It is Time We Started Tracking Government Aid on a Monthly Basis

   When the jobs report came out, I couldn't help but notice it showed the rate of people receiving government assistance up .5 percent.

   Okay, I'm kidding. There is no such monthly measurement. It would  be good if there were, though, as it would help us track the sources of income our society has. Whereas some job indicators come from survey data, the government assistance tracking should be easier, government simply releasing information (it would seem) already at its fingertips.

  We could have an average payout, and breakdowns showing payouts to those in various income brackets. It would be a report in and of itself, as opposed to being just one number added to the jobs report. It would include a monthly breakdown of the percentage of people on each government program: Food Stamps, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), SSI-Disabilities, etc.

   It would help us track need, being an indicator of how many people are so short of personal funds they must turn to the government.

   It would be an accounting to the people, disclosing monthly how much government money is being spent for our social programs.

   Welfare has become a big part of our government, and government welfare a big part of our society. It is time we started tracking it monthly.

Of Mace and Men

   Now, when most folks speak of self-defence against armed killers, they speak of toting guns themselves. Enter Jon Meis, he who made a habit of toting around pepper spray. Meis shows that pepper spray or mace can sometimes do the job nicely.
   Mace and pepper spray have the advantage of not being lethal weapons. You can stop your assailant without killing him (or her). For those who don't like killing, it is a huge plus.
   In this case, not killing was not only a plus for Meis, who became a national hero for stopping short what probably would have been a mass killing, but it was also a plus for justice, as the shooter, Aaron Ybarra, had intended to kill himself as soon as he was finished killing others. Had Ybarra been shot with a gun, he would have gotten his way with the ending his own life. Pepper spray robbed him of his death wish.
   If you haven't heard the story, Ybarra went to Seattle Pacific University, intent on a mass killing. He shot shot but three, including one who died, when he had to reload. Meis saw the opening, doused Ybarra with the pepper spray, and tackled him. Others rushed in to further subdue Ybarra until police could arrive.
   Maybe those of us who don't want to kill -- not even killing someone who would kill us -- should start carrying around mace or pepper spray. Me, I'd choose to carry a gun that could fire the mace, so I could stand a better chance of stopping a gunman without having to rush in close. I will confess to not even knowing how far away you can be with a can of mace before spraying it does any good.

http://newsasnewstravelsfast.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-mace-movement-of-2014.html

17-Year-Old Shot with Stolen Gun

   It's a harp you might not want to hear, but the shooting of a 17-year-old Cottonwood Heights boy exemplifies the danger of a society having too many guns.
   The more guns out there, the greater the chance they will fall into the wrong hands. In the case of the three teens in Cottonwood Heights, they were the wrong people to be having a gun simply because they were inclined to play around with it, with one of them pointing it at the head of another. The gun cycled through several empty cylinders before coming to a cylinder with a bullet in it. The boys might have thought the gun was empty, but, if so, they were deadly mistaken.
   With an estimate 400,000 guns stolen each year, the greater danger is that they will fall into the hands of criminals, not just teenagers who don't respect the gun as something you don't play around with.
   The gun they were playing around with had, indeed, been stolen. How it came into their hands is not known.
   A good share of crimes are committed with stolen weapons. I think back to Sandy Hook, and how Adam Lanza stole his guns from his mother's arsenal. No gun arsenal and Lanza would have had to resort to another method of coming up with a gun. You can't steal that which isn't there.
  I am not in favor of banning guns, but I do wish fewer people saw the need to own them.

Of Unhonorable Alliances

   I do not condone things John Swallow is accused of, nor those Mark Shurtleff might have wrongfully done. But, I do wonder if many of them should rise to the level of criminal, prosecutional offenses. I'm not decided. Though I have followed most every news break on this issue, I'm not remembering the specific laws Swallow is accused of breaking. I just wonder if we really went after them all, many a politician could be found in the same wreck. I remember from yesterday's news, a story saying one thing prosecutors are looking at is a pay-to-play history. A person pays something, and they get better treatment.
   Hey, depending on where you draw the line, many a politician could be accused of pay-to-play. Yes, that is wrong. Yes, we should object when we see it. But, I don't know that we are talking criminal offenses.
   But, we should raise our voices against wrongful actions even when they do not raise to the level of criminal conduct.
   Today's Paul Rolly column in the Salt Lake Tribune notes State Rep. Ken Ivory was one of the just three representatives who voted against funding the Swallow investigation. At that time, Swallow got Ivory invited to make a presentation at the Conference of Western Attorneys General (CWAG). Ivory made a presentation for his American Lands Council, which is an organization from which he derives some of his income.
   Inviting Ivory was not a criminal offense, of course.
   But, the thought that Swallow would reward Ivory with a sort of favorable payback (or vice versa, depending on which came first, the vote on funding the investigation or the CWAG conference) is offensive. Someone might say what is offensive is that I am assuming one favor was being granted in reply to the other. I simply think that if you want to avoid an unhonorable alliance, you can see both events going on, so you steer clear of the casting a political favor for the other person. The timing of these two events is too close to discard.
   Our votes and actions as public officials should be based on what is right or wrong, not on an exchange of favors. It would keep us very busy if we were to go after office holders every time they broached an unhonorable alliance, but that does not mean such relationships are not wrong.
   They are.
   There are times when I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you'll-scratch-mine is fine, but often it is inappropriate in the realm of making public policy. Our votes and actions as public officials should not be held out as barter.

(P.S. -- "Unhonorable" is not an official word in many dictionaries. The word is "dishonorable." I knew this when I posted this and left it as is. The word "unhonorable" seems natural enough to me, whether recognized by most dictionaries or not.)

Children from Afar, Traveling Without Parents, Coming to America

   Imagine children migrating without their parents to America, thousands of them crossing the border illegally, most coming from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, large numbers of them being under the age of 13.
   Let's say 47,000 of them were apprehended in the last eight months. Can you imagine such a phenomenon, so many children migrating so far without parental supervision?
   News stories are reporting it, so I imagine it is really happening, but I'm awed. One story says many of the children are driven from Central American by the violence and poverty in their countries. So many children are being caught that the apprehending authorities are having trouble taking care of them, and the Obama Administration is asking for $1.4 billion to care for them.
   A humanitarian crisis at our southern border.
   If we must use federal money, we must, for we clearly want to take care of them. Still, I do wish we were turning to private charity to house these children and, when there are family members they are hoping to join already in the U.S., to transport them to those families. I can imagine there might be a great outpouring of support for such charities, as people rally to save the children.

Bring Bergdahl's Reasons for Deserting Into the Debate

   We free five Taliban members, including one who was once their deputy minister of defense, in exchange for the freedom of a single American soldier?
   We negotiate with Qatar instead of directly with the Taliban since U.S. policy forbids us to negotiate with terrorists? It seems if Qatar is representing the Taliban, the effect is the same, and the policy is still broken.
   Congress was not notified as required by law? I don't think we can justify this breaking of the law.
   And, to top it off, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl may have been a deserter. And, his platoon mates say six died while searching for him.
   Of course all these matters all to be considered as our nation debates his release. What may not get as much attention, should. If Sgt. Bergdahl had become disillusioned with the war, and perhaps even with America, what were the points that drove him that direction? We as a nation should be very concerned with our faults, and what we might be doing wrong. If Sgt. Bergdahl went out a soldier sold on the purpose ahead, but lost faith in what we were doing, let us consider the issues that led him to disillusionment.
  If he deserted, but deserted for righteous reasons, while we still hold him accountable for deserting, we should be understanding.
   And, we should bring his reasons into the debate that is upon the nation.

The Ten-Year Drone War in Pakistan

   For 10 years now, the United States has been fighting a war that isn't a war. Iraq and Afghanistan were our wars, not this.

   Pakistan? Has anyone called that a war? Does it matter that we've taken perhaps more than 3,000 lives? War is when soldiers on each side are shooting at each other. This is not a war. We have no soldiers on the ground in Pakistan, do we? If we do, they are few, and hid away so as to not be shot at? 

    Pilots in the sky? I don't know if we have any of those, either. No, while we have planes in the sky, the planes have no pilots.

   Drones fight our battles, robotic planes.

   We began the drone war in June, 2004. Ten years later, we are still bombing away. It is a war some of us question, because our high-technology, supposedly surgical strikes take out civilians as well as targeted militants, and because most of the  al-Qaeda casualties are but rank-and-file soldiers who probably pose little threat to the United States.
   Why risk taking out civilians? If this were a war where we were desperately defending ourselves and we were striking where civilians might be only because we had no choice, it might be understandable. But, our backs are hardly against the wall. We fire with no fear of being shot back at. How, then, do we justify killing any civilians? Is it necessary? Necessary only comes when you have little choice.
   And are we justified in taking out the al-Qaeda soldiers? They represent an enemy, yes. But, North Korea is an enemy. Russia is an enemy. Iran is an enemy. Why don't we, then, strike them with our drones?
   The answer is obvious. North Korea, Russia and Iran would strike back, in some form or fashion. Then, there would be a war, a real war.
   But, al-Qaeda? While it is defenseless this time around, it is not as though it is not to be feared. It may lack the means to engage us in a war when we come after it with our drones, but it has the ability to fight battles that in a fashion are of the same sort we are fighting against them. We hit defenseless targets. They hit defenseless targets. We look for sitting ducks. They look for sitting ducks. Hit and run. Hit and hide.
   If we are justified in our killing, perhaps it is in that we are keeping them so preoccupied with running from us, they have less time to commit mischief.
   But, is that enough justification? The killing of another person is a terrible thing. We should deeply, gravely consider what we are doing. We might be assuming, but we don't know they will be more likely to attack if we let up the drone attacks. Do we kill another person simply on the supposition they might kill us, not knowing, but just wondering if they might?
   Or, is our justification that we are still extracting vengence for 9-11?
   Perhaps the Pakistan non-war is a war we should walk away from.