A Quick Look At Marijuana Usage

I'm writing in response to my colleague, Jane Kim. My first very serious issue with her writing is that she makes all sorts of assertions about the effects of marijuana without citing any sources. Considering that some of these assertions, e.g. the carcinogenic nature of marijuana, are controversial, I think it's important to provide evidence. She said that marijuana contains "50-70% more cancer causing substances than tobacco smoke". Although I couldn't find this exact statistic, the American Lung Association says that inhaling any type of smoke, including marijuana, contributes to risk of lung cancer. However, marijuana, if legalized, can be ingested rather than smoked. She said that marijuana has adverse affects on minors. I found a concurring article that asserts that marijuana usage lowers students grades and IQ. However, I think many factors could contribute to this: for example, frequent marijuana users would, simply, be smoking marijuana instead of doing homework, which could contribute to both statistics. I don't mean to imply that these statistics should be completely disregarded, just that they are not as black-and-white as Kim suggested.

She also said that Amsterdam is famous for legalizing pot, though it banned it's use in schools, which means that marijuana is harmful to the city. Frankly, I don't see the logic here. In the US public intoxication is illegal and people are not allowed to smoke or drink on school property. She also said that legalized marijuana would lead to "dealers standing on every corner", which is completely absurd considering legal marijuana would be bought from pharmacies, not from street vendors.

To be clear: I have never taken any form of marijuana or other drug, and nobody I know, friend or family, regularly smokes or ingests marijuana. However, I do support it's legalization because it will help regulate it's consumption and make it safer and more secure for it's users. As my colleague said, 44% of high school students were found to know a student who sold drugs at their school, so acquiring the drug is not a huge obstacle at present, and doing so leads to unnecessary risk for users.

Articles referenced here:
Legalizing Marijuana by Jane Kim
Marijuana and Lung Health by the American Lung Association
Marijuana May Hurt The Developing Teen Brain by Patti Neighmond

Bernie Supporters need to Wake Up

In light of Sanders' recent editorial on the world economy and Donald Trump, as well as Nicole Wallace's writing on Trump, I think it's very important to consolidate some reflections on both candidates. It's been found that many (a sizable minority) of Sanders supports Trump over Clinton, a stance I find absolutely insane. If I think about the topics Trump has refused to back down on: increased involvement in the Middle East, encouraging violence during protests, defaulting on our debt, claiming to be more knowledgeable than experts, banning Muslims, building a wall, admiring dictators, playing coy with white supremacists, encouraging nuclear involvement, supporting media censorship, supporting the claim that vaccines can give people autism, denying climate change, and a myriad of other issues, and I compare this to the (admittedly legitimate) criticisms of Clinton being hawkish, I find it hard to see a liberal, or even centrist conservative, supporting the former set of ideals. Some say that Clinton is untrustworthy, and although she may occasionally waver on some issues, it is nowhere near as bad as Trump. I'm not in love with Clinton's hawkish foreign policy, but it still pales in comparison to his, and Clinton can back her policies with years of experience and knowledge. Some say Trump is a grab-bag, and that they prefer that to Clinton's policies, but the issues that Trump does not waver on- violence, bigotry, over-confidence- are far more threatening. However under-privileged somebody feels and as much as Clinton's history may make her seem like the face behind today's issues, Trump's policies will do nothing but destroy every ounce of structure and infrastructure we have today.

Linked articles:
Democrats Need to Wake Up by Bernie Sanders
The G.O.P. Waits, and Waits, for Donald Trump to Grow Up by Nicolle Wallace
Who Lies More: A Comparison
How likely are Bernie Sanders supporters to actually vote for Donald Trump? Here are some clues. by Philip Bump

A Deeper Look At The History of Gun Control in the US

I wanted to expand on Hayoung Lee's post on gun control by discussing a few myths often used as arguments against gun control.

Fundamentally, guns do not help protect people from criminals (I use "criminals" in particular in response to the phrase "if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns"). Statistically, the leading cause of homicide by firearm is not from so-called "outlaws" but from day-to-day arguments that escalate to violence. Additionally, it has been shown that guns are no more effective at self-defense than any other weapon, and running to the police is by far the most effective. Of the 160 active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2013, only "1 shooter was killed at the scene by a citizen with a valid firearms permit". 21 were stopped by unarmed civilians. In the event of police intervention to gun violence, having armed civilians on site makes it hard for law enforcement to identify attackers. In cases where CHL holders have attempted to intervene, they have been killed, injured, or shot the wrong person. Those with training don't trust CHL holders and simulations have supported their belief.

To be clear- I understand the motivation to want to carry a gun. We hear about mass shootings and gun violence all the time and to walk around in public after hearing about these incidents could be really scary. Wanting to carry something to make you feel safe is completely understandable, but mass shootings are, on the whole, very rare, and carrying a firearm as self-defense simply isn't effective at all. At some point we have to trust data over our emotional impulses and concede that civilians might not be the most effective at protecting the public.

Articles linked here:

The Issue on Gun Control by Hayoung Lee

Expanded homicide data table 11- Murder circumstances by weapon

Gunfight or Flee: New Study Finds No Advantages to Using a Firearm in Self-Defense Situations by EVAN DEFILIPPIS and DEVIN HUGHES

A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013

Commentary: Gun-Rights Advocates Say Places That Ban Guns Attract Mass Shooters. The Data Says They’re Wrong. by EVAN DEFILIPPIS and DEVIN HUGHES

Two Cops, Three Others Killed in Las Vegas Shooting Spree by ANDREW BLANKSTEIN, TRACY CONNOR and JOHN BOXLEY

Man arrested in Tacoma Mall shooting by Mike Carter, Emily Heffter and Julia Sommerfeld

Myth of the Hero Gunslinger By TIMOTHY EGAN

Tactical Experts Destroy the NRA’s Heroic Gunslinger Fantasy by Joshua Holland

Gun Carriers Fail At Self-Defense In Independent Study at Police Training Facility- July 22, 2015

I found much of the data in this article from the website for Gun Free UT, an anti-campus carry group.

A Practical Solution to Employment

It's no secret that many jobs are being automated, outsourced, and in general becoming obsolete. Even the president admits that there are jobs that will never come back. Making clothes, manufacturing cars, agricultural production- many jobs have permanently left the US. It used to be that inmates and the homeless could learn some basic skills and adopt a blue collar job of this sort as a way to gain work experience and re-enter the workforce. Most companies require some sort of college degree, if not to ensure experience than at least to show that they can work at a single institution for some time. Granted, some professions are still available that don't require a college degree, where the skills can be obtained independently- automotive and electrical repair, construction, and various service jobs. But these are also becoming increasingly automated and they don't always translate easily into higher paying jobs, making retention fairly low. What can the government do, then, to try and create jobs? What jobs exist to be taken?

As things become increasingly automated, why not have people work on automation? Why not have training for computer science and electrical engineering jobs? Most programming does not require a complex knowledge of algorithms, data structures, or computer architecture. The majority of a coder's days are spent managing APIs, reading documentation, and writing very few lines of code. (Famously, Frederick Brooks wrote in "The Mythical Man-Month" that the average programmer writes 10 lines of code per day in development.) In most companies, the infrastructure is already set up and there are, in fact, very few minds working on high-level theoretical programming. Instead, most of their time is spent testing, reading government regulations, and cleaning up deprecated code.

One area that has extremely strict testing, bureaucratic regulations, and tons of out dated code is the US government. (I remember one upperclassman describing his experience as an intern for the government where he started off without access to a computer, so he had to write code on paper and have another employee type it in.) So, naturally, I think the government could help create jobs by offering training (either free or with minimal tuition) for basic programming and using the manpower for their own infrastructure. Additionally, most government development is ongoing- they don't typically ship products, instead offering ongoing services like healthcare and housing, and employment. A government-led programming-centered employment program could create thousands of jobs for Americans nation wide, jobs for which demand has been rising steadily as others have been dwindling.

The Trump Tapes

Donald Trump's real estate seminar business, Trump University, has recently stopped functioning due to a series of lawsuits it currently faces. In response to the lawsuits, a coalition of all major television networks has filed a motion to demand the release of video footage of these lawsuits. In response, Trump's lawyers are fighting to delay release of the footage until after the election, claiming that the footage will be used out of context to attack Trump's presidential campaign.

Over the course of the election the Trump campaign has received a large amount of free media publicity. Trump and his campaign have stated that they plan to not produce any of their own ads, instead using only "earned media". The writer of this blog post (loosely identified as the "Media Matters Staff") points out that Trump is not leaving all media to produce its own image, and that, as evident by this incident, he is only leaving positive coverage alone while suppressing negative coverage. The author did not say that Trump has stated that he will leave all media coverage alone, only that he will only rely on earned media, and in this way I do not think the author has actually asserted hypocrisy on Trump's part. However, Trump has previously said that he embraces all media coverage (though this was not stated in the article), so the point still stands.

So, the author does have a point. Trump's statements here are contradictory and they do create a new instance of hypocrisy on Trump's part. The author's sources are sound, providing sources for all their referenced events. I would prefer proper citations, rather than just hyperlinks, so that in the future the sources can still be found even if the referenced URLs have changed, though the article is thoroughly sourced. Most prominently it links to a Politico article on the events, and seeing as Politico is one of our suggested sources, and seeing as there is other similar coverage on the events, I would say that the evidence is reliably sound.

The article is short and digestible, though it also contains a good deal of information. In this way I would think that it is oriented towards politically involved liberals who read political blogs in their spare time, for example on their lunch breaks on mass transportation. The article does sneak in a remark about Trump attacking the presiding judge with racist remarks, though this doesn't relate to the rest of the event, meaning that the writer and reader are already non-Trump supporters, which again suggests a liberal audience.

The article is Trump Suddenly Encounters Media Attention He Doesn't Want by the Media Matters staff, published at 4:00 on Thursday June 16, 2016.

The Role of the Vice President

Evaluate the author’s intended audience, the author’s credibility, and their argument (including their claim, evidence, and logic). 

Mr. Vaughn stays fairly neutral in his writing, instead letting his polls speak for him. Vaughn says he interviewed a total of 40 political scholars on their retrospectives on previous vice-presidents, their recommendations for the current candidates, and the vice-president's role as a whole in government politics. Vaughn is currently an associate professor of political science at Boise State University, and doesn't appear to have any editorial role at The New York Times. He has two books: "The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency", on Obama's high expectations coming into the presidency, and "Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics", on the role of figures such as Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachmann in White House politics. He doesn't appear to have any self-proclaimed party alignment. Taking into account the author's educational background, teaching background, multiple publications, and that his analysis is based off of the opinions of a group of other scholars, I'd say that his assertions in his writing have a very strong credibility.

The article is currently the most prominently displayed article in the opinion section of the New York Times. Seeing as the New York Times is a politically neutral newspaper and that Vaughn has no history with the New York Times, the audience of his article is party-neutral and politically inclined enough to go beyond the front page of the Times.

I can't speak to the first-hand accuracy of the results, but on the whole they seem reasonable enough to me. From what I've read on Nixon's presidency, the assertion that Spiro Agnew, Nixon's VP, is the worst vice president in recent US history seems reasonable. I'm surprised that Cheney ranks as one of the highest, though he is also ranked as one of the worse which implies a good deal of controversy about him, which is about what I'd expect. I have been told (mostly by conservatives) that Jimmy Carter was criticized as being unassertive as a president, which would present a good opportunity for a strong vice-president. So, I agree that Mondale sounds like a strong VP. The other aspects of the poll- potential 2016 running mates and the roles of the VP in the US government- seemed similarly sensible.

The article was How To Be a Great Vice President by Justin S. Vaughn on June 11, 2016

Trump Considered Harmful by Sanders

On Thursday Bernie Sanders met Obama and promised his support- not in electing Hilary Clinton- but in defeating Donald Trump. He went on to say that he would work with Clinton in the coming months to make this happen, and that he would continue to fight for issues such as college affordability and combating institutionalized racism. He stated that Trump would be, to himself and many others, "a disaster as President of the United States", and that Trump "makes bigotry and discrimination the cornerstone of his campaign". He said he hoped to unite and pull together the Democratic party before the election and that "there's a natural process of everybody recognizing that this is not about any individual."

While it's typical for a party to promote the winning candidate following the primaries, I think that this in light of the lack of unity in the GOP around Donald Trump emphasizes the abnormal party alignments in this election. I think Sanders also recognizes that his campaign has exposed a lot of issues with Clinton's stances and methodology and he wants to be clear that he still thinks Clinton is a much stronger candidate than Trump.

Original Article: Obama Endorses Hillary Clinton, and Urges Democrats to Unite by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Jonathan Martin on June 9, 2016