Mischievous Ramblings II

A Day That Should Live in Infamy

Manzanar War Relocation Center, on US 395, near Lone Pine, CA.
Photo by Evan Robinson.

Seventy-five years ago today, on 19 February, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, "Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas".  Roughly 120,000 American legal residents of Japanese descent -- about 70,000 of whom were American citizens -- were moved out of coastal exclusion zones and incarcerated in concentration camps.  Around 14,000 residents (or citizens) of German and Italian descent, as well as some refugees, were also rounded up and jailed under EO9066.

Assembly centers were set up at convenient locations like racetracks (Santa Anita in Southern California, and Tanforan in the Bay Area) and soon housed thousands of internees.  By October, ten "Relocation Centers" were set up outside the coastal exclusion zones: Manzanar and Tule Lake in California; Poston and Gila River in Arizona; Granada, Colorado; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Minidoka, Idaho; Topaz, Utah; and Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas.  Manzanar was the first, opened in March 1942.  Tule Lake was the largest, housing nearly 18,800 internees.

American citizens and legal residents had everything taken away but what they could carry, were stuffed into horse stalls and temporary housing, then moved hundreds or thousands of miles away and crammed into tar paper shacks behind barbed wire perimeters with machine gun towers.

In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu that the exclusion zones were constitutional, but sidestepped the question of incarceration.  In 1983, Fred Korematsu's conviction was overturned because the US government had knowingly submitted false information to the Supreme Court (in other words, the government perjured itself) and that the information was material to the Court's decision.  Other significant decisions upholding curfews for Americans of Japanese descent were Yasui and Hirabayashi.  Both were overturned in the 1980s for the same reasons as Korematsu -- government perjury.

So far as I can tell, no Supreme Court ruling ever addressed whether or not the internment (the incarceration of tens of thousands of legal residents and citizens) was constitutional, despite the occasional news story to the contrary.  Some such stories claim that Korematsu touched on the constitutionality of the internment, but the decision included the language:

"The provisions of other orders requiring persons of Japanese ancestry to report to assembly centers and providing for the detention of such persons in assembly and relocation centers were separate, and their validity is not in issue in this proceeding."

which clearly excludes the question of the constitutionality of the internment.  Ex parte Endo further muddies the water by the ruling (on the same day as Korematsu) that there was "...no authority to subject citizens who are conceded loyal to its leave procedure."  In other words, the government had no authority to detain citizens not proven disloyal.  But they may imprison anyone for refusing to be illegally detained.

The Roosevelt administration lifted the internment orders immediately before the Korematsu and Endo rulings were announced. Public Proclamation No. 21, issued on 17 December 1944, rescinded the exclusion orders.

Legislation was signed in 1988 providing that the survivors of the internment were to be paid $20,000 in redress, and additional legislation appropriating additional funds was signed in 1992.  The internees did not get their property or belongings back, and fortunes were made by complicit white Americans who bought real property for pennies on the dollar during 1942.

And if, by chance, you think we would never do this again, let me quote from Executive Order: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, issued 25 January 2017:

Sec. 5.  Detention Facilities.  (a)  The Secretary shall take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources to immediately construct, operate, control, or establish contracts to construct, operate, or control facilities to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico.

Note that those to be detained are not "undocumented aliens" or "aliens illegally in the US", but any "aliens".

How many of you carry proof of citizenship with you at all times?

(Cross posted to Group News Blog)

Simple Math on Canadians Coming to America for Health Care

It's a common refrain whenever the cheap, effective Canadian health care system is brought up: "what about all those Canadians who come to the US for health care?"

Here is the simple answer.  All numbers are from 2014.  Links go to the sources.

In 2014, according to the Fraser Institute, 52,513 Canadians got non-emergency health care in foreign countries.  Since there were about 35.5 million Canadians in 2014, that's about 0.15%.

In 2014, the Census Bureau reported that a sharp drop in uninsured Americans (caused by the first year of implementation of ObamaCare) meant there were 33 million uninsured Americans.  The Census Bureau also reports that the population of the US in 2014 was about 319 million, so the uninsured population was about 10%.

The Canadian health care system underserves about 1/7th of a percent.  The American system underserves slightly over 10% -- after the first year of Obamacare.  The number the year before would have been about 13%.

In a single number, the American health care system underserves 70 times as much of the population as the Canadian system.

This number is conservative, as it includes Canadians who get non-emergency health care in other countries because of convenience or scheduling, when they might have gotten it at home, and reserves American under service to those completely without insurance, not including anyone who can't afford a co-pay or deductible.

(Cross posted to Group News Blog)

Trump Jr.'s Nazi Skittles Metaphor is Bad Math

 

So Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a metaphor about poisoned Skittles and Syrian refugees.  It's drawn directly from a Nazi children's book which uses the same metaphor for Jews, who are the "poisonous mushrooms" you must not gather in the forest.  It's worth pointing out that the author was hanged at Nuremberg (same article).

We have some actual data on this.  Since 9/11, 745,000 Syrian refugees came to the US (until late 2015), and there have been two (2!) terrorism related arrests among them (both for financing terrorism in other countries).  That's 2/745,000 or 0.27 per 100,000 Syrian refugees vetted and brought to the US.  About 1/4 of a terrorist per 100,000 refugees admitted.

How much does that raise our risk?  The pool of terrorist attacks in the US is small.  Let's start with violent felonies, instead.

As of 2012, there were just over 721,000 convicted violent felons incarcerated in the US.  That's 721,000 out of roughly 330 million, or about 240 per 100,000 Americans (including men, women, and children).  So there are 1000 times as many violent felons in the US as there are terrorists in vetted Syrian refugees.  Adding those refugees raised our risk by 2 in 721,000.  That's a number so small it's not worth doing the math.

How about actual acts of terrorism within the US?  There have been 491 individuals designated as having "launched extremist attacks" in the US since 2001.  Of those, 397 were US citizens, 39 were legal residents, 10 refugees, and 8 held visas, while 37 had unknown or "other" citizenship status.  According to the fact checking article just referenced:

Individuals were counted as extremists if they have been indicted on or convicted of terrorism-related crimes, or had been killed and “widely and credibly reported” as having extremist motives, according to New America’s website.

Which is a MUCH higher bar than funding terrorism elsewhere.

397 American citizens having launched an extremist attack out of 330 million is about 0.12 per 100,000.  Only about half as many as Syrian refugees have funded terrorism overseas -- about twice as many.

To be clear, twice as many vetted Syrian refugees have been convicted of funding terrorism overseas as American citizens have launched actual terrorist attacks against the United States.

Of the 28 deadly homegrown terrorist attacks in the US since 9/11, 18 have been made by violent right-wing extremists, versus 10 violent (homegrown) Islamists.  Adding .4% to the pool of violent Islamists would up that total from 10 to 10.4, or maybe one, making the ratio 11 to 18.

So adding all those Syrian refugees might, possibly, have added one deadly terrorist attack in the last 15 years, except that the Syrian refugee "terrorists" were funding terrorism overseas, not making attacks here.

Syrian refugees are not three in a bowlful of Skittles.  They are 1 in 400,000.  Since there are about 400 Skittles per pound (Thank you, Walmart!), that means one dangerous Skittle per half ton.

I'll take those odds.  Remember that Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian political refugee.

Note to Gabby Giffords & Mark Kelly

I believe in gun rights.  I believe that we have a lot of existing laws that we don't enforce.  David Gregory breaking the law in Washington D.C. by possessing a magazine which is illegal there would be an excellent example.  Captain Kelly's apparent straw-man purchase of an AR-15 (to give to the local Sheriff's Department) might well be another, as it's against federal law to purchase a firearm for someone else.

As a gun owner, I have greater responsibilities than others.  I take those responsibilities seriously.  I have spent thousands of dollars for safe storage of firearms and for past and ongoing training.

Most gun owners (literally over 99%) are like me: careful, responsible, and serious about their responsibilities.  It's insulting to tell us that we shouldn't be able to buy or carry because of the actions of a tiny irresponsible minority (many of whom are guilty of criminal offenses).  We don't deny people the privilege of driving whatever car they want because or of using otherwise legal intoxicants because some people drive impaired -- we address the issue of irresponsible drinking and drug use and reduce the magnitude of the problem where it exists instead of where it doesn't.

Additional impediments to the right of firearm ownership and carry, like more extensive background checks, waiting periods, limits to magazine size, registering ammunition purchases, maintaining databases of firearm ownership, creating more gun free zones, and the like will effect orders of magnitude more responsible firearm owners than irresponsible ones.  That's not how we do things in a civilized country like America.  We don't punish those who haven't done anything wrong because of those who have done wrong.

Gays with Guns: A Growing Subculture?

Gays and guns seem as likely to go together as Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey. As a culture, even under attack, we are a peaceful lot -- you catch more bees with honey, right?

"Wrong," says Gwendolyn Patton of Pink Pistols, a group that advocates gun ownership for the LGBT community. With taglines like "pick on someone your own caliber," and "armed gays don’t get bashed," Patton says Pink Pistols changes the perception that gay people are easy victims.

"We teach queers to shoot, and then we teach the rest of the world we’ve done it," Patton told WBEZ91.5, a public radio station in Chicago. "Because then they may think twice about using (LGBT people) as a target."

via www.edgeboston.com

Makes sense to me. If I'm part of a marginalized subculture, especially one which is a target of hate crimes, I'm interested in protecting myself.  And nothing says "self-defense" like a concealed carry permit and training to go with it.

OK, so that worked...

One down, and an infinity to go. I've gotten less used to sharing personal thoughts and events, and I'm definitely not paying a whole lot of attention to generalized politics these days, so there's a distinct question sitting here like an elephant in the room.

What to talk about?

Well, one area of politics I am paying attention to is gun politics. It started out months ago when I suggested to Sara that we go to the local gun show as a way to visit the right wing in it's natural habitat. She thought that was a fine idea, and off we went.

We've found ourselves going back with surprising regularity. We both grew up with guns (she in the High Sierra, me in and around the intellectual capital of Oregon in Eugene), and while we'd put them down incidentally during much of our adulthood in the Bay Area and we put them away very deliberately when we had kids at home, now that the kids are gone, our interest has returned.

Sara being put on more than one RWNJ hit list didn't hurt our interest any either...

In any case, we toddled off to that first show and found ourselves talking with a lot of people who looked and sounded a lot like the people we grew up with. There was the guy with the anti-Obama shirts and stickers (gradually weeded out by the organization that runs the show) and there was the brother of the militia group founder, but most of the people were blue collar, tending toward rural, ordinary people. The salt of the earth.

So there we are, the token progressives in the woodpile, as it were. I suspect I am the only person to carry a Glock home from the show in a bright green reusable "Whole Foods" bag :-).

Interestingly, while we've gotten some hard pushback from social groups we're used to moving in (a number of progressive email lists, for example), we've also begun to find other people like us, moving around the periphery of our usual political haunts, who don't demonize firearms and who may actually own, carry, train with, fire, and generally enjoy them.

So I'm sure I'll be talking about guns, gun safety, gun control, gun rights, and gun politics. Consider yourself warned.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

SCOTUS on GPS trackers used by law enforcement

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.

via www.msnbc.msn.com

What the Supreme Court Really Said About GPS Trackers

via WSJ Law Blog

 

IANAL, but I like the idea that SCOTUS seems to have decided that GPS trackers are not business as usual, that they are "a trespass", and they seem to require a warrant.

Good news.

Daily Kos: WA-01 Do you want a solid Progressive or a self financed millionaire New Dem?

What else has she done since 2008.  Well, after her loss Darcy went to DC and worked for 3 years as the Executive Director of ProgressiveCongress.org where she set about helping to build the progressive infrastructure we Kossacks like to complain we don't have.  She joined the boards of several progressive organizations like Netroots Nation Foundation, ActBlue, Progressive Ideas Network and NARAL.  

via www.dailykos.com

Let's be clear.  Either of these ladies would be better than a lot of other choices.  But there's no reason for us to settle.  Settling gets us Blue Dogs who fight for things we don't believe in.  We should be backing the best electable candidate who matches our values.

And that's Darcy.  No question.

Send a geek to Congress!

GNB: A New Emancipation Proclamation

A New Emancipation Proclamation

McCain Speaks Out of Both Sides of His Mouth

Photograph: John McCain 2008 Campaign Website
Photoillustration: Evan Robinson, Mischievous Ramblings II

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16605.html