The Second Amendment

I think the gun control opponents fall into two categories:

People who sell firearms and accessories:  It is in the best interests of their profit margin to oppose all gun control laws.  Naturally, if we limit sales and ban certain products, their profit margins will decrease and narrow.  This is why we have gun rights activists and lobbyists.  They use the second amendment to protect their profits.

Citizens who may or may not own firearms, but are adamant about the second amendment and feel any talk about gun control is an attempt to abolish an inalienable right:  These people put their fear of losing a right they may or may not use or even need ahead of logic.

It’s important to actually understand the full intention of the second amendment:

“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.”

I think you would be hard pressed to find an organized militia in any state in today’s America.  Yet the full effect of the second amendment would seem to require one (or maybe that if a militia were to be formed, it should be well regulated).  Regardless, this is no longer required.  We now have a more secure country with an advanced military and organized police force to ensure safety and security.  The amendment was written to allow interpretation to the law, much like the other amendments, as it does not outline specifics for enforcement or precise substance.

There are two ways in which the amendment itself requires gun control laws.  First is the inclusion of the word “bear” in “right of the people to keep and bear arms”; a right that should not be infringed.  If it were to keep and display arms without restriction this word would read “bare”, as I suspect most people interpret.  In this application “to bear arms” means to hold up under, and be capable, of armaments.  To be capable of armaments is open to subjective criticism, hence gun control laws.  This is already in effect to a degree, subject to varying degrees of freedom by state, in which you must prove your capability to have firearms.  This is the focal point of gun control proponents, in that this is not adequately defined or enforced.

The second is the interpretation to circumstances in which the right to bear arms is applied.  Do the right to bear arms only apply to a militia?  If so, if one does not belong to a militia, do they have a right to bear arms?  This would probably never be the interpretation.  A militia, by definition, is a body of individuals enrolled for military service who serve full time only in militaries.  We could argue that all able adults are in a militia, and would act in an emergency for our own individual safety or safety for our community.  Regardless the interpretation of a militia, the amendment requires a “well regulated” one.  This implies regulation of the right to bear arms.

There is no denying the fact the arms trade in America is regulated, it’s just a matter of how effectively it is regulated.  It has been apparent that it is not effectively regulated.  This amendment, with the other 9 of the bill of rights, was adopted into law in 1791.  In that time, the US was a new country, and more susceptible to a declaration of war on our own soil in which an individuals’ right owning a firearm was necessary to national security.  It is now only useful for personal security, and we must adapt the regulations to also ensure personal security from firearms.

To do that we need a reasonable solution that upholds ones right to own a firearm with the regulation required to provide security to citizens from firearms.  The logical approach would be to analyze past events, corroborate worldwide statistics with gun laws, and find root causes to the tragedies that require regulation.  It would be the responsibility of our elected officials to start this conversation.

However, everyone has their own solution they would like to see in effect, and I’m no different, but I always try to take a scientific approach in solving a problem, and I would hope our legislators and experts on the issue would do the same, as would proponents and opponents of regulation alike.  I think it is important to understand that in a world of nearly 7 billion people, all with different religious and moral views, evident oppression and violence, and different sociological views and economic standards, that violence is going to occur.  There will never be an elimination of violence, no matter how positive we think.

Banning the ownership of firearms is not acceptable, but neither is full armament of citizens.  Logically, if the presence of guns is a contributing problem of mass violence, then introducing more guns – more contributions to the problem is just, well, silly.  You don’t get rid of the smell of trash by adding more waste to the pile.  I hear the case “if the teachers were armed, this wouldn’t have occurred”.  This is speculation.  At most this would mitigate the effect of the attack, but it would not prevent it; however even this assumption is speculative.  If there is a possibility of a potential victim being armed, would this necessarily deter the potential suspect from carrying out an attack?  I don’t think that is true.  If it were, there would only be attacks against citizens in which the attacker knew could not be armed.  Consider the attacker who recently opened fire in a mall in Oregon.  There was a good possibility that he would open fire on citizens with concealed firearms, and even police officers, yet that did not deter him from carrying out the attack.

Complete disarmament of citizens is not effective, either.  It is a known fact that criminals do not necessarily follow the law.  There will always be a way to obtain a firearm, even if it is illegal to do so.  Sure, criminalizing the use of and banning all firearms would mitigate the number of gun deaths, but it would not prevent them entirely, nor would it prevent other forms of violent acts.  It would also reduce one’s ability to protect themselves in cases necessitating the use of a firearm for such a reason.

Understanding root causes to gun deaths and mass attacks are important in providing effective solutions to the problem.  It is apparent that the availability and lack of regulating gun procurement and mass capacity arms and accessories is a root cause.  This is apparent because in the last two mass attacks, the suspects had access to both multiple, automatic firearms as well as mass capacity accessories.  In the Aurora shooting, the attacker legally purchased weapons while being treated by a psychologist.  He was able to obtain large capacity magazines for his weapons to allow him to fire more rounds of ammunition before he needed to reload his weapon.  He also obtained body armor that reduced the effectiveness of an attack against him, either in an attempt to increase his casualty count, or to afford him the opportunity to fight off a counterattack and escape.  Either way, his motive to kill was still there, but his ability to kill multiple people was a variable made possible by enabling the instruments of his attacks to maximize casualties.  If he did not have access to high capacity magazines and body armor, would that have deterred him from carrying out the attack?  Again this is speculative, and I would be surprised if this did deter him.  I do think it is a strong possibility that he would not have as many victims, that people would be more able to stop him, or have a better chance of escape.

No the case of the Sandy Hook shooter.  The weapons he used were owned by his mother, who was also a victim.  He also had access to high capacity magazines for his weapons.  There is no question that increasing the ability to fire repeatedly for extended periods of times decreases the ability to defend against said attack. 

In both recent scenarios, it would seem that banning high capacity armaments and increasing restrictions on gun ownership would have an immediate effect.  It is important for opponents to this regulation to know that this does not prevent one from owning firearms.  This enforces the expectation that one is responsible for owning firearms.  I have yet to hear an argument in why owning these things are a requirement for effective defense against an attacker.  The argument that one should have access to the same weapons they could face an attack from is an irresponsible one - Russia could drop a nuclear bomb on your home, but that doesn’t mean we should all have our own personal nuclear weapons.  Limiting the availability of articles used in mass attacks would logically reduce the number of casualties in the event of an attack, and may reduce the occurrence as well.

Finally the argument of more effective mental health programs:  It is apparent that most suspects in mass shootings, or mass attacks in general suffer from a mental illness that may prevent them from reasoning against carrying out an attack.  We apparently do not know enough about these mental illnesses, or how to treat them, that enable a person to carry out these attacks.  Understanding the illness, and better responding to and treating them, would surely mitigate these attacks.  Anticipating the effect a mental illness may have on ones’ ability to own a firearm should be investigated as well.  Let’s say that in his quest to purchase a firearm, the Aurora shooter had to submit to a background check in which it indicated he was seeing a psychologist, and it was a requirement for his psychologist to sign off on the permit.  This wouldn’t necessarily prevent him from obtaining a weapon, but it would definitely make it more difficult.  Identifying indicators of one’s inability to responsibly own a firearm may further mitigate the ability of one to carry out an attack.  Again, the second amendment protects the right for one the “bear” arms – to have the ability to own arms, which indicates a responsibility to own arms, and the presence of regulation to ensure an ability to responsibly own arms.

Regardless what the solutions are, they need to be logical and well thought out.  It would seem that we maintain an ineffective system of regulation because proponents of gun control laws cannot adequately influence legislators and gun law opponents to ensure the effectiveness of proposed solutions.

Let’s Talk About Tax, Baby (Let’s Talk About You and Me)

As you may or may not know, tax is a big political topic right now.  It’s been pretty big for a while.  In fact, the entire fate of our economic prosperity apparently depends on extending tax cuts to Americans, which congress wants to make as suspenseful as possible by not passing just yet.  Romney is using the impeccable record of trickle-down economics by proposing large tax breaks on high earners, GOP is slamming Obama and other democrats on the passing of the Affordable Care Act, claiming it raises taxes on the middle class.  Angola is all like, “you ONLY pay as much as 35% income tax (they pay up to 60% on personal income, 35% corporate and 10% sales tax nationally) wtf are you all complaining about?”  It’s an all out tax warfare, with little tax soldiers lobbing tax grenades and stabbing each other with tax bayonets.  I think a lot of Americans have been pretty selfish and greedy about pouncing on any mention of increasing taxes, and this post explains why.

Obama has pushed this nation past an historical milestone by getting the Affordable Care Act signed into law and blessed by the Supreme Court.  There are 33 developed nations in the world.  The United States was the last nation to implement national health care.  The first nation to implement health care was Norway back in 1912; the last was Israel in 1995.

http://truecostblog.com/2009/08/09/countries-with-universal-healthcare-by-date/

Norway is doing pretty good economically, so it’s safe to say their health care system hasn’t destroyed the country yet.  The whole deal with the Supreme Court was ruling that the insurance mandate was not unconstitutional, but was in fact a tax.  Hearing this word put a lot of people into a frenzy.  No one wants to hear about more taxes.  Many Americans oppose the ACA simply because they hear their taxes will go up, and they really need to just calm the frank down.  Here’s a breakdown of how universal health care worked before the ACA:

·         You have insurance, you get sick, you go to the doctor, the doctor bills your insurance, the doctor gets paid, you or your employer continues to pay health insurance premiums, the insurance company gets paid, everyone is happy.

·         You don’t have insurance, you can’t go to the doctor because they require insurance.  The emergency room does not require insurance so you go there.  You are treated and the hospital sends you a bill.  You can’t pay the bill so it goes into collections.  The bill is either dramatically reduced or dropped.  The hospital gets little to no money so they use government subsidies to recoup these losses.  Who pays for these government subsidies?  The government.  Who pays the government?  The taxpayers!  So, in the past, the burden of the uninsured fell on all taxpayers.

This is what the ACA brings to the table:

·         Everyone is required to purchase health insurance.  If you are too poor to buy health insurance, you are exempt from a penalty, and receive medical services from Medicaid, which has been part of government assisted healthcare for quite some time.  If you would have trouble affording insurance, then you are eligible for subsidies from the government.  The government also creates insurance exchanges to create a competitive market for insurance, which reduces insurance premiums so more people can afford insurance.  Also – the number of insurance policies increase, which is an increase in demand for insurance policies, which reduces premiums.  If you are otherwise financially able to purchase health insurance, but choose not to, then you are subject to a tax up to 2.5% of your income – This s the tax that everyone is talking about.  The burden of the uninsured now falls more on the uninsured, rather than everyone.

·         There are other taxes too.  Medicare tax on the wealthy increase by 0.9%.  A 3.9% tax is imposed on unearned income for the wealthy – this is income from investments, not from salaries.  A tax is imposed on “luxury insurance plans”.  Plans that have premiums in excess of $10,200 per year, and include ridiculous coverage that no one needs, like eyeball massages or some crap.  Taxes on MSA’s go up – these are Medical Savings Account where instead of health insurance, you pay into an account that you use when you see the doctor – essentially a personally funded and managed health insurance plan.  If you withdraw money from an MSA for non medical reasons, you are taxed on it.  This tax went up from 10% to 20% (this prevents a loophole where people say they are electing for an MSA instead of health insurance, getting around the 2.5% maximum tax for not having insurance).

These are the major taxes of the ACA.  I can’t remember if I wrote an article on the ACA outlining the major changes and how they affect citizens or not.  Maybe I’ll do that next.  The point of this whole outline is that the ACA expands coverage to all Americans, prevents insurers from denying health insurance to individuals with existing conditions, and shifts the burden of the uninsured from all taxpayers to just the uninsured, and the highest earners of our country.  Good for 95% of the country, bad for the rest – and not really all that bad.  In a little bit, I’ll explain why the wealthy sounds ridiculous when they adamantly refuse to pay higher taxes, such as the ones imposed by the ACA, even if it radically transforms the health care industry for the better of the nation.

Then there’s the Bush Era tax breaks set to expire this year.  If they expire, tax rates go up for pretty much all earners.  The bottom tax rate of 10% goes up to 15% and all brackets above that increase anywhere from 3% to 4.6%.  Obama and his team want to extend the tax cuts to the middle class, but not the wealthy.  This would only increase tax rates in the top two tax brackets.  Republicans are pissed about this, but I’m not sure why.  Obama wants to eliminate tax cuts for the rich, which is presented by Republicans as a tax increase… tomato, tomato.  Wait, that only works if you actually say tomato.  Okay, phonetically then: TomAYto, TomAHto.  What is the benefit of keeping tax cuts for the wealthiest tax brackets?  The GOP (that’s The Grand ‘Ole Party, or Republicans) says it will hurt small business.  Well, that’s kind of a moot point because taxes are only increased on individual income of $200,000 for a single person or $250,000 for a family.  The small business owner earns as much as $105,757 per year – and this is for someone with about 10 years experience in the industry.  By region this goes up to $125,185 per year, and skilled small business owners earn as much as $104,762.  These are high end figures, not average ones.  So the definition of a small business does not include salaries of more than $125k a year.  Their business income is different.  No increases are expected by either candidate for the corporate tax.  So saving the small businesses can’t be it, they don’t earn enough to be affected by the tax increases.  Then it’s about jobs – if you make companies pay more in tax, they won’t be able to hire workers.  I might be misunderstanding something here, but the tax increases apply to personal income, not corporate income.  The corporate income tax rate has been about 35% for the last 25 years.  It only seems that wealthy people just don’t want to pay extra taxes.

Now in comes Romney with his economic plan.  His plan has not only proven that it gives extreme tax cuts to the wealthy, but it has also proven to be impossible to implement.  Furthermore, the tax cuts to the wealthy are paid for by eliminating tax cuts to the middle class.  Under his plan, earners of $1 million or more get tax breaks – an average tax cut of $175,000.  These tax cuts are paid for by effectively increasing tax on 95% of earners by 1.2%, or about $500 a year.  This should work, of course, because the average American simply makes too much.  In all, the shift in tax burden is to the tune of $86 billion from people earning $200,000 or more, to people making less than that.  How his team came up with this plan without knowing the burden they are placing on the middle and poor class is impossible.

Romney is implementing the time tested strategy of trickle-down economics.  I HATE trickle-down economics.  Not only do I believe it doesn’t work, at all, but I also believe it has contributed to the extreme income inequality we have today.  Trickle-Down Economics, or ass-backwards stupid talk as I like to call it, has been around for awhile, but really took off under Reagan and his whole Reaganomics thingy.  Now, here’s the thing about Reaganomics and why people thought the trickle-down theory worked.  We had a period of prosperity under Reagan, but we also significantly increased government discretionary spending.  There is another instance of economic prosperity associated with an increase in discretionary spending – and that was when we came out of the Great Depression.  Another problem I have with trickle-down economics is that it tries to manipulate the supply side of economics to create jobs.  The theory is that we give corporations and high earners tax breaks.  The wealthy will now use this extra income to invest in companies, and the companies will use the combination of investments, increased income after taxes and looser regulations to increase production.  The only problem is you actually need demand in order to justify production.  No company produces as much of a product simply because they have the means.  Trickle-down economics may have worked for a few years, when the middle class, lower class and upper class weren’t too far apart, and the consumers were able to buy luxury and commodity goods.  TDE (I’ve decided to shorten trickle-down economics to TDE) destroyed itself by giving the wealthy more money, increasing the middle class and lower class, reducing the upper class, increasing income inequality and eventually disabling the consumers’ ability to purchase goods.  Now we want to continue TDE – we will give more money to the wealthy to invest, but they don’t want to invest in a company that can’t grow.  Companies will be given more money to create jobs and grow, but they can’t because there isn’t sufficient consumer demand.  So what happens if the wealthy and large corporations are given more money but don’t use it to create jobs?  That money certainly doesn’t go back to the general population.

All of this jargon comes down to the fact that the wealthy just don’t want to pay more taxes.  I’ve researched the tax rates for the last 100 years – my conclusion is if a wealthy person travelled from 1945 and heard a wealthy person today whine about his tax rate going from 35% to 39.6%, he would open hand slap him across the face and ask him what his privileged ass was complaining about.  The average tax rate for the top income tax bracket in the last 100 years is 59%.  We had our highest tax rate on the wealthy appear in 1945 – 94%.  The average tax rate between 1945 and 1965 was 88%.  I remember watching an episode of the twilight zone where a couple finds a magic lamp and is granted 4 wishes.  One of their wishes is for $1 million, which they started to give away to their friends.  Then an agent from the IRS walked into their store and told them they owed income tax on that $1 million to the tune of about $920,000.  I was like “what, no way, that’s way too much, our tax rate is only 35%”.  The discovery I made is we pay the lowest taxes we have ever had in the better part of 80 years.  With the exception of five years under Reagan and Bush Sr., the last time the wealthy had tax rates lower than they do now was back in 1931, coincidently just before the stock market crash.  This goes the same for corporate taxes too.  We had a period of economic prosperity from 1961 to 1968, in which corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy were at their highest (average of 50% corporate and 79% top tax bracket), payroll tax was at its lowest and income tax for the lowest bracket was fairly modest at an average of 17% over that time frame.  How was it that we had high taxes on the wealthy and corporations, low taxes on the consumers, yet still managed a period of economic prosperity, in which our GDP grew at an average rate of 7.7%?  According to TDE, this is impossible, or at least not the way to do things at all.

I am not suggesting we raise taxes on the wealthy to astronomical rates again, or on corporations.  We have been reducing tax rates on the wealthy, while increasing the amount of national income the wealthy controls over the last 30 years.  This has eventually led to extreme budget deficits – the government has mandatory spending, which is money they must spend by law, and then there’s discretionary spending, which neither democrat or republican wants to reduce.  Since we have significantly reduced the tax liability of the wealthy, which happens to control most of the nation’s income, the government has less money to spend, yet needs to maintain a level of spending, which is why we sell debt to China and other countries, and create a deficit in the trillions.  Why do democrats want to “spend our way out of debt”?  Because increasing discretionary spending in the past worked, but it worked because we still had a larger amount of tax income from the wealthiest individuals, and the middle class had more money as well.

In closing, the main argument I hear from the rich is that they shouldn’t have to pay more because they work harder and were more successful.  What they don’t realize is that people aren’t successful because they don’t try; they aren’t successful because they don’t have the chance. Taxes MUST be raised on the wealthy because they own more and more of the nation’s income each year.  It’s time for them to take responsibility for the power they have over the middle and lower class, and to take a cue from history.

TL;DR

Wealthy people need to stop whining about paying more in taxes.  They have more of the national income than ever before, and they have the lowest tax rate in the last 80 years.  Also, trickle-down economics is stupid and doesn't work.

Other Sources on tax rates and GDP:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts

http://www.measuringworth.com/usgdp/

Super PAC Squad!

I read an article about GOP Political Action Committees, or PACs, spending over $1 billion to influence the upcoming election.  This is ridiculous, I thought, so I started looking into PACs and found a fine website called OpenSecrets.org that had some pretty interesting statistics.

Of the 218 PACs that have raised money, 97 support Republicans where only 59 support Democrats.   The rest are independent.  Of the 25 PACs that have raised over $1 million, 12 are conservative and 9 are liberal.  Of the 4 PACs that have raised over $10 million, 4 are conservative to 1 liberal.  In total, conservative PACs have raised over $161 million to the liberal PACs meager $45 million.  Of the money raised, conservative PACs have already spent over $97 million compared to $12 million spent from liberal PACs.

Among the largest donors to PACs is Harold Simmons, who donated over $11 million, most of it to American Crossroads, a conservative PAC.  He lives in Texas and is worth over $9 billion.  He buys and sells companies.  Sheldon and Miriam Adelson donated $20 million to Winning Our Future, another conservative PAC.  Their net wealth is over $21 billion which comes from casinos and resorts.  Only one of the 11 people listed are considered liberal – Jeffrey Katzenberg.  Jeff contributed $2 million to Priorities USA Action and is worth around $1 billion.  He is CEO of DreamWorks and former Chairman of Disney Films.

The following will outline what industries is spending money to influence the election of a certain political party.  I would assume they do this because that particular candidate has policies that benefit them – mostly or entirely monetarily. 

-Electrical Utility companies seem to favor Democrats, as do Miscellaneous energy companies (no doubt renewable energies for the most part) and environmental companies.  Most contributions go to Republicans, though, with mining (coal) and oil & gas being the largest donors.  73% of all oil and gas contributions went to conservative PACs.

-Unsurprisingly, Commercial banks gave more money to conservative PACs

-Intriguing – the healthcare industry contributes more money to liberal PACs.

-Human Rights, Environmental, Pro-Israel and Women’s Issues organizations give most of their money to liberal PACs.  Gun Rights organizations give 74% of their money to conservative PACs.  Gun Control organizations, however, give 100% of their donations to liberal PACs (only $6,600… but still!)

-Labor unions favor Democrats – 93% of donations from the Labor sector went to liberal PACs.

-The Education sector gives primarily to liberal PACs, as do Non-Profit organizations.

What to learn from all of this?  Most billionaires spend money to get a Republican elected as president.  The highest earning companies in the US – oil companies – spend a lot of money to get a Republican in office.  Big business and billionaires want Republicans whereas social sectors of our country want Democrats.  I guess this is nothing new, but people should be aware of who they support, and who else is supporting the same candidate.

An Atheist, a Theist and a Deist Walk Into a Bar...

I may be ostracized by this, by anyone who is religious that happens to read my rantings, but I feel the need to defend Atheists.  There has been an argument by many a theist that Atheists are preaching untruths, that life as we know it was spontaneously created without spiritual meaning; that the life we live is not simply a test, rather merely an existence.  Life exists because it must, if you will.  The theist, of course, challenges that there must be a deity responsible for existence, that life is too intricately built to have happened by accident; everything is intelligently designed by a creator.

I just realized something.  If I outline my understanding of the basic beliefs of the theist, and the atheist, it would look like this:

The Atheist: Life exists simply because it must, and was created from nothing in a random event.  The world as we know it is the result of billions of years of evolution and adaptation.  Science and logic is the foundation of this ideology.

The Theist: Life exists as the result of a creator.  There is a larger purpose for our life that is defined by the maker’s will.  Our life on Earth is devoted to praising the creator for all he has given us.  Religious faith is the foundation of this ideology.

That sounds innocent enough, right?  I mean, sure they believe in two completely different reasons why we are here.  So why has the conflict become so tense between the theist and the atheist?  I believe the problem lies on both sides of the fence.

In my more immature, cynical thoughts, I have corralled both the theist and the atheist into a realm of ridiculousness.  The theist, I had thought, was afraid of change, afraid of the fact that if there was no creator then we were responsible for our own existence, and that there is no purpose to our life.  Morals are outlined by the creator to ensure the world exists as he wants it to exist.  The atheist, I might have once believed, were mostly a group of bitter ex girlfriends and boyfriends, or battered souls from a more traumatizing experience that left them re-examining their beliefs and eventually disowning the god they once trusted.  I am reminded of an internet quote fortified by a picture of Earth and the Galaxy, a MEME if you will, about the two:

Atheists believe this all happened by chance.  Christians KNOW a wizard did it.

The MEME (is that supposed to be in all caps? I don’t know) singles out Christians, but it really applies to any theist.  Yes I admit these thoughts of mine were a tad bit ignorant.  I think most thoughts are created with a little bit of ignorance, which is why I study, and ponder on these thoughts until I can come to a logical and fair understanding.

So, why can’t theists and atheists live in peace with each other?  I believe that the theist think that atheism attacks their religion whereas the atheist think the theist forces religion on the unwilling.  Both are true, but not entirely… make sense?  There are some theists that believe the atheist is a threat to the continuity of their religion.  There are some atheists that believe religion is a threat to the continuity of society.

I defend atheists because their intent is not the destruction of religion, rather the acceptability of a world without religion.  They are simply providing and alternative lifestyle to those that feel they do not need religion to be moral citizens.  Furthermore, they are advocates of a society with the freedom of religion, as well as a freedom from religion.  Our society is one such system where we are protected from religious governance.  The atheist goal, I believe, is to provide an option for those that wish to have faith without religion, and accept science and logic as a means to existence as an alternative.

What theists believe atheist are, is in fact, the antitheist.  The antitheist is one who strictly believes one or all religions are wrong, and should not exist in society.  It may be said that most religions have an antitheist nature towards other religions.  It almost seems that religion could work better if each one of them didn’t require an army to amass in some sort of afterlife super battle between good and evil – this way no one religion would feel the need to recruit the non believers and sculpt a world in their Gods image.

I’m not atheist, nor am I a theist (weird how one space separates the two).  Yet I have faith in the supernatural and am open to the possibility that there may be a deity that created us all.  Faith is accepting a miracle that we do not yet understand, science is the ability to understand.  Just because we may have a good understanding that the universe was created from nothing, doesn’t mean there wasn’t something theological behind the theory.  Some dude named Einstein said this:

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Apparently some people thought he was smart.  I would change ‘religion’ to ‘faith’, though, as I do not believe religion is necessary for faith.  So it should be written:

Science without faith is lame, faith without science is blind.

Simply living within a world with such mystery and miracles does not satisfy our thirst for knowledge as an advanced race with the ability of reason.  I remember reading this somewhere, and wholeheartedly agree with it:

Living in a world without understanding its mysteries is like spending your whole life in a library without opening a book.

I do not believe that the common perception of god is correct.  That god is omnipotent and omniscient.  I believe that if there is a god, then this God makes mistakes.  Applying this theory to most perceptions of god is simple: god is omniscient, yet mankind is made in the image of god.  Mankind is fallible, therefore god is fallible.  God is therefore not omniscient.  The smartest man (or woman) in the world could be omniscient in the eyes of everyone else, because he (or she!) knows more than anyone else in existence.  This does not prove that he (or she) does not make mistakes.

To me real intelligent design is a progression of elaborate events, or miracles that we may not understand.  If you believe in a god that created an organism with the ability to evolve and adapt to the random changes in an environment, that seems more miraculous than creating a species without the ability to do so – even if that was not the natural intent of said god.  At any rate, I believe in these things but I don’t base my life around it more than I do logic, reason and morality.  Truth is I could care less what or where it is we came from.

Frack!

There’s an old public enemy committing a new public crime.  With the recent earthquake in the Midwest, more and more people are hearing a new term: Fracking.  Well, it’s new to them, anyway.  The process of “Fracking”, or Hydraulic Fracturing, was first used to harvest and sell natural gas in 1949.  I wasn’t really surprised to see that Halliburton was the first company to extract and sell natural gas using this method.  What I was surprised, or at least slightly more surprised, to read is that Halliburton is behind a dangerous loophole that was formed from sketchy legislation in the last decade that allows some of the most dangerous chemicals to be used in the process.

Fracking is the slang term used for fracturing shale to release natural gas.  Oil companies drill into the earth and pump millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals to create enough pressure to blast apart shale.  Natural gas is released in this processed and collected by the oil company.  Inevitably, some of the chemicals cannot be contained and work their way into the ground water.  The recent earthquake in northern Ohio is suspected to be the result of Fracking, in which the hydraulic pressure triggered the movement of tectonic plates.  This may be the first time a natural disaster was caused by humans!

It seems a little off that oil companies are allowed to pump all of those chemicals straight into the ground.  Well, I suppose if they can do it legally there isn’t any harm that can come from it, right?  The EPA should have a pretty strong chokehold on oil companies, especially in our “green movement”.  It turns out, and this may be shocking to some, that Former President Bush, with the help of Former Vice Villain Cheney, passed an energy bill in congress that exempts natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act!  The SDWA (I’m assuming that is the short version) protects Americans from deadly natural and man-made chemicals.  I know, I never would have expected that an owner of one of the biggest oil companies, that pioneered natural gas fracking (which directly affects the quality of surrounding drinking water), would try to pass legislation that protects said companies from scrutinizing and restricting their processes by banning some of the deadly chemicals they use in those processes.

What chemicals could these be?  And are they really that toxic?  Well, yes… yes is the answer to that question.  A study was recently completed by the Committee on Energy and Commerce to acquire the type of chemicals used in Fracking directly from the oil companies, and found a disturbing list of nasty crap that may seep into the water table.  Astonishingly, the oil companies were open to providing some of the chemicals they used.  However, they were not obligated to give the names of the chemicals for anything they deemed a “trade secret”.  Some of the companies said they simply did not know what chemicals they were using, because they acquired the chemicals from a third party vendor that labeled them as trade secrets.  So some of these oil companies don’t even know what they are pumping into the ground.  IT doesn't matter though - they could legally pump whatever they want as long as it is for natural gas drilling, thanks to Bush and Cheney.  The committee found that there are as many as 750 different types of chemicals used in the process.  Of the 750 chemicals, 29 are known carcinogens.  These are the type of chemicals that cause cancer, abnormal growths, and other deadly diseases.  Some of these carcinogens are Benzene, Lead, Diesel, Formaldehyde and Sulfuric Acid.  A large product of the Fracking process is Methane as well, and there have been some reports of flammable drinking water due to a build-up of methane in the water table near some of these Fracking wells.

So, once again, big oil has ignorantly placed the lives of the consumers in jeopardy in order to maximize profit.  If natural gas drilling were susceptible to the same rules as harvesting any other energy, or any other process that directly or indirectly affects drinking water, they would not be able to use any carcinogenic or any other potentially lethal chemical in their process.  They would be forced to find another method of extraction, which is undoubtedly possible.  Instead, they relish in the loopholes of the system, knowing (or even worse in some cases not knowing) what chemicals they are pumping into the drinking water.  Largely unethical, extremely dangerous yet disturbingly tolerated.  The question is how long will it take before we acknowledge that the risks are just too, well, risky and hold natural gas drilling to the same standards of all other drilling.  Probably quite a while, unfortunately.  It’s like big oil has some sort of advantage over us.  As if we actually need natural gas to continue functioning as a society.  They could really take advantage of that situation is they ever became aware of it!  Anyway, you can read more about it here:

http://8020vision.com/2011/04/17/congress-releases-report-on-toxic-chemicals-used-in-fracking/

TL;DR  Big oil is a fracking mess.  They fracking take advantage of every unethical loophole and constantly fracking extort the consumer at every fracking turn.  Now they are fracking fracking so they can maximize profits, and in return they are spilling fracking carcinogens directly into the drinking water.  And guess what?  Everyone fracking knows it!  What the frack!