Read Jay B Gaskill’s Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition.  More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/ .

And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones.  More on the Policy Think Site at   http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf .

As Published On

→ The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1

And

The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 by Jay B. Gaskill

As posted in htm format – http://jaygaskill.com/Sneak.htm

SENATE?  WHAT SENATE?

The spirit and plain meaning of the US Constitution have just been violated by the US House of Representatives. Or soon will be.  A motion to block the 'deemed' parliamentary maneuver in the House has been defeated. 

See http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=36097 .

If - as I must now assume, this plan proceeds, a major piece of legislation will have been “approved” for purposes of not approving it, then amending it, without ever holding a direct vote, utilizing a parliamentary trick that was roundly criticized in advance by democrats and otherwise friendly opinion.  As a result the US Senate has just been maneuvered out of the picture and, assuming things go as planned, a monumental piece of legislation will be presented for presidential signature without having followed the simple requirements of the US Constitution, article One, Section 7 (See the full text below).

All this was to get around the fact that a majority of Massachusetts voters – and of the rest of us – opposed the congressional health care juggernaut.  

Why even have the US Senate anyway? 

Under the plain terms of the US Constitution, a bill becomes law only when the same exact bill has been duly passed by each chamber, according to that body’s rules, then and only then referred to the president for signature and duly signed by POTUS. 

There is no back door.  Or at least there was no back door when the framers set up the system.

Because revenue bills must originate in the house, the first Health Care bill was HR 3200, passed in the House of Representatives by a margin of 5 votes.

The Senate then passed a different bill, one that many members of the House declared they could never support. 

The next step in the process is well established.  A conference committee is appointed consisting of members from each chamber and charged to work together to iron out the differences.  The result of that process (if there is a result) is then submitted - one result, identical language, mind you – to each chamber for an up or down vote.  Only when and if the two chambers both pass this new, reconciled version, can it be submitted to POTUS for signature.

In the Senate’s own language:

“Resolving Differences with the House

“A bill cannot become a law of the land until it has been approved in identical form by both houses of Congress. Once the Senate amends and agrees to a bill that the House already has passed—or the House amends and passes a Senate bill—the two houses may begin to resolve their legislative differences by way of a conference committee or through an exchange of amendments between the houses.”

From the official US Senate website....

[ http://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/Senate_legislative_process.htm ]

But the House Speaker was so eager to deliver a health care bill to her president that she and her colleagues hatched a scheme to have the House vote only on the changes to the Senate Bill without ever having any senate concurrence or even having an up or down vote on the Senate Version. 

An up or down vote? You must be “deeming” See  --http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/16/AR2010031604251.html .

The Washington Post apparently thinks the situation is amusing.   Most of the rest of us don’t. (Note: a clear majority of Americans oppose this bill.) 

I personally think it is an outrage. 

Mr. Obama and the country would have been better served in the long run had Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid resigned, the current bills withdrawn and the entire matter taken up in a less ideologically saturated atmosphere, piece by piece after full congressional hearings. 

The current headlong rush can only be explained by the “last hurrah” syndrome of out-of-control ideologues who plan to leave as much party detritus behind to clean up as possible before they are evicted from the premises.

Jay B Gaskill

Attorney at Law

“U S Constitution, Article One, Section  7

“All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively, If any Bill shall not be returned by the

President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournament prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.”

Go to http://www.jaygaskill.com/LiberalVampirism.htm. 

NOTE:  The deficit numbers are now far worse.

JBG

Read Jay B Gaskill’s Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition.  More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/ .

And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones.  More on the Policy Think Site at   http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf .

As Published On

→ The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1

And

The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 by Jay B. Gaskill

Read this article in htm format at this link: http://jaygaskill.com/DoubleDownPOTUS.htm

DOUBLING DOWN ON HEALTH CARE:

WHAT WAS SAID

& WHAT WAS MEANT

The president has inexplicably doubled down on his stalled comprehensive heath care plans, in the face of a weakening recovery and more pressing and immediate concerns about dismal employment figures.  At this late stage it is no longer appropriate to talk about how President Obama is squandering his political capital, because – remarkably – he’s already accomplished that. 

Given the 10% approval ratings of the congress, that august institution’s political capital sailed port long ago.  Only one thing was left to squander: The raw political power of numbers to deliver the president’s agenda no matter what the later electoral consequences might be. 

This is what Mr. Obama said today (as taken from an embargoed ‘prepared remarks’ piece released shortly after the President’s presentation this afternoon.

(Under my plan) “No longer would (insurance companies) be able to deny your coverage because of a pre-existing condition. No longer would they be able to drop your coverage because you got sick. No longer would they be able to force you to pay unlimited amounts of money out of your own pocket. No longer would they be able to arbitrarily and massively raise premiums like Anthem Blue Cross recently tried to do in California. Those practices would end.”

“Second, my proposal would give uninsured individuals and small business owners the same kind of choice of private health insurance that Members of Congress get for themselves.”

“Now, it’s true that all of this will cost money – about $100 billion per year. But most of this comes from the nearly $2 trillion a year that America already spends on health care. It’s just that right now, a lot of that money is being wasted or spent badly. With this plan, we’re going to make sure the dollars we spend go toward making insurance more affordable and more secure. We’re also going to eliminate wasteful taxpayer subsidies that currently go to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, set a new fee on insurance companies that stand to gain as millions of Americans are able to buy insurance, and make sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of Medicare.

“The bottom line is, our proposal is paid for. And all new money generated in this plan would go back to small businesses and middle-class families who can’t afford health insurance. It would lower prescription drug prices for seniors. And it would help train new doctors and nurses to provide care for American families.”

“Both during and after last week’s summit, Republicans in Congress insisted that the only acceptable course on health care reform is to start over. But given these honest and substantial differences between the parties about the need to regulate the insurance industry and the need to help millions of middle-class families get insurance, I do not see how another year of negotiations would help.

Comment:  Neither this administration, nor the current congressional leadership, have ever taken seriously any of the many proposals and proposed amendments offered in the last year to address the complicated finance and delivery of heath care issues at stake.  The impasse was always between targeted, separate reforms vs. a comprehensive global package.  See:  http://jaygaskill.com/HEALTHCAREIsItReallyTimeToSayNO.htm and http://jaygaskill.com/HMOfromHell.htm and http://jaygaskill.com/HeathCareTrainWreck.htm.

“So, no matter which approach you favor, I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform. We have debated this issue thoroughly, not just for a year, but for decades. Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a supermajority of sixty votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, COBRA health coverage for the unemployed, and both Bush tax cuts – all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.”

What all this really means:

1. Contrary to Mr. Obama’s previous stated positions, he now favors the ‘nuclear option’ by using the budget reconciliation process to achieve a massive restructuring of an entire industry.  In a similar context, Senator Obama has said, “...what I worry about would be you essentially have still two chambers -- the House and the Senate -- but you have simply majoritarian absolute power on either side, and that's just not what the founders intended.” 
2. The Senate Bill was the 2500 page ‘prop’ bought to the ‘summit discussions’ to which GOP representatives were invited and attended bearing the bill that could not be re-passed by a 60 vote margin because of Massachusetts voters. As CNN announced in 12-24-09, before the Mass. Special election changed the political calculus, “The (Senate) bill now must be merged with a $1 trillion plan approved by the House of Representatives in November. Democrats hope to have a bill ready for Obama's signature before the president's State of the Union address early next year.”  That bill (see http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/24/health.care/index.html ), will now be the basic template for the final law, after a parliamentary shuffle between chambers, and a series of amendments from which conservatives will be effectively excluded.
3. Assuming passage: The private health insurance companies that are required to meet the requirements sketched out by the president today – and the many more that are contained in pending legislation - will eventually be forced out of business because their current premium structure cannot possibly meet the new demands.
4. The subsidized inclusion of additional otherwise uninsured persons into “same kind of choice of private health insurance that Members of Congress get for themselves” will far, far exceed all current cost estimates, forcing a reduction in care.
5. The notions that “our proposal is paid for” and that the estimated additional cost of $100 billion each year can be made up “from the nearly $2 trillion a year that America already spends on health care” and “money [that] is being wasted or spent badly” are simply not supported by sound accounting analysis.
6. When the president said, “I do not see how another year of negotiations would help,” he actually was announcing that an ideological devotion to top-down comprehensive, bundled reform can only be achieved before the pending congressional elections.  On that point, he was most certainly correct.  All the polls indicate that a majority of American voters no longer trust the present congress and oppose passing the House or the Senate bills in anything like their current form.

The larger question is whether most Americans now trust their president.

JBG 

Read Jay B Gaskill’s Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition.  More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/ .

 

And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones.  More on the Policy Think Site at   http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf .

 

 

As Published On

→ The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1

And

The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 by Jay B. Gaskill

Permission to print all or part of this article (except for personal use) is needed. [Permission for use in group discussions is almost always routinely given.]

Please contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com

PERMISSION TO FORWARD LINKS TO THIS BLOG OR INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES IS HEREBY GIVEN

As posted on The Policy Think Site ON 3-1-2010, revised 3-2:

http://jaygaskill.com/PolicySweetSpots.htm

CRISIS, GRIDLOCK

&

THE POLICY SWEET SPOTS

Gridlock in congress is neither bad, nor permanent.  In this case, the needed and effective policy innovations – even in the midst of a crisis - are being stalled by a series of collisions between ideologies and common sense. 

The ideologies are inside the Beltway and the common sense resides elsewhere.

The president purports to want to find ‘common ground’ with the opposition after allowing congressional leaders to shut down the amendment, congressional hearing and discussion process.  He purports to listen to his critics while pointing out that ‘we won the election’.  The implication is clear enough:  The president wants the appearance of consultation, without the burden of real compromise.  He stubbornly believes that his leadership must still be followed even when his electoral victory is now regretted by a plurality of voters trending to a supermajority.  Doubters should look at the polling data:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

and

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history 

and

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/right_direction_or_wrong_track .

President Obama still expects implement a comprehensive policy package many key features of which are strongly opposed by a majority of Americans. 

All of these discussions and maneuverings are taking place under the looming shadow of a debt crisis more severe than any in this country’s history.  Compare the CBO’s Gross Domestic Product  projections --

{http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10014/03-20-PresidentBudget.pdf }

with the national debt projections --

{http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10014/Chapter1.5.1.shtml} and note this ---

“How bad is the CBO's latest report on the country's budgetary future? The Washington Post calls the office's numbers ‘dire.’ U.S. News says they're ‘off the wall.’ And in a post about the report on his blog, the CBO's director, Douglas Elmendorf, writes that ‘under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path.’”

{http://reason.com/blog/2009/06/29/debt-and-taxes-the-cbos-dire-p} from June, 2009.

...And this ---

“...our debt will hit 60% of GDP twelve years earlier than forecast...” {http://wallstreetpit.com/17751-the-lost-budget-decade}

All this is going on while a majority of elected and unelected officials inside the Beltway still live in a fantasy construct.  In their fantasy, the United States federal government still has an immense store of financial resources with which to address a crisis engendered by that same government having operated on funds on borrowed, but not repaid over the last 30 years. 

But the cupboard is bare.

No political party or faction escapes accountability for getting us into the current mess...and no one can now escape its consequences.  Eventually, one constraint must govern those who govern:  Government cannot continue to borrow money to fund the operations of government. 

There are a number of policy implications, among them these four:

(a)                    Public indebtedness must be reduced, not increased, across the board, in real terms, without any accounting gimmicks or tricks before the entire house of cards becomes “the American bubble”. 

(b)                    The necessary tax and spending adjustments must be managed with care in order to avoid choking off the real private business growth necessary to get us out of the current fiscal crater.  This means that the promotion of real, robust, profit-generating private sector commercial enterprises (i.e., those based on actual commodities and valuable services with a world-market value, as opposed to mere financial paper) becomes the very first economic priority of government. This necessarily requires a radically new government direction.

(c)                    Therefore most of the burden of tax and spending adjustments must be borne by the government itself, in the form of spending and services cuts and lower taxation.

(d)                    And any tax changes must satisfy two conditions: (1) they must amount to a net decrease in the overall tax burden, and (2) they must operate to help, not differentially punish or burden, domestic business development.

Yes, the current impasse will be overcome.  But it will require intelligent, trusted leadership that mediates agreements at the policy ‘sweet spots’ where ideologies, common sense and wise policy converge.  In other words, the current impasse calls for a new generation of leaders.... 

AN IMPASSE ANALYSIS

This impasse is driven by one or a combination of the following three assessments, each describing how the policy positions taken by one side are seen by the other:

·        The wrong approach, risking lasting damage if implemented;

·        The right approach, taken up by the wrong side as a head fake;

·        Possibly the right approach, but killed by the breakdown of trust.

The health care debate is particularly intractable because opposing sides are driven by fundamental differences.  As David Brooks described the impasse in Friday’s New York Times,

“Both parties see the same problem. The current system is a mess, with opaque prices and perverse incentives that mostly favor the insurance companies. But, as Yuval Levin has pointed out in National Review, the Democrats believe the answer is to create a highly regulated insurance system with inefficiencies eliminated through rational rules. The Republicans believe that the answer is to create a genuine market with clear price signals, empowered consumers and an evolving process.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/opinion/26brooks.html?ref=opinion

Good faith discussion of possible areas of agreement (and, yes, there are a few) have been shut out by a breakdown of trust, exemplified by the congressional leadership’s insistence (with a complicit administration) on a comprehensive package, rather than individual, separately debated proposals, separately implemented and tracked.  That approach is like the software bundling practices of Microsoft. 

And the administration’s ‘consultation’ approach recalls those faux consultations held by top management with mid-managers after the real decisions have already been made or the ‘public meetings’ that administrative agencies notoriously hold for ‘input’ when the proposed rule or policy has already been set in stone.  

The people have become wise to this ‘going through the motions’ process because the political elites have used technique too much and too blatantly for too long.

POLICY SWEET SPOTS

Definition of Sweet Spot

In sports: The sweet spot is that balance point between potentially conflicting forces that produces the optimum outcome.  In baseball for example, players refer to the ‘sweet spot’ on a bat.  In skiing, there is a performance sweet spot that optimizes control and speed. 

In policy:  The sweet spot is that balance between competing political forces that produces an optimum political and policy outcome, crudely, the ‘win, win’ spot. 

For example:  Conservatives and liberals were able, long ago, to agree on a federal freeway system funded by user fees from gasoline taxes and truck load weight assessments.

Prediction:  The ‘sweet spot’ discussions will not bear fruit until the congressional democrats are forced to change their approach. 

Look for progress in January 2012.

THREE SWEET SPOTS

A. Energy/Global Warming

The impasse is all about the scientific and economic wisdom of punishing (economically burdening) traditional hydrocarbon energy technologies during a recession, based on a faux scientific consensus suggesting an emergency (i.e., the science is conflicted, the urgency exaggerated).  The sweet spot is a consensus that the USA is unduly dependent on oil from politically hostile parts of the world, that energy independence is a highly desirable course of action, all the global climate change and ‘evil CO2’ claims aside.

The sweet spot:

Small Scale, Mass Produced, New Generation Nuclear Power Plants

Links: 

Modular Nuclear Reactors – Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703444804575071402124482176.html

Green Research –

http://www.greentechmedia.com/green-light/post/small-modular-nuclear/ 

Toshiba’s “Nuclear Battery” http://www.nuclear.com/n-plants/index-Small_modulr_reactr.html and http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html

Small Town Nukes [March 2010, National Geographic]

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/08/mini-nukes

Advantages:

·        10-20 megawatt units (small town, neighborhood size), reduce dependence on large power grids

·        Mass production economies & Smaller investment risks

·        Failsafe designs

·        Uniform technical interfaces, simplifying training

·        Simplified & expedited licensing

·        No atmosphere emissions

·        20 to 30 year life

·        Not subject to Middle East politics

Why this particular impasse?

The anti-carbon, global warming opinion set vehemently opposes exploitation of new oil reserves and is skeptical about ‘clean coal’ technologies.  The conservative, energy independence opinion set, having rejected the global warming ‘emergency’ but accepted the need to achieve independence from ‘terrorist state oil’, does not believe that solar and wind technologies can fill the oil gap.  Both sides are nervous about nuclear power, the liberals because of outmoded safety concerns (solved in the new generation reactors) while the conservatives are nervous about a massive tax investment in large nuclear plants. 

The obvious ‘sweet spot’ compromise is the small, modular nuclear plant model, mass produced by private industry and rolled out incrementally.

B. Health Care Reform

The Sweet spot:

Expanded Catastrophic Care Model, with Consolidated Risk Pools, implemented gradually

Advantages & Features:

·        Consumer driven – requiring enforced price transparency

·        Deductibles would be mitigated by tax incentives for health care savings accounts

·        Vouchers could be made available to assist

·        High risk pools, backed partially by the fed., would be diluted by folding in federal employees, attracting and adding state employee pools and other mixed risk pools with incentives

·        Gradual implementation with success metrics

Links:

The case for reform caution:

http://www.aei.org/outlook/100934

Overview of a new model:

http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=164618&type=newswires

High risk pools – mixed experience

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/flawed_model.html

An argument for vouchers

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0810/p09s01-coop.html

Why the impasse? 

Any major new entitlement program is DOA, given the grim fiscal picture.  This means that reform necessarily proceeds incrementally via micro-compromises, using a combination of tax incentives and state/local/private partnerships to gradually move towards a more consumer-driven, less bureaucratic health care delivery and financial system. 

Visit and review my own proposals at: http://www.jaygaskill.com/HeathCareTrainWreck.htm .

C. Transition from a Debt – Consumption Economy to an Investment – Production Economy

The Sweet spot:

Selective Repeal & Removal of Political, bureaucratic, Administrative Business Start-up Obstacles, Coupled with a stable, competitive Tax Structure

Links:

Futility of increasingly progressive taxation

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/research_memorandum_11.htm

International Competitive Tax Cutting

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=3449

Competitive advantages of a low, flat tax

http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-ce030806.html

See my own proposals at:

http://jaygaskill.com/GUIDEtoRECOVERY.htm and http://jaygaskill.com/Recovery09.htm and http://jaygaskill.com/KeynsianCollapse.pdf .

This cliff-sized impasse should not be surprising.

We are on the edge of a tectonic shift between a consumption-driven-economy, supported by perpetual borrowing, to a production-sustained-economy, ignited by private investment.  This shift requires us to embrace a profound adjustment of government’s borrowing, spending and taxation policies, one that runs roughshod over the entire spectrum of special interests.  Fixing the problem now, before a catastrophic economic collapse caused by the expiration of easy credit at all levels, is a bit like getting an alcoholic into rehab before he or she reaches the ‘gutter stage’.  

See -- http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/11/cut-spending-taxes-budget-medicare-paul-ryan-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html  -- detailing one plan without a bureaucratic obstruction relief component.

My Prediction: 

In the next five years or so, there will be upheavals in the Chinese and European economies the net effect of which will be to dry up easy, low cost loans to the US government.  These may be offset by direct foreign investment in US business startups, if we are wise enough to allow them room to do so while employing American talent.  The overall effect will be a federal fiscal diet and a nascent recovery.  Our ability to sustain that recovery and recover government fiscal balance will be the real test of the sustained character of our new leadership.  This will require a major reconfiguration of the roles of the ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ elements in our polity and a new, better informed, more responsible populism, something I have described as the coming populist reformation.  http://jaygaskill.com/newPPP.htm .

Stay tuned....  I’ll be developing these themes over the coming months.

JBG

Jay B Gaskill

Attorney at Law

 JOE STACK & KARL MARX

Read Jay B Gaskill’s Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition. More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/  .

And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones. More on the Policy Think

Site at http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf  .

As Published On

→ The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1 

And

The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com 

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 by Jay B. Gaskill

Permission to print all or part of this article (except for personal use) is needed. [Permission for use in group discussions is almost always routinely given.]

Please contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com 

PERMISSION TO FORWARD LINKS TO THIS BLOG OR INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES IS HEREBY GIVEN

JOE STACK AND THE KARL MARX VIRUS

ALSO POSTED IN HTM FORMAT AT THIS LINK:
http://jaygaskill.com/TheMarxVirus.html 

Joe Stack, the suicidal idiot who achieved flaming notoriety by flying his plane into an IRS Building this week, erasing his tax liability and ending his life, is widely quoted on the WWW as having left a manifesto quoting and parodying Karl Marx.

In Stack's alleged suicide post, Marx's value couplet is correctly stated as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. This is followed by a parody of the capitalist ethos: “from each according to his duplicity, to each according to his greed”.

Let's unpack Marx a bit. As restated for clarity and honesty, the couplet reads:

Each must use his or her abilities as determined by the collective for need-based compensation as recognized by the collective.

The capitalist couplet, honestly stated, reads as follows:

From each as freely offered value, to each in voluntary exchange for actual value received.

The unstated Marxist corollary is the monster political mechanism it requires: a state with sufficient bureaucratic power to control all work and compensation, organized by ideologues to implement a utopia based on a couplet so vague that public slavery is justified.

The unstated capitalist corollary is the sophisticated justice system it requires: a judicial polity sufficiently robust to operate in a class-neutral, corruption free mode, designed to prevent fraud, assure transactional honesty, transparency and the just enforcement of contracts.

The Anglo-American judicial system, all flaws accounted for, with the concomitant financial system that it supports, is much closer to the Utopian ideal of a just society than any authoritarian bureaucratic state on the planet earth.

History's Utopian lesson is clear: BEWARE WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

JBG

{corrected  version} 

Read Jay B Gaskill’s Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition.  More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/ .

And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones.  More on the Policy Think Site at   http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf .

As Published On

→ The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1

And

The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 by Jay B. Gaskill

This essay is not about ideology, party or personality, but is sheds light on all three....

J

This article is also posted in htm format at this link:

http://jaygaskill.com/MoralNarcissistsAmongUs.htm

Moral Narcissists are living among us

And they are up to No Good

By

Jay B. Gaskill

Narcissism is life in a self validating bubble.

In its milder forms, narcissism is the infatuation with one’s own personal narrative as if it represents the very center of the universe.  For a narcissist, the chords that bind us to others are ignored. Here, I’m using the musical version of cords here to express the notion that we are bound to our fellow beings more by resonances than by restraints. 

Narcissists have cut the ‘humbilical’ chords that tie them to the larger human narrative, to the Moral Center its Creator.

For purposes of this discussion, narcissism is a chronic self absorption so profound that all relationships with others (and by extension all values) are measured by whether - or the extent to which - they represent or validate approval of the narcissistic individual in question. 

In the most extreme forms of narcissism, empathy is replaced in by the miming of empathy in order to gain – or validate – approval. 

Narcissism is the solipsism of the soul, the world view that one’s self is the only value.  This is why the notorious achievements of others are resented and denied by the narcissistic mind.  If one’s separate self is the only value, and the approval of others is the only proper response, then the elevated status of others can never be truly merited or endured.  The very existence of the more successful, the more loved, the more ... (insert envied trait here) challenges the narcissist’s “if I’m not doing well, then it must be someone else’s fault” set of assumptions.  The successes and high status of others disparages and undercuts the narcissist’s personal narrative. 

Malignant narcissists are actually willing to destroy the successes of others as a twisted from of ‘therapy’. 

Real therapists observe this pathological behavior in a number of situations, particularly in the attitudes of addicts who try to co-opt others into their miserable state. 

The rest of us can readily recognize the same behavior writ large on the world stage:  Malignant narcissism is the psychological fuel that drives violent jihadists who are willing to die in flames in order to bring down Western civilization, the notorious material success of which is an extreme example of the “if we’re not OK it is someone else’s fault” mindset. 

For the doctrinaire, bloody-minded Marxists, the act of bringing others down to one’s level is seen as simple justice, as perverted as that notion seems to a healthy mind.  This is the base appeal of all such left-wing collective egalitarian “reparations” notions.  [Contrast individuated justice in which an actual thief is legally compelled to return the stolen item or otherwise ‘pay’ for an actual crime.]

Moral narcissists are an interesting, but poorly understood subset of the larger narcissistic cohort.  They include the groups and subcultures of narcissists who have adopted a camouflage strategy to escape the moral disapproval of others - after all, no one truly loves a blatant narcissist.  They accomplish this camouflage by cloaking their narcissism in the trappings of ‘social justice positioning’.  [Bumper stickers do the job quite well as does cocktail party banter.]

These are members of “club narcissist” who live in an unspoken social compact, the first tenet of which is “We are not narcissists because we care”.  The second tenet consists of a commitment to sign onto a shifting list of approved ‘humanitarian’ positions and stances with the unspoken understanding that these will require little more than gestures - bargain basement humanitarianism, of you will.

Thus the moral narcissists create an artificial a moral universe where ‘standing for’ is the equivalent of ‘doing for’.  These self-selecting cohorts have simply expanded their approval bubble to include those who share the same approval needs.  This explains more than other factor why actual charitable activity - as measured by deeds, treasure and sacrifice - is far higher in so called ‘backward conservative’ communities than in ‘enlightened progressive’ areas.  [Many sources support this finding.  One sample-   http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1222/p15s01-ussc.html ]

Caveat:  Obviously, not everyone living in a social justice approval bubble is a moral narcissist as I’ve defined the term here, but the very existence of the bubble, characterized by the non-critical acceptance of ‘positions” in lieu of concrete helpful actions, provides perfect cover.

We need to address moral narcissism as a serious social problem because it is so rampant among the comfortable, well off, and “well meaning” intelligentsia,   These include those  who purport to care about the victims of war while opposing the use of armed forces needed to maintain peace, who purport to care about educating the poor, while opposing vouchers for indigent families to send their children to safer private schools, and who purport to care about civil peace while opposing necessary police resources and authority.  

Moral narcissists are easily controlled and manipulated by political elites, ideologues, and corrupt political predators.  Moral narcissists are immune from the teaching effects of authentic dialogue.  Moral narcissism is the disease of the modern mind. 

We all live in an information bubble of some sort, a position imposed by our circumstances and our limited resources of attention. But many of us are at least able to know something of the boundaries and limitations of our separate concerns, and we are able to make an effort to engage with the world outside those boundaries and limitations.  Some of us are actually willing to listen to and learn from ‘the other side’.

That is, we are able to engage the world unless we are crippled by some form of solipsism.  Babies are born with a passion for life and an aboriginal solipsism/narcissism from which they/we are eventually charmed by the attentions of loving, but morally centered adults. 

Or not.

Modern moral narcissism resembles an attempt to return to an infantile state.

Solipsism, in its various forms, occupies a continuum.  One end is occupied by the pure solipsists. This is a rare condition only simulated by philosophers – “We can’t really know anything about the world.” If ever solipsism is actually taken seriously, the warped minds it captures tend to exist in a delusional state (“I am the world”) so profound that it belongs in the DMS IV’s catalog of clinically recognized mental disorders. [The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the agreed diagnostic catalog used by mental health professionals in the United States.] 

At the other end of the continuum, solipsism’s milder forms slide naturally into one of the contemporary versions of narcissism.  We might say that a narcissist is a recovering solipsist who has accommodated the world’s existence but not its independent value. 

Here are the takeaway points:

1. For purposes of this discussion, narcissism is an inappropriate and chronic self absorption so profound that all forms of approval (and by extension all value) are measured by whether (or the extent to which) they represent approval of the narcissist. In its more extreme forms, empathy is replaced in the narcissistic mind by the miming of empathy in order to gain – or validate – approval for ‘being nice”.  Yet the authentic achievements of others are almost always resented by the narcissistic mind.
2. A moral narcissist lives in a self-approval bubble shared by other moral narcissists who collectively have agreed that their cocoon of mutually agreed moral gestures and self congratulations will constitute a perfect and sufficient engagement with an imperfect world. In their morally empty minds, the notion of ahimsa (essentially, “do no harm”) easily mutates into “do nothing concrete or risky” to prevent harm. 
3. Moral narcissists are prey in a world full of predators.

This is why moral narcissists are naturally drawn to ideologies based on the moral validation of envy, and why it is safer for them to “feel” empathy for the “victims” than for those who take risks and engage in dangerous struggles to protect them. 

JBG  

Read Jay B Gaskill’s Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition.  More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/ .

And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones.  More on the Policy Think Site at   http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf .

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SNEERING AT THE GOOD AMERICANS

Free the Idaho Ten, Part Two

“PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Ten U.S. missionaries arrested trying to leave earthquake-crippled Haiti with a busload of children may be spending the weekend in jail despite a judge recommending their provisional release.”

“...group leader Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, told the AP the children were obtained either from orphanages or from distant relatives. She said only children who were found not to have living parents or relatives who could care for them might be put up for adoption.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hoQp80v7-bk5Gp-2GTTe0PUyw80Q  ]

Even now, our media mavens continue to snipe at Ms. Silsby, the 40 year old woman who led the small cohort of Christians in a valiant effort to rescue orphans on scene in Haiti under conditions so chaotic and difficult that most of us would prefer to write a small check and go on with our comfortable lives.   

“The 40-year-old Idaho businesswoman convinced members of Idaho's Central Valley Baptist Church to follow her dream of building an orphanage in the Dominican Republic for Haitian children. But her other business and personal ventures reveal a checkered history.” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/05/world/main6178794.shtml

Far less critical attention was given Senator Edwards when he was running for the presidency.  

A Haitian judge is due to provisionally release the ten Christian women from small town USA, finding that they did not act with criminal intent when they tried to rescue and repatriate orphaned children from a cesspool.  This: after several weeks of incarceration without bail in a country unable to control real crime.  This: in a country where its own citizens have no constitutional right to leave.

http://www.indypressny.org/nycma/voices/350/editorials/editorials_1/

Legal status – My rights, my country

By Ilio Durandis, Haitian Times, 18 November 2008.

“Haiti is a country where the rules of law mean very little to people. We have books that contain the laws, but we don't have fair-minded people to apply them. Our leaders take greater pride in protecting their own power and interests instead of those they represent. Haiti is a failed state not simply because it is corrupt, but mainly because it cannot protect the rights of its citizens.”

Ten American citizens have been imprisoned for trying to save some children from a hellhole.  Why is there not more outrage?  Why do the media seem automatically drawn into “blame the victim” mode, picking on the group’s leader, Laura Silsby, for flaws routinely tolerated among our highest elected officials?

I suspect that these ten brave, well meaning women are being marginalized because our over-comfortable, somewhat decadent culture has lost touch with the value of direct, personal charitable action.  This is the variety of concrete kindness that always difficult, sometimes risky, but never less than the real deal.  No, it appears that, in the current culture, charitable acts should be reserved for governments, large agencies and the very wealthy and well-protected who can drop in like beneficent, mighty angels and exit the same way.  Does anyone doubt for a minute that a celebrity like, say, Angelina Jolie could have been detained for five hours, let alone five weeks, under similar circumstances?

Are we really a nation in which no ordinary good deed is immune from snarky second guessing?

JBG

MORAL DEFAULT

ECONOMIC DEFAULT

Read Jay B Gaskill’s Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition. More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/ .

And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones. More on the Policy Think Site at http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf .

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On one level, the current economic crisis is too complex for easy discussion. But on another level, that apparent complexity was the reason this crisis was able to metastasize in the first place.

I am now fully persuaded that the root cause of the ongoing economic collapse in the developed Western economies is a pervasive moral failure in the elite culture.

I'm also convinced that the path to economic recovery necessarily requires a strong measure of moral recovery.

Here is the fundamental operating moral principle:

Comfortable distance enables destructive immoral behavior.

The first time I tumbled to this simple truth was during a study of the Third Reich.

How could so many intelligent, 'cultivated' and superficially decent people been so thoroughly co-opted into a massively evil enterprise? Was it the complete absence of conscience? Or was it the presence of comfortable distance, the moral insulation provided by bureaucratic remove, the fairy tale denials and the recursive rationalizations of modern amoral functionaries? The pattern of toxic insulation went well beyond the janitors at Dachau. It included brilliant scientists, engineers and even physicians.

Albert Speer, the architect who became the Nazi defense minister, was by all accounts a 'cultivated 'man. As he later wrote from his prison cell in Spandau, “Basically, I exploited the phenomenon of the technician’s often blind devotion to his task. Because of what seems to be the moral neutrality of technology, these people were without scruples about their activities.” From Albert Speer's diary, “Inside The Third Reich.”

[A thoughtful essay about Speer's later moral insights is on the web at http://www.translucency.com/frede/speer.html ]

The great financial collapse of 08-09 was the consequence of a massive fraud (selling vapor assets disguised via 'bundling', borrowing on illusory or non-existent promises to repay.

The private sector fraud was fully mirrored in the public sector. [Read the brilliant piece, 'Civilization's lies' by Hoover scholar, Victor Davis Hanson at http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson020610.html.]

The widespread participation in this rampantly catastrophic fraud was enabled by the comfortable distance achieved through obscurantist complexity.

Otherwise reasonable bankers and financiers routinely sold 'packages' and 'products' the actual contents and value of which these men and women were clueless. The difference between their fraud and the blatant thefts of Bernie Madoff was exactly the same kind of comfortable distance that insulated certain physicians and medical researchers from full moral depravity of 'experiments' conducted on prisoners who just happened to be Jews.

This experience tells us that fundamental operating moral principle I stated earlier has two corollaries, one modern, one ancient, to wit:

1. Where finance is concerned, large scale and individual transactions operate in exactly the same moral environment: Trust is the currency. Honesty, full disclosure and accountability are the indispensable ingredients.

2. No algorithm, no matter how sophisticated, can be trusted to operate morally. If the transaction is too complicated to understand, it is too complicated to trust on any level.

The cooperating elites of faux liberal and faux conservative leaders who now uneasily occupy the chairs of power within the Beltway are deeply frightened of the Tea Party political insurgency.

Why fear the people? The angst of the Beltway elites stems not from the claims that this grassroots rebellion is 'uninformed' and 'immoral'. The reality is quite the opposite. They are so deeply frightened because this populist movement is all too well informed and far too moral for their elite tastes....

JBG

Read Jay B Gaskill’s Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition.  More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/ .

And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones.  More on the Policy Think Site at   http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf .

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Link: http://jaygaskill.com/FreeTheIdahoTen.htm

Free the Idaho Ten!

By FRANK BAJAK

The Associated Press

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti | Ten U.S. Baptist missionaries were charged Thursday with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti to a hastily arranged refuge.

Their arrests Jan. 30 came just as officials were trying to protect children from predators amid the chaos of the Jan. 12 earthquake.

[The missionaries] began buying used clothing and collecting donations from their Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho. In November, [their organizer] registered the New Life Children’s Refuge Inc., the nonprofit organization coordinating the rescue mission. … When the quake struck, [she] recruited other church members to help kick her plans into high gear. The 10 Americans rushed to Haiti and spent a week gathering children for the project. Most of the children came from the village of Callebas, where residents told The Associated Press that they handed over their children to the Americans because they were unable to feed or clothe them after the quake. They said the missionaries promised to educate the children and let relatives visit.

In Haiti it seems  that some good deeds are worth a show trial.  Think of it this way.  The corruption-riddled government of Haiti is the closest thing to a failed state among all Pac Rim countries.  That government, in the midst in the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory, in the face of heroic efforts by outsiders to restore the shreds of civilized life to its citizens, at a time when the local government was impotent to restrain rioting by its own people, simply decided to assert its authority by prosecuting 10 Christians from a small Idaho town for trying to help some abandoned orphans.  Only a clique of embattled, small minded bureaucrats would seek to enforce the letter of the law over its spirit and larger purpose (to help Haiti’s children) as a belated show of petty authority.

It’s one thing to prevent the removal of children to a better place, quite another to criminally prosecute their would-be rescuers.   

Our Secretary of State has approached the matter with typical caution:

“On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was ‘unfortunate’ that ‘this group of Americans took matters into their own hands’ by trying to take the children across the border without proper documentation. ‘We are engaged in discussions with the Haitian government and looking for the best way forward on this,’ she added.”

http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=378331

Sorry, that’s not good enough.  A single phone call from our new president is in order, “Free our citizens. Allow them to return to the USA now,” should do the trick.  Failing that, a second call to US military personnel is in order.

The bruised egos of shamefully incompetent, small minded government officials is a secondary consideration.

JBG

THE REDEMPTION OF JOHN YOO

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THE REDEMPTION OF JOHN YOO

And Why John Yoo “Speaks For Me”

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My old law school, Boalt Hall, is not altogether overrun by leftist ideologues. 

Berkeley Professor John Yoo has been the victim of a witch hunt worthy of the late Joseph McCarthy because of legal advice he gave the Bush Administration about the interrogation of terrorists.  Professor Yoo has just written a book about presidential authority,  “Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush.” 

He recently appeared on the comedic Jon Stuart Show (http://www.thedailyshow.com/), but Mr. Stuart is not promoting that encounter because Yoo ran over him like a truck, politely to be sure, but lucidly.   Perhaps unfairly, Professor Yoo was aided by a rapier wit and - dare we say it? – he also used an arsenal of facts.  Don’t you just hate it when somebody does that?

A reasonable case can be made that Mr. Yoo’s legal opinions have saved thousands of American lives and that the ideologues who are still seeking his disbarment and dismissal are...out to lunch.

But that’s just me.

I still vividly remember that day when our plane touched down at SFO after an unexpectedly extended stay in Manhattan that included that searingly transformative experience we all now call nine eleven.  Anyone who has followed my writings and reflections post 911 will understand the following. 

As I wrote at the time:

“Evil is real. It came to this city, near the Manhattan apartment where we are staying, announcing itself in a succession of grotesquely surreal images of a monumental murder.  

“Yet Good is real.  The last few days here have recharged my belief in the human capacity for heroism and virtue under duress.  It is an honor to be among the New Yorkers.  I now understand that evil is like a descending night flare on a battlefield, exposing the configuration of forces below.  Its terrible light clarifies the essence of things. In that actinic glare, all our differences melt into insignificance because, after all, they are just different versions of the good.” 

Then added a few months later:

“Later, when our plane finally roared down the runway at JFK, the images of the window candles, the taped up photos of missing loved ones on the armory, on doorways, windows and poles, the long paper scroll in Union Square, the Ladder Truck 24 shrine, all played out in my mind.  As I looked out the window at the suddenly diminished Manhattan skyline, I realized that - for the moment - we had become a single people, whose disputes and differences were exposed as trivial. Then I imagined concentric circles radiating from ground zero: In the circle close in, people were profoundly changed, then further away people touched, less touched, and finally I imagined (and later met) the detached and disconnected. I entertained the deep hope for a new energy, a drawing in to faith communities sustained by the important truths that bind us.”

Within that immediate circle of human beings in the day and the days immediately following, there was a profound, gut wrenching insight that, for the morally receptive minds among us, was permanently transformative.  But as we left that circle, traversing new concentric boundaries of understanding, the nine eleven epiphany became increasingly attenuated, even distorted. 

After getting off the place in San Francisco, I was, for a time, profoundly reluctant even to enter Berkeley.  Recall, if you can, that the Berkeley City Council banned the display of the American Flag on fire trucks and that the congresswoman from Berkeley, at the time my congressperson, was Barbara Lee. 

Ms. Lee immediately distinguished herself by being the sole member out of 535 elected to House of Representatives who voted on September 14, 2001, OPPOSING the authorization the use of US forces against those responsible for the September 11 attacks, granting the president authority to use all "”necessary and appropriate force” against those terrorists and who harbored or aided them. 

Bumper stickers then began appearing in the East Bay, like chocken pox pustules, reading “BARBARA LEE SPEAKS FOR ME.”

Now contrast Berkeley law professor, John Yoo, whose historically informed review of presidential executive power in a time of crisis, and whose hard nosed, “Jack Baueresque” take on the real world exigencies of terrorist “interviews”, bought him a host of troubles from the reflexively timorous left.  

Sadly I’m too old to have taken Professor Yoo’s courses at Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley’s Law School), but not too old to have graduated from the same institution around the time that Ted Olson (the conservative lawyer who has taken the “gay” side in the California proposition eight litigation). 

Here’s the irony of the moment: 

The so-called partisan right is as benignly tolerant of Mr. Olson’s legal position and the partisan left is rabidly intolerant of Professor Yoo’s post-911 legal memos to the Bush Administration.

All this is preamble to today’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Interrogation memo author views executive power”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/16/MNA51BIQN7.DTL

Here is my favorite pull quote:

“Yoo said he was equally unperturbed by the uproar that followed his return to Berkeley, including calls for his disbarment.

“’I guess it's a very, very tiny price for living in a very sunny place with good weather and exquisite food prepared by ex-1960s hippies,’ Yoo said in a brief interview.

“‘I mean, it's Berkeley after all. There's a protest every day in Berkeley about something. If it's not me, it's about trees. If it's not about trees, it's about the Marines recruiting, so it doesn't really bother me.”’

Jack Bauer returns on Fox’s durable terrorist-fighting series, “24 Hours” this Sunday.  This is the popular series that once featured a tough-on-terrorists black president, David Palmer, an image that helped pave the way for Mr. Obama’s subsequent career surge.

So I hope you will fully appreciate where I am coming from when I say, with all legalistic nuance aside, that:

JOHN YOO SPEAKS FOR ME.

JBG
 

Please reference my earlier articles and pictures on 911 and its implications for all of us:

http://jaygaskill.com/NineEleven08.JPG

http://jaygaskill.com/StPaul1.JPG

http://jaygaskill.com/BrilliantDream.pdf

http://jaygaskill.com/91105d.htm

Mr. Gaskill is a California lawyer who served as the Alameda County Public Defender (serving Oakland and Berkeley among other cities) 1989-1999.

MURDERS ARE DOWN, ECONOMIC DISTRESS IS UP?

What’s up with that? 

Analysis

By

Jay B. Gaskill

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As we linger in the dark well of the worst recession in recent memory, many urban jurisdictions are now reporting (San Francisco among them) that we are experiencing an inexplicable drop in murders.

You may doubt this is actually taking place.  Here are some links:

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/dpp/news/tennessee/122909_murder-rate-declines-first-time-in-years [Memphis]

http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20091230/NEWS01/912300329/1006/news01 [New Jersey]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-09-crime_x.htm [Steep national decline]

http://www.examiner.com/x-24880-Boston-Law-Enforcement-Examiner~y2009m9d28-Boston-murder-rate-declines [Boston]

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_francisco&id=7193070 [San Francisco]

Years ago I was invited by the Alameda County Sheriff to address the graduating class of his peace officers; training academy. 

My address is posted here: http://www.jaygaskill.com/sheriff.html.htm.

Among the points I made was this:  Crime is not caused by or even strongly correlated with economic poverty.  Even in the Great Depression general crime did not go up, Al Capone notwithstanding. 

The overall crime rate is sensitive to a number of factors, notably the visible deterrent effect of a welcome police presence and the underlying morality of the non-criminal population (something I’ve called civilization’s ‘moral infrastructure’). 

Therefore in the USA, the UK and other cultures and subcultures where the Judeo-Christian ethos (or its moral equivalent) persists whether in its religious or secular forms (think ‘do not steal, lie, murder’ as being generally accepted), then the following principle will tend to govern: Crime operates in an inverse relationship to community.  Put another way, “When community is strengthened, crime is depressed” (assuming the baseline moral infrastructure and the implementing law and justice infrastructures are intact). 

In the current recession, more families are at home and more people are looking out for each other....and crime goes down.

Francis Fukuyama connected some of these dots in his book, The Great Disruption (1999 – link to Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Great-Disruption-Nature-Reconstitution-Social/dp/068484530X ).  He linked crime increases to the disruptive migration patterns that took apart existing networks of social relationships that had constituted our “social capital” when life patterns were more stable.  The missing piece in his analysis, in my opinion, was the health - or lack thereof - of the underlying moral framework. 

The “moral infrastructure” piece was separately disrupted by a bit of cultural insanity that is just now fading away.  This damage to the underlying morality of the non-criminal population was the unintended consequence of an outbreak of postmodern neo-tribal multiculturism.   Suddenly legitimacy was given to the perverse notion that thugs who belong to “oppressed” tribes were to be spared as an act of “social consciousness”, and that the beleaguered gendarmes who answered our 911 calls were to be mistrusted because they “work for the ruling class”. 

That nonsense has almost run its course.  My first indication of the healthy counter-trend took place several years ago in Oakland, California when crime victims and witnesses from “the hood” started showing up.  Today, whole neighborhoods of honest, hard working black families in Oakland are demanding more not less police services.   That very passion has a benign side effect:  Thugs are deterred by an energized population.

Yes, times are tough.  But there is a silver lining.

JBG

The author, a well known trial and appellate lawyer, served as the Alameda County (CA) Public Defender from 1989-99, then left his “life of crime” to pursue writing and general trouble making.  His profile is located at: www.jaygaskill.com/Profile.pdf

Want to escape the dismal headlines? Read: Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones.  Purchase Information and samples:  http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf

Want to escape the dismal headlines? Read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller.  More at  http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf

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COMFORTING FOUR YEAR OLD CRIME VICTIMS

A retriever/lab mix named Vivian comforted a 4 year old boy as he testified against his aunt in an abuse case in Marin County a few weeks ago.  This was the San Francisco Chronicle’s front page story today, with pictures of dog and DA.

Pioneered in Seattle in 2003 by Deputy DA Ellen O’Neil-Stephens, the witness comfort program (using cute, nurturing dogs to support child crime victims) gone viral. 

Check out these links:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003767349_courtdogs29m.html

http://www.marinij.com/ci_13991903?source=most_emailed

http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_13991903?nclick_check=1

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/lifestyle/stories.nsf/pets/story/A5EA01DC3751E96486257698001B2007?OpenDocument

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-02/news/0806020002_1_therapy-dogs-carroll-county-victim-witness-assistance

In the current state of journalism, no story, however touching, is complete without “balance”, which means:  Find some contrary comment to report, unless of course, you’re talking about global warming, in which case you can skip that part.

SO...WHAT DOES THE DEFENSE SAY?

The defense has argued (without success) that the comfort dog’s very presence in court sends a signal that something very bad has happened to the child witness.  No kidding.  Any charge of child abuse that gets to trial is generally an indication that something bad has probably happened to a vulnerable, underage witness.  Leave it to my former colleagues to make the obvious sound like rocket science.

It might be more accurate to say, that the presence of a comfort dog with a four year old witness portents that something very bad is about to happen to the defense.  I note with interest that that there are reportedly fewer quick deals in cases when comfort dogs are employed to strengthen witness resolve.  That outcome is both good and to be expected.  Many defense plea bargains are reached in order the “spare the victim” the ordeal of a court appearance (translate – sparing the rigors of cross examination).  This sort of plea bargain does avoid a trial but it also reduces the punishment because after all: Why “‘cop a plea’ without getting a ‘reduction’”?  

The mythical subset of defendants who graciously plead guilty to spare the victim and to atone for bad conduct by accepting a greater punishment must have been in somebody else’s caseload over the long years of my practice.  I can’t remember one.

The quick deal in child abuse cases because of victim reluctance represents a social good only if you take the position (as I do not) that crimes against children in US urban jurisdictions are over-prosecuted and over-punished.  Yes, there is a chance of miscarriage in these cases, admittedly a very small chance.  But the final check and balance, the ultimate way to prevent of a miscarriage of justice, is the classic fair trial, not a plea bargain-under-duress.

Another defense objection is that allowing dog comfort support for a child witness is an inducement in the nature of an award for testimony; by implication it is (supposedly) in the nature of a bribe.  This line of argument has traction only if the doggie comfort is an inducement to lie as opposed to a form of moral support for going public with an accusation. 

Child witnesses are frightened by their abusers, often confused and disturbed when crime is a breach of trust by a family member or authority figure. Small children are flat out terrified by the prospect of getting into a courtroom surrounded by adult strangers. The risks attendant a miscarriage of justice in child abuse cases, rare as they are, mostly stem from problematic eyewitness identifications of strangers (when identification is at issue) or witness manipulation by angry spouses. 

Comfort dogs encourage a safe space for questioning when an otherwise hysterical witness can be barely be made to understand questions let alone provide considered answers.  In my courtroom experience, the task of ferreting out errors and misstatements by kids in a trial stetting requires the defense attorney to be gentle, to earn trust and to have conducted a careful and thorough factual investigation before ever asking the first question.  A reassured child helps, does not hinder the search for the truth.

I know...I know...I’ve just used the dreaded “T” word here.  At their most noble, defense lawyers are primarily about eliciting truth, unlocking mercy and checking prosecution overreaching, that never-ending task of keeping the other side honest and fair.  The other image of defense lawyer is more cynical – lawyers for whom the game is about winning or – if not – inflicting such damage that the next encounter will result in a favorable plea bargain.  Both operate in the real world.

In my own experience, the task of cross examining a vulnerable child witness is wrenchingly difficult (often requiring therapeutic decompression at a pub), but it remains part of the general assignment, to defend the poor with the same vigor as a hired gun defends the rich.  Just as the Vatican assigns a pre-beatification “Satan’s advocate” to expose the weakness in candidate for sainthood, the defense is tasked to do the same for all prosecution cases whatever the ultimate merits. 

Should four year old abuse victims be denied their comfort dogs?  Hell no.  My advice to my former colleagues of the defense:  I know it’s tough.  So apply for your own dog. 

Jay B Gaskill

The author is the former Alameda County (CA) Public Defender

What next for Health Care?  Go to

Link -- http://jaygaskill.com/BlueDogsGreedyMonkeys.htm.

J