Does anybody else find this study as obnoxious as I do?
The New America Foundation found that twice as many people have died in attacks by right-wing groups in America than by Muslim extremists since 9/11.
First off, it’s incredibly fatuous. When you drill down into the study itself you’re left with a somewhat different conclusion. If you exclude the largest terrorist attack not merely in U. S. history but in the history of the world, you’re left with fewer than a hundred deaths via terrorism in the U. S. over a period of 15 years. From that I draw two conclusions. First, that in a country of more than 300 million people a few nutcases will inevitably kill some people an claim political motives for it. No foreseeable law, enforcement, or anything else will stop that. It’s a combination of sheer numbers and personal empowerment.
Also by the logic of the red shoes it tells you that concern about mass terrorist attacks, particularly mass terrorist attacks with state backing, are a legitimate concern. Who are today’s candidates for such state sponsorship? Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. It’s just not Russia’s style. And China’s anti-U. S. actions are targeted at gain rather than terror.
The other thing I gather from the underlying study is that law enforcement has caught more jihadists before they committed acts of violence than other terrorists. So its not necessarily true that jihadists constitute less of a threat. I would assume that jihadists are easier to track because of connections or travel outside the country.
I would think that you could conclude that we worry way too much about terrorist attacks. The large amount of money, most of it anyway, we spend on it would probably be better spent elsewhere, or not spent at all. Don’t really see any of those three being interested in state sponsored terrorism in the US. A lot of the money for the 9/11 guys probably came from Saudi Arabia, but it would be a stretch to call it state sponsored. They still want us for protection after all.
Steve
In an aristocracy “rich Saudis” = “state sponsorship”.
I’m sure one could have said on 9/10/2001 that we worried too much about terrorism, as well. Wouldn’t have been much comfort on 9/12/2001.
Hey Steve, if 3,000 deaths aren’t worth worrying about, maybe you should tell some black people to stop worrying every time someone shoots up a black church.
Oh, wait, I forgot – Black Lives Matter. Only Black lives, it turns out, but Black Lives Matter. So never mind.
And surprising no one, the Supreme Court has once again that words mean the opposite of what they say. Hardly surprising in an age in which men become women by just saying, “I’m a chick, now” and people that are as White Scandinavian royalty can say they’re really black because they like to get their hair linked and say “bigger” a lot.
Someday someone is going to wonder exactly why Congress and the Supreme Court decided to give away all their authority to the President. They may even think it was a bad idea….
Hair kinked.
Hey Ice. We could have prevented 9/11 with about $50 million spent on airplane doors. We should have done that a long time before we did since hijackings were already a problem. Now we spend, IIRC, about $20 billion a year to stop rare events, most of which we can’t detect ahead of time anyway. I am not advocating zero spending, just spending in proportion to the risk, which is low.
As to the Supreme Court case, they decided to look at the entire law, not just a single section. That makes a lot of sense to me, but IANAL. Between the ability to actually ask those who wrote the law what they meant, and what was clear from the rest of the law, I would also have decided in the same way. I guess PD can tell us if that is unusual in court findings.
Steve
It’s pretty clear what the intent of the passage was: To punish those states that did not agree to play ball with the Feds. That’s clear from, you know, the actual language of the law. Either words have meaning, or they don’t. You are in the camp that they mean whatever you want them to mean RIGHT NOW to be convenient for your political party RIGHT NOW. Tomorrow they will mean something else entirely, which is pretty goddamned Orwellian.
Fun quote about today’s ruling: Obama: “What we’re not going to do is unravel what has now been woven into the fabric of America.†So I guess those Confederate flags should be put back into place, huh? That would have also been a fine reason to have NOT inacted any of the civil rights actions from the 1950s & 1960s. But hey, it’s not about the fabric of America, is it? It’s about Obama getting what he wants, and goddamn everyone else that doesn’t get on board. (One wonders how many children Roberts has molested, and how often the NSA lets him know that they have all the evidence.)
Roberts: “In this instance, the context and structure of the act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.â€
That is to say, words have meaning at all. It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is, and so forth.
” That’s clear from, you know, the actual language of the law.”
Only if all you read is that one section. If you read the rest of the law it is clear that was not the intention. If you followed the law as it was being written and discussed, that was never the intention. If you are a minimalist, textualist, then you will agree with Scalia. If you are a complete textualist, then you agree with Roberts. If you believe in original intent, Roberts wins again.
Steve
I work with lawyers for a living. With the caveat that we are talking contract law the vast majority (>95%) have told me that the documents say what is within the four walls of the document. Period. They note that the authors either are competent lawyers or can employ competent lawyers and know what words to put in the documents. Interpretation is for losers, and arbitrators and courts tend to be strict interpreters. From where I stand Roberts played politics, not law.
That said, I’m much more interested I the false notion that Obamacare is working. Compared to the number of uninsured cited during the sales job the number now insured looks more like a batting average of rank second baseman. Costs? Delivery costs not down. Costs to insure the formerly uninsured per capita huge. Premiums not down in any way. The best Obama could do today was his usual straw man argumentation that death panels weren’t formed. That’s an argument of someone who lies, not conveys the truth for public consumption for better or worse.
It is what it is, but it’s a terrible public policy result.
If you read the rest of the law it is clear that was not the intention.
From the PPACA’s dubious and flawed inception that clause was purposed, expressed more than once in the law, to force states into compliance. The government’s legislative strategy was that money was to be the hammer subduing any resistance from states to not establish their own exchanges. The massive number of states not taking the bait took them by surprise. Consequently, the IRS became their facilitator to smooth out the subsidy wrinkles. If this had not happened the law would have cratered under it’s own foolish constructs.
When it was taken to the SCOTUS for Constitutional oversight, the court turned it’s back on rendering a ruling, based simply on the merits of this deliberate but failed ruse directed at the states, and instead became an enabler of a poor law.
Much like the weaknesses of the Roe vs Wade decision, which did not legally assuage the controversial nature of abortion, so will the legacy be of this ruling, which will not settle the issues and problems inherent in achieving better and less costly healthcare for all.