* * * *
If you need a license to drive a car, which
can be an instrument of death if improperly
driven, why isn’t a license required to own a gun, which is specifically
intended to be an instrument of death?
Gun possession without a license should be a crime, and will be, but only after a few thousand more unnecessary deaths in this country. Isn't that sad?
Reducing the number of guns in this country (which exceed the number of people here) should be our immediate goal. Regardless of the laws that might be passed, a fewer number of available weapons will mean fewer will be available to fall into the hands of lawbreakers.
The argument that guns are necessary in the event a despotic government needs to be overthrown doesn't work in a real democratic republic which we supposedly are.
Corner your State legislators and ask them to support real gun control. If they won't, work to throw them out of office.
JL
* * * *
News from the Butterfly Garden
The Passiflora vine in my new (and smaller)
butterfly garden is now flowering! Its
flowers are red and I have identified them as ‘Passiflora
Coccinea.’ I hope they attract a lot of butterflies.
Adjacent to this vine are the hollyhocks with which I am
experimenting. Months ago, I started
them from seed in cups and now they are on their own in the ground. Hollyhocks are biennials so I don’t expect
them to flower during their first year during which leaf development
occurs. They are supposed to blossom
gloriously in their second year, after which they will die and go to seed. Hopefully, the seeds they drop will generate
new plants on their own. That’s the way
it worked up north many years ago.
JL
* *
*
We Are All NOT Created Equal!
The Declaration of Independence
says that all men (and a 21st century reading of that would not make
it so gender-specific) are created equal.
But don’t take this literally. It
is not really the case because of the wide range of differences in the human
race that make physical and intellectual ‘equality’ impossible.
Some of us are taller than others
(and do well on the basketball court), some of us are smarter or more talented
than others (and win awards such as Nobel prizes or Grammies or Oscars), and
some are born into caring, nourishing, environments while others are born into
situations where adequate food and decent housing are not always available and
where familial love sometimes has a lower priority than mere survival.
Recognizing this, the Declaration’s
reference to ‘equality’ is taken by some to mean an ultimate outcome to be
worked toward. ‘Equity’ is the
accomplishment of what is necessary to make that outcome, the Declaration’s
‘equality.’ possible. It is often
joined, particularly in terms of educational goals, with ‘diversity’ and
‘inclusion,’ which are much more self-explanatory than is ‘equity.’
Digressing for a moment, these
partners of ‘equity’ can be taken to mean that an organization or group should
not exclude any particular type of person because of their racial, ethnic, or
other characteristics and that such inclusion should be in approximate
proportion to the percentage of the population comprising that type of person.
There are better definitions for 'inclusion’ and for ‘diversity’ but right now,
let’s get back to ‘equity.’
Needless to say, anti-democratic
forces in our society, including Florida’s governor and many Republicans are
against ‘Diversity, Inclusion and Equity’ being a part of our educational
system and our society in general. Only
last Tuesday, Ron DeSantis announced
plans to block state colleges from providing programs on ‘diversity, equity and
inclusion,’ along with critical race theory, which had been identified as a
‘danger’ much earlier.
Such ‘culture warriors’ are fighting ‘Diversity,
Inclusion, and Equity’ with the same vigor they had been directing toward CRT
(Critical Race Theory), an educational theory recognizing the role earlier
racism, particularly slavery, has had on our present society as manifested in
its politics. economics, and government.
While both CRT and D.I.E. are
accepted academic disciplines at most real degree-granting institutions of
higher learning, Republicans see them as insidious left-wing plots.
They fear that the expansion of
knowledge about the history of this country, and how many of the everyday things
that we live with got to be the way they are, will reduce the number of voters
who will support their appeals to emotions like hatred and greed. That is the
way of fascist dictators. Limit
knowledge. Appeal to emotions.
The worst thing about Florida’s
governor DeSantis is that, despite his Harvard and Yale education, he doesn’t
recognize that what he is doing by appealing to such emotions is what despots
routinely do.
Stated simply, the problem is
whether or not it is the government’s role to attempt
to iron out those differences that prevent ‘all men from being equal,’ enabling
them all to enjoy equal opportunity and equal rights, the end result of which
would constitute achieving ‘equality.’ But the way to get there is through
‘equity.’
Certainly, government cannot add
inches to one’s height so that NBA teams would fight over them but they
certainly can work to level other differences which prevent ‘all men from being
equal.’
A picture is sometimes said to be worth a thousand words. In this one, whose job do you think it is to move around those boxes, or even provide them in the first place? Answer that in your own mind.
Show this to Ron DeSantis and he will ask 'what right do you, or any government, have to take something away from someone and give it to someone else just because they have a greater need for it?'
I believe that all religions say that would be the proper thing to willingly do, but is it right for a government to do it? It sure is! Certainly, that is the role in our society the graduated income tax system plays.
A taxpayer fortunate enough to have to pay $500,000 in income taxes enables someone with too little earnings to have to pay any income tax whatsoever to share in the benefits of our society. There will never be 'equality' insofar as how much wealthier some are than others, but government certainly plays a role in giving everyone a fair shot by smoothing the way.
The greatest challenge for government in playing that role is that achieving 'equity' means that those given a boost (look at those boxes in the above illustration) must be able to receive it, but not by doing harm to, or at the expense of those who are able to succeed WITHOUT that boost. Achieving 'equity' without short-changing them requires delicate balancing. Right now, we are leaving that to the Supreme Court.
I believe there is enough opportunity and wealth in our country to do both. No one need be deprived of opportunity in order to make room for others who achieve it through 'Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity.' All men are created equal.
(And in the far background are people sitting in the grandstand, not having to watch the game over a fence. Maybe there should be more 'grandstand' seats.)
Neither communism nor socialism, both economic
systems, have anything to do with ‘all men being created equal’ as stated in the
Declaration of Independence. Too
many Republicans, though, label those working for ‘equity’ as the way to
achieve ‘equality’ as advocates of one of those two ‘isms’ because it involves
taxing the wealthy to provide benefits for those with limited income or none at
all.
This is the same argument the defeated
Confederates used after the Civil War to obstruct and ultimately cripple
Reconstruction, Lincoln’s unrealized plan to bring about ‘equity.’ They called it ‘socialism.’ Shame on them. Shame on those who do so today.
JL
* *
*
Getting 'Hoisted'
It turns out the right-wing forces opposed to
democracy in this country are now trying to make it easier for politicians to
sue journalists for defamation, by reversing the 1964 Sullivan vs. New York
Times Company decision. Florida’s
governor supports this happening because he doesn’t like what his critics are
saying about him. He announced that at a
press conference simulating a TV anchor’s desk the other day.
(That’s great practice for his future vocation,
probably on Fox, after he realizes that Americans are smarter than Floridians
and he loses his effort to become President.)
If the Sullivan decision is indeed reversed though, there will be a spate of new successful lawsuits, but most will not be against the likes of the Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the intended targets of this right-wing supported litigation.
No, Fox
News and similar right-wing propaganda outlets that pose as journalists and who
defame daily as a routine practice, might suddenly find that those about whom they lie would find it easier to drag them into court. This
would be perfect examples of being ‘hoist by one’s own petard.’
 |
| A 'petard' is a bomb set to blast open a gate. |
Petards could backfire, injuring the one who set it! This fellow just received some severe leg damage but wasn’t quite ‘hoisted’ into the air by the explosion. The expression originated in Shakespeare’s play, ‘Hamlet,’ where Prince Hamlet turned the tables on Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, who were setting him up to be murdered, and ended up being the ones killed.
JL
* *
*
Reality in Politics
Would it be better if our Representatives in Congress
were all made-up fictional characters like George Santos? Almost of them have flaws which voters choose
to ignore. His are now apparent but imagine if Congress were not composed of
real people but of characters in a play, all good and honest men and women,
written by a skilled playwright. And
once elected, they would follow a beautiful script in which they only did things for
the benefit of the people. Do any of us want to choose such a fictional reality over
what we now have?
Some Republicans who want to raise the ages for
eligibility for Social Security and Medicare don’t seem to think that amounts
to cutting these programs. Here is a
quote from a recent (2/11/23) posting by Heather Cox Richardson that appeared on
her daily newsletter, ‘Letters from an American,’ more or less on that subject. Its last
sentence answers my question about the reality in which politicians should be
living :
’There is a difference between political spin—which virtually all political
operatives use and which generally means making a statement without full
context so it is misleading—and rejecting the reality-based community in favor
of lies and attacks. Political decisions that are not based on reality rob us
of our right to make informed decisions about our government and what it will
do.
Social Security and Medicare are currently financially unstable. They can
be stabilized by cutting benefits, raising taxes, rearranging government
funding, or by some combination of the three. Biden wants to raise taxes;
Republicans want to cut benefits, but they won’t say which ones and now deny
they meant Social Security and Medicare.
On Friday, Scott (G.O.P. Senator Rick
Scott – Florida) introduced
a bill to rearrange government funding, saying it would “increase funding” for
the programs, but in fact, it finds the money by achieving another Republican
goal: cutting the $80 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act that restored
funding to the Internal Revenue Service. That funding has enabled the IRS to
answer 88.6% of taxpayers’ phone calls this year, up from 13% in the 2022 tax
season and 11% the year before. Adding in automated phone support and chat
features, 93.3% of taxpayers have been able to get support. Democrats will
almost certainly not agree to stop this program, and Scott is likely hoping to
get them on record as “voting against” more money for Social Security and
Medicare.
Voters need fact-based information to elect people who will enact the
policies a majority of us want.
We need politicians to participate in the reality-based community.’
JL
* *
*
Balloons in the Sky
A Random Thought:
It occurs to me that the use by the Chinese of old-fashioned balloons to
gather intelligence seems to indicate that they lack the technology to assign
that task to satellites, something that I suspect we are able to do. It’s easy enough to ‘jam’ a balloon’s
receivers or to shoot one down, but shooting down satellites might require
other satellites to do that job. That’s
where we enter the dangerous, presently fictitious, world of Star Wars or Star
Trek, but for real. (I had submitted
this as a comment to a New York Times online article, and they included it on
their site.)
JL
* *
*
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