Thursday, June 17, 2021
Knives vs. ARs
The Walking Stick. . . is also a weapon and it meets a felt need of barbarian man on that ground.
— Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
When Judge Roger Benitez, a Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California said in his recent ruling that: “Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment” his words awakened in us the realization that many of us need to have a better understanding of the Swiss Army Knife and its role in society.
In Switzerland and the United States there are no regulations about where those knives can be carried. The possession of those knives, although common in both countries, is unregulated. They can be openly carried or concealed in a pocket or a purse. There are no age restrictions on who can carry such knives, nor do there appear to be any restrictions on where the knives can be taken except, of course, on airplanes. I have seen people in both Switzerland and the United States openly using those knives on mountain trails to cut up a piece of bread or sausage to enjoy with lunch.
There are no statistics available in Switzerland or the United States to indicate how often Swiss Army Knives have been used for killing people. A search on the web for that kind of information yields no results. In the violence-prone United States there have, of course, been reports of gang violence in which knives were used, but whether they were Swiss Army Knives or even other folding knives is never reported. In one recent example of a knife being used in an altercation, a video of the incident shows a bicycle rider riding down a city street and hitting a pedestrian who was crossing the street against the light. A scuffle ensued and the bicyclist stabbed the pedestrian. The knife used by the stabber was reportedly a folding knife, but the report does not indicate if it was a Swiss Army Knife.
A brief search of the web produces numerous comments about Swiss Army Knife. None of the articles I found addresses the issue of whether it is an effective weapon for someone intent on committing mass murder. The only discussion I found of its use in a violent situation was in an article in the Anchorage Daily News. The Anchorage Daily News does not compare the Swiss Army Knife with the AR 15 since it is an article about the value of the knife for self-defense for women, and for obvious reasons, does not delve into its use if a woman wants to murder a lot of people quickly. The headline gives away the substance of the article. It says: “Don’t count on the Swiss Army Knife for Self-Defense.” For obvious reasons no comparison is drawn between the Swiss Army Knife and the AR 15 since outside of actual combat zones there are no reports that the AR 15 has ever been used for self-defense. In the civilian world it is purely an offensive weapon. That article, somewhat pejoratively, says that the Swiss Army knife “leaves much to be desired as a self-defense weapon. . . .”The author concludes his discussion of the knife saying: “If you’re carrying a Swiss Army knife for protection, I don’t think you’ve mentally prepared for the real thing.”The foregoing makes it obvious that the knife is never a good substitute for the AR 15 for someone bent on committing mass murder. . The first and most obvious disadvantage is that the Swiss Army Knife is a folding knife which means if the owner wants to use it to murder a large number of people the owner has to waste precious seconds unfolding it in order to extract the blade. Once the blade is exposed, pointing the knife at the intended victim has no effect. The owner of the knife has to make physical contact with the intended victim and that can take many seconds, if not minutes. While the mass murderer with the knife is trying to contact and stab his first victim, the other hoped for victims are leaving the premises and there is little the would-be mass murderer can do to prevent their escape.
Since 1931 there have been four mass killings in Switzerland resulting in the deaths of 35 people. In none of those massacres was the Swiss Army Knife used.
In 2019 Judge Benetiz ruled that a voter approved initiative banning high capacity gun rounds was a violation of the second amendment right of citizens and, therefore, unconstitutional His ruling was put on hold pending an appeal. Judge Benitez has taken senior status on the Federal bench. One can only hope that he will take full retirement sooner rather than later.
Friday, June 4, 2021
Your Friendly Banker
Now is the month of Maying,
When merry banks are playing. . . .
— An old English Ballett (slightly distorted)
The pandemic was not the same as 2008 as far as the banks were concerned. The banks remember 2008 because that was the year that the federal government and taxpayers came to their rescue when it seemed many of them would fail because of the 2007 bank liquidity crisis.
Thanks to the Troubled Asset Relief Act (TARP), eight banks survived because the federal government made investments in those banks that were to be repaid to the government in future years. As recent events have shown, the banks were outraged when the shoe was, as it were, on the other foot.
In March 2021, Congress enacted the $1.9 trillion stimulus package designed to help those who had been adversely affected by the pandemic. That was similar to how TARP had helped banks and certain other industries that suffered during the crisis of 2008. A part of the 2021stimulus package included a $4 billion debt relief package. The $4 billion debt relief was intended to be given to black and other minority farmers who, in addition to the effects of the pandemic, have suffered for years as a result of discriminatory lending practices by the banks in their dealings with the minority communities. According to a report in the New York Times, the number of Black-owned farms in the country has gone from approximately one million in the 1920s to fewer than 40,000 today. The decrease is attributable in part to onerous loan terms imposed by lenders on the minority community and the resulting high foreclosure rates.
The money in the stimulus package that is to be given farmers was to enable them to pay off mortgages held by banks or other investors sooner than they otherwise would have. Given the history of the banks with the minority community and their high foreclosure rates, it surprises the non-banker to learn that the very same banks whose practices adversely affected the minority communities in the past and who benefitted from TARP, would be the banks opposed to the debt relief program. The banks’ opposition to the proposed debt relief is based in part on the fact that banks make money on interest they earn when money is loaned to borrowers. They are upset because if the loans are paid off early, they, or individuals to whom they sold loans, will receive less in interest payments than they expected at the time the loans were made.
In explaining how adversely affected they and their investors will be when the loans are paid off early , they did not address the bad effects of their earlier discriminatory practices. Instead, they explained that when a loan is paid off early as a result of the debt relief program, they, or people who had purchased the loans, received less interest than they anticipated and, accordingly, an early pay off results in less profit than anticipated. This remains true even though under the debt relief program, banks receive 120% of the outstanding loan amount to compensate them for additional taxes and fees they incur as a result of the early payoff.
The perceived adverse effect on the lost profits resulting from early pay offs and loss of expected income, may help explain the banks’ treatment of those who withdrew more money from their checking accounts than they had placed in them during the pandemic. In those cases, the banks compensated themselves not by lamenting a loss of earnings, as they did with the loan forgiveness program, but by exacting high penalties on those making withdrawals in excess of what they have in their accounts.
The banks’ practices with respect to overdrafts were disclosed in hearings before the Senate Banking Committee that took place at the end of May. The chief executive officers of six of the biggest banks in the country appeared before the committee in what became a somewhat contentious hearing.
During the hearing Senator Elizabeth Warren observed that JPMorgan Chase, one of the beneficiaries of TARP 13 years earlier, continued to charge overdraft fees to its customers who overdrew their accounts as a result of the pandemic. She observed that in 2020 the bank earned almost $1.5 billion in overdraft fees. In response Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of the bank said the banks waived fees for depositors who requested them. Apparently the owners of accounts that incurred $1.5 billion in overdraft fees were at fault for not having requested waivers of the overdraft fees.
According to Senator Warren the four banks that were represented at the hearing collectively made $4 billion in overdraft fees during the pandemic. During that same period they enjoyed record profits. In the first quarter of 2021, all previous profit records for banks were shattered. They made $76.8 billion in that quarter.
Here is what we have learned from the foregoing. Bankers have short memories. The pandemic did not affect everyone equally.
Thursday, May 27, 2021
The Quick and the Dead
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
— Frank McKinney Hubbard, Saying
The good news on the legislative front comes from assorted state legislatures. They remind us that with the ubiquitous frenzy in many states to pass legislation to insure that the kind of non-existent voter fraud that was the hallmark of the recent presidential election is properly addressed, at least some state legislators have found time to enact legislation that has nothing to do with voter fraud, thus proving some legislators can chew gum and walk at the same time.
Last week we examined South Carolina. That state’s legislature took advantage of the 2021 session to expand the execution choices available to those on death row. Until the legislature stepped in, those sentenced to death in South Carolina were given only two choices of how they would like for the sentence to be carried out-lethal injection or the electric chair. In throwing a bone, as it were, to the soon to be executed, the legislature added a third method the condemned can select in order to enter the state prescribed state-the firing squad. It was only a coincidence that within weeks after the South Carolina legislature acted, the U.S. Supreme Court was given the opportunity to consider a Missouri man’s request that he be executed by firing squad instead of lethal injection. His appeals, addressing the issue of how he would like to be dispatched, had gone on for years. In his last appeal, requesting that he be executed by firing squad instead of lethal injection, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled that his request was filed too late and refused to honor it. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to get involved in the discussion. South Carolina was not, of course, the only state to find the time to address issues other than the election process. Texas and Alabama also got in on the act.
In Texas, during the same week that the 232d mass shooting of 2021 took place in California, a shooting in which 8 people were killed, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, signed a law that will allow anyone over the age of 21 to carry a handgun without a permit. Trumpeting the passage of that bill and ignoring the 2021 mass shooting bonanza, Abbott described the legislation as: “The Strongest Second Amendment legislation in Texas history.” In a similar vein U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (who last seized the spotlight when he went to a beach in Mexico to escape the covid quarantine and the cold weather Texas suffered in the winter) said: “I applaud Texas legislators for passing this landmark legislation to make constitutional carry a reality and to protect the right of law-abiding citizens.”
In Alabama the legislature dealt with a somewhat less fraught issue. It was confronted with the vexing problem of yoga instruction in the public schools. Until the legislature acted during its recently concluded session, it had taken a dim view of yoga and addressed it in simple fashion. It said the local boards of education could decide whether to offer yoga and that it was an elective subject. It further provided, however, that instruction was limited to “poses, exercises, and stretching techniques” and provided that all “poses, exercises, and stretching technique shall have exclusively English descriptive names.”
Notwithstanding the statutory provisions that appeared to permit limited yoga instruction in Alabama, the State Board of Education completely banned yoga in the public schools in 1993. The ban was found in the Alabama State Board of Education’s Administrative Code. The Code specifically prohibited any techniques that involve “the induction of hypnotic states, guided imagery, meditation or yoga.” The ban was reinforced in the Alabama Physical Education Instructional Guide. That Guide does not limit itself to addressing yoga. It also addresses certain other activities that are to be avoided in public schools. Among the activities to be avoided are those that “Over-empathize fun with no purposes or objective” and “Limit maximum participation by a majority of students.” In order to instruct those in charge as to what activities might be considered as over-emphasizing fun with no purpose or objective, the Guide lists “specific student games or activities to avoid.” The games to be avoided include: “Crack the whip, dodge ball, Doggy, doggy, where’s you bone? Duck, duck, goose,. . .Heads up, seven up…Messy backyard, . . .Red light, green light, Red Rover, Relay races, Simon says. . .Steal the bacon.” It is not known whether ending the ban on yoga will also end the ban on the games listed above.
Although the legislation seems to move Alabama in the direction that is being taken by the rest of the country with respect to yoga, it provides that “All poses, exercises, and stretching techniques shall have exclusively English descriptive names. It says “Chanting, mantras, mudras,, use of mandalas. . . and namaste greetings shall be expressly prohibited.” It requires a signed parental consent that includes an acknowledgement by the parent that yoga “is part of the Hinduism religion” and describes a variety of yoga activities that are prohibited.
Although the legislature was able to expand the ability of those wanting to participate in yoga classes, it found a way to limit the ability of those wanting to participate in the electoral process. It banned curbside voting.