The Supreme Court Gets it Wrong.

In no particular order:

Dred Scott was born a slave in Virginia before 1800.  He was sold several times, and in 1838, he and his wife were sent from a free territory in what is now Minnesota to Louisiana, a slave state.  They traveled on their own and were on a Mississippi River boat in what was then the Free State of Iowa, when a daughter was born.  By law, the daughter was therefore free.  Scott sued to free the whole family and was denied.  They were sold again to a New York (a free state) owner and Scott sued again. The case rose to the supreme court, which nonsensically decided in 1857 that Scott was not really a citizen, that the 5th amendment banned property from being taken without due process and several other dubious rulings, and overturned the Missouri Compromise, effectively allowing slavery in all states.  President Buchanan had illegally persuaded at least one northern justice to vote with the southerners.  The ruling was eventually overturned, (not the least by the 13th amendment), but not before it had become a major provocation for the Civil War.

Bush v Gore.  The popular vote in the election of 2000 was won fairly convincingly by Gore, but the vote in the electoral college was close.  In Florida, the count was extremely close: at the completion of the first count, Bush had a 537 vote lead of almost 6 million cast.  There was an enormous amount of election fraud and corruption committed by Republicans: the Secretary of State, responsible for the count, was Bush's campaign manager for the state.  The governor was his brother, tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters had been suppressed by caging, 50,000 mostly black voters were purged on the grounds that they were felons when they were not, a republican operative had switched parties to participate in the committee to design the infamous "butterfly" ballot, leading at least 3000 people to vote for third party candidate Buchanan who meant to vote for Gore, and hundreds more voted for both, invalidating their ballot. Republican operatives screaming in the ear of pollworkers trying to do a recount.  The state supreme court tried to support a recount but the US supreme court blocked it, going back and forth several times until it was finally too late and no recount could be completed in time.  The president that the court selected proceeded to nominate two even worse justices to the court, abandon the antiterrorism work started by his predecessor and rejected warnings by the CIA of what would be the worst terrorist (or military) attack in US history, start an unprovoked war, and wrecked the economy.

Jones v Clinton  Paula Jones claimed that Bill Clinton had sexually harassed her while he was governor of Arkansas. The court ruled that Clinton, while he was serving as president, could be required to testify in a civil suit against him, even though the constitution exempts him from legal action while he is serving, claiming that it shouldn't particularly interfere with his ability to serve his duty as president.  In fact, although he was cleared of any wrongdoing in the Jones case, he spent most of the next two years dealing with the consequences of this testimony, including impeachment.

DC v Heller.  The District of Columbia had long required that all firearms be licensed and be stored unloaded.  In 2008, the court took the extraordinary position that the bit about militias in the second amendment is irrelevant to the the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, despite extensive writings by the founders that the militias are the whole point of it.  Only the requirement that guns be stored unloaded or disassembled was overturned; it didn't really affect DCs right to regulate, but now that the precedent that the comma in the second amendment should be taken as a period has been established, we can be sure another bad decision will follow.

Citizens United vs FEC.  Citizens United made an attack movie against Hilary Clinton, which they advertized on TV during the 2008 election cycle, showing many of their criticisms of the candidate in the ads.  Because CU's funding is secret (it apparently comes from the Koch brothers), FEC ruled that this was a violation of the Tillman Law of 1907 blocking corporate donations to candidates.  The court decided, against more than a century of explicit law and overwhelming precedent and evidence, that corporate political advertising is protected free speech, effectively overturning Tillman.

Buckley v Valeo.   In 1974, congress passed a law putting various specific limits on political contributions.  The court struck down a number of those limitations, for the first time equating money and free speech and opening the door to subsequent even more consequential rulings, such as Citizens United and McCutcheon v FEC, which ruled that aggregate limits to campaign contributions are illegal.

Look, the employees and owners of a corporation are actual people, and under Tillman, have a right to donate to political causes.  But corporations are not.  They have no morality or sense of fairness, they have very narrow short term goals, and they often have lots of money.  In a century or so, when the history of the American collapse into corruption is written, this group of decisions will be recognized to have been a big part of why.

Plessy v Ferguson.  By a 7-1 majority, the court of 1896 upheld states laws requiring racial segregation in such contexts as streetcars, schools, drinking fountains, etc., defining a doctrine which came to be called "Separate but equal", and cementing another half century of segregation and discrimination.  The nonwhite services were invariably not equal, until this decision was overturned by Brown v Board of Education in 1954.

Shelby Co v Holder.  One of the outgrowths of the Brown v Board of Education decision was the Voting Rights Act, which was passed by overwhelming majorities in congress in 1965 and repeatedly renewed by similar majorities.  Certain regions had a history of laws blocking minorities from voting, and in those regions, explicitly listed in the act, the justice department had to review all laws affecting voting.  Shelby County, Alabama, wanted to install new, but more subtle and not racially explicit versions of the racially discriminatory policies of old, but they were blocked by the VRA.   So Shelby sued. The court upheld most of VRA, except struck down the classification of states and regions, saying the 40 year old classifications had no logical relationship to the present day facts.  Which plainly ignored the fact that Shelby was trying to do exactly what the law had originally been intended to block.  The court pointed out that congress could make adjustments to the classifications and restore the law Within hours of the ruling, several states had passed into law voting restrictions which had been previously been blocked by VRA.

Marquette Nat. Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp.    First of Omaha wanted to sell credit cards to customers in Minnesota, and Nebraska had a higher maximum interest rate  (16%) than Minnesota (8%), which meant that FoO could profitably reach customers that banks in Minnesota could not.  The Supreme Court, in 1978, unanimously agreed with FoO; that lenders should be allowed to charge whatever interest rate pertains in their home state.  Remarkably quickly, many banks had moved their legal home state to South Carolina,  Nevada and a few others, which have NO legal maximum interest rate on loans and the local banks offering low interest largely evaporated.  Not long after, the payday loan industry was created, all chartered in the same places despite doing business all over the country.   300% interest is commonplace and rates in excess of 1000% have been observed.

McCarran-Ferguson Act.  In a case that went before the court in 1944, Southeast Underwriters Association was found  to be a monopoly, using boycotts, intimidation, and other coercive tactics to maintain its 90% market share in the region, despite gouging and other non-competitive behavior, in clear violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  The insurance company had questioned whether the Federal Government's jurisdiction applied over a regional insurance company.  The court correctly said yes.  Congress, led by two of the most corrupt senators in history, almost immediately passed a law that specifically exempted the insurance business from most anti-trust regulation on the bizarre grounds that it's somehow not interstate commerce, but allowing states to regulate on their own.  Many did, but the monopoly power of the insurers generally exceeded the enforcement power of the states.   For example, in 1999 Washington State tried to block insurers from cancelling healthcare policies due to pre existing conditions, but was forced to back down by a boycott.   The McCarran-Ferguson act and the unregulated trusts it allowed are directly responsible for much of the high price and poor behavior of insurance in the US.

Korematsu.  Two and a half months after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, ordering Japanese Americans into internment camps, regardless of citizenship. Fred Korematsu, a 23 year old welder born in Oakland, CA, refused to obey, claiming the order was unconstitutional.  Two years later, his challenge made it to the supreme court which decided against him, though admitting that the internments were "constitutionally suspect" but justified by the war.  This decision is technically still valid although most legal scholars recognize that it was an error.

addenda: 27 Jun 2018
Trump v Hawaii  During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly railed incoherently about Muslims and promised to ban them from entering the country, irrespective of reason, security status, etc.  A week after he was inaugurated, he signed an executive order implementing this.  It was immediately challenged in court and blocked by every real court that looked into it.  Several adjustments to the order later, the Roberts court allowed the ban to take place, arguing illogically that despite repeated insistence by Trump that it is a Muslim travel ban, that it wasn't.

Janus v AFSCME  For decades, once a shop has voted to unionize, all workers are required to pay union dues, whether they support the union or not.  The rationale is that all workers are benefiting from the work the union does, and might be called upon to do, much as you are required to have auto insurance in case you get into an accident.   The court has now ruled, explicitly contradicting an earlier ruling, that government workers don't have to pay their dues if they don't want to. Several states already have laws doing this for private industry, cynically called "Right to Work" laws.

addenda: 25 Jun 2022

Dobbs v Jackson.  The state of Mississippi made a law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks, a restriction deemed too narrow under the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling, which had been repeatedly upheld despite numerous challenges.  In 2022, the court ruled, in a vast overreach of the needs of the case and in at least 4 cases, the explicit assurances in their confirmation hearings that Stare Decisis prevented it, that Roe vs Wade was, in fact, unconstitutional.

references:
http://www.newsreview.com/reno/top-10-worst-supreme-court/content?oid=5378990
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2036448,00.html

The Most Harmful Philosopher

I've read the works of quite a few philosophers and people who think of themselves as philosophers.  All, I think, mean well,  but quite a few had ideas which can be taken to justify people doing really harmful things, often flatly contradicting the intent of the philosopher themselves.

Socrates, Aristotle, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Kant and the other ontological philosophers really don't rate as harmful.  Socrates objection to elective democracy has been borne out by the corruption of the western countries in the last few decades.  His suggested improvement was benevolent dictators. A few dictators have been benevolent but mostly not.  Many of the others wrote about politics too, but their ideas have been predominantly used for good, with a few exceptions.

Locke and his heirs are responsible for the ideology that led to the American political system that worked so well for two centuries.

Descartes, Berkeley, Hegel, Sartre and the other epistemological philosophers are even less harmful.  They're interested in how we understand things.  Their direct effect on the world is pretty minor, although the consequences on how we think about things can be profound.  Newton, for example, figured out what we call the Scientific Method, which is an approach to proof and elimination of confirmation bias.  Heidegger was a big booster of the Nazis, but his own philosophical ideas were irrelevant to their project.

Finally we come to the political and religious philosophers.  There are surprisingly few important ones.   The Abrahamic arc includes Moses, Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Mohammed, etc.  The modern political arc starts with Locke and includes many of his disciples, such as Jefferson, as well as other thinkers, such as Nietzsche.  The economic arc includes Smith, Marx, Keynes, Hayek, Rand.

Moses and Jesus were very much men of their time, recognizing what was wrong and advocating ways to improve it.  Both stood against religious institutions being exploited for profit, and were wholly well intentioned and it's hard to find positions in their thought which were directly used for evil.  But their subsequent disciples incorporate some bad thinking...Paul's silliness with the afterlife, and Augustine's with universal conformity--by force if necessary--led to many of the worst atrocities of all time.  The inquisition, the crusades, and much more, including the Nazi horror to some extent, stem directly from Augustine.

Locke, I think, was wholly well intentioned and most of his disciples were too.  American political theory almost entirely stems from his thought, and while there has been lots of corruption, I think it is the opposite of stemming from his or his disciples thought.

Nietzsche is interesting.  Like Socrates, he's an elitist.  Like Socrates, he's deeply interested in the welfare of society, even to the cost of some of its members, including eugenics and a number of other controversial ideas.  Hitler used the germ of his thinking to rationalize his eugenic programs, but he didn't really understand Nietzsche, and Hitler's elites were what Nietzsche would have regarded as lowbrow thugs. An imaginary version of Nietzsche played a role in the Nazi origin fantasy, no more real than Siegfried or the Valkyries or other heroic Germanic fantasies.

Smith and Keynes were scientists, and with Marx and Newton, the only ones on this list.  They figured out how a lot of the economy works and came up with the beginnings of a system to make it work better. Smith was opposed to laissez faire--he understood that a too-free market will promptly be corrupted.  Something similar is the case with Marx: he was primarily a sociologist but he came to a new understanding of the social dynamics of the forces at work in the economy.  One of his lesser ideas has been taken to be the mainstream of his thought and many societies have purportedly been based on it.  It's not really fair to tar Marx with the harm that the ideology derived from this has caused, but Augustine didn't mean ill either.

Friedrich von Hayek was considered an economist by a lot of people, including many bankers and political conservatives.  He was a pretty bad one though...in the face of lots of empirical data, his theories have pretty much flunked.  He wrote an influential book called "The Road to Serfdom" which suggests that political liberalism will lead inevitably to government control of everything and ultimately the enserfment of almost everybody, and that the unregulated free market is the only solution.  As Smith pointed out, the unregulated free market leads only to corruption and monopoly--a much more direct path to serfdom than via liberalism. 

Hayek's contemporary Ayn Rand wrote a series of fantasy novels which have been taken as economic gospel by an amazing number of people, especially on the far right.  Their appeal is mainly to teenagers, desperate to break from parental and societal control. Alan Greenspan was a particularly devoted admirer and through dishonesty, corruption and a great deal of schmoozing, was one of the major causes of the economic crisis of 2008.  Rand's world has no particular bearing on reality and the characters are totally unrealistic.  In particular, in her world, Gresham's Law does not hold and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis does--the opposite of reality.

My ranking:

Nietzsche's ideas were a tiny part of the Fascist horror that killed tens of millions--but being incredibly generous I can only give him 5% credit or so, so he ranks in a distant 4th place.

Ayn Rand and Hayek have killed tens of millions so far and have ruined the lives of hundreds of millions and will kill lots more before they are done.   I give them a solid third place with a real chance to move up.   It's important to recognize that their followers are applying their ideas as they were intended, which is wholly different than what's going on with Nietzsche and Marx.

Marx was only a small part of the communist ideology that's killed about 100 million, and more appropriately applied in Sweden and Cuba and other places, those same ideas have saved millions.  But places like North Korea, and Cuba to a lesser extent are still misapplying his ideas and will kill plenty more before they are through.

St Augustine's ideas have been behind over half of the religious wars that have occurred since his lifetime, 1600 years ago.  He's in effect killed hundreds of millions, in the hands people following a fairly literal version of his ideology.  Lots of others--Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist fanatics, have behaved in ways that fit his ideas.  The Augustinian Heresy: that you must believe as some authority demands or die, is easily the most harmful idea. Augustine himself would have been horrified, and I'm sure would have reversed course had he comprehended.

The Economic Spectrum

The traditional "left" vs "right" distinction came up during the French Revolution, when supporters of the King sat on the right in the National Assembly, and supporters of the revolution to the left.  This distinction has persisted in many parliaments and legislatures throughout the world, including our own.

Trying to put an individuals political leanings onto a simple one dimensional spectrum is doomed to fail.  How we select and replace leaders and representatives (the issue that the French National Assembly was concerned with) is completely different than how we run our economy.
  
I'll define the economic spectrum as half a circle.  I'll define "everybody is totally equal" communism to be at -90 degrees, and "no rules at all" laissez faire at +90.   There really haven't been such societies.  A few communes have come close, probably -80 or so...but every such society has had leaders.  There have been lots of societies that pass through +90, but it can't last more than a few days before someone with weapons and supporters takes over.  The dark ages hummed along at +45 or so--a new bandit or tyrant rising every few months to make everybody miserable. Somalia was probably about +75 in its darkest, most anarchistic days.    Soviet and Chinese communism in their heyday, I'll put at about -30, Korean maybe -60.  European Socialism, with democratically elected leaders, people working for wages appropriate to skill and demand, but a lot of redistribution, at about -10.  

America is the farthest right successful country in the world.  Lots of countries have been farther right, but they are disasters--as will America be if we continue on our present rightward tack.  Chile under Pinochet, Greece under the generals, and so forth.  Here are where a few famous Americans are, I think:  Obama, Clinton, Nixon, GHWB, Eisenhower are all at about +10. Reagan about +15, GWB claimed to be about +10 when he was running for office, but actually governed at +25--very much to our cost. The Kochs and other John Birchers are at about +50, and America will be over if they get more power than they already have. Bernie Sanders about -5. Noam Chomsky is at about -15, Angela Davis -30.

If you ask Americans to rate themselves on this scale, the Gaussian peak is probably about +15 with a standard deviation of about 5. However, if you ask people questions about specific issues--minimum wage, union rights, clean air, health insurance, etc., they'll come out pretty close to 0, again with a fairly narrow SD. This difference showed itself in the recent election in a number of places where they voted in higher minimum wage, marijuana legalization, gay rights and other "liberal" things, yet sent someone to congress who is dead set against all of those those.
 
Obama and Clinton are the most right wing democrats to have been president since the 19th century. Only the bubble presidents: Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Reagan, GWB, are to their right.  Obama has done NOTHING to warrant the description "socialist".  The PPACA is very much a pro-business, pro-insurance, pro-free-market piece of legislation.  What came before had many of the bad aspects of monopoly, and in many cases, literally was a monopoly: price gouging, trapped consumers, poor service.

I'm pretty sure that no economic system that's more than about 15 away from zero on my chart can be stable without a pretty ruthless dictatorship. Friedman/Pinochet's Chile tried to be at about +30 and it didn't work.  China between 1949 and 1972 was at about -30 with the same effect.

Usury

Strictly, Usury is a general term for a lender taking unethical advantage of borrowers.  Nearly always, this takes the form of exorbitant interest rates although technically there are other abuses.  The bible speaks against it and Nicea banned clergy from collecting interest on loans, and from the 12th century, required that all Christians practicing usury be excommunicated.  (this was often interpreted to mean collecting any interest at all, effectively banning Christians from the banking industry--opening the door for Jews). 

Most states have limits on the interest a lender may charge a borrower.  These rates vary.  Minnesota had a very low rate: 8%, while most other states had higher limits.  First of Omaha, which was able to run a nice credit card business in Nebraska, where the limit was 16%, tried to expand into Minnesota, but discovered that there wasn't much profit to be made when they were limited to 8% interest.  So they sued and in 1978 the Supreme Court decided that a bank could charge up to whatever the limit in their home state allowed, irrespective of where the loan was being made.  Within a few days, a great many banks had legally incorporated in states with higher limits and several states, attempting to corner the market on this new business, including South Carolina and Nevada, did away with the limit entirely.

Prior to this misguided supreme court decision, very few people had a credit card and the vast majority of legal loans were business and mortgage loans.  But afterwards they sprang up like weeds, and the brand new predatory lending industry came into being.   Today, the average household credit card debt is about $7K and the average individual with credit card debt has $11K of it.   A high fraction of this is interest on unpaid interest.

Predatory lending serves no public need whatsoever and creates a lot of misery and corruption.  It should be banned.  Credit cards are useful, but there needs to be a mechanism to limit abuse.  Usury limits will do both things.   Limiting interest to about 8% above inflation is enough for the lenders to make a small profit, but too low to make extremely short term loans profitable, and will force the lenders to be diligent about who they are lending to.  For most people, requiring their credit card to be paid off at the end of the month, or whenever their paycheck is issued, is the right limit.  The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already done a great deal of good, but republicans have been too successful at weakening it. 

Republicans are Outraged

The hits keep on coming.  The latest is the director of NIH saying there would be a vaccine for Ebola by now had their budget not been drastically cut in the early 2000s. 

A few more:

ATF, frustrated by the Republican controlled congress blocking every reasonable attempt to track or block firearms as they are being smuggled in huge numbers into a savage drug war in Mexico, comes up with a dubious scheme to track a few by salting the market with a few easily tracked examples.  Some of them find their way back into the US where they are used in crimes.  Republicans are outraged.

The state department, frustrated by Republican budget cuts, spreads their protective forces too thin and the embassy in Benghazi is attacked, killing the ambassador and three others, two of them from the security detail assigned to protect him.  Republicans are beyond outraged.

The IRS, frustrated by Republican budget cuts, resorts to a simplistic filter to select groups for further study when establishing tax exempt-ness.   Political groups on both the right and left were identified...nearly all were granted tax exempt status even though the law clearly says they shouldn't have been.  Republicans were outraged--not by the violation of the law, but that the IRS would even speculate whether groups that identified themselves as Tea Party or Anti-Tax might possibly be political.  Progressive groups got the same scrutiny.

Republicans trying desperately to overturn the PPACA before the voters find out that it's actually a good thing, shut down the government.  They are outraged when their own shutdown results in Air Traffic Controllers preventing them from politicking.  They are outraged when a DC park aimed at Veterans is shut down.

Veterans Administration health workers, frustrated by demand for their services tripling and costs doubling while Republicans blocked all but a tiny increase in their budget, resort to delaying or denying patient service and attempting to hide the fact they'd done it.  Republicans are outraged.

Republicans take resources from a somewhat justifiable war in Afghanistan to put them and a lot more into a disastrously counterproductive war in Iraq, which they underfund and manage very badly in the early days.  And cut taxes at the same time.  It goes very badly in Iraq.  Republicans are outraged, so they increase the budget in Iraq (and keep the tax cuts), which allows some small progress there but makes them hate us.

We pull out, on the schedule defined by the republican's president.  Republicans are outraged.

One of the groups we antagonized (with "de-Baathification" and more) finds a strategy to gain power in Iraq and behaves very ruthlessly.  They recognize that hostility towards America and Americans is a terrific recruiting strategy.  Republicans fall for it and are outraged.

CDC and NIH, frustrated by Republican budget cuts and obstruction, are behind the curve on responding to Ebola. Republicans are outraged.

There is no surgeon general to deal with the public during the Ebola and other health crises. Republicans have blocked the nominee since Nov 2013.


All of these problems are self inflicted--by their own petard, as the expression goes.  But they never seem to suffer.

Gun Control

There was a shooting very late Friday night across the street from my building.  I was on the balcony of my condo, 23 floors up on the opposite side of the building, and I heard it, but didn't see it.  There were about a dozen police about a block north, as there often are at closing time for the night clubs and bars in the area.  Surprisingly, while a few hundred people ran away from where the sounds seemed to be coming from, perhaps 50 ran towards the sounds.  Some of them were cops.  At first, the sounds seemed like a string of firecrackers--at least 4 shots going off within half a second, with several more following, but when I saw the look on the cops (from 250 feet away) I knew it was something else.  One guy was killed on the scene, gun still in hand, two others were injured and were taken to the hospital, and the cops are still looking for another shooter.  They're not saying whether the two injured people were bystanders or participants, but the two principals, the dead guy and the one that got away, had been friends.

The comments to the newspaper article are telling.  Virtually all of them point out how upcoming initiative 594, which would require background checks for all gun transfers, would not have stopped this.  Perhaps, but over time, things will be different.  Right now, we have a gun culture.  Too many people think, incorrectly, that having a gun makes them safer.  The statistics say something quite different.  As illustrated by Friday night's gunfight, the presence of a guns makes the situation much more dangerous for everybody, both those with the guns and others.  This was most likely an argument that escalated.  Had there been no guns, there might be bloody noses or even broken bones, but it's unlikely anybody would be dead.  It doesn't sound like it in this case, but it could also be that it was gang related.  Were possession of an unlicensed firearm a crime, the police could have stepped in before there was a problem.  The only people who are made safer by having a gun are those who have a job that exposes them to armed and dangerous people all the time: basically police and active duty military.  All have extensive training.  A 19 year old pub crawler does not.

The backers of I-591 not withstanding, nobody is suggesting confiscating firearms (or anything else) without due process.  Seriously, nobody, apart from those who are raising it as a strawman to be opposed.  If you think such a thing is at any risk of happening in the United States, your sanity is in question.

This is not what is in the law, but here's how I think it should work:  To buy or receive a gun as a gift, you should require a gun license.  This is functionally similar to a drivers license--you would need to pass a test, which includes a background check for mental health and criminal issues, and a demonstration of safety and handling competence.  The license itself should simply be a number--16 digits, like a credit card, should suffice--which represent an account in a universal database.  In that account are stored your safety and background check history and photographs, and the registration number of any guns you have.  When transferring a gun, the seller looks up the number on the smart phone and submits a new photograph of the buyer.  The seller can look through the old photos to verify that this really is the person, but apart from yes/no on whether the purchase can be allowed, has access to no other information, not even the name and address of the buyer.  Submitting a photo of a person other than the recipient of the gun would be a crime.  There would be no general access to the database without a specific, court-issued warrant--e.g. look up the ownership history of a gun that was used in a crime, or look up the guns owned by an individual suspect of a crime.  Broader searches, such as looking up all owners of a specific model of gun, should probably not be allowed, although there are fuzzy areas, such as if the registration number has been damaged.

There are some things that should be banned from general use: fully automatic weapons, high capacity magazines, explosive projectiles, projectiles above some caliber, etc.   All of these things should be allowed on a safe range, or to be handled by specially trained and supervised individuals, but their use off-range or unsupervised should be a crime.  A swat team member may, for example, use a fully automatic weapon, but should be supervised at all times.  An individual (including one early in their training) may use such a weapon on a safe firing range, but taking it off range would be a crime.  It should be relatively straightforward to establish a safe range.  If you have a big field with berms in appropriate places, or a big basement with thick walls, an appropriate inspector can certify that the range is suitable and you can plink or blaze away all you want.

update:
Local sources tell me that the two bystanders who were injured were not involved at all.  The person who was killed apparently had just arrived on the scene with intent to kill the other guy, but the other guy was a quicker draw, and apparently succeeded in blending with the crowd and making his getaway.  A third person has been taken into custody.

Call It Highway 9

I grew up in Cupertino, California, living there from 1962 to 1978.  My father still lives there, and my mom did until she died.

Cupertino was named for a creek, discovered by the De Anza party of 1776 and named "Arroyo de San Jose de Copertino" for the patron saint of the day it was discovered, Saint Joseph of Copertino.  The first American settler in Cupertino after it was won in the Mexican American war of 1846-8 was Elisha Stephens, who settled on the banks of the same creek.  Not realizing it already had a name, other settlers named it for him. It's not known how Stephens became Stevens, but it did.  The Spanish mission in Santa Clara had a tiny chapel on the creek, which as population grew became inadequate, and a new church, again named for Joseph of Copertino, was built a little over a mile away, near the intersection of what was then called Mountain View-Saratoga road and Stevens Creek Road.  Both were dirt.  Not long later, a small general store was built right at the intersection and named "The Cupertino Store".  The picture below was taken while they were paving Mt View-Saratoga for the very first time in 1915.  You can see the rails of the electric trolley that ran on Stevens Creek Road between 1907 and 1934.  The camera here is looking due north.  The house I grew up in is about half a mile northeast of this scene--and was built 46 years later...  Saint Josephs church is invisible behind the haze from the steam roller.

Some time in the first half of the 20th century, the Mt View-Saratoga road became part of the state highway system and was called Highway 9. It no longer ran all the way to Mountain View, but stopped in Sunnyvale.  But it was expanded up over the Santa Cruz mountains past Saratoga, through Saratoga gap, Boulder Creek, Felton and eventually to Santa Cruz.

When I moved to Cupertino in 1962, everybody called it "Highway 9".  We knew it was also called "Saratoga Sunnyvale Road" but nobody called it that. There was a Highway 9 Auto Parts about half a mile north of this scene on the west side of the road (Apple Computer's current headquarters is across the street from that site).  There were several other businesses with Highway 9 in their name.

In the mid '60s, a new freeway opened, called I-280.  Initially, it connected Highway 9 and State highway 17.  But it soon was expanded, going a little west, and then swinging north to connect to connect to US 101 in Mountain View.  The northern swing was called Highway 85.  It was planned for 85 to eventually connect to Los Gatos and eventually Blossom Hill, but that didn't happen until the 1980s (280 was connected to SF in 1972).   But for some reason they decided that they needed to rename the Saratoga Sunnyvale road Highway 85.  Highway 9 over the mountains continued to be called that, but once it got into Saratoga, it took a sharp right and went instead to Los Gatos.

So from about 1970 to 1985, there were two highway 85s in Cupertino: the short bit of the freeway that had been built, and the Saratoga to Cupertino part of what had been Highway 9.  The part from Cupertino to Sunnyvale was called the Sunnyvale-Saratoga road.  Once 85 was finished, the Saratoga end was called the Saratoga Sunnyvale road, and 85 was moved to the freeway.   Cupertino, in the middle, was torn, not wanting to offend their neighbors, and really, being unhappy calling it anything but Highway 9.  They hemmed and hawed for a long time, before settling on De Anza Blvd. 

I say, screw the state highway system.  Call it Highway 9.  The other road was the Saratoga Los Gatos road before, and it still is labeled that on most maps.  There's no good reason not to go back.  Anybody who lived in Cupertino prior to 1980 calls it Highway 9 anyway, and a lot of people who came later do too.

Musicians and Smack

Disturbingly many great musicians have died or been destroyed by drugs, especially Heroin.   Here's a list of some of them, in no particular order

Jerry Garcia  1Aug1942-9Aug1995 (53)  Garcia had been addicted to Heroin for many years, had kicked it, fallen back in and was trying to kick it again when he died of a heart attack.
Charlie Parker 29Aug1920-12Mar1955 (34).  The founding pillar of BeeBop was a Heroin addict.  The coroner said he appeared to be in his 50s.
John Coltrane 23Sep1926-17Jul1967 (40)  Arguably the greatest and most original saxophone player ever, died of hepatitis, thought to have been a complication of his Heroin addiction
Chet Baker 23Dec1929-13May1988 (58) The great Jazz trumpeter struggled with addiction most of his career. He apparently fell out of his hotel window while on Heroin.
Janis Joplin 19Jan1943-4Oct1970 (27) Heroin Overdose
Mike Bloomfield 28Jul1943-15Feb1981 (37) Heroin Overdose
Tim Buckley 14Feb1947-29Jun1975 (28) Heroin Overdose
Brian Jones 28Feb1942-3Jul1969 (27) The Rolling Stones founder drowned in a swimming pool.  It was thought he'd passed out from an OD but authorities and family were inexplicit.
Alan Wilson 4Jul1943-3Sep1970 (27) The Canned Heat leader died of barbiturate overdose.
Kurt Cobain 20Feb1967-5Apr1994 (27) He shot himself after several failed suicide attempts with drugs.
Jimi Hendrix 27Nov1942-18Sep1970 (27) Asphyxia after ODing on sleeping pills.
John Kahn 13Jun1947-30May1946 (48) Jerry Garcia's long time friend and Bass player for most of his projects away from the Grateful Dead, died of a Heroin overdose.  Some of Garcia's friends blame Kahn for re-addicting him after he'd kicked the habit.
John Belushi 24Jan1949-5Mar1982 (33) The Blues Brother and Comedian died of a Speedball (Heroin and Cocaine) overdose
Brent Mydland 21Oct1952-26Jul1990 (37) The Grateful Dead keyboardist died of a Speedball OD.

Peter Green 29Oct1949-  Founder of Fleetwood Mac and one of the most talented and soulful of all guitarists.  He was clinically depressed and did too much LSD, and was submitted to years of shock and drug therapy.  He's still alive and can still play the guitar, but the amazing talent is gone.

Date Formats

There are quite a few formats in common use for presenting the date.  The most common in the US is

MM-DD-YY, which represents today's date as
September 23, 2014, and can be abbreviated as Sep 23, 14 or even 9/23/14

In Europe, the most common is
DD-MM-YY, which represents today's date as
23 September 2014 and be similarly abbreviated
Some people also use the "big endian" version of this
YY-MM-DD, which comes out
2014 September 23, which has a certain appeal. (This is ISO 8601)

as long as everybody is using the same format, it doesn't really matter that much which we use.  But too often, you can't tell.  After a lot of thinking about it, I've concluded that little endian euro style is the way to go.  the biggest advantage is that it requires no punctuation or even spaces to remain readable:

23Sep14 is almost as decipherable as 23 September 2014 and requires only 7 bytes to represent all possible 21st century dates.  (it takes 3 letters to disambiguate March from May and June from July.)   by adding two more to indicate the century, 23Sep2014 is completely unambiguous, self documenting, (no Y2K problem!) and can represent any date from the reign of Augustus to 31Dec9999 in 9 human readable bytes.   If for some reason I choose to write it 2014Sep23, you can still read it correctly.

If I write it Sep2314, you can still probably figure it out, but it could also be 14 Sep 2023.  If I go really crazy and write "91101", you aren't really sure it's a date at all--it could be a zip code (it happens to be Pasadena, CA).  Or it could be 1 Jan 1991, 9 Nov 2001, or 11 Sep 2001.

So, unless there's a good reason to do otherwise, I use Euro little endian when I write the date: 23 Sep 2014.

First Presidents

George Washington    First President
John Adams               First Ivy League President (he went to Harvard)
Thomas Jefferson       First President to cite Executive Privilege.
Thomas Jefferson       First President to get over 100,000 votes
James Madison           First President to ask for Declaration of War (war of 1812)
James Monroe            First President not known to have been a Deist. (he may have been.  We just don't know)
James Monroe             First President to ride on a steamboat
John Quincy Adams    First President of whom we have a photograph (although it was taken after he'd left office)
John Quincy Adams    First President who was not a "Founding Father"
John Quincy Adams    First President to have a middle name
John Quincy Adams    First to win the presidency without winning the popular vote
Andrew Jackson          First President to ride on a train.
Andrew Jackson          First President to have been openly religious.
Martin Van Buren        First President born after the Declaration of Independence was signed
Martin Van Buren        First President not of British descent.
William H Harrison      First President to die in office
William H Harrison     First President to get over 1 million votes
William H Harrison     First President to be photographed (the photo has not survived)
William H Harrison     President who served the least time (one month)
William H Harrison     Last President born a British Subject.
John Tyler                    First President to have impeachment proceedings initiated against him
John Tyler                    First President to have been made a widower while in office
John Tyler                    First President to marry while in office
James K Polk               First President of whom we have a photograph from while he was in office.
Zachary Taylor             Last President born before 1800
Zachary Taylor             Second President to die in office
Millard Fillmore           First President born after 1799
Millard Fillmore         Last president to be a member of the Whig party.
James Buchanan         First (and so far, only) President to never marry
Abraham Lincoln         First President to be murdered while in office
Abraham Lincoln         First President not born in one of the original 13 colonies.
Abraham Lincoln         First President to hold a Patent.
Andrew Johnson         First President who was neither a Lawyer or military officer
Andrew Johnson         First President to have been impeached
U.S. Grant                   First President to write a memoir.
U.S. Grant                   First President to have a mustache.
Rutherford B Hayes    First President to use a telephone while in office.
Rutherford B Hayes    First President to visit the west coast while in office.
James Garfield            First Left Handed President
Benjamin Harrison      First President to use electricity while in the White House
Benjamin Harrison      First President of whom we have an audio recording
Benjamin Harrison      Last President to have a beard
William McKinley      First President whose inauguration was filmed.
William McKinley      First President to ride in an automobile

William McKinley      Last President to have served in the Civil War
Theodore Roosevelt    First President to leave the country while in office
Theodore Roosevelt    First President to ride in a submarine under water
Theodore Roosevelt    First President to make a public appearance from an Automobile.
Theodore Roosevelt    First President to ride in an airplane (but after he was out of office)
Theodore Roosevelt    Youngest person to be President
Theodore Roosevelt    Last President to not have a middle name
William H Taft            Last President to wear facial hair.
William H Taft            First (and so far, only) President to serve on the Supreme Court
Woodrow Wilson        First (and so far, only) President with a PhD
Woodrow Wilson        First President to cross the Atlantic
Woodrow Wilson        First President after the Civil War born in a state that seceded
Warren Harding          First President born after the Civil War.
Warren Harding          First President to get more than 10 million votes
Herbert Hoover           First President born west of the Mississippi River
Herbert Hoover           First (and so far, only) president to have a successful business career before entering politics (excluding farmers and lawyers)(several others have been failed businessmen)
Herbert Hoover           First President to have a phone on his desk.
Herbert Hoover           First President to get more than 20 million votes
Franklin Roosevelt      First President to appear on TV
Franklin Roosevelt      First President to fly in an airplane while in office.
Dwight Eisenhower     First President born in Texas
Dwight Eisenhower     Last elected president to not have a full head of hair.
Dwight Eisenhower    Last President born before 1900
John F Kennedy          First President born after 1899
John F Kennedy          First non Protestant President.
John F Kennedy          First President to have served in the Navy.
Lyndon Johnson         First President to be inaugurated on an airplane.
Richard Nixon            First President born west of the Rocky Mountains
Richard Nixon            First President to leave office through means other than death or election.
Gerald Ford                First (and so far only) President to have been a college All-American in any sport.
Gerald Ford                First President to serve as president and vice president before having run for either.
Jimmy Carter              First President born after WWI
Jimmy Carter              First President born in a hospital
Ronald Reagan           First President to have been divorced.
Ronald Reagan           First (and so far, only) President to have been a union leader
Ronald Reagan           Oldest person to be President
Ronald Reagan           First President to die in the 21st century
George HW Bush       First President to have piloted a plane
George HW Bush       First President to have been in a plane crash
Bill Clinton                 First President born after WWII

Barack Obama            First President born west of the Pacific Coast

Donald Trump            First President to lose the popular vote by more than 255,000 (he lost by nearly 3 million)

Donald Trump            First President to have told more than 20,000 documented lies while in office 

Donald Trump            First (and so far, only) actively anti-american president

Donald Trump            First President to have been impeached for an actual crime. (Nixon committed actual crimes too, but resigned before he was impeached.)

Donald Trump            First President to have been divorced more than once.

Joe Biden                   Last President to have been born before the end of WWII.

14 Jan 2017 I just discovered that wikipedia has a page on this subject

Recessions by president

Here are all the recessions that occurred since 1947, plus the three main ones that occurred between the world wars, listed by the president and year they began, along with unemployment.  Before 1947, BLS didn't collect these statistics, so these are just approximations for those three.

Truman 1949: 3.9-7.9, back to 3.3 by 1951.
Eisenhower 1953: 2.5-5.9, back to 4.0 by 1955
Eisenhower 1957: 4.1 to 7.8, back to 5.2 by 1959
Eisenhower 1960: 4.1 to 7.1, back to 5.5 by 1962
Kennedy and LBJ did not have any recessions, both lowered unemployment through their terms
Nixon 1969: 3.9 to 6.1, only recovered to 4.9 by 1973.
Nixon 1973: 4.9 to 9.0, only recovered to 5.9 by 1979
Carter 1979: 5.9 to 7.8, only recovered to 7.2 by 1981
Reagan 1981: 7.2 to 10.8, back to 7.4 by 1984
Bush I 1990: 5.4 to 7.7, back to 3.9 by 2000
Clinton 2000: 3.9 to 5.8, no real recovery before 9/11
Bush II 2008: 4.4 to 10.0, back to 6.1 by 2014
Hoover 1929: 4% to 22%, began coming down very soon after FDR took office
FDR 1937: 14 to 17%.
Wilson 1920: 3.5 to 8%

My rankings for these guys is based on the number and size of the recessions that began during their administrations.  You can't blame a guy for things that began before he took office. 

Hoover is the worst, although it was mainly the policies of his two immediate predecessors that were at fault.   But he handled it as badly as he possibly could have.

Bush II is by far the worst modern--had Bush reacted as badly as Hoover had, his recession would have been as bad as the great depression.  Bush and his party deserve 99.9% of the credit for causing it, and they deserve 90% of the credit for preventing it from being cured faster.  I blame Obama for not being strong enough to take the gun away from the psychos, but the damage they are causing is the Rs fault, not O's.

Nixon is next, with a big recession and a small one.  Not entirely his fault but his price controls made it far worse than it needed to be.  (The provocation for the Arab oil embargo that caused the recession--unequivocal US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, was substantially Nixon's doing although it's difficult to find fault in him for that)

Reagan and Wilson are tied for 4th, each with a big recession.  Reagan's was caused by conscious policy choices, which his staff (and Volcker) wisely realized were ruinous and quickly reversed.  GWB and present day republicans fail to notice that part.  Wilson's was caused by the end of the war and the influenza panic.  Wilson himself was very sick at the time and was bullied by conservative advisers into doing the wrong thing.

Eisenhower is #6 with 3 small recessions

Truman, Bush I, Carter and Clinton all rank about equal, each with a medium or small recession that ended quickly.  Carter's recession is really a legacy of Nixon and OPEC.  It was really fairly small but he was politically unable to do anything about it because he was hamstrung by the Iran Hostage Crisis.  Clinton's recession was also quite small and mild (although I personally was hurt by it), but I downgrade him because he supported Phil Gramm, Alan Greenspan, and their friends when they set the time bombs that destroyed the economy in 2008.

FDR's small recession was caused by backing away from policies that had been working.   He stopped it quickly, but it was a disaster for the country, because it damaged him politically, and he was no longer able to resist the austerians who had pressed him to do it.

Kennedy/LBJ and Obama have no recessions that can be blamed on them.  Note also that ALL of the significant hikes in the deficit since the end of WWII have been during three presidents: Nixon, Reagan and Bush II.  All others have reduced the deficit or held it steady--including Johnson, who started a major new safety net program and a major wasteful war.   Since WWI, the 4(5) presidents that have been best for the economy are:  #1: FDR.  #2: Kennedy/Johnson, #3 Clinton, #4 Obama.



http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=UNRATE,U6RATE,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#mediaviewer/File:US_Unemployment_1910-1960.gif