cost Israel many resources and weapons, and the sense of security among its citizens.  Hamas lost hundreds of soldiers, but doesn't value human life, so that is openly of no consequence with them.  "We know this: without victory, there can be no peace."  Well since the world will not allow victory, there will be no peace there.  The only reason the fighting stopped was because of outside international pressure.  Neither side wanted to stop fighting, but at great cost to civilian life.  There is a reason for this.  "Israel uses its weapons to protect its people, while Hamas uses it people to protect its weapons."  It should be clear who is responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza, and also who benefits from them.

 

So that is not a pretty picture of what has been going on in the world over the last few months, and I haven’t even touched on the biggest issue, ISIS.

Christmas Break

I was only back in LA a few days before I was headed home for Christmas.  Being gone the last few weeks, I didn't do much Christmas shopping until I got home the day before Christmas Eve.  Not a good time for avoiding crowds and traffic.  Christmas went better than Thanksgiving, and we all did get together and have a big meal at the house.  We played a lot of board games, which had become a pretty solid family holiday tradition at that point.  That fact also provided a lot of good options for Christmas presents as well.

I had an interesting talk with my Mom one night that week, and she asked me a lot of questions about whether there were any girls that I was interested in or dating.  That was the first time I mentioned anything about P to her at all, downplaying it as usual, but answering her questions without lying about it.  Fortunately she didn't seem to retain much of that information for long.

I setup to visit a few friends, and do things like that while I was back.  The night before I was to have lunch with Sunshine, I got an unexpected call from Rockstar, asking for a ride home from the train station.  We had dinner on the way back, and had another pretty good talk.  Right before I dropped him off, I mentioned my plans for the next day, and was about to share that I was going to try to encourage her to see things his way (which I agreed with), when I was faced with an unexpected emotional explosion.  That must have just released something within him that had been bottled up over the last few months, and I was the unlucky recipient who he had the faintest excuse to make a target of.  Once I drove away, we didn't talk again for many years.  Ironically that talk the next day was cancelled for other reasons, and never happened until long after it was a moot point.  Although our relationship eventually resumed in a different form, it has definitely not been the same as it was before that conversation took place.  And we have never directly discussed that event either, although I have made reserved efforts to try.  I understand that people who have been deeply hurt have a tendency to lash out at those around them, but that doesn't excuse it when it happens, nor preclude the possibility of an apology.

The camp staff reunion had been an annual affair for many years, a three day retreat shortly after New Years.  That year was the first time one wasn't planned in a long time, so I setup a reunion BBQ instead at my parent’s house instead.  About thirty people showed up, including the executive and program directors for the camp.  We had lots of good food, and played some card games afterwards.  Once the meal was mostly over, P showed up with another friend.  I had invited her to many events in the past, but that was the first time she had taken me up on the offer.  It also allowed her see where I grew up, and meet my parents, who were never out at camp.  I heard her introduce herself to my mom by name, which got my attention after our recent talk.  But my mom obviously didn't make the connection at all, otherwise her next line certainly would have been “Oh, it’s nice to meet you, Mike has told me so much about you.”  (Regardless of the fact that that wasn't really true, it’s just how she talks.)  It had happened before, in other situations where I was far less concerned about how my perspective was perceived, and it was still really awkward later.  Instead things went smoothly, and we all hung out as a group playing Apples-to-Apples.  A pretty good party all around, and then it was back to work in LA, to edit the footage we had just finished shooting in the South.

Finishing My Tour of the South

The mission the next evening was for a team of Marines to drop in from the air, cross a mile of forest, and capture an insurgent leader and get him back to the ship for interrogation.  My mission was to meet their V-22 at the LZ, and get a drive of footage from our crew member who was supposed to be onboard, shooting the extraction team in flight.  And I was supposed to give them some extra cards and batteries we had bought, since they were coming up short on the ship.

 

As I heard it overhead I was racing to try to get the truck to the right part of the clearing in the woods, and then hopped out to run the rest of the way, since they were usually only on the ground for a couple of minutes.  As I got closer all you could see was dust.  I hoped that the blades were fully upright or I was going to lose me head.  Finally I could make out the back of the aircraft, which was open, with a tail gunner standing on the ramp.  I could just see his NVGs reflecting at me as he made some emphatic hand motions to direct me, but I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to get me to do.  After a couple seconds I decided to interpret it as a wave off, and withdrew a ways back, which seemed to be accurate, since they took off a few seconds later.  I was a bit frustrated to have missed the hand off when Mike Svitak appeared out of the darkness.  He had offloaded with the Marines and was sticking with that team for the duration of the mission.  We opened our pelican cases, exchanged the items in question, and then separated into the darkness.  I drove the mile to the insurgent compound, but I didn’t get there soon enough, so the MPs stopped me at edge, and I waited as the mission took place, watching the Marines infiltrate in the darkness, and leave a half hour later with their captive in tow.  It was a faster paced scenario, so I didn’t get any other media from the crew until it was over.  But once I was back at the hotel, I had plenty of data from the second ship to keep me busy.

 

For the mission the next night, I was assigned to be a camera assistant, and help one of the main operators with lenses and batteries.  I don’t remember the full mission profile, since I was only involved with a narrow part of it, but we spent a while in the top of a building waiting, and ended up talking with one of the marine guards for a while.  It was a short enough mission that I didn’t need to start backing up data until it was nearly over.

 

Our last mission was back at Camp Lejeune, so we took a charter bus back to our original hotel in North Carolina.  That mission was a night vehicle raid.  They would land a convoy of humvees on the hovercrafts, and then proceed overland to a village a few miles inland.  When the crew arrived at the village, I ended up helping the electrical department setup power to imitation street lights to improve our camera shots.  The “buildings” were mostly old shipping containers, which I had to climb on to get the power cables run.  The actual mission wasn’t very interesting, and I hardly saw the vehicles.  The Marines drove to the edge of town, dismounted and interacted with some of the local extras, and did their thing and left.  I guess half the action was getting off and on the hovercrafts at the beach, but I didn’t get to see that.  When the mission was over I backed up the last set of data, and was happy to be headed home after two weeks of travel.  We flew back to LA the next day.  I don’t remember how I got my new cold weather wardrobe home, probably as “padding” in the equipment cases.

A Night on the Beach

We headed to Virginia Beach the next day, and I was reassigned to drive a pickup truck with the audio team.  I knew them from filming the movie together, and we were friends, so that was a much lower stress vehicle to be in.  Plus I usually just followed car in front of me, which was easier.  It was the off season and very cold, but we were staying in a high rise hotel right on the water, with rooms overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.  Our next shoot was at Fort Point, overlooking the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.  This would be a full amphibious landing, with hovercraft and armored vehicles from the ship.  The landing was at night, and really cold.  I started with a camera unit on the beach, waiting for the first footage, to return to the vehicles to process it.  The USS Ashland was anchored a mile or two off shore, and we could hear what was coming long before we could see it.  The first units to hit the beach were AAVs, which drove out of the water, and appeared around us in the darkness.  They offloaded their passengers, who secured the beachhead, and moved inland.

None of these exercises were designed to be actual combat missions; they were just various unusual situations that could arise.  This one was planned to be a two part mission with the initial landing group discovering a cache of WMDs a few miles inland, and then the mission would shift to guarding and securing those items until a team could be brought in to deal with them properly.  The problem was that the initial landing team didn’t actually identify the WMDs, even though they made it to the correct building.  So the MPs that were overseeing the exercise had to help them out a little, which wasn’t as dramatic for our shooting purposes.

The challenge for us was that the mission took place across the wide swath of coast and several miles inland, over 36 hours.  The initial landing and discovery was finished by the morning, and we headed back to the hotel during the day, where I was able to collect media from the twelve camera operators who had been distributed throughout the exercise.  The next evening we went back to film the arrival of the WMD experts, which may have been the most anticlimactic moment in the history of the world.  The marines had been guarding that area for 36 hours by the time they left, after 12 hours preparing for the mission on the ship.  They would trade off who was on watch, but sleeping in the back of their armored vehicles can’t be that restful.  I spent most of that night logging footage in an SUV, trying to stay warm in the extreme cold.

We had the next day off, to catch up on sleep, and in my case catch up on footage logging as well.  We had gotten a drive of footage from the team on the Ashland, when one of them came ashore on an AAV, so I had a lot more to sort through.  We were halfway done with the project, so I was able to ship a drive full of data back to the office, which lowers the overall stress level once it arrives safely.  Our next two missions were in Fort Jackson, South Carolina.  So the production had chartered a flight to get the crew down there.  It was a pretty small plane, so I had a seat that was a window AND an aisle seat.  We landed and were given a new set of vehicles.  I got another truck, and we loaded up the sound gear, and headed off to get another set of base passes.

First Contact with the Marines

There was a long wait before anything happened.  We would occasionally be told that they were on their way, and get all the cameras turned on and ready.  And then 15 minutes later we would hear that was a false alarm and that they still hadn’t left the ship yet.  I eventually had to go down to the staging room to setup a battery charging station because of how much power we had expended on those false alarms.  But finally we heard the rotors in the distance.  The first group arrived on a V-22 Osprey, and circled once before tilting its wings and rotors upward, and landing vertically on the soccer field.  The first 40 marines jumped out and formed a perimeter around the LZ.  The V-22 took back off, and then nothing happened for about ten minutes.  I could see them talking and pointing at things, and a couple of marksmen clearly had their sights on me.  They probably took the approach that if I did anything aggressive they could take me out, minimizing that potential threat.

 

It turns out they were just waiting for reinforcements, and we soon heard a second V-22 approaching.  It landed in the same spot, and 40 more Marines got out as I got some great shots.  We were all pretty fixated on it as it took off again, when I looked around and realized that the first group had just disbursed into the town.  I was quick to point that out on the radio, and a couple of our operators had already noticed, but the rest hurried to catch up.  The next fifteen minutes were fairly interesting, as squads of marines moved through the streets and secured the town.  I pointed out when things were happening that we might be missing, and got a few overhead shots when I could.  The rest of the Marines landed in a CH-53E Super Stallion, and setup a casualty processing area near the field.

 

They eventually started interacting with the actors around the blast site that had been setup.  Their Navy corpsmen began treating the wounded, and the officers began conversing with the actors, who were playing local leaders and witnesses, and a Navy EOD team went in to deal with the second suicide vest.  They dragged it halfway down the street and then proceeded to “disarm” it.  But this all took another hour, and was actually a very slow process to observe.  Eventually as the action slowed down, there started to be discussion on the radio about conserving camera batteries and card space.  Once the Marines withdrew back toward the soccer field, I headed down and began processing the first batch of cards that the camera department had collected.

 

We eventually learned that it had become too windy to operate the V-22s, so they were waiting for the helicopter to ferry them all back in three trips.  That ended up taking a few hours, long waits, punctuated by a few minutes of action when a helicopter landed and took off.  I was pretty much caught up with the data backups by the time the last group left, well after dark.  I had the last of the cards copied by the time the crew was finished breaking down our gear.  On the drive back to the hotel, I got to listen to the discussion of changes to be made before the next operation.  We weren’t the Marines in training, who were supposed to be ready for anything.  We needed to know exactly when the assault was expected to arrive, so we weren’t wasting resources during every false start.  And we needed to know what we were expecting to actually happen, in order to be prepared to properly record it.  I ended up getting a call from McCoy at like 4am that night, looking for keys to get something out of the car, which was quite a way to end a very long day.

Welcome to Winter

I flew out of LA in early December, and on descent into my layover at ATL, I was startled to hear “We’ll be landing on time in Atlanta, where the outside temperature is 17 degrees.”  Oh yeah, it’s winter in the rest of the country!  After months of shooting in the humid swamps and hot deserts, I hardly had long pants with me, let alone a decent jacket.  So the walk across the tarmac to my puddle jumper to Wilmington was REAL cold.  And it was strange for it to be that cold without any snow on the ground.  Hana was coordinating the production, and picked me up from the airport that night.  My first priority the next morning was a trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods, to buy warmer clothes.  I bought what I anticipated to be two full sets of cold weather gear to alternate between.  In reality I usually ended up wearing all of them layered on top of each other, since it was usually about twenty degrees out with a stiff wind coming off the ocean.  The first day was just prep at the hotel, and distributing gear to the crews that were going to spend the next two weeks on ships sitting off the coast.  I was informed I was going to be one of the drivers, and all of us were sent to the base to get permits and clearances.

 

The next day I was handed a radio and the keys to a Suburban, and I led the caravan of fifteen production vehicles to Camp Lejeune.  I was driving McCoy, who was directing the production, as well as Jeff the executive producer.  Once we got on base, we followed the military liaison around in circles as he tried to figure out where we were supposed to be.  During this time, the Marines were using our caravan for targeting practice for their attack helicopters.  It is a bit unsettling to look in the mirror and see a Cobra helicopter tracking you.  We finally got to the correct training area, which was quite amusing to see.  It was clearly designed to be an Eastern European village, constructed during the cold war.  But as times had changed, it had all been painted sand brown and had Arabic writing everywhere.  We piled out of the vehicles and began setting up.  I put my laptop and hard drives in one of the buildings we were staging in, and helped unpack the camera gear.  Shortly after that, a large group of people arrived, who were locals hired by the military to be extra civilians.  Some of them were actors, who actually had roles to play in the unfolding scenario.  The scenario had not been made clear to the crew ahead of time, but involved surveying the aftermath of a suicide bomber, and disposing of a second explosive device found in the village.  There would be a full company of marines dropping in from the ship off the coast.

 

After scouting around with McCoy a bit, I pointed out that our guys could get lost in the streets, and miss some of the action, since the place was so big.  I recommended putting someone in the top of the church steeple to keep an eye on things, and direct camera crews to the action.  He pointed out that if someone was there, they should also have a camera to get shots, and requested a 600mm lens be sent up there on a camera.  Then I was unexpectedly given that role.  Usually I received data cards from the camera crews during the shoot, to be offloaded and reused.  So being located at the top of a six story stair case didn’t seem ideal for that role.  But they decided that the shoot should be short enough that they wouldn’t copy the footage until it was all over.  So I had my first role as a camera operator.