Why sexual assault in the military can get you killed

The military culture is unfamiliar to those who haven’t served, but it’s been in the news lately because of the scandal surrounding sexual assaults and how the crimes and the victims are dealt with. The focus thus far has been on the general failure to bring offenders to justice and the frequency with which victims are punished.

There’s an underlying problem that’s not getting enough attention, and that is the tendency of so many members to commit acts of sexual violence against comrades — a clear indication that recruits are failing to think. While it is true that the people who serve are human beings no different from society at large, servicemen and women can and should be held — and indeed hold themselves — to a much higher standard.

When you serve in the military, every member of every branch is your comrade in arms — people you expect to have your back in times of danger. The immorality of sexual assault aside, what sense does it make to abuse, disrespect, assault, or violate someone who might at some point have your life in their hands?

I have no doubt there will be increased emphasis on sexual assault in military training classes, both for enlisted personnel and officers. The point I made above is something that every recruit should be able to understand and be stressed in training.

Injustice, Florida style

The moment she turned 18, a Florida girl named Kaitlyn Hunt was targeted by state prosecutors for “lewd and lascivious conduct” toward her girlfriend, who happened to be 15 at the time Kaitlyn turned 18. It was the girl’s parents who wanted charges to be pressed, even though the younger girl protested that the relationship was completely consensual.

At that age, such things happen all the time. It’s not uncommon for a high school boy of 17 to be dating a girl of 15 or so, yet I know of no cases where the boys are prosecuted as soon as they celebrate their 18th birthday. But in Kaitlyn’s case, her girlfriend’s parents were upset that their daughter was in a lesbian relationship and they retaliated by having State Attorney Brian Workman to bring charges, claiming that Kaitlyn turned their daughter into a lesbian.

There is ample reason to be outraged against a state attorney who was so readily swayed by bigots to do the wrong thing, but then he’s probably a hard-core bigot himself. As for the parents, well instead of embracing their daughter and encouraging her to be happy, they have probably alienated her for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the girl will be an adult herself in less than three years, and if she keeps her love for Kaitlyn alive for that long, they will be free to resume their relationship — that is if Kaitlyn isn’t in prison and her life isn’t in tatters, as is liable to happen if these redneck Floridians don’t drop the whole stupid case.

An inevitable milestone

When I saw the headline of this NY Times lead article, I knew it meant we had reached an average daily CO₂ level of 400 parts per million. We don’t know if we’ve passed the point of no return, but if we haven’t, it sure won’t be long.

That the US is no longer the leading emitter of carbon dioxide is irrelevant. This distinction falls to China, and it’s possible that we may win back the “honor” before too long because the Chinese are probably smarter about science than we are.

Take this, for example: “The CO₂ levels in the atmosphere are rather undramatic,” Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said in a Congressional hearing a few years ago when he tried to play down the role of carbon dioxide in managing our global climate because it only amounts to 0.04 percent of the total atmosphere. Why he wasn’t laughed out of the House is pretty clear: politicians in general and Republicans in particular are dangerously ignorant about atmospheric science — although at least Democrats believe what virtually all the world’s real scientists tell them. But the fact is, this relatively tiny amount of one gas makes the planet habitable and has everything to do with how much heat is trapped close to the earth’s surface — and we’ve known this for a long time. It’s not theory, it’s not subject to debate, it’s a scientific fact.

And as we all know, Republicans are seldom interested in facts. And even if some of them know in their hearts that climate change is real and it’s caused by human activity, they don’t dare let on to their corporate masters. If their constituents are uninformed, they can inform them. They just won’t.

I’ve written about global warming here before — apparently at least 52 times — and here and elsewhere I broke down the science as I understood it. What’s happening now is that we appear to be rushing headlong to return to conditions that prevailed during the Eocene epoch — a world vastly different from today’s.

While China may be the new leader in global carbon emissions, the US still plays a leadership role — and the US certainly cannot preach what it doesn’t practice. But even if the world were to magically able to reduce our avoidable carbon emissions to zero overnight, atmospheric CO₂ would continue to rise for the foreseeable future, and there’s no telling where it would level off and begin to reverse. But I won’t be around to see it, which makes me wonder why I care. Well maybe I care because survival of the species is an instinct all living creatures possess. The problem with some humans, though (the Koch brothers, for instance), is that their instinct to be rich might be stronger — and of course that’s a problem for all mankind.

Adding insult to injury

Something we don’t think of in the moments following a tragedy like the Boston Marathon bombing — will the victims’ medical care be covered? Well that’s the subject of this NY Times article this morning. What’s unsaid in the story is, “Only in America.”

Even in Massachusetts, with what’s as close to universal care as we have in the US, those in need of health care aren’t sure their expenses will be fully paid. As a result of an act they had no part in except to be present, some may face daunting medical bills. It’s bad enough that their injuries and trauma have changed their lives forever; so too might the resulting financial ruin.

The health insurance system in the United States is so terrific that no other country in the world uses it for a model. Employer-based for the most part, it relies on for-profit insurers for even government insurance like Medicare —and even the VA, a model for non-profit single-payer health care, will bill Medicare or private insurance if you’re an eligible vet who happens to have either. And while health care in Massachusetts gives the appearance of being universal, it’s still a system that throws business in the direction of private insurers.

Which is why special funds are being created and people are passing hats — to assist the uninsured or those whose coverage doesn’t fully cover much. Debilitating injuries are bad enough. Debilitating medical costs compound the tragedy.

America must grow up before gun violence will end

Ordinary people don’t need semi-automatic, magazine-fed weapons, whether to hunt or for self-defense.

Notice that the Second Amendment refers to the right to bear arms, not guns, and the federal government has a long history of regulating all types of arms without challenge — and certainly no rational person would argue that people have a right to own tanks or nuclear missiles.

There’s not much more you need to say to justify strict controls on guns — but of course that wouldn’t be the end of the story. There are of course hundreds of millions of guns in circulation in the US today, and many are the kind that should not be in the hands of civilians. The sad truth is, no enforceable law that passed today would end gun violence tomorrow. It will take generations for Americans to mature sufficiently to give up the guns they don’t need for hunting and self-defense.

It is, incidentally, tragic that so many Senators will oppose the simple bill to require background check today, and I have a feeling we’ll see some of both parties lose their seats because of this opposition next time they’re up for reelection. It’s unfortunate, however, that we may lose a few Democratic Senators in the process — but it’s clear the NRA must be neutered.

How the US violates a basic human right

We can thank WWII wage controls for the employer-based insurance plans that dominate health care in the US. During the war, labor was in short supply because of the high demand for goods and the diminished work force. Government-mandated wage and price controls barred employers from offering higher wages to attract workers. When the Labor Board announced that benefits like health insurance weren’t wages, employers responded by offering health insurance to attract employees. Following the war, President Harry S. Truman proposed a public health insurance system to provide universal coverage, but we know how that went.

Elsewhere in the world, health insurance was a relatively rare thing, but when The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN in 1948, no other nation adopted the employer-based system. We had the bandwagon all to ourselves

Here is Article 25 of the Declaration, which in its entirety broadly covers human rights:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Most of the rest of the industrialized world responded by adopting some form of a single-payer universal system, but the US stuck with employer-based insurance. As a result, we deny too many Americans the right to good health and medical care — even though the US voted in favor of the Declaration.

While The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a legally binding treaty, it does have the moral authority of such documents as the Declaration of Independence, which Americans cherish perhaps even more than the Constitution. That so many policy makers have rejected important provisions of the Declaration over the years is indeed a violation of human rights.

Adding jobs would cut deficit—a no-brainer

This infuriates me constantly, but today I’ll vent. ENOUGH ABOUT THE DEFICIT ALREADY.

In Sept. 2011, the administration presented to Congress the American Jobs Act. It was not presented as a deficit reduction plan — it was offered up as a jobs-creation bill. But it was both.

It was a mistake on the administration’s part not to discuss the AJA as a means to reduce the deficit as well — even if no one was thinking about it in those terms at the time. But that’s what it was, because it would have put more people back to work even as it tackled more critical infrastructure projects — and in the process it would have spurred more hiring throughout the country as more and more families found themselves with respectable incomes.

Fuller employment of course contributes to deficit reduction in two ways: one, it increases revenues because more people are working and therefore having taxes withheld; and two, it reduces expenditures because fewer people are receiving unemployment benefits and other assistance. As the deficit shrinks, pressure to make savage budget cuts is reduced.

Which is exactly what Republicans don’t want, because as long as unemployment remains high, the deficit will remain high, and they will press to gut the social programs they hate so much — the so-called entitlements, Social Security and Medicare, and such safety net programs as Food Stamps and Medicaid — which is their goal.

It ain’t the helmets

Football helmet manufacturers are being sued because players have suffered brain trauma that has resulted in permanent brain damage from concussions. But helmets are to blame only because they give a false sense of security. They protect the skull, not the brain.

In truth, no helmet will protect the brain from impact. When a head slams into something immovable, the brain will bounce around inside the skull no matter how well the skull is protected. This is due to the physical law of inertia, and the brain is not exempt from this law.

It’s like this: the brain isn’t packed tight into the skull — there’s space around it that’s filled with fluid, and there’s room for it to move. If a player is running at, say, ten miles per hour, the brain is moving at the same speed. If the player comes to an abrupt stop, the brain keeps on going and slams into the skull. This is inertia, where a body in motion tends to stay in motion until an external force intervenes. It is Newton’s first law of physics — the resistance of a physical object to a change in its state of rest, or motion.

It’s the brain that would have to be cushioned, and that’s impossible.

Trashing the Constitution

I am hardly a legal scholar, but to me the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment is pretty clear. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

I interpret this to mean that laws must apply equally, not arbitrarily, and specifically that a state cannot pass a marriage law that arbitrarily decides who can and cannot marry, as long as they are consenting adults. Gay marriage is a new issue only in the sense that marriage laws weren’t challenged until now. They’ve been unconstitutional ever since the 14th Amendment was adopted.

As the Supreme Court readies itself to hear the gay marriage cases before it, some are predicting that the justices might decide to leave it up to the states to determine who can and cannot get married. In my mind this arguably would render the equal protection clause meaningless, and ultimately invalidate all the amendments. It would in effect give states license to nullify rights that are now protected by amendments — suffrage, racial equality, for example. Are there still state legislators who think women should never have been given the vote or slavery should never have been abolished?

You betcha.

Citizen journalists

I looked up “Citizen Journalist” in Wikipedia, figuring I’d find something I could trust to be accurate to cite for this post, but to my surprise the article came up short. When I scrolled down to history, I found only passing mention of what the article’s author deemed to be a clarification of the First Amendment: “‘freedom of the press’ referred quite literally to the freedom to publish using a printing press, rather than the freedom of organized entities engaged in the publishing business.” For the most part, the history of citizen journalism in this article began with the advent of the blog.

What disappointed and puzzled me was that I didn’t find the name “Thomas Paine” in the article, for as howstuffworks.com put it, “citizen journalism has been in existence at least since Thomas Paine wrote self-published pamphlets like Common Sense that stoked the fires of independence.”

In this sense, “blogging” has been a part of America’s history of liberalism since before the Revolution, except then the medium was print on paper, not digital on the web. Responsible blogging carries on the historic tradition of citizen journalism.