Plain Talk

about matters of interest in Washington State and, often, elsewhere

August 2007

This is the version with all the answers shown--and some related discussions..

In 1787, Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland's delegates to the Constitutional Convention, wrote in his diary: A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.

Franklin's pithy remark implies many things, but a paramount one is that a citizenry cannot and will not keep a republic forever if it is not able to make informed evaluations of its governance. In short, voters need to keep up with their nation and their world. How well do we do that? Not very well, by many indications.

To see how you're doing, and have some fun, take this little "20 Questions" news test. The questions cluster around a few topics frequently in the news these days, and important as well (that is, no questions about Sheraton St. Louis, or whatever her name is).

In the answers below, please do follow out the various links given, which substantially flesh out the brief information given here.

Muslims in Iran are predominantly: Shi'ite or Sunni? (The word is variously written as Shiite or Shi'ite.)
And which was Saddam Hussein?
And why is or isn't all this important?

The religion of Islam divided virtually at its beginning into the Sunni and Shi'ite sects--these are often analogized with Catholicism and Protestantism in Christianity, though there is little resemblance save in the satisfaction the paired types take in slaughtering one another in the name of the parent religion. The Shi'a are the minority sect--perhaps 1 in 8 Muslims worldwide is a Shi'ite--but they are not distributed uniformly about the Islamic world; rather, they are concentrated in a few areas. And, by a freak of fate, most of those areas sit atop vast oil reserves.

In Iraq, the Shi'ites are the definite majority, but they never held power there (or in any other country), Saddam having run Iraq as a severely secular state under Ba'ath party rule, so that his own nominal sectarian affiliation was immaterial. But the matter is now of grave importance because, with the overthrow of Saddam's regime, the majority Shi'ites want--for the first time ever--to have control of a nation, and, almost as an aside, to put down the Sunnis, who--to repeat--are a minority in Iraq but the great majority world-wide.

Neighboring Iran is a Sunni state, and thus has great influence with Iraq's Sunnis, who feel persecuted by the new government, since, even though it is nominally a "coalition", Shi'ites dominate it. Much of the so-called "insurgency" is Sunnis who feel grave danger from the current government, and who are actively courted by Sunni Iran, who finds them ready to hand as terrorists. These sorts of horrid complications were never foreseen by the Bush administration (who, as a team, easily qualify for the Olympic Non-Foreseeing event).
Illegal immigrants are a problem chiefly because they pay almost no taxes yet receive large amounts of public services: True or false?

Very much False. For almost twenty years now (since 1986, when the law for employers got a lot tougher), illegal immigrants, to obtain jobs of any sort, have had to provide at least a Social Security number. While almost all use numbers either bought, stolen, or (most commonly) simply made up, the fact remains that their employers take out all the payroll withholding taxes due and forward them on to the Treasury--which then ends up annually with literally billions of dollars it can't assign to any actual person (because of those phony Social Security numbers). It is reckoned that unclaimable withholding taxes presently make up about 10 percent of the Social Security fund's annual surplus, and that without the contributions from the "illegals", the fund would be in very much deeper do-do than it is now. Then remember that not only are the illegals contributing just like regular citizens, they'll never get the money back--unlike you or me, whose contributions buy us retirement, medical, disability, and death benefits. Oh, and the experts also agree that most or all illegals even pay their income taxes in full (if they ever earn enough to actually owe such taxes).
Who is Ben Bernanke and why does he matter to you?

Bernanke is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System. While too few citizens understand economics well (it's not that hard, but it's usually taught terribly), it is crucial to understand that what the Federal Reserve does affects your day-to-day life mightily: can you afford that car, or that house? Depends on going loan interest rates, which depend directly on the Fed. The Chairman's strategies and tactics control our economy.
What is Washington State Referendum 67 about?

It's about what is called in technical terms "insurance bad faith"; that doesn't mean people trying to cheat their insurance companies, it means insurance companies trying to cheat their policyholders. The usual form of "bad faith" is for an insuror to deny a claim on the ground that the loss isn't actually covered by the policy. It happens all the time, even to--perhaps especially to--large companies (because the stakes are so much higher in their losses).

Referendum 67 increases the penalties for insurance bad faith: it's that simple. Needless to say, it's not being presented to the public in that simple, clear manner; instead, it's being painted as a contest between the insurance companies and the trial lawyers. Each side paints the other as the Big Bad Wolf, come to eat up the poor little citizens of Washington. The two groups trade on hated stereotypes: the public dislikes "greedy lawyers", and it about equally dislikes "Big Business". The PR campaigns are an amusing exercise in imagery, and the winner is not going to be the side that makes the most sense, it'll be the side that is most effective in portraying the other side as a bunch of dirty rats.

You can look over the positions of the pro-passage folks and the anti-passage folks, and may the least-bad man win.
What is SCHIP an acronym for?

The State Children's Health Insurance Program, which is--despite the name--a federal program. It's controversial news right now because Congress wants to modify the existing program to cover more under- and un-insured Americans, especially children, while the neocons trot out their standard old "socialized medicine" bafflegab. Read all abaht it, as the newsies used to cry out.
Who is Tommy Thompson and who is Fred Thompson and does the difference matter?

Tommy, in and out.

Fred: his ideas, his problems, and a summing-up.

So the answer to that last part seems to be: No, not really.
At what age should you start automatically getting an annual flu shot?

At age 50. It's news because it's a relatively recent lowering of the recommended minimum age from the former recommendation of 65.
Washington is one of only a small handful of states with a legislated "greenhouse gas emissions" target: True or False?

False, false, false. About one-third of the states (including, as you can see, most of the really populous ones) already have such legislation, and many more are working on it. As so often happens in America, when the federal gummint drags its heels on something, the states move in and pick up the slack, and good for them.
What disease are the Hanford "downwinders" especially liable to, and why?

Thyroid cancer, because the Hanford releases were primarily of radioactive iodine, and it is the thyroid that picks up iodine in the body (that's why people living inland require iodized salt, lest they develop goiter). Were you aware that those releases were not incidents or accidents, but deliberately--and secretly--done?
The non-partisan "Louisiana-style" blanket primary system now disallowed in Washington State is common in many other states: True or False?

No, no, no: even Louisiana hasn't had it for ages. Very few states ever had it.
Washington State has one of the highest tax rates in the nation: True or False?
And those rates are: rising or falling?

High? False, despite many anti-tax organizations' misleading claims. Washington State taxes are very low, the state being 36th down the list in taxation as a percentage of income. What can be used to obscure that fact is the fairly high total taxes paid by Washingtonians--because there are a lot of very rich westsiders, and their federal taxes are high, so their tax total is correspondingly high; but it would be higher yet in 35 out of the 50 states.

And the percentage of income paid as state taxes in Washington is actually going down--not drastically, but definitely down, not up. You could look it up (or just follow the link above and read the whole document).
Lower-income families in Washington pay out a lower share of their income in state and local taxes than those in any other state: True or False?

Dead-exactly-opposite False. Washington State's poorer families pay a higher share of their income in state and local taxes than in any other state. That is newsworthy because of Initiative 960, which is a simply terrible idea masquerading as some sort of tax-cutting plan (read the whole page of the link given here).
Since the famous 1980 eruption, the Mt. St. Helens volcano has ceased to be a significant threat: True or False?

Sorry to say, False. As the old saying goes, there is no such thing as an extinct volcano. Right now, everything looks acceptable, but one never knows.

The best bet, whether one lives near or far, is preparedness (which goes for a lot of other possible emergencies, too): make a plan and be sure you're ready.
Atlanta Falcons' quarterback Michael Vick has pleaded guilty to charges deriving from organized dog fights; conducting dog fights is a crime in all 50 states--a felony crime in most. What major national internet retailer refuses to stop encouraging dog fighting?

Amazon. Dog fighting is so vile that it's hard to believe anyone or any organization could or would, even in the least way, lend support to it. But, alone among online retailers, Amazon does. Anything--anything--for a buck, it seems.
Whether human activities are a major driver of global warming is still an open question in the scientific community: True or False?

Wildly false. The very fact that one can even credibly ask such a question is a testimonial to the tens of millions of dollars the energy industry has poured into artificially promoting "FUD" ("Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt"--an old Microsoft strategy). The problem with FUD is that many citizens, not being critical news readers, see two or three articles about global warming, then two or three pooh-poohing it, and assume that the views represent roughly equal numbers of experts. It just goes to show what money can buy. Start with this article from the Los Angeles Times; then read the author's original study in the highly respected Science magazine. Next, read this clear reportage from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; then read up on the subject in an encyclopedia context.

To see clearly where the FUD comes from, and in what quantities at what price, try this report from 60 Minutes; then see just who the so-called "skeptics" really are. There's more detail yet in this report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (and if you don't know who, and how credible, they are, check them out).
Explain in 50 words or fewer what the "greenhouse effect" is.

Radiant energy enters a container transparent to its frequency, strikes mass, and is re-radiated at a different frequency to which the container is opaque, so that the energy cannot escape the container and is trapped within it. That's 38 words.

The shortest explanations are not always the clearest to someone who doesn't already understand them; but if you can't give a short answer to this question, you have no right to an opinion of any sort about global warming, because the greenhouse effect is what drives it and if you don't solidly grasp how that works, all you're doing is repeating what someone told you. But, for those willing to learn, here's an example that illustrates how it all works. The key is that many materials are transparent to radiation in one band (such as visible light) but opaque to radiation in other bands (such as infra-red).

Light passes through the glass walls of a greenhouse, strikes the floor and soil and plants, and is re-radiated as infra-red energy; unlike visible light, infra-red cannot pass through glass, so the energy is contained within the greenhouse, raising its temperature.

Likewise, sunlight passes through a layer of gases in the Earth's atmosphere, strikes the Earth's surface, and is re-radiated as infra-red energy, to which the atmospheric layer of aptly named "greenhouse gases" is impervious, thus raising the Earth's temperature. There has always been a layer of greenhouse gases, and without them the Earth would likely be cold and barren (about 60° Fahrenheit colder); but human activity has added substantially to the thickness of the layer, notably by adding huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂), further raising the temperatures above long-term planetary norms.

Here's a yet-fuller explanation of the effect.
What are "carbon credits"? And what's wrong with them?

The background: humans increase global warming by adding to the Earth's greenhouse gases. The far-and-away major addition is carbon dioxide (CO₂), a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas (which, when frozen, is what we call "dry ice"). For various reasons, the element carbon--soot or, when compressed enough, diamond--is the basis for all life as we know it, or can even imagine it. Naturally, all living things have lots of carbon in their chemical makeup. When we burn fuels derived from organic sources--coal in electricity-generating plants or gasoline in cars, trucks, and aircraft--lots of carbon is released by that burning; and, when released, it readily combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide. If we burn lots of fuel, we get lots of carbon dioxide.

Thus, the chief thing we as a species need to do now--right now--is to somehow greatly reduce the amount of carbon we pump into the environment (or find some way to remove much of what is there, or both). One suggestion, which has begun being implemented in various places and ways, is what is called "carbon credits". Persons, companies, or other entities or enterprises that either generate much less carbon than normal for their activities or else take active steps to reduce atmospheric carbon get "credits" for their work, which they can then trade or sell to others; when someone buys a "carbon credit", that supposedly means they have offset some of their own carbon-producing activities. (A similar scheme has been used for some time now for general pollution discharges.)

In Europe, the EU mandated by law that companies achieve "carbon neutrality" by trading or selling carbon credits. In the U.S. (which still has not signed onto the Kyoto Treaty, or any international global-warming-reduction agreement), carbon credits are not mandatory, but many companies and individuals are starting to use them anyway.

(Note: one popular source of carbon credits is anything that increases or preserves planting of trees, because trees suck up carbon dioxide and replace it with oxygen, storing the freed carbon in their structures--but which carbon is, of course, re-released when the trees die and decompose or are burned.)

Regrettably, there are serious problems with this concept, and many feel it is not merely being done badly but is inherently useless or possibly even counter-productive. In Europe, for example, the regulators--presumably pushed by big industry--set the carbon "caps" (the amounts considered reasonable for carbon emissions) so ridiculously high that just about every industrial operation has surplus credits to sell, meaning that almost no one needs to get any (so there's no change being made), and that they are so comically low in price that even the very few who do need them to meet requirements can buy them for a song. Those factors, coupled with the usual quota of stupidity and greed, make a joke of the EU efforts.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., diligent individuals who want to help the situation are finding it not so easy when they look more closely into what's really going on in the "market" in credits.

Still, there are a very few credits sellers who seem to be doing an honest, competent job. If you are curious about how your own household weighs in the carbon-emissions scales, there are some easy-to-use on-line carbon calculators available; one, from CarbonCounter.org--possibly the best U.S. credits seller--allows you to go right from the calculation to a purchase of the appropriate compensating credits; if you want to cross-check their figuring, there's another calculator available, from the World Resources Institute's SafeClimate site.

How should you have done on this test? Maybe not 100% to the questions exactly as asked, but if you're not 100% on the underlying stories, you're not keeping up with what's important--really important, not passingly amusing--in the world today. You might not, for example, recall just what Referendum 57 or SCHIP are, but you should have heard of and know something about what they refer to.

A republic, replied the Doctor--if you can keep it.

Plain Talk is a more or less monthly feature carried in the weekly Ritzville Adams County Journal.

The text appearing above is a substantially expanded version of the published feature, which is limited by word count.