During the presentation of evidence at the penalty phase of Mr. Buck’s trial — when the jury was required to decide between the death penalty and a life sentence — the trial prosecutor elicited testimony from a psychologist for the defense indicating that Mr. Buck’s race made him more likely to be violent in the future.
The prosecutor asked, “You have determined that the sex factor, that a male is more violent than a female because that’s just the way it is, and that the race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons; is that correct?”
“Yes,” the psychologist, Walter Quijano, answered.
Because a finding of future dangerousness is a prerequisite for a death sentence in Texas, the prosecutor then argued in closing that the jury should rely on that race-based expert testimony to find that Mr. Buck would pose a future danger. The jury accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation, and Mr. Buck was sentenced to death."
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 Watched Restrepo on the treadmill over the last few days. Excellent documentary of the war in Afghanistan. Brings home the fear, confusion, exhaustion, brutality, and camaraderie of war. Some thoughts:
- Being shot at is terrifying. Being shot at when you don't know what the hell is going on around you is even more terrifying. The movie does a great job conveying the fog of war. - Whether or not Americans are in Afghanistan for good reason, we cannot expect the Afghans to like their occupiers. Yes, the Americans are chasing out the Taliban, building roads, opening schools, bringing aid, and so on. But we are also dropping bombs on innocents, rousing people from their sleep at gunpoint, making them sit on their hands, and interrogating them. Maybe the goat-herd they're interrogating in the movie is Taliban and was shooting at them yesterday. Or maybe he's really just a goatherd and has nothing to do with the Taliban. The soldiers can't know. What they're doing might be necessary. But it's certainly not winning friends. We shouldn't be surprised that we aren't liked. - May not be a big surprise, but there is a good bit of machismo and hazing and unprofessional behavior on display. - Most of the soldiers seemed like ordinary people, caught in the hellhole of war, who can't wait to leave. I hope we can bring them home soon and that Afghanistan won't fall to the Taliban after they leave. But.. what can't be done in twelve years, cannot be done in twenty. Mark Bittman, who usually writes about food for the New York times, veered into economics today:
"... a rapidly increasing number of food industry and other retail workers are now fighting for basic rights: halfway decent pay, a real work schedule, the right to organize, health care, paid sick days, vacations and respect. Next week, organizers say, we’ll see a walkout of thousands of workers at hundreds of stores in at least seven cities, including New York and Chicago. Something is happening here, though exactly what isn’t quite clear. Fast food was never a priority of organized labor — it’s difficult to imagine a traditional union of four million fast-food workers in something like 200,000 locations — but dozens of organizations are now involved, including, to its credit, the Service Employees International Union, which is providing financing and counsel. The upshot: Workers with nothing to lose are demanding a living wage of $15 an hour, and gaining strength and confidence." Bittman welcomes this: "... we tolerate the fact that one in seven of our fellow Americans live in poverty, with half of those people working tough jobs. Do we want to be part of that? Surely, better scenarios exist." This is a classic case of good intentions and bad policies. Bittman seems like a nice guy who wants to do some good. But like most people, he doesn't understand how markets, prices, and unions work. He assumes he does, but he really doesn't. Unions aren't the answer to low wages. Unions are esssentially cartels that raise wages for some lucky workers at the expense of other workers (who will become unemployed), consumers (who will pay more for food), and shareholders (who will see reduced profits). If you tot up all the benefits and costs, you will find that they do far more harm than good. A much better way to tackle the problem of low wages is through direct redistribution programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit. If everyone learned a little economics, we can stop pursuing bad ideas and actually solve some problems.  Photo: Manu Dias / AGECOM Cuba's President Raul Castro scolded his country for declining civic behavior. According to a New York Times article, Castro accused Cubans of
- urinating in the street - raising pigs in cities - building houses without permits - catching endangered fish - cutting down trees - gambling - accepting bribes and favors - hoarding goods and sell them at inflated prices - harassing tourists (I'm assuming they try to sell stuff to them) I'm guessing much of this has to do with the broken economic system. Cubans seem to think so: "But while Mr. Castro rebuked his countrymen for losing their “honesty, decency, sense of shame, decorum, honor and sensitivity to others’ problems,” many Cubans accused the government of clinging to an unworkable economic system while the country’s infrastructure and social services crumbled and, with them, the people’s sense of communal duty." People are the same everywhere. The systems in which they operate are different. If you want to change people's behavior, you have to change the system they live in. Presidential scoldings do nothing. It's possible that George Zimmerman was pinned down by Trayvon Martin and feared for his life when he shot Trayvon Martin. It's also possible that Trayvon feared for his life when he decided to engage the stranger who was following him. I don't know what's fair punishment for a person who assumed a black teenager was up to no good simply because he was black, and then initiated the sequence of events that led to the teenager's death. At the end of the day, Trayvon Martin died because he was a black hoodie-wearing teenager. He would not have died if he had been a white or Asian hoodie-wearing teenager. That's a stain on our society.
The Washington Post reports that this week "the Kabul government took the unprecedented move of blocking inbound shipments of fuel and equipment for Afghan security forces." They want the Americans to pay a $70 million fine, alleging that "U.S. contractors hired to transport equipment failed to turn in documentation for billions of dollars in equipment shipped into the country since the 2010 troop “surge.”"
So America has to pay Afghanistan to send in fuel and equipment to help Afghanistan's security forces? Talk about perverse! J.K. Rowling does an interesting experiment. Here is a self-published author's take on it.
An Op-Ed in the New York Times that echoes my sentiments on the military coup in Egypt: The Perils of a 'People's Coup'
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Ben Mathew
Author of Economics: The Remarkable Story of How the Economy Works Archives
October 2016
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