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December 16, 2005

Who You Gonna Call? Intelligence Busters!

Senators Squash Renewal of the Patriot Act

This is not a Pat Robertsonesque condemnation, but a helpful reminder of who took part in putting our country's security in jeopardy during such a dangerous time of war. We can only hope that we (those of us who could not vote to protect ourselves) will not eventually regret today's vote. In fairness, it should be noted that 40 Democrats had the intelligence to support the renewal. Today, the Senators listed below showed their reckless disregard for our national defense:

Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Clinton (D-NY) --This is the woman the Democrats want to entrust with protecting us from terrorists in 2008?!?! Do New Yorkers join their Senators and this sorry crowd in returning this country to our pre-September 11th lack of security?
Conrad (D-ND)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Craig (R-ID)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Hagel (R-NE)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA) --Reason number one for regime change in MA
Kerry (D-MA) --Reason number two for regime change in MA (They flew out of Logan you dopes!)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Sununu (R-NH) --And I admired our neighbor's leadership...
Wyden (D-OR)

Posted by capecodcyclist at 08:03 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2005

Why Did the Senator Cross the Road? Because the polls told her to.

“Ask not for whom the public opinion polls; it polls for thee.”
~ Edwin Newman

Spam, junk mail, phone solicitations, phone surveys and public opinion polls: I hold them all in equal regard, as should we all. They are each a waste of our time, a detriment to productivity, and a hindrance to progress. These are all common annoyances that plague our daily lives. However, polls and phone surveys are not simply annoying parts of our lives anymore. Their slanted and inaccurate results have poisoned our political process. Unfortunately, the disturbance does not disappear by just hanging up our phones.

Personally, I respond to poll and survey takers as I do telemarketers: I politely make it known that I am not interested, and if they do not respond with the same understanding, I promptly hang up. Many people do not realize that there are laws in Massachusetts requiring telemarketers to inform you of a substantial amount of pertinent information in the first minute of their call: 1) What company they are working for, 2) What company or organization hired them to solicit you, 3) What they are attempting to sell, 4) The market value of what they are selling, and more. If you are not on the Massachusetts “Do Not Call” list, all of these rules (and more) apply. Anyone who has been the unfortunate recipient of such a call knows that this law is rarely adhered to. This brings me to my next question: Shouldn't similar laws apply to organizations and businesses conducting public opinion polls?

There have only been two survey takers who I have been bored enough to placate with answers. On both occasions, I could hear in the questioner's voice when they started getting answers that did not jive with the results they were fishing for. On one of these occasions, I was actually told they had no further questions when I told them I was not willing to agree with a statement they were proposing to me. You see, these callers often bait the hook with a number of questions that are perfectly agreeable to any sensible, caring individual, and then they sneak in the real purpose of their poll by way of a seemingly innocuous statement quite different than the previous questions. Just for example, after answering in the affirmative to a series of public education related questions, I had a conversation something like this:

Survey Taker (scripted statement): “Wouldn't you agree that the people who prepare meals for our University students deserve a yearly increase in their wages?”

My Answer: “No.” (my first negative answer in the phone call)

Survey Taker (unscripted): “Excuse me? You don't think the people who prepare meals for our students and educators should get yearly raises?”

Me: “I said no. I think they should be paid on a scale equivalent to the public sector. Personally, I haven't had a raise in two years. Can you fit that in the yes or no answer box?”

Survey Taker (quickly wraps up the call): “Well, thank you for your time. Have a good evening.”
In my opinion, these calls are equal to the annoyance of sales calls, and their purpose is often more deceitful. At the very least, they should be regulated by laws similar to those that apply to telemarketing. Personally, I would support the idea of banning them outright. If people are opposed to completely banning these public opinion polls, perhaps a disclosure label similar to a nutrition label should accompany their use in the media. Heck, if we need to be informed of the empty nutritional value of junk foods, we should at least get visible warning of similarly empty poll results. Perhaps the tendency to cook the results would not be so great if everyone could easily see the ingredients.

Can you imagine politicians acting on principle instead of catering to poll results? Can you imagine the political climate in this country if everyone were not bombarded with polls claiming to have discerned what the majority thinks about a particular issue? Luckily, with 95% confidence, the majority of us recognize that, in addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls. In simpler terms (for the uncertain 5%), poll results can easily be, and are most often, skewed. Polls and surveys are a shady business that have no justifiable use in our political process.

Posted by capecodcyclist at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2005

Don't Leave Your Doors Unlocked

Last Friday, the top stories on many news sites were expressions of outrage over the hanging of an admitted drug smuggler in Singapore. This is a difficult subject to broach, because no matter which way I butter the biscuit, I will be maligned for admitting that I had to read further to find out what the big stink was all about. First, where is the outrage over his offense? Drug smuggling is illegal. Newsflash: countries, states, localities, schools, religions, etc. all have rules and laws, and when you break them, and when you get caught (especially when you don't have enough money to get out of jail free) you pay the price. Second, has anyone else noticed that countries that are not known for distributing get out of jail free cards seem to have less crime? Many countries, like our United States, now seem more concerned about the criminal's rights than the rights of their victims. If a criminal's connections are “good,” or the civil liberties, anti-justice campaign of the week is aligned in their favor, they are frequently excused anything short of mass murder.

Please refer to my favorite search engine, Google. A simple query regarding crime rates in the United States reveals the difficulty of finding such figures. Sure, you can find them eventually, but they can't be compared to those of a country like Singapore, that has “cheating” as their most prevalent crime (mostly by con men) and chewing gum in public (nicorette excluded) is a criminal offense. Crime, at least by other societies' definition, and often according to our own written laws, is no longer something we can honestly measure in this country. The phrase “everyone does it” has become the common, American rationalization. It seems we have rationalized justification for nearly every conceivable criminal offense. Only violent crimes appear worthy of our attention any longer. The rest of our crime seems much less troublesome in the shadow of murder and child abuse.

The emotional side of last week's hanging in Singapore was the story of a man who was running drugs to pay for his brother's sins. Nguyen Tuong Van, by all accounts, was a man who was caught in the middle. He had agreed to pay off his druggy brother's debt's by acting as a drug mule himself, and he got arrested in the process. He was nabbed in a country that has strict penalties and zero tolerance for such acts. The popular, sorry excuse in our teenage culture would have been “my bad.” In Singapore, “my bad” isn't good enough, and neither is a sincere apology. Following the rule of law is not a suggestion, it is absolute. There is clear evidence that Singapore society still has hold of something that we may have already lost:

* Singapore had only 481 crimes per 100,000 people in the year 2000. It should be noted that, as I said above, “cheating” was most prevalent of these, with 923 reported offenses. This is in a country of over 4 million people.

* Here in the United States, we suffered more than 11,000 crimes per 100,000 people in the same year, and I am sure that figure does not include chewing gum in public.

I am certainly not advocating capital punishment for such crimes, and I am not suggesting we adopt the laws of other nations. However, shouldn't we at least analyze what seems to be working in other countries? Or do we just forge ahead with the narrow-minded assumption that our monopoly on goodness and correctness will protect us? Laws and their enforcement are obviously not the only solution. The moral decay that has brought our society to these depths can only be addressed in families, churches, schools and communities. But for those who violate our laws, punishment should be absolute. We spend an inordinate amount of time studying and debating things that are broken and not working in this country, and far too little time analyzing what appears to be working here and abroad. In Singapore, the public gets much of the credit for their low crime rate. Close to 40 percent of criminals involved in serious offenses in Singapore are caught with public assistance. Here, a growing percentage of the public actively participates in demonizing and hampering the ability of those whose jobs it is to enforce our laws and protect our freedoms.

Articles about the tragic hanging of Nguyen Tuong Van fail to mention the death he was importing back to Australia with him when he was caught. Nguyen, through the 26,000 doses of heroin he was delivering, was destined to be a killer himself:

* 725 Australians between ages 15 and 44 died from opiate overdoses in 2000.

* In 2000, the hanging “victim's” home region held the distinguished record of claiming more than 36 percent of all Australia's opiate overdose deaths in the 15 to 44 age group.

* Heroin related deaths in Australia have reached an all time high, more than doubling in the past 15 years.

The reports of Nguyen's death also failed to mention the hundreds of crimes perpetrated by addicts in his neighborhood during thefts for drug money. The least of these are stories of elderly women being slammed in the head while having their purses snatched by drug addicts. Singapore's Prime Minister said it best: "We also think that drug trafficking is a crime that deserves the death penalty. The evil inflicted on thousands of people with drug trafficking demands that we must tackle the source by punishing the traffickers rather than trying to pick up the pieces afterwards."

Who are the victims here? In the United States, Australia and other countries in the downward spiral of moral decline, we are increasingly made to feel we are the bad guys just for asking this question. Laws are supposed to protect us and keep order in a civilized society. Singapore's laws reflect the values of its citizens. What right do we have to criticize a society that seems to have gotten it right? Public safety is not something we should have to think of in terms of investing more money in enforcement and prisons. Our safety should be the byproduct of a healthy society, and one that places the values of its law abiding citizens above the rights of their law breakers.

In the meantime, while we ponder this, there is a new web site up in Boston to help citizens keep track of recent violent crimes. Regrettably, rapes are not included, because those are not reported to the public. How many do you think will even see jail time for these crimes? How many of those who do will be quickly released back into our society as part of some misdirected social experiment? Common sense seems to have abandoned us when it comes to fighting crime in this country, and criticizing countries and laws aimed at protecting citizens is a sure sign.

Related articles:

* Singapore Window: Singapore crime rate

* Australian Institute of Criminology: Opiate overdose deaths by sex, 2000

* Boston Online: Boston Violent Crimes

Posted by capecodcyclist at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)