It is Time We Talked About the True Function of the 2nd Amendment

The following is a letter I submitted to the New York Times for publication. It is my opinion that we need to have a national debate over the purpose and function of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and decide if this amendment is an anachronism from a distant time or if it is still vital. Only then can we effectively decide what direction we should go as a nation in terms of gun legislation. [click on the image to enlarge]

Newtown Massacre a Mental Health Issue - NOT a Gun Issue

What kind of parent buys guns for a son with issues like his?

That Adam Lanza suffered from a variety of mental disorders was well-known, both to the Newtown High School psychologist and to his parents. In fact, his father agreed to pay his ex-wife $250,000/year support payments, more than was recommended by the courts, in exchange for joint legal custody and liberal visitation privileges, precisely because he was worried about his son.

Therefore it defies all reason as to how, under these circumstances, his school-teacher mother would have purchased firearms and trained her mentally ill son how to use them, and why his father never intervened.

The lesson to be learned from this absolutely horrific and incomprehensible tragedy is that we, as a nation, need to get serious about mental health treatment. We not only need to identify those in need of life-long mental health care from an early age, we need to involve and train parents on what to do and what not to do. Did the Newtown High School psychologist who recommended Adam Lanza for counseling ever speak to his parents about weapons at home and the risk of someone with his profile? Did his father ever talk to his ex-wife about the guns she bought shortly after they divorced, or of the trips she took for target practice with their son?

Mental health problems are serious health problems, perhaps the most serious problems we as a society face. Currently, our response in cases like these is wholly inadequate, and the Newtown shooting is one result.

It is my hope that we can use this horribly sad event to catalyze the discussion on how we identify and treat those among us who are, quite literally, ticking time bombs.

Throwing My 2 Cents in Over the 'Fiscal Cliff'

Should we look back to 1990 for the path forward?

Pundits, congressional leaders and the President have taken to referring to the anticipated effects of the 2011 Budget Control Act, if allowed to come into effect, as a "fiscal cliff". However, I have started to come to see this piece of legislation as the kind of fiscal shock therapy needed to reset the calculus and set our fiscal ship back upright.

Here is what the fiscal cliff involves:

• Expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts.
• I believe that these tax cuts MUST be allowed to expire, since they ballooned the debt.
• Across the board spending cuts.
• These cuts only amount to 0.25% of all spending, and are hardly draconian.
• Setting the alternative minimum tax back to 2000 levels.
• Once again, somebody has got to pay for all of this spending.
• Expiration of the 2% Social Security tax cut.
• In my opinion, either we keep Social Security or we dump it; if we keep it we need to strengthen it, not weaken it.
• Expiration of Federal unemployment benefits.
• I have mixed feelings about this one -- however, unemployment benefits cannot be paid out into perpetuity, even if the economy is weak, so their expiration is probably needed, in spite of serious near-term discomfort for the long-term unemployed.
• New taxes associated with Obamacare.
• The up-front costs of Obamacare are going to be a shock to many, even though there are significant savings forecast in later years. Obamacare is a gargantuan piece of legislation and the adoption pains will be many, but the nation has decided that this is the path that we want to follow, so follow it we must.

Taking all of these points into consideration, my biggest complaint about the "fiscal cliff" is that it isn't steep enough! While the increases in revenue are needed, not nearly enough emphasis is placed on spending cuts.

As I have explained in a previous post, the size of the U.S. Budget, at least on a per-capita basis, is far, far too large. We could get by with a federal budget 25% or 35% smaller (taking us back to levels of per capita federal spending that prevailed under Bill Clinton), but the net effect of the "fiscal cliff" would reduce government spending by only 0.25%, according to GAO estimates. That being said, the "fiscal cliff", if enforced, is expected to put us on a much healthier fiscal track, as shown in this graphic (courtesy CBO):

The brown area is where we are headed if we stop the "fiscal cliff" and change nothing, and the baby blue area is were we are headed if the "cliff" takes effect. Clearly, we do not want to be in the brown area.

While the CBO projections seem promising, we must not forget that we already have an absolutely HUGE amount of public debt that must be periodically refinanced, and the "fiscal cliff" does nothing to reduce the amount of that debt since CBO forecasts call for continued deficits for at least the next ten years.

Therefore, I call for a 2 for 1 plan: target $2 of spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases. My estimates are that, if we permit the "fiscal cliff" legislation to take effect and couple it with 2x the amount of new revenue in the form of government spending cuts, we will reduce the total public debt (not simply the deficit) by about HALF in ten years.

How will this work? Current estimates are that the "fiscal cliff" will increase revenue by about $500B in 2013; if combined with $1T in spending cuts, the federal government would be expected to see a surplus in year one. By year 10 we would expect to see a cumulative surplus of about $8T, against the backdrop of over $16T in public debt. I am making the assumption here that a constrictive effect on GDP of the reduced government spending in the early years will be offset by strong growth in the later years, leading to a net that is positive in terms of GDP growth over the ten year period in question. $1T in spending cuts in 2013 would be about a 26% reduction in budgeted spending. Clearly, to reach this goal, no program can be "off the table." In fact, the only spending category that is off the table is the service to the debt, which is protected by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, and which will ruin us if we don't deal with it now. Therefore, I believe that there is consensus in the nation to combine revenue increases with spending cuts to put the brakes on this runaway debt train.

Why is this important? While interest rates are currently low, they are bound to rise in the future, and when they do the interest portion of the debt will grow to consume a larger and larger portion of our public discretionary revenue, forcing cuts and cancellations of millions of much-needed programs or exploding the debt even further. Additionally, the buyers of our debt will grow more and more skeptical of our ability to balance the budget and will demand a progressively higher "risk premium" at auction until the auctions fail outright. The federal government and Federal Reserve have injected huge amounts of liquidity into our financial system which must be absorbed. If we keep the "fiscal cliff" and combine it with huge spending cuts we can prevent the fiscal collapse and runaway inflation that are just over the horizon.

While no solution is popular or attractive, the least attractive option, in my opinion, is to do nothing and wait for the global financial markets to make our decisions for us.

The True Meaning of the Second Amendment

In the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado shooting, there have been many commentators who posit that there is no reason for anyone to be able to purchase an assault weapon such as that which was used in the shooting.

In order to answer this question we have to ask ourselves, "What did the Framers intend when they included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights?"

First of all, the Framers were men who had lived through (and in many cases fought in) perhaps the most unlikely and auspicious victory in the history of wars -- the victory of agrarian colonists against the mighty British Empire. This David vs. Goliath battle left the Framers with a clear respect for, and confidence in, the power of a determined and armed populace as a bulwark against tyranny and abuse of power.

Secondly, the Framers recognized that the risk of tyranny did not necessarily have to come from a throne an ocean away, but could just as easily arise from within and so the citizens should be equipped with the resources needed to wage war against their own government if needed, just as they had against the British.

In other words, the Second Amendment is a license to armed insurrection since the threat of armed insurrection may be the only realistic obstacle preventing a leader from becoming a tyrant.

Under current law the rights of the citizenry to keep armaments is severely restricted. For example, average citizens cannot own fully automatic weapons such as machine guns, nor can they own grenades or rocket-propelled weapons, all of which are readily available to the military. So, does the implied "license to armed insurrection", subject to existing restrictions, still serve as a deterrent to tyrants, who control the military and ostensibly can used it as they fancy?

I think the answer is "yes" and "no". Clearly, no small group of rebels could ever hope to wage open war against the U.S. Army, and to that extent the answer must be "no". But, if the intent of these rebels is to martyr themselves to the cause of freedom and thereby inspire a wider rebellion, then even the greatly curtailed Second Amendment that we have today is a deterrent in that even the U.S. Army could not put down an insurrection by the majority of the citizens armed with the armaments that they are currently legally permitted to own. Whether the martyrdom of a small band of rebels waging war against tyranny would be sufficient to rally to arms the masses of people is doubtful, so I think that the answer to this open question is probably "no".

Therefore, it is clear to me that the Framers intended for the citizens to have at their disposal weaponry sufficient to oppose tyranny with a threat level that might give a tyrant pause, and so the citizenry must be entrusted to arm themselves with weapons that rival those of the regular army if we are to sufficiently respect the intent and purpose of the Second Amendment.

Gravity at Center of Black Hole is Zero

Obviously, Albert Einstein is sticking is tongue out at all the haters and doubters out there!

His General Theory of Relativity predicted that super-massive, incredibly dense objects, such as the core of a black hole, could create such deformation of the time-space continuum that the gravity created by these objects could be virtually infinite.

The further away from a super-massive black hole (SMBH) you are, the less you are affected by its gravity. However, if you venture too close and become entrained in its gravitational vortex you will begin to accelerate until your speed exceeds that of the speed of light, meaning that no one further away from the SMBH than you are will be able to see you! Eventually, your mass will unite with the mass at the core of the SMBH, but in a quantum state in which all that exists are the smallest of sub-atomic particles, all packed into a infinitesimally tiny space (at least, relative to the mass). I don't believe that anyone knows the diameter of the core of a SMBH, or exactly what state of matter exists there, but I would predict that the extreme forces  and energy involved (keep in mind a SMBH eats suns for lunch) would break down atoms way beyond electrons, protons and neutrons to subatomic particles that we've never detected and whose behaviour we can only imagine. I also predict that, in the SMHB core, the subatomic particles are as tiny as they can possibly be, are all the same and are arranged in a matrix or geometric pattern, very much like a crystal.

Eventually, all matter in the universe will be reduced in this manner until the black holes themselves begin to be drawn toward one another. Since the sub-atomic particles in the core of the SMBH want to repel one another, bringing two SMBH of similar mass into proximity to one another could destabilize one or the other core which I predict would result in a massive explosion, similar to the "Big Bang". This explosion could propagate throughout the universe, destroying all black holes and creating a great cloud of sub-atomic particles which will begin to arrange themselves to form the building blocks of all matter that we now know.

Getting back to my original point, Einstein's General Theory predicts that the force of gravity at the center of a SMBH is infinite, basically because the force is 1/r, and when r = 0, the result is mathematical infinity. However, it is a force we are talking about here, not some equation on a blackboard. Force is mass times acceleration (F = ma), and so when r = 0, a = 0 and F = 0. Therefore, the gravitational force of a SMBH is a limit approaching infinity, but can never be infinite. In fact, the gravity in the dead center is zero, which is the ultimate source of the instability of a black hole.

--Christian Antalics, May 15, 2012

Is Fracking the New F Word?

Interest in and concern about "fracking" -- the hydraulic fracturing of subterranean shale deposits which contain huge reserves of natural gas -- motivated me to rent and watch a very interesting documentary by fellow Pennsylvania native Josh Fox, entitled Gasland.

While the documentary makes is clear that a number of homeowners have had their groundwater contaminated by natural gas released in the fracking operations and that these people appear to be at their wits end, I don't view this as the biggest matter of concern, since many of these families sold leases to drill on their land and that natural gas percolating into their aquifer shouldn't come as any great surprise.

The biggest issue of concern, to me, is what is in the chemicals that are being used in the fracking operation and what the environmental impact studies, if any, show.

Therefore, I support the FRAC Act, which has stalled in Congress, and I urge you to contact your legislator and express your support in the hope that this legislation can come to a vote.

While I want us to continue to develop and recover shale gas, which I consider to be an important new part of our national security picture, the cost of the energy we consume must reflect the true cost of developing that energy, including environmental and health costs.

Developing a fossil fuel energy source at an artificially low cost because of select exemption from environmental regulation only serves to delay the adoption of energy saving innovations and renewable energy options.

Not to mention the millions of residents of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York who want to know exactly what is in their drinking water.