About the McBudget...

Everyone has likely had a minimum wage job.  It's usually the first couple of jobs you get, and part-time.  If you're a teenager, it usually pays for a car payment, or the requisite insurance, or the extras in life (certain clothes, expensive shoes, game systems, etc.) that your parents have deemed you old enough to provide for yourself.  But it is usually a transition to better jobs with a little bit better pay, as you gain experience and skills.  McDonald's has always been the launching pad for teens 14 years old and up to have a job and learn some skills.  If those teens continue into college and earn degrees, they usually move out of McDonald's and into much higher paying jobs/careers.  If they stay at McDonald's, they can move up into management ranks and beyond.  McDonald's, if nothing else, has long had a reputation for promoting from within, and helping the beginners make careers out of the company.

Recently, there has been a push to increase the minimum wage again, preferably with a tie to the cost of living.  It has been estimated that, if the MW had been tied to inflation, it would be roughly $10.40/hr now.  If it had been tied to the cost of living, it would be $12 and change.  Opponents of a MW hike have claimed that it would cost people jobs.  Those in favor have claimed that unemployment is high because people can't afford to purchase things, and THAT is what drives unemployment.  They are both right.

McDonald's, as one of the major national employers of MW workers (as well as all other restaurant companies, WalMart, etc), is resisting this MW hike.  In partnership with VISA, they issued a response, in the form of a living budget:

Okay, most people have seen this.  It lays out estimated costs for various bills, and calculates what they believe to be the average person's cost of living.  But this is where McDonald's goes off the rails, obviously out of touch with reality.  Right from the start, they ASSUME a second job.  Right there is the big red flag:  If you want to be able to pay bills, DO NOT count on us.  The second job also implies that you will likely never get better than part-time hours at McDonald's.  Look, most people can do the MW thing if they get their hours, but they'd like it to be at one place, if at all possible.  That's clearly not possible here.  For anyone with children, holding down two jobs is tough, especially when the children are younger.  This estimate also appears to disregard payroll and Social Security taxes, which would lower the overall income estimate.  But of all the things wrong in this budget, taxes are but a blip.

Another area where they falter is in the area of health insurance.  First, the main reason they keep people as part-time status is to not have to provide benefits.  Many restaurants don't provide health insurance at all, except for full-time management.  Second, as laid out in a September 2010 article in Forbes, $20 a month for the people who do get insurance isn't even in the ball park of realistic.  In 2010, they were paying an average of $14 per WEEK.  Imagine that cost now, since the last several premium hikes over the past few years - it's more likely in the $125-150 range, if not more.  And, as the article points out, the health coverage they have been getting is atrocious in quality.  They are better off rejecting coverage and funding a health care savings plan, or  finding something on their own - which will undoubtedly cost much more than $20 per month.

This budget also underestimates the cost of heat.  Anyone living up north knows there's no such thing as a $50 heating bill, especially during the peak months of December to February, where the heat costs can be up to triple that amount or more, depending on the type of housing you live in.  See, the poor usually live in older apartment buildings and homes that have poor insulation.  So it's not unusual to have the heat running 24-7 in the dead of winter, jacking up heating bills.  It also underestimates electric, especially in the south, where air conditioning is often run 24-7, especially in the peak May-September heat months.  And in Florida, where I am from, gas is rare.  Almost all homes are run on electricity, save for the individual home owner who plants a gas tank in his yard and supplies it himself.  So there's no such thing as a $90 electric bill.

And this budget also simply disregards things like, well... groceries.  Or gasoline for the car.  Or clothing expenses.  And it obviously assumes no children, which is a big miss when you are talking about the average worker and their average 2.5 kids per family household.  But maybe McDonald's thinks that all falls into the $750 in spending money left over after putting $100 in savings.  Or maybe they think their poor workers will be on food stamps.  They would be wrong, by the way, in a two person household.  Their estimated monthly income would make them ineligible to receive benefits.  The chances increase with a child, as the minimum requirement goes up for every household member, but that is a huge assumption to make. 

McDonald's, in this attempt to teach poor people how to be fiscally efficient with their poorness, generally shot itself in the foot.  Then they shot it again when they decided to try forcing employees to take their paycheck in the form of a re-loadable VISA debit card, neglecting to tell them that VISA charges fees for virtually everything - getting cash at an ATM, basic withdrawals, balance inquiries, online bill paying, etc.  They also neglected to mention that McDonald's corporate gets a hefty payment from VISA to implement these cards, as most companies do for the business they provide to VISA.

Minimum wage opponents are correct that raising the MW would cost some jobs. Many employers are not willing to wait out the short term effect of higher payroll, for the long term effect that MW advocates are also correct about:  if people can generally make more money, they will spend more on average, revenues will climb, and employment will subsequently rise.  Generally, it's the conservatives who are opposing the MW hike, because they would rather keep their money in the short term, even if they have to cut payroll to do it - so feel free to raise the wage.  But keeping their costs low is the priority, even if they short-sightedly cost themselves revenues from the lack of purchasing power of the average consumer.  Advocates are largely from the liberals and civil rights groups who advocate for the poor.  There is a genuine concern for the welfare of the lower income families in this faction, but there's also a political and fiscal underbelly to it, in the form of union advocates, who are major pushers for the hike.  Why?  Because wages in union collective bargaining agreements are often tied to the MW.  Raise the MW by $3-5 per hour, and the well-paid union worker gets a raise too.  So the politiking surrounding a MW increase very often tosses aside the people most affected by it - the working poor, who need the ability to provide a living for themselves and their families.  For all the good qualities that McDonald's has, they've faltered in a pretty important area, and it highlights just how hard the working poor have it. And considering that adding the cost of a hike to consumer prices causes only a minimal increase in overall spending costs per consumer (1.2% on average), it should be given serious consideration.  We are falling behind in so many areas - this should not be one of them.  Let people have a living wage, the rest of the economy may just follow suit.

Hacker Awareness is Everyone's Responsibility

I've been seeing a lot of news lately about identity theft, which continues to increase on a global scale, and protection of private information, increasingly from the federal government.  The feds are now demanding user passwords from web firms.  If they can't get them the legal way, and want them bad enough, they will simply hack them.  The NSA, FBI and CIA all utilize hackers  The government has the resources to do whatever it wants, but there are hackers everywhere that do the very same thing.  Hacking passwords is a major security concern that many people do not fully respect.  And they should, because that's how your identity is often stolen.  So I thouht I'd pass on a few tips that people can utilize very easily.  The first tip involves protecting yourself against keyloggers, which record everysingle keystroke you make.  No matter if they are hardware devices or software programs, here's a great tip:

Use ASCII codes. 

Most people don't know this, but everything in computers is binary - 1s and 0s.  Each character is a byte, each byte is 8 bits, each bit is a 1 or 0 (1 = "ON" and 0 = "OFF").  For example, each byte is between 00000000 and 11111111.  Each bit (right to left) from the first bit to the eighth has a value (128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1).  Notice the value doubles itself with each bit.  For every "1" in the byte, you take the corresponding place value and add it together - "0" means that particular bit has no value and is left alone.  The sum is the ASCII code for a corresponding character.  Every character a computer uses is calculated this way - it is the core principle of binary coding.  For example, my name begins with the letter "E."  In binary, "E" looks like this:  01000101. 

                                                      (128  64  32  16   8   4   2  1)
                                                          0     1    0    0   0   1   0  1

The corresponding values for the 1s are 64, 4, 1.  Add them and you get 69.  So the ASCII code for the letter "E" is 69.  You access the ASCII codes using the ALT key.  Try it.  Press ALT-69, and you get "E."  (By the way, you can do a search for "ASCII tables," or "ALT codes" to find web pages that have the chart for all the characters.)  But "E" is on the keyboard, and that's too easy.  So if I wanted to make it tougher to crack, I could use the ASCII code for "É."  In binary, "É" looks like this:  10010000.

                                                      (128  64  32  16   8   4   2   1)
                                                          1     0    0    1   0   0   0   0

The corresponding values for the 1s are 128, 16.  Add them and you get 144.  So the ASCII code for the character "É" is 144.  So to protect my self better, I wouldn't type Eric - I would instead type Éric, using (ALT-144)ric.

Your keyboard is simply a set of keys that are shortcuts to the sum-values that correspond to the ASCII codes for the characters printed on the keys (to save you from having to type in binary).  Keyloggers are great for the keyboard characters.  But if, for example, I type my name this way: (ALT-69)RIC, instead of (E)RIC, the keylogger will see that I pressed the ALT, the 6, and the 9, but it doesn't know if I pressed them together or separately, and some loggers (typically the software kind) will only record the ALT key and miss the 6 and 9 because they were pressed during the main keystoke, the ALT key.  So using ASCII command characters - even just one - makes hacking your passwords exponentially harder, because hackers typically use the main set of keybord characters, under the (correct) assumption that most people don't know how to input ALT codes.  Your password can still be hacked, but it will take much longer - and hackers are like burglars, in the sense that speed is everything.  The longer it takes, the more likely they'll give up before they crack it.

Home Wireless Routers

Most of us use wireless in our homes.  And hackers love to drive through neighborhoods, scanning for wireless networks they can hack.  There are a couple of ways to counter this, and both are very simple:

 

1) Disable your SSID.  Every router has one.  It's the ID that is broadcast from the router into the air, so you can find your router and connect to it, by simply clicking on it.  But you can also input the SSID manually.  Just give it a simple name that's easy to remember.  Once you disable the SSID broadcast, your router is still present, but now it is invisible, outsiders can't see it as an available network.  Most of the time, you only connect to your router the first time, then your computer does it automatically every time thereafter.  So this is a nice little security step that is minimally taxing to the user.

 

2) If you are not a fan of coming up with a name for your router, or disabling the SSID, try this:  most routers have a generic name out of the box, and it usually contains the brand name, like Linksys-something, or Netgear-something, D-Link-something, etc.  If your router is a Linksys, rename it Netgear, or D-Link, or Buffalo.  If it's a Netgear, rename it Linksys, and so on.  Hackers usually have a set of base command protocols for each brand of router.  If you change the SSID's name to a different brand, the hacker will waste a lot of time using the wrong protocols to get in.  Remember, you can't totally beat them, but you can slow them down trememndously, and that will increase the chances of them leaving yours alone.

 

3) If your router gives you the option between WEP and WPA or WPA-2 passwords, always choose WPA or WPA-2.  WEPs are the most easily hacked, as they are the most generic in design and application.  Use them ONLY if you have no other option (in which case, your router is likely older, and should be replaced). And remember, you can use the occasional ASCII character to throw off the hackers to make it that much more time consuming, which is the goal.

 

These are simple measures (sorry about the quick binary tutorial, but I tried to keep it short and easy to understand), and everyone should be proactive in protecting their information from intruders, be it the feds, the professional hacker, or the recreational hacking 10 year old who's at home bored while Mom and Dad are out on date night.  It's your information and your life.  Look after it.

The Postal Service, Victim of the Long Con of Congress

The United States Postal Service has long been the black sheep of the federal government.  They were designed to operate autonomously, yet their ability to do so has always been at the behest of Congress.  Now the USPS is teetering towards bankruptcy, and they need to curb costs.  They don't want to have to cut services, but Congress is pushing hard to eliminate door-door service altogether, and will vote on it Wednesday.  I don't have a problem with that. Door-to-door service is expensive, from an hourly wage standpoint - curbside and cluster boxes are the efficient way to go.  But this move will cost a lot of mail carriers their jobs.  I have a couple of friends that do that very job, so I am now concerned for their job security, as the job market is tough, and has been for several years now.

But setting aside my personal feelings, I will now fill you in on something very few people even know about (I didn't know about it until one of my USPS friends filled me in):

In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act, or PAEA.  This act mandated forced the USPS to PRE-fund a 75-year liability for future retiree health benefits.  That's right, folks.  At 75 years, they are not just funding future retirees' benefits - they are funding people who will not have even been born for the next 10-15 years.  What's worse, current employees pay for their own health benefits.  So do retirees, minus whatever Medicare covers.  So there is no such thing as a "health care benefit" for current employees or retirees.  And pre-funding anything means employees have to pay out more from their paychecks.  So this mandate basically amounts to an agency-wide pay cut to fund something they have no access to.  And this is all paid into the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), which means - you guessed it - they are funding all federal employees from every other agency, who will have access to these benefits, while the people paying for it have no access.  And they are the only employees in the country that have been required to do this.

This pre-funding amounts to roughly $5 billion per year, and it accounts for about 70 percent of the USPS' net deficit for the last five years (through FY 2012).  Keep in mind, this is the only federal agency that generates a revenue stream, while consuming exactly zero tax payer dollars.  Postage and package delivery services, as well as postal merchandise products, are their revenue stream.  Many people, including much of Congress, have seriously discussed privatizing the USPS, portraying it to be an expensive, unprofitable relic of times gone by - a dinosaur, that needs to be out of the federal system.  But while mail service has decreased about 25 percent since 2006, when the PAEA was enacted, the biggest improvement in revenues in recent years has been from becoming more competitive in package delivery services.  So one has to wonder why the entirety of the USPS is being deemed  an unprofitable relic that needs to be shut down.  After all, if this kind of service is so unprofitable, why are so many of our congressmen so heavily invested in UPS, FedEx, and DHL?  Wait a minute...

And here is where I start to twitch:  The USPS fund in the FERS had about $46 billion total.  Just recently, the Treasury Department took money yet again from the FERS - and included the USPS fund - to pay down debt.  So the USPS is near bankruptcy, yet they can be pilfered by the Treasury Department?  And, naturally, the loss of those funds changes weakens the financial position of the USPS, making them look less fiscally stable than they already are.  All this, and Congress wants to get rid of the USPS, or privatize it, when they are the biggest reason the USPS is in the position they are.  And Congress has repeatedly refused to return the surplus payments to the USPS - meanwhile the agency has had to close thousands of post offices, mail sorting facilities, lower service standards, and delay mail delivery, including eliminating Saturday delivery beginning in August of this year.  

Only our government would force an agency it deems "failing" to over pay into a system it has no access to, while simulatneously strategizing the best way to get rid of the agency.  I wonder what happens to all the pre-funded payments into the FERS for "future federal employees," who won't ever exist once the federal agency is dissolved...?

Roe and the Country, 40 Years Later

On May 11, 2013, Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke at an event commemorating the 40-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade at the University of Chicago Law School.  She wished that they had ruled solely on the Texas law being debated, highlighting a few important flaws in Roe v. Wade:

 

• The ruling gave opponents a singular target - the Justices themselves who, many complained, should not have had the ability to dictate national policy on such a personal, subjective issue when they had not been elected to do so.
• Such a sweeping ruling "...stopped the momentum that was on the side of change..." at a time when many states were already expanding abortion rights.
• The fact that the debate was not argued in terms of women's rights, rather as an issue of privacy rights that secondarily extended to women's ability to terminate a pregnancy.  This allowed states, while adhering to the technical specifics of the ruling by not outlawing abortion outright, to attempt to carve up abortion policy piecemeal, sometimes to the degree of rendering the Roe ruling somewhat inconsequential.

 

A big fear of the current gay rights cases coming before the Supremes this year is that it could fall into the same misguided arguments that Roe did, for many of the same reasons.  Gay rights have been on the move over the past couple of decades, even with DOMA and DADT making arguably backward steps.  The gay population has been steadily increasing as more and more come out of the closet, and children are being better nurtured than before, allowing them to become more comfortable and accepting of themselves at an earlier age.  The one advantage that gay rights has over Roe is the context of the debate.  It's not an issue of privacy, as marriage is already deemed a right for all consenting people of adult age.  But it ultimately renders gays to be non-people in the eyes of the government, and that's where the debate will likely hinge.  DOMA was an attempt to manage that criticism - by "defining" marriage, you can exclude all but the model you specifically want, and try to avoid the bigotry tag.  The problem is that DOMA is highly unconstitutional, because it excludes a considerable portion of the population - a portion that grows by the year.  And not for nothing, but it's becoming a sizable voting block as well.  Politicians who continue to try to exclude them are going to have a backlash of careers being cut short.  President Obama already sees this coming, and has simply ordered the Justice Department to NOT defend DOMA in the courts.  It would be better if the more die-hard, fundamentalist elements of my Christian brethren would quit worrying about DOMA - let it die, and they can continue with their own lives of adultery and hiding in the closet, while publicly bashing gays and pleading for the sanctimony of marriage to the press.  Hasn't it become a bothersome little norm, that the loudest preachers of sanctimony and gay bashing either turn out to be gay or have been philandering around like the playboy of the modern world?  It would be more comical, if they weren't using their considerable power to attack others.  If we can get rid of DOMA, we may just be able to chip away at the facade of sanctimony. 

 

As individuals, religion is often a part of our marriages.  But as a country, marriage is a legal partnership, nothing more.  This country has never cared what religion you are (we have an amendment to prove it) when it came to marriage.  We have a wide array of religions, and we are free to perform our marriage ceremony in whatever religious context we like.  But the country only cares that we file for the license, and address our marriage one way or the other to the IRS and, once every decade, to the Census Bureau - that's ALL.  The country has no requirements for marriage, other than age and consent between the parties - the country will marry you itself, through the courts - it needs no religious backing to do so.  DOMA was a way to change the parameters, and that makes it legally exclusionary - and that will ultimately mean it's defeat.  Even if there is failure this time around in front of the Supremes, the country has made it clear that the status quo won't last much longer - and state after state is coming around to that reality.

 

My concern at this point is that we are focusing on cosmetic issues at a time when our country is floundering.  Gay or straight, what is doing us in is our economic instability.  We have a government who has propped up the markets with stimulus money, yet jobs are still scarce, largely because of lack of access to qualified workers, due to insufficient training.  We have an economic structure that has a CEO making anywhere from 350- 450 times what the lowest paid worker makes - the disparity is even worse when you include the total pension and retirement packages.  And many of these CEOs are running failing companies.  This disparity has much more to do with the political connectedness of these CEOs than the market dictating the compensation.  The evidence of that fact is seen throughout the rest of the world, where CEO pay in the same marketplace (say, the auto industry) is only a fraction by comparison.  This is largely due to two things:  some socialized economies set limits on executive pay, and most other companies around the world tie executive pay to the financial stability and success of the company.  It's mostly just the US that ignores this connection.

 

We have a president who preaches fiscal toughness, yet freely spends without concern for deficits or the future generations tied to a crushing level of debt they had nothing to do with.  He wants to raise income tax wage rates of the wealthy, while ignoring that the wealthy don't pay wage rates much anyway - they are rich because of investments and, as such, pay Capital Gains rates.  But we never cease to hear the need for "the wealthy to pay their fair share..."  I have never once heard what their fair share is.  Does anyone know?  They already pay over 80% of the country's revenues.  What exactly IS their fair share?  And "fair share" is a bit of a misnomer, considering where the majority of the country's money goes.  Our biggest expenditures are social programs and health care.  Social programs like welfare and food stamps are a necessary evil.  We would like to not have to need them, but people need to survive, so we accept them.  But we also move the poverty line down to make more people eligible for benefits.  On the surface, it seems like a nice gesture, looking out for the downtrodden.  But it also serves to keep people in the system.  You see, if you work enough hours, you can work yourself right into ineligibility.  Yet our minimum wage is debilitatingly low compared to our ever-increasing cost of living.  So very often, people will choose to not work because, between all of the programs they can qualify for, they actually make more money in the system than they would working.  This is not a healthy way to utilize our money.  

 

Health care I can understand the impetus to nationalize the system - the belief that costs can be lowered, while the status quo of care maintained.  It's a complete farce, the way we do it, but I get it.  But our government's solution is to leave the control in the hands of the insurance companies, while forcing them to take all applicants, no matter the pre-existing condition.  Fine, I get it, even the pre-existing still need some way to afford care and receive it.  But when the insurance companies cry foul, that they will be spending a fortune on pre-existing claims, with no revenue (in the form of premiums) to have ever been collected, what does our government do?  Mandate that everyone is required to purchase insurance policies, giving the companies the revenue stream they so desire.  Nice bribe, I guess...   And all of this could maybe be overlooked - except for the fact that millions of people will still be without health care coverage.  Wasn't that the entire purpose of this "takeover?"

 

All this only skims the surface of issues plaguing our country right now, so here is my plea:  gay marriage is so unimportant to the stability of our country, could we just please allow them to marry, so we can address more important things?  That's all gays want - they are just as important AND unimportant as us heteros - just treat them the same.  They've never looked for privilege, only that they aren't held as "less than."  They can provide familial stability, which we sorely need.  They provide a nurturing to children (especially gay children) that we sorely need.  There is simply no reason to deny them their rights as American citizens.  This is all so matter-of-fact that it's irresponsible to have invented issues where there were none - and then let it drag on for decades.  Let gays be free to live as they choose - like the rest of us - so that we as a country can start tackling more pressing issues.  Our country is in need of serious people right now, so we need the circus of bigots to leave the stage, please.

Where Are the Parents?

I have been disassociatively been seeing some of the coverage of the trials of youngsters recently, and have been disconcerted with why these kids are where they are.  The Newtown, Connecticut shooter, Adam Lanza, has been found to have been highly interested and engaged in the study of mass murders, furthering the notion that this wasn’t just someone gone cuckoo for a day – he wanted to emulate, and surpass the body counts of previous killings.  A bit closer to my neck of the woods, two teens in Steubenville, Ohio were just found guilty of raping a 16 year old girl last summer – and they took pictures and video of the entire evening as it took place, with onlookers doing nothing to stop it.  And yesterday, TJ Lane, the teenager who recently pleaded guilty to the shooting of schoolmates in Chardon, Ohio, came to his sentencing hearing wearing a t-shirt with the word “KILLER” written on the front.  And when allowed to speak after parents of the victims were given the opportunity to address him and the court (during which he smirked the entire time), he extended to them his middle finger and said, “F—k all of you.”

I say I’ve been watching disassociatively because I’ve been trying to avoid seeing this stuff.  The events themselves bother me, and the non-stop 24 hour round-the-clock coverage of such events and their aftermath disgusts me.  People just can’t get enough of it, and I find this growing preponderance very disturbing.  But I do watch the news every now and then, so the winding down of the court cases has been bumping the coverage back up.   And the one thing that keeps running through my head is this:  where the hell are the parents in these ordeals?

How did these kids get the idea that these actions are okay?  One actively studies mass murders, and no parent is there to question why?  Two others decide that, not only is rape okay, but it’s perfectly acceptable to photograph and video record it – AND then post it online?  How did they acquire this attitude?  Where are the parents?  And where are Lane’s parents?  Their kid kills students, and then taunts their families in court?  At what point did they stop giving a damn about their kid?

I was the oldest child in our house, so my parents knew very little about what to do with me when I turned obnoxious – ahem – became a teenager.  Everything I did was a lesson for them in learning how to prevent my brothers from doing the same thing.  And when they reached a point of not knowing what to do with me anymore, they admitted me to a facility for kids with family problems.  I hated them for it, but in hind sight, I know they were worried and thought experts could succeed where they felt they had failed.  They were wrong – well, not entirely.  There wasn’t anything “wrong” with me – I was just an asshole who was way too smart for his own good.  So putting me in this place at least kept me out of trouble for the most part.  I was only there for a few months (the psychologist in charge of my case was fed up with me), but less than a year later, I was out of the house for good. 

My point here is this:  my parents may not have known how to handle me, but they never stopped trying.  And most of the things I did, my brothers weren’t allowed to get away with as they grew up.  Each kid brings his/her own set of problems, naturally, so some things will always be new to Mom and Dad.  But the point is to keep trying.  The lessons don’t go away just because the kid isolates him/herself.  And it seems like that’s what has happened to parents of the younger generations.  Kids are smarter and more independent earlier in life, and at some point the parents leave them to their own devices.  DON’T.  The law may have gotten in the way of disciplining children (to our disservice), but never stop teaching them right from wrong.  At my worst, there were just things I would never do – I knew better.  And when I stopped being an angry asshole (after I moved out of the house and only had myself to answer to), I decided to not fight with anyone ever again – wasn’t worth it.  I resolved to never get angry about things that just don’t matter in the grand scheme of life – it’s just not worth it.  All my parents’ lessons stuck, even if I stopped caring about them for a while.  And I’ve only gotten angry a handful of times in the last 25 years.  I don’t think people truly understand how freeing it is to CHOOSE to let things roll off your shoulders, not get mad about stuff that happens (especially when anger doesn’t solve anything – the problem still exists and has to be dealt with, but now you’ve taken yourself to a bad place you have to recover from, which drags out the process), even if anger would be justified.  You simply take each problem and try to solve it.  Blow off steam if you have to – just not at your kids.    Isolating yourself from your children is not the answer.  It’s about preserving your own peace.  And your kids will grow to replicate THAT behavior as well.

White Collar Crime is Not Really Crime

It amazes me constantly, the judgment that our government, and other westernized governments, apply to countries that aid and abet corruption.  We demonize them, we publicly eviscerate them for their behavior, we have applied sanctions on the occasional country that has been an accomplice to crime.

It amazes me, because our government, and many like us, are the most hypocritical on the planet when it comes to policing our own house.  Just last week, HSBC Bank was found to have laundered money for terrorists, banks with connections to terrorists (Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank), and drug cartels.  So prolific and long standing were the laundering habits, that the Mexican cartels had long ago created specially designed boxes, whose dimensions were EXACTLY the measurement needed to pass the boxes through the teller windows without having to open them, allowing the cartel to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars a day quickly, and without inspection.  The heads of HSBC are now known to have been complicit in these corrupt functions, sometimes facilitating the functions themselves.

If I had laundered so much as $100 for a friend, I would have the book thrown at me in our justice system.  But HSBC criminals - and let's say it way out loud, leaving no doubt - THEY ARE CRIMINALS, in every sense of the word, are being slapped with a $1.9 billion fine, and no prosecution, in any capacity.  They have been deemed "too important" to be disrupted in their management of the bank with criminal prosecution.  I did not just make that up - the word "disrupted" was particularly galling to me.  They claimed that criminal prosecution would have dire repercussions on the stability of the bank:

"Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized."

Uh... what?  Better put the hip-boots on, it's getting deep up in here.  No one ever prosecutes the BANK when someone launders money, because it's not the bank that launders it.  It's the people.  Let's be clear about that.  PEOPLE launder money.  Banks are simply the mechanism.  A bank has no way of knowing when money is illegal, it's simply an institution.  We've never prosecuted a bank for laundering, we go after the guy who did the laundering.  So when we say we are not prosecuting the bank, what we really mean is we're not prosecuting the people.  No bank would destabilize because of a prosecution of criminals within the bank.  Banks change CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and upper management people all the time, without the banks crashing.  That's all that would happen here.  Prosecute the people involved, they lose their job, new people are brought in to replace them.  Really not that complicated.  But not for us - we make decisions in legalese that make it sound like we put a great deal of thought into this, when the simple reality is that these bankers are rich and connected.  And our government doesn't put it's friends in prison, no matter what they do.  We already know this to be true, with the obvious looking of the other way with the Wall Street bank brokers and managers who willfully broke the law in deceiving their own customers about the stability of funds they sold, while secretly executing credit default swaps, hedging their bets against the failure of those same funds.  What did we do?  Nothing.  Spewed a lot of rhetoric, but ultimately, we bailed them all out with billions of dollars - that they kept and invested on their own, bolstering nice profits - and the subsequent bonuses that come with them -  but not repaying any losses to the customers they swindled.  Just the cost of doing business...

Our government has become one of the largest accomplices to white collar criminal conduct, yet no one holds anyone accountable for it.  This is largely due to the fact that many of the people connected with these institutions transition into high level government positions.  It's no coincidence that Goldman Sachs got away with a paltry fine for some of it's fraud - their former CEO, Henry Paulson, was Bush's Treasury Secretary.  If you prosecute anyone, Paulson would have to be at the top of the list, since he was running things when all this began and, for what it's worth, Paulson's Goldman Sachs stock was valued at over $600 million when he became the Secretary.  There's no way a Treasury Secretary is being prosecuted, if for no other reason than it indicts the federal government for their hiring of criminals for top tier positions - that will NEVER happen.

HSBC is just the latest in a long string of corruption that our government pats on the back and allows to operate unscathed.  The $1.9 billion fine is about one month's revenue.  The bank barely blinked at it, nor did their stock price.  Just the cost of doing business.  And so it continues...

Lessons from Sandy Hook

So unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard about the Sandy Hook school massacre.  I was no where near a television or radio when it happened, so I didn't hear about it until mid-late afternoon that day.  Of course, once I found out, I couldn't get away from it.  Even now, I struggle with a multitude of feelings.  First, I shook my head in disappointment, thinking "What the hell is wrong with people...?"  Later, I was passing by the television in the living room where my wife was just finding out about it, watching in shock.  The anchor was pontificating about what would cause someone to do such a thing.  I thought, "Well of course he took to mass murder!  He was unhappy, so everyone must share in his misery.  That's how it is!  No one has the guts to just deal with their own shit, they have to drag innocent people into it..."  Obviously, I was getting angry and cynical.  I made sure to NOT watch any coverage of the event, no longer having the stomach for it.  The next morning, I went online, and saw a headline on one of my news sights, saying that almost all the children had been shot multiple times, leaving some of them almost unrecognizable.  Right then, for the first time in my life, I knew what a truly broken heart felt like.  Killing them wasn't enough, he had to mutilate them with bullets - as if he was getting off on it.  I almost cried as I read the article: Victoria Soto, the teacher who was killed shielding the children from the bullets with her body as she funneled them into a closet.  And that's how they found her - dead on top of the children she was protecting;  Dawn Hochsprung, the principal who went after the gunman, and gave her life in the attempt to overtake him;  Twenty children, who knew nothing about life except enjoying it - the ultimate perk of youth.

Then I was flipping through channels and passed by the group of news networks.  I stopped on FOX News for a moment, to see Mike Huckabee offering commentary, in the vein that the shooting happened because we've taken God out of the schools.  And I just wanted to throw something through the TV.  Whether you believe in Jesus Christ or not, YES - believing in something bigger than yourself, that instills a respect for the world you live in, would make the world a better place.  But to blame the removal of school prayer and the refusal to teach religion as science as reasons for... what, God's punishment, in the form of a massacre?  That's wholly irresponsible, and it underlines a major contributor to these types of coverage:  the sensationalism of tragedy.

These networks are beyond the pale.  Something horrible happens, and within an hour, they have gripping headlines, a tragedy moniker, a theme song, and the anchors look as if they're masturbating while covering it, just enraptured at the sound of their own voice.  They have psychologists lined up for "official" opinions, reporters on the scene eagerly asking every person they can get there greedy little paws on how they are feeling right now, as if they are expecting different answers five people in.  They have photographers snapping photos of everyone, just itching for that one shot that wins them a Pulitzer - cause if you can't capitalize on a tragedy, why are you in the job, yes?  And if there's one thing people in that situation want more than anything, it's having the entire planet seeing a gut-wrenching photo of them in the most vulnerable and heart-broken state they've ever been in their entire life on the cover of TIME, Life, or NewsWeek for eternity.  There is truly nothing more heartless in this country than the media, and they are proud of it, wearing the label like a badge of honor.

The argument has been made that the media is one of the ones to blame for tragedies like this, because they encourage the downtrodden and depressed to one-up the guy who did it two weeks ago - you too can be famous!  There's some merit to that, although it's a bit broad for my taste.  And for the ever-popular claim that a gunman had a mental illness, this argument assumes a great deal of clarity being capable of the mentally ill.

I think there's more merit to the argument that gaming and social media do a great deal more to contribute to someone's thinking than the media.  Games, especially the exceptionally violent and graphic ones, desensitize kids to violence and bloody, gruesome images.  Do they make people violent? No, not if they are of sound mind.  But if they are mentally unbalanced?  Yes, I can see a contribution to the state of mind occurring.  And people spend so much time on social media now, they barely interact with other actual people.  Gamers are more likely to feel connected to their avatar than real people these days.  And if you're already an introvert, or "socially awkward," as they like to call it, you already lack the connection to people that would have you feeling something for them, so imagine how detached social media and gaming can increase that widening gap between them and reality.  Many people call this a cop-out argument, but it's actually much stronger than you think - especially if we're so ready and willing to blame the media for the same thing.

Gun control.  Let's face it, we need it.  It won't stop events like this, where the guns were legally owned by his mother.  But we have to get tested and licensed for a variety of things - in some cases, like driver's licenses, you have to do it every so many years - something as dangerous as guns should definitely be on the list.  The goal of regulation is to make it more difficult for criminals to have access to black market weapons, but it should also be to make sure that weapon ownership is legal and safe.  Everyone wanting to purchase a gun, should have to disclose the number of children and mentally challenged in their home, so they can be advised of the strongest measures to take in securing the weapon and ammunition in the home.  In cases like this (although, sadly, the mother was a victim here), the owner should not be allowed to own a firearm anymore if a child, or mentally unbalanced person, gains access to it and hurts themselves or someone else - clearly responsibility is not being exercised.  And doing nothing, or worse, brushing it off because it's too political of an issue, is simply not acceptable anymore.

There are many factors that contributed to this tragedy, and we will hear about some of them in the weeks to come.  But we, as a nation, need to take mental health and gun/ammunition regulation more seriously.  And the media seriously needs to stop glorifying every tragedy that occurs.  A mass murder isn't your giddy answer to Sweeps week.