Let’s Get Rid Of “Deadbeat Dads”

I live in Alexandria, Virginia, and in my particular area of town the member of the House of Delegates (the lower chamber of the state legislature) is Charniele Herring, a Democrat who I understand typically takes fairly left-learning positions. Now, that’s par for the course around here, so normally I don’t think twice about her. But I do receive her periodic email newsletter, and while normally there are plenty of things with which I disagree, it’s only in today’s that I finally read something that made me genuinely angry.

Specifically, I was very disappointed by Ms. Herring’s use of the use of the derogatory term “deadbeat dads” in her recent newsletter to constituents. This hateful phrase deserves to be scrapped for two reasons.

First, not all parents who aren’t able to make their child support payments are “deadbeats”. There are all sorts of reasons that a parent may not be able to live up to his or her court-determined financial obligations. Unwillingness is one, yes, but others include unemployment, underemployment, other family emergencies, unexpected tax liabilities, illness or other disability, and so forth.

In many cases, a parent who has fallen seriously behind financially faces the prospect of six months in prison for contempt of court. Since this is not technically a criminal matter, the parent doesn’t even have the right to legal representation. Is a child really better off with that parent behind bars? And is a society for which imprisonment is the first resort really the one in which we want to live?

Second, not all parents who aren’t able to make their child support payments are dads. While the majority of non-custodial parents may indeed be fathers, so too are there mothers who for whatever reason are the ones whose children primarily reside with the other parent. I would have thought this would go without saying in the 21st century, particularly from someone such as Ms. Herring who otherwise comes across as progressive. Sadly, it would seem this is not yet the case.

This term may be a convenient was to score cheap political points, but at its heart it’s a way to demonize yet another segment of our population, people who in many instances may actually need help rather than scorn and punishment if they’re to regain the ability to meet their children’s needs. Child support enforcement could well use far reaching reform in Virginia, but that reform should be based on the idea of focusing on what’s best for the child rather than what’s worst for the non-compliant parent. Let’s hope that Ms. Herring’s unfortunate turn of phrase doesn’t mean she advocates going in the wrong direction.

Testing For Purple Belt

“Yay, burpees!” — Unofficial Potomac Kempo slogan

Last June, I signed up to study Shaolin Kempo Karate at Potomac Kempo. Two of my sons had been studying there for about half a year at that point, and the dojo offered a special, through which dads of current students could join and study for the month of June for free. I had been fascinated by watching my kids learn this art, so I decided that since it was free — my favorite price for things! — I would go ahead and check it out from the inside.

Tonight, seven months later, I will test to try to earn my purple belt, the fourth step on a journey where the black belt is the twelfth step. And yes, I’m counting white belt as the first step even though they hand you one on your way in the door — after all, making the decision even to walk through the door for the first time is a step, and a big one at that. Now, I’m no expert, but I’ve at least learned enough to know some of what I don’t know, and maybe have some insight into the road ahead. For one thing, while many people talk about earning a black belt in a martial art, that is not the destination, it is simply an important milestone on a journey that never ends.

That brings me to goals. What are my goals as a martial artist? I know a few things that may sound like they would be goals, but at least in my case they’re really not. One is to “level up” by earning belts. The belt itself isn’t the point to me, it’s the knowledge of the art that accompanies it. Put another way, if everything at Potomac Kempo were exactly the same, except with no belt system, I would still stick around.

Another thing that’s not a goal for me is to become better at actual fighting. That may sound strange considering that I’m studying a martial art, but thanks to delightfully sheltered upbringing, I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had to fight someone physically, and don’t really expect to be in that sort of situation in the future. Being prepared for unexpected situations is always nice, but the likelihood seems pretty remote.

Similarly, I’m not in this to try to be better at it than other people. Sparring is a common activity in class, and a featured event at our semi-annual tournaments. But I find I learn more sparring someone more advanced than I, someone who could easily take me out with three limbs tied behind his back, than I do from tagging white belts.

So if those aren’t my goals what are? Well, whenever a sensei asks in class why we’re doing a particular thing, there are only two answers guaranteed to be correct. One is “to get better at kempo!” The other is “to help other people get better at kempo!” That sounds good, and conveniently it’s even true, but saying that I’m doing kempo because I want to get better at kempo is uselessly circular unless I also explain what kempo really is, at least to me.

Kempo is physical, and mental. Kempo is science, and art. Kempo is the asymptotic pursuit of perfection. The closer you get to the speed of light, the more energy it takes to accelerate. The better one gets at kempo, the more discipline it takes to improve. This is not a drawback, it is a feature. Kempo means learning things that are brand new. Kempo means uncovering things one has always known. Kempo is not an event, it is a process. Kempo is cooperation with other people. Kempo is struggle against oneself.

But some of those things I can simply see from here, as I said, I’m only testing for purple belt. And at a basic level such as mine, the study of kempo is a balance of mental strength and physical strength. In keeping with that I’m gearing up both mentally and physically for my test this evening. Mentally, I’m remaining as low stress as possible, something that I’ve found is a bit easier the more diligently I attend class. Indeed, there have been times when I was upset about something or another, and spending an hour focusing on kempo made a difference — and not just because I was too tired to care afterward! In order to perform moves properly, especially in an environment where other people are initiating a pattern with a strike or kick, it takes a focus that doesn’t leave room for stray thoughts about outside matters. It’s not exactly meditation, although we do that also (albeit briefly), but it’s still a good way to hit the mental reset button. And it takes mental strength to overcome the natural instinct during sparring to back up, and instead try to get as close as possible to someone whose job is to hit you.

For tonight I’ve prepared by scheduling a lesson for last night to bone up on the moves I should know, and they seem reasonably good, although always with room for improvement. Throughout the day I’m taking the advice so often shared among those of us who have done belt tests before, and that is first and foremost to drink lots of water throughout the day. But that’s just regarding this evening. Overall, I’ve noticed a number of physical benefits from my months of kempo. I can do at least a few pushups now, and when I first started the idea of me doing pushups was solely useful for entertainment value. I have endurance when it comes to running — even though I hadn’t gone on a run in nearly a year, when I did so a month or so ago I was able to jog a 5K without stopping or even being overly fatigued. I believe I am more a bit more agile than before. My feet are finally figuring out why step dragging makes sense, and I occasionally twist around to catch objects, reach for items, etc., in a way that may not sound like a big deal, but is still sort of cool.

For this, I have to thank Sensei Chris Santillo, Sensei Cassie Frost, Senpai Charles Murphy, assorted other occasional instructors, innumerable sparring partners, and last but not least, my mom. I appreciate all of the cooperation you’ve provided to make the struggle possible.

So I suppose that’s a snapshot of where I am with kempo at this point. Tonight, if all goes well, I’ll earn a change of uniform, as my current orange belt means I wear a white uniform, but as a purple belt I will wear a black one signifying having reached the lofty point of not being entirely being clueless. Between there and there I’ll have the chance to demonstrate the moves I can do. And of course, there will be burpees. Oh yes, there will be burpees. Yay!

Taxation Without Representation

Tip o’ the hat to me dear mum, who just sent me this article on how officials from the local government of Washington, D.C. who are traveling the country to drum up support for D.C. statehood are receiving the indifferent response that they probably should have expected.

The reason for the D.C. statehood movement, which is extremely popular among District residents and virtually unheard of elsewhere, is that since those who live in the district don’t have any real representation in Congress, it’s unfair that they’re held to federal laws and regulation. Their battle cry, based on similar sentiment from the American Revolution, is that they live in an democratic system of “taxation without representation”. And that photo is real — they have it on the license plate and everything.

And if you subscribe to small-r republican principles, you might see their point. Sure, Washington, D.C. has a lot of Congressmen, lobbyists, and other power brokers, but that doesn’t mean that all 600,000 people who live in the city are wheeler dealers who are shaping the destiny of the federal government. While the city has its wealthy areas, much of it is working class, and their claims to disenfranchisement shouldn’t be lightly dismissed, especially since there are several states that have a lower population than D.C., yet have their full Congressional complement.

The problem is that outside D.C. itself, no one cares about this issue. And even if they did, it’s arguable that it would take an amendment to the U.S. constitution to change things, which is the way D.C. residents got electoral votes in the presidential election. That’s hard to do even when people around the country actually want something. There are other options than statehood however. Personally, I’d just give the whole place back to the Piscataway Indian tribe, although I doubt that would set well with the city’s current inhabitants. Another option is to return the city to being part of Maryland, from which it was carved in the late 18th century, and just keep a “federal enclave” separate from that state, one without residents. There’s precedent for this, in that the portion of Virginia that was ceded to be part of D.C. was given back in the 1840′s, since it didn’t seem at the time like the federal government would ever be large enough to need it, among other reasons.

One option that I never hear people suggest, and it sort of surprises me, is to solve the taxation without representation problem not by adding representation, but by removing taxation. Especially considering much of the city isn’t affluent, it would be a prosperity enhancing move to say, “You don’t get a vote? Fine, no federal taxes for your residents.” Do that, and watch the place become the biggest boom town ever seen in North America. Maybe it would even have the healthy effect of causing people in other parts of the U.S. to realize that taxation, and maybe even Congressional representation, are overrated.

The Recent SOPA Strike

For what it’s worth, I meant for this site to participate in the SOPA strike on the 18th. But the WordPress plugin I so confidently chose to make this happen apparently didn’t do anything. So, in the now famous words of erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, “Oops.”

Oh well, at least I blogged about it over on eLearners News.

Meanwhile, if you don’t know what all the fuss is about, I think the best concise description of the danger of SOPA and PIPA has been provided by Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy. Shoot first and think later, indeed!

Gary Johnson For President

This will probably surprise those who know me well, but I’ve become interested in Gary Johnson’s run for President. Gary Johnson was a Republican governor of New Mexico for two terms, which was a feat in a state that leans Democrat. He started his campaign last year as a candidate for the Republican nomination, but after being shut out by the Republican establishment and assiduously ignored by the mainstream media, at the end of the year he decided to switch parties and run as a Libertarian Party candidate instead. His record as governor is surprisingly strong, and this basically makes him the highest quality presidential candidate the Libertarian Party has ever fielded.

One way I find Gary Johnson interesting is the contrast he provides to the other noteworthy libertarian running for president this year — Ron Paul. Both hold similar positions, with the noticeable exception of abortion, where is no universally recognized correct position among libertariana, and immigration, where Gary Johnson’s positions are a lot more freedom friendly than Ron Paul’s. Overall, while Ron Paul is more of a paleolibertarian with more natural appeal to those on the right, Gary Johnson’s lifestyle and record are much more in keeping with the sort of left-libertarianism that shares goals with many progressives. Left-libertarians like myself don’t always have the same “virtue of selfishness” or “God-given rights” motivation of their right-libertarian colleagues, instead many of us are primarily motivated by concerns about poverty, environmental degradation, eroding civil liberties, and the like and simply understand that markets are a better way to solve those problems than constantly expanding state power could ever be.

And by markets, I don’t mean big corporations! Indeed, many on the left are surprised to hear that there are libertarians who are as distrustful of big business as they are of big government. Ultimately, corporations are not the epitome of capitalism, they’re a perversion of it. To own a corporation is to have a state entitlement of limited liability for the actions of the company that you control. There’s nothing libertarian about that! Indeed it’s frustrating for people like me to see progressives correctly rail against certain corporate abuses but then don’t see that the corporate power they oppose comes primarily from the collaboration between those firms’ executives and government policy makers. And it’s especially frustrating to see progressives who understand the harm done in communities, the country, and even internationally by maintaining a law enforcement approach to drug abuse that has clearly failed — an approach Gary Johnson came out to oppose while still in office as governor of New Mexico.

While obviously not as radical as myself, I believe that Gary Johnson is a left-libertarian at heart. And I further think that it would be a fascinating experiment to see him run his campaign specifically to attract progressive voters who have lost faith in Barack Obama. I say this because Obama’s broken promises about closing Guantanamo, abandonment of civil liberties by signing NDAA, and refusal to consider alternatives to drug prohibition have left many on the left without a candidate they can believe. Unlike previous cycles, there’s no name brand candidate running to the left of the Democrat — two little known figures are fighting for the Green nomination and Ralph Nader’s finally sitting one out. There’s opportunity for a left-libertarian to come in and make the case to many progressives, particular younger ones, that freedom in every sphere of life, not just on social issues and civil liberties, is progress in its truest form.

Please Join Me In Helping Hawa Akther Jui

This is not a conventional blog post for me, and those who are disturbed by accounts of severe domestic violence may find it unsettling.

Most people who pursue a degree through eLearning end up having to overcome some sort of adversity to get to graduation. But for most of us that means trying to balance work, family, and study. Sure, that’s a challenge, but it’s nothing compared to the story of Hawa Akther Jui. She’s a young woman in Bangladesh who, like many, decided that she wanted to take advantage of higher education. But her husband, who was working abroad, disapproved of her ambition. She defied him, continuing with her education anyway. On his return to Bangladesh he blindfolded her, gagged her, restrained her right arm, and cut off all of the fingers on her right hand.

He has been arrested for this horrible crime and is likely to be punished severely. Ms. Akther has said she has no desire to have anything more to do with him. But this is not his story, it’s hers.

It’s said that who you are isn’t determined by what happens to you, but instead by how you respond to what happens to you. And Ms. Akther’s response to this is that she is more determined than ever to complete her education. Her right hand cannot be repaired — her husband and one of his relatives ensured this by discarding her fingers so that by the time her family could recover them it was too late for them to be reattached. But she has been been relearning how to write, saying, “I have now started practising writing with my left hand. I want to see how far I can go. I never imagined that my fingers would be chopped off like this because of my studies.”

I’ve never met Hawa Akther Jui, nor even heard of her before I read the BBC article and other articles about what happened to her. But I feel drawn to try to help her, if possible. I expect that she has medical, educational, and living expenses, and I am willing to contribute $100 to help defray them. If you’re reading this, and you would like to help also, please contact me by email to steve@hiresteve.com. I have the contact information for the Bangladesh-based BBC reporter who interviewed her, and would send her the money through him. In the event that Ms. Akther does not need or want any money raised, I would instead donate it to the Asian University for Women, also located in Bangladesh.

No one should have to face this sort of thing, particularly not as a consequence for trying to improve one’s lot in life. If you would like to help, even just to send a little, please get in touch. I’ll be sure to post updates so that everyone who helps finds out what happens.

Body Surfing

“Surfing soothes me, it’s always been a kind of Zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful, and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I’m on a wave. ” — Paul Walker

I recently spent a few days at the beach with the kids, and the older boys and I engaged in one of our favorite seaside activities, body surfing. If you’ve never done this, it’s when you’re out a ways into the sea, just past where waves are cresting as them come into shore. If you start swimming at just the right time with a wave that’s shaped in just the right way, it will pick you up and carry you all the way in.

Obviously, this uses the same principle that surfing with a board does. And sure enough, while we were out there, we were sharing that section of ocean with quite a few surfers on surfboards. But as cool as those folks look, I came to wonder what they were getting out of the experience that we weren’t. They weren’t really any further out when they would catch a wave. They didn’t seem to be able to ride the waves they caught in as far as we could. Most importantly, it seemed to me that the quality of their experience was inferior to ours.

What I mean by that is that the biggest difference I could see is that the board surfers were riding the waves, but we body surfers were becoming part of the waves. There was no intermediary of wood or fiberglass between us and nature; when a wave would pick us up, we and the wave would become as one — at least until we reached the beach and were returned to being our former selves.

Now, I’ve never learned to surf with a board. I’m perfectly open to the possibility that there’s some awesome aspect to it that I simply don’t understand from that lack of experience. But body surfing offers such a strong connection with the wave that one rides that I’m not sure what that aspect would be. If there are any board surfers out there who would like to enlighten me, by all means, please do.

The Airport Security Dilemma

“TSA. You are supposed to be protecting us, but at this point you are… terrorizing us.” — Elie Mystal

This week I’m in my first doctoral residency at Northeastern University, and while I’m writing about that elsewhere, I did want to share the experience I had getting there in the first place.

Northeastern University is in Boston and I live in Northern Virginia, meaning I first had to get there. It’s about a ten hour drive, and at first I considered taking my car, but then when I considered gas, tolls, and mileage, and checked out how little the flight would cost, I decided to fly. It helps that I’ve taken public transportation in Boston once before, when I flew up to speak at the Free Culture National Conference a few years ago, so I knew that getting from the airport to the place on campus where I was staying would be fairly easy.

Of course, this is the brave new twenty-first century, and that means when flying one gets a choice. No, not a choice of sodas, those cost extra now. I mean when going through security one can either go through the porn-o-matic scanner, or one can be groped. Now, while I don’t believe any of this actually makes travelers significantly safer, and don’t believe that those with delicate sensibilities should have to suffer these sorts of indignities and violations of privacy to fly on an airplane, I personally don’t really care if some random person sees a black and white scan of my junk. So you probably expect that means I went through the porn-o-matic, right?

Nope, I went for the groping instead. I know I’m not a medical doctor or anything, but I’ve read enough about the millimeter waves used by the porno scanners not to want to go anywhere near them. Yes, it’s possible that the sources of information that question the safety of these scanners may be suspect, but if there’s anything one can learn from history, it’s to disbelieve anything a government official says until proven otherwise — and they’re desperate to make people believe those scanners are perfectly safe.

So, how bad was the procedure? Well, I don’t believe he went to school for homeland security, but, to give credit where it’s due, the guy who patted me down at Reagan National Airport was extremely professional about it, telling me everything he was going to do ahead of time. It didn’t take very long, and while it was thorough, it wasn’t the end of the world. Of course, I’m a mentally healthy adult who’s never been abused, adopted religious sensibilities, or anything like that which might lead me to be sensitive about this sort of thing. And I could definitely see why people in those situations might feel extremely uncomfortable, even violated, by this procedure.

The other thing was that I was surprised I didn’t have to go through a metal detector. My bags went through the x-ray machines, as usual, but the pat down was the only procedure for everything on my person between the street and the airplane. Maybe it’s because I’ve worked in information security, but whenever I see a security measure I think of it (intellectually, of course) as a challenge to be defeated. I couldn’t help but wonder whether someone determined couldn’t figure out some means of getting dangerous items. There was a scan for chemical residue, but that wouldn’t pick up any metal objects I might have cleverly concealed on my person.

I know I sound dismissive of security, but that’s not really my objective. When I get on an airplane, I want to land at my destination and live my life, I don’t want to be on a plane that gets hijacked and flown into an office building or shot down by an F-16. But I also don’t think that sort of 9/11 scenario is as likely today as it was in 2001, for two main reasons. First, cockpits are inaccessible, so hijackers might take over the cabin, but they’re not going to gain control of the plane. Second, before 9/11 passengers were told to comply with hijacker demands. Does anyone think hijackers will be obeyed by a plane full of Americans from the “Let’s roll!” generation?

Homeland Security spokespeople and others often say that any security measures, no matter how intrusive, are acceptable in part because no one is forced to fly on an airplane. But someone who needs to fly somewhere for work is hardly in a position to resist in a time of double digit unemployment. More to the point, however, is that “You’re not forced to fly” works both ways — why can’t it be the easily terrorized, who demand unreasonable security measures to feel safer, be the ones who take the bus?

The Great Depression, Obsolescence, And You

“Around ’75 when the recession hit, club owners started going to disco because it was cheaper for them to just buy a sound system than it was to hire a band.” — Tommy Shaw

I’m a radical libertarian and my Mom is a sort of old school liberal, so as you can imagine political conversations around the dinner table can end up being pretty exciting. It also means we occasionally email each other opinion pieces from whatever newspapers we read, usually that support our point of view but sometimes just that we think are generally interesting. For example, today she sent me a link to an opinion piece by Robert S. McElvaine about the Great Depression. He’s a history professor at Millsaps College who’s written a book on the subject, and his central idea seems to be government didn’t spend enough in the 1930′s.

The title of McElvaine’s piece is “Want to avoid another Depression? Try understanding the first one.” Given his prescription, however, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps he should follow his own advice. One of the problems with understanding the Depression is that too many on the left think that the U.S. had an entirely free market economy in 1929. That’s not the case — there were a number of big changes made in the 1910′s (institution of an income tax, start of the Federal Reserve System, etc.) that led to the bubble of the ’20s and the resulting downfall. And most of what federal decision makers did in the ’30s was ineffective or counterproductive, e.g., confiscate gold, raise tariff rates, or attempt Keynesianism.

Of course, this isn’t 1930, and what bedeviled them is not the same as what plagues us. I don’t have the stats to back this up, but I suspect as technology keeps accelerating, the market for unskilled and semi-skilled labor will just get softer and softer, no matter how much GDP rises or how well those who already own stuff may do.

For example, one of Google’s projects is to automate driving — institute a system where vehicles can safely drive themselves long distances without a human involved. They’re actually getting pretty close to succeeding at this, they’re doing test runs in Nevada and that sort of thing. So what? Well, driverless vehicles it will be good for some businesses, but at the cost of putting every long haul trucker and bus driver out of a job.

I think if one takes a twenty year view that this sort of thing is a big concern. Right now we have millions of people who simply aren’t good enough at anything other people actually need to make enough money to support themselves. I’m not blaming them, or calling them lazy, I’m just calling it like I see it. What happens when that number reaches 30% of the population? Even if you’re morally copacetic with saying “screw you” to unemployable people, if you try that with one third of your population it won’t end well for you. (Ask wealthy Venezuelans, because they did this and the result was a decade and counting of Hugo Chavez.)

So assuming my gloomy scenario is at all likely, is there anything to do about it? I’m not sure. I do know that stopping the advance of technology isn’t very practical, and wouldn’t be desirable if it were. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to make sure that entrepreneurship is integrated in every school curriculum one into which one can possible fit it. If employment as we’ve known it will only get more and more difficult to find, but there’s still affluence in the overall society, that’s a recipe for people to get into the mindset that there are ways they can take control of their own futures.

European and American Mentalities

“[W]hen you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you… you may know that your society is doomed.” — Ayn Rand

I often read University World News to learn what’s happening with different systems of higher education in different countries. Usually I’m more attracted to articles about what’s happening in regions of the world that are up and coming rather than those that have already peaked, but for some reason I was drawn to this article about research in the EU, and within the first sentence I was reminded why I have so little enthusiasm for Europe as a whole:

European Union Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is planning to create one million jobs in research and innovation in Horizon 2020, the next seven-year research programme.

Why did I consider that so eye-catching? Because I believe that it reveals the European mentality when it comes to how the world works — specifically, it suggests that how the world really works is something that decision makers in Europe don’t understand at all.

Why the harsh assessment? Most importantly, because EU Commissioners do not create jobs. Entrepreneurs create jobs. Those who run established businesses create jobs. But politicians and bureaucrats, whether at the local, country, or Euro-superstate level, do not create anything, all they can do is get in the way. Now, you might expect someone who’s an EU Commissioner to praise herself at the expensive of the truth, fair enough, but that doesn’t excuse the media coverage of her statements, which accepted this view of the world at face value, rather than challenge it in any way.

Now, I’m aware that there are larger, established corporations that do cooperate with government officials, and that they do this to their own benefit and that it may lead them to hire more people as a result of this favor. But those corporations do this because they are protected by government from competition, not from any intrinsic efficiency or other virtue. Corporatism is not a path to prosperity for all, it’s simply a means by which different powerful factions collude to retain their illegitimate hold on political and economic power.

But corporatism is more of an American mentality, one that neither the American left nor right talks about often enough. Perhaps that’s because those on the left seem very reluctant to criticize government, even when government decision makers clearly deserve it, and those on the right seem very reluctant to criticize business, even when corporate decision makers are just as deserving.