Racial Bias by Police?

Do you think there's widespread bias and violence by police officers against blacks and other minorities? What you suspect and what you can prove are two different things.

In the midst of much lamented acts of police violence and equally lamentable reprisal comes a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research titled An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force. Among the media and related punditry are some claiming this study as ‘proof’ of the absence of racism in policing.

Yet the paper itself shows why that conclusion may be erroneous, starting with a frank notice on page one that it’s a working paper that hasn’t been peer reviewed. Other caveats start on page 7. (Page 7 of the PDF actually displays the number 5 on it’s bottom.) Caveats include problems with their source data and a concern that their methodology is inadequate. Snopes.com catalogs many other problems noted by critics and others.

I know what my gut's telling me about the veracity of the NERB paper. If this were an opinion piece I'd share that opinion. A New York Time story on the paper opens with the unequivocal “a new study confirms”. If the Times actually believes that then they need to either read more carefully or acquire a better understanding of how scientific research works. If they understand how science works, they're editorializing. in which case their whole article should on the opinion section, not posted as news.

Biergartens

For years I've heard the German term biergarten and assumed that garten must have a broader meaning than the English term garden. Coming from a place with open container laws and an almost neurotic anxiety about where open drinking can and cannot occur, I thought surely Germans wouldn't allow alcohol consumption in a setting that sounds synonymous with park. Yet that's exactly what they do.

 My friend and coworker Paul is from Munich. He tells me the biergartens can be cliquish. The goal is what the Germans call Gemütlichkeit, a place or feeling of warmth and friendliness. This is the original place where everybody knows your name. It looks downright civilized. There’s no ear splitting music, no drunk twenty year olds crashing into each other and tossing back Jell-O shots. No bouncer keeping out The Ugly People™.

In fact, there’s no bouncer at all. Nor is there a barrier separating the drinkers from the non-drinkers. I can’t tell you if that’s true of all the dozens of biergartens in Munich. The biergarten in the photo is literally in the center of a public park called the Englischer Garten. The other biergarten I visited is the Viktualienmarkt, an open public square a block off the town center, the Marienplatz.

Every biergarten has copious trees, even more tables, places to buy beer, and places to buy food. Some people bring their own food because that’s allowed. I suppose it’s also possible to bring your own beer as well, but nobody seems to be doing that.

Most of the beer steins are glass instead of the traditional ornate covered steins that everyone associates with Bavaria. According to a tour guide, clear glass is required by law. About a century or so back, beer sellers were using the fact of dark covered steins to cheat customers by underfilling and charging the same price. Glass lets customers see exactly how much they’re getting for their money. Bier steins are a full lite. The glass in the photo is typical of the typical biergarten stein around here, it's actually one from the Hofbrauhaus. It’s 2.11 pints, in case you were wondering. Beer sellers keep them from wandering off by charging a stein deposit with the beer purchase, for which the buyer is given a metal token or ticket.

I wish I had better pictures of all of this. No matter how many pictures I take on a trip, inevitably, when I start processing them, I find there’s something I missed, something I didn’t get enough of. For Munich, biergarten’s are what I missed.

Lead in Water

I share the disdain of many people for our media, but not because they're too liberal or too conservative, or too whatever. I accuse them of other things. I accuse them of being lazy and incompetent. Today I'm adding to that list irresponsible.

The National Resources Defense Council a few days ago released a report indicating that more than 5300 communities nationwide, like Flint, Michigan, suffer from some for of lead contamination in their drinking water. The first question I want answered is, do I live in one of those communities?

If you read about this story on CNN or NBC, you wouldn't immediately know. To their credit, CNN, provided a link to instructions for investigating your own water for lead. But instead of linking to the NRDC report with interactive maps that let you zoom in on your part of the country, they created their own static maps that make that difficult.

I don't foolishly think that news organizations exist for the public good. They exist to make money for their owners. The marginal cost of adding a link to a news article in negligible, which is another way of saying it costs them nothing. To leave out links to answers when 18 million people are being poisoned, that's irresponsible.

Everybody’d be Surfing, Surfing Isar Fluss

When you hear the name Munich what comes to mind? The world’s best Lagers? Bier gartens the size of fusball fields? Maybe you’re a history buff and you think of darker things. One thing you won't think of is surfing.

It’s after lunch and the group I’m with leaves the bier garten in Munich’s Englischer Garten. We’ve got some time before our next stop at the Deutsches Museum so some of us decide to walk. One of my companions mentions something she specifically wants to see: a standing wave on the Eisbach, an artificial branch of the Isar fluss (river). It’s here that some locals in this land-locked state practice their surfing skills.

I don’t know much about this and didn’t think to ask any of the surfers at the time. If you’re curious, you can read the wikipedia article. Meanwhile, here are some pictures I took.

Refusing to Research

A few years ago, a Facebook acquaintance posted an article stating that President Obama had failed to give a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery three years running, and that he was the first president in modern history to do so. The acquaintance stated he didn't need to "research" it (quotes his) because he knew it was true.

One thing struck as wrong, immediately. After observing politicians for a lifetime, including six as a super-volunteer where I could get to know a few and observe them at close range, it struck me as unlikely that any politician, no matter what his character, would risk alienating every veteran in America by skipping a memorial day appearance at Arlington. Whatever one's character, one does not get within spitting distance of the White House by being politically stupid.

But how to confirm or refute? I quickly found that Snopes.com had an article on this claim from 2010. That told me the claim's been floating around a while, but Snopes is not a primary source. An even better place to look would be whitehouse.gov, where they publish not only the President's public schedule, but the text of every public statement. Under May 28, 2012 I found the text of one speech given by President Barack Hussein Obama at Arlington National Cemetery. I guess you could claim he posted a speech he didn't actually make. Now, you're just being silly. Republicans would certainly have made hay of such a thing. As I said, one does not get within spitting distance of the White House by being politically stupid.

I'm Tired of the Welfare Discussion

"People can't stay on the government dole forever."

Agreed. But everyone who says this thinks that's possible now. People look at me in stunned disbelief when I say it's not. (It's not, under federal law. We'll get to that shortly.) The response usually goes, "then why is it still an issue of public debate?" The obvious answer, I think, is that politicians gain support from beating that dead horse. And a dead horse it is. The proof is easy enough to find. Two minutes of internet searching lead me to the actual text of the current national welfare law, which has been in place since 1996. Provisions of this law include the requirement that recipients must acquire some kind of employment within two years of starting on assistance, even if said employment doesn't cover all expenses, and a lifetime limit of five years on benefits paid from the Federal budget.

Yet everyone I argue about this with seems to know someone or have heard about some someone who plans to live on the government for the rest of their life. Here-say is notoriously unreliable, so I can safely ignore the later. (While researching this, I found a study from 2003 suggesting that 37% of all welfare recipients and three quarters of Spanish speaking recipients don't know there are lifetime caps. That doesn't surprise me, and I expect the numbers are still high thirteen years later. If there's any truth to the hear-say, this is why.)

Is it possible to live a lifetime on state benefits? Last year I wrote two posts called "You Can't Get There from Here" about my frustration with finding certain kinds of information online. I could write part III on this question. I've so far been unable to find a source that I'd feel comfortable citing in a real debate. (There wouldn't be one primary source on this. There would be fifty primary sources. If I had a spare week, I could look for them.) Ehow.com has a list broken down by time limits. I present them with the caveat that I don't know accurate they are. If Ehow's information is correct, only four states have no lifetime limits. The other 46 have limits with exceptions.

Militias or Personal Arms?

This post is just a footnote to the latest round of gun debates touched off by the recent murders at Umpqua Community College, near Roseburg, Oregan. I don't believe I can add anything to the debate without considerable research. I've long been interested in the history of the second amendment. That's what this post is about.

The story starts with confusion and a question. Why's the second amendment so weirdly written? Don't tell me you've never noticed. Have a look:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Groups like to chop this up for various political reasons, but that's the whole thing as it's written in the second amendment. It's oddly written. The odd wording makes it ambiguous. Does it enshrine a personal right or the right of states to maintain militias? (Incidentally, I have questions about grammar and usage in that amendment. I'm researching them and hope to publish about that sometime in the future.)

An avenue of investigation was suggested by a comment in one of Steven Pinker's books. Vague lines in legal documents are often the result of parties who can't agree. They write language that either side can interpret as they wish, with the hopes that a real consensus can be reached later. If this were the case with the second amendment, where could I find material relevant to the theory? I looked at writings published about the constitution at the it was created.

Pennsylvania ratified the constitution on December 12, 1787 by a vote of 46 to 23. Nearly a week later, 21 of the dissenters published in several newspapers a position paper titled, "The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania to their Constituents." It contains two relevant statements.

First...

"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence (sic) of themselves and their own state, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals."

and...

"That the power of organizing, arming and disciplining the militia (the manner of disciplining the militia to be prescribed by Congress) remain with the individual states."

So there it is. At least some of our founders wanted to enshrine both an individual right to bear arms and a state's right to organize militias.

Early the following summer, Virginia proposed a bill of rights. Their paper contains this line:

"The people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence (sic) of a free State."

(I wasn't able to find an online version of this document; however, it is available in this book by Signet Classic.)

Though it's better worded than our second amendment the Virginia language, had it been adopted, would likely have suffered from the same disagreement as our second amendment. Does it assert an Individual right, or only put the militias under the control of the states?

Both interpretations would agree with the dissenters in Pennsylvania. Why then is that position, whatever it was, not stated more explicitly in the bill of rights? Clearly there's more to this story than I've learned so far.

A friend guessed at a piece of the puzzle that my gut tells me is right on the mark. If the Virginia proposal excluded an individual right, there's a historically plausible reason. The powers in Virginia, and all southern states for that matter, probably didn't want firearms laying around, arms that might land in the hands of slaves.