Summer safety -- myth vs. reality

With summer approaching and the end of the school year nigh, we must be vigilant regarding the safety of our children. Parents, rightfully, are concerned for the safety of their children. A popular parenting website offers this featured article: Gun Safety - Do You Ask About Weapons Before a Playdate? Skittish parents are warned that forty percent of homes with kids also have guns and that “eight kids die every day from guns” (emphasis in original).

Humans tend to be very poor processors of risk information, and that tendency is greatly exacerbated by downright bad information. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics for 2004 (last full year available) states that for children 5-14, a total of 41 were killed by accidental firearm discharges. (Unless you allow your child to play hopscotch on the drug war battlefields, your chief concern should be accidental death by firearm). While 41 deaths are tragic, that is a far cry from the 2,922 deaths asserted in the article (the yearly total of 8 per day).

So what should you, as a caring and responsible parent, be concerned about? While guns are popularly vilified, they are way down on the list. According to CDC statistics, here’s what you should be asking your playdate’s adult family (mom, dad, steps, uncles, aunts, etc.):

1. Do you have a bad driving record? Any DUI convictions? In 2004, 1,453 children aged 5-14 were killed in transportation-related accidents (overwhelmingly in automobiles). Odds – 64.3%
2. Do you have a pool, or will you be taking my child to the beach? Over 250 children died by drowning in the same period. Odds – 11.3%
3. Is your home protected by fire and smoke alarms? How about a sprinkler system? More than 180 kids died from smoke, fire, or flames. Odds – 8.0%
4. Are all of your household poisons (cleaning solutions, etc.) safely locked up? Nearly 60 kids died from poisoning in 2004. Odds – 2.6%
5. Finally we get to the firearms question – with 41 accidental deaths. Odds – 1.8%

While it may be fashionable and politically correct to vilify firearms, a truly responsible parent will pay attention to the real probabilities. Maybe it’s time for a Brady Campaign to Prevent Traffic Violence. It would be much more effective in actually savings kids’ lives.

Let's end violence violence

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal (May 23-24, 2009) reports that community activists are begging president Obama to intercede in an epidemic of murders of young people (“Chicago student killings spark appeals to Obama”). Chicago has suffered the killings of 37 school age children so far in the 2008-2009 school year – which we can all agree is 37 too many.

Two thirds of the murders were drug or gang related, others may involve cases of mistaken identify. Activists decry gun violence and are calling for stricter gun control. This focus may be dangerously wrong headed in that it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem.

The Reverend Michael Pfleger (of “America is the greatest sin against God” fame) urged his congregation to sell and wear t-shirts emblazoned with an upside-down American flag (a sign of distress) and the exclamation “Gun Violence – An American Emergency.” Reverend Pfleger also asked them to wear American flag pins upside down. Reverend Pfleger thinks that America is sick.

Imagine that Mr. Obama could cause all of the guns in Chicago to be magically atomized. Do you think for one instant that the violence would end? That guns are the underlying cause of violence and, that by “disappearing” them, the violence would leave with them? If guns are the source of violence, then I must have had a blessedly lucky childhood. We had guns down on the farm and in all of my friends’ homes, too. None of these guns ever forced one of us to murder a classmate. No, there is something else at work here.

There are creatures in Chicago (hard to call them human) who do not blink to kill in cold blood. The willingness to pull a trigger would transfer with ease to the willingness to swing a baseball bat, crushing a skull, or wield a knife to stab the heart, or slice a throat, or rip open an abdomen. It is that willingness that is the problem. That is our enemy, and that which must be eliminated. Magically atomizing guns won’t make that willingness go away.

But from where does it arise? Much has been written on this, but I suggest that it is lack of boundaries, skewed values, and distorted social and cultural norms. The willingness to kill in cold blood is evil incarnate. So it is not gun violence, or knife violence, or brickbat violence, or dynamite violence, or motor vehicle violence that is the issue – it is violence violence. And until we address the root cause, we are tilting at windmills.

In this, I side with Dr. William Henry “Bill” Cosby, not with Reverend Pfleger. I wonder whom Mr. Obama favors.

Freedom's just another word...

In early May, a monumentally irresponsible MBTA driver crashed his trolley into the rear of another. Proximate cause? Texting while operating a public conveyance. In typical fashion, the Massachusetts legislature is now debating whether to ban texting for all Massachusetts drivers on all public roadways. (That this arose as an MBTA disciplinary matter is apparently not a material issue).

Don’t get me wrong – I do not text while driving and do not support it. But this micromanagement of human behavior is precisely what earned Massachusetts its abysmal 44^th place ranking in personal freedom (“Freedom in the 50 states, an Index of Personal and Economic Freedom”, February 2009, Mercatus Center, George Mason University). Given our existing laws and proclivities, here is the Massachusetts version of proscribed behaviors while driving:

1. Do not drink
2. Do not take drugs
3. Do not text
4. Do not watch DVDs
5. Do not eat pizza
6. Do not read the newspaper (except the Globe – that’s OK)
7. Do not shave or apply makeup
8. Do not shampoo the dog
9. Do not sauté food items on a hibachi
10. Do not weed your window planter boxes

It is possible to take an entirely different approach, one based on outcomes rather than behaviors. Outcomes are countable while behaviors are infinite. For instance, the entire traffic safety code could be replaced with:

1. Keep your vehicle under control at all times.

If you can drink, or text, or shampoo the dog while keeping your vehicle under control at all times, more power to you. (But you can’t – that’s the whole point). This approach would be elegant, efficient, and consistent with the principles of freedom on which our nation was founded. As a matter of fact, all of our laws could be re-crafted in this fashion. Thousands of pages of stultifying laws, regulations, and restrictions could be reduced to a few principled paragraphs.

But it will never happen – and here’s why. There would be no need for a full-time legislature. We would not need fancy offices and big salaries and retirement benefits and perks and multi-million dollar budgets for aides. Can you see your legislature giving up this cushy life they have crafted for themselves? No way – and it is you, dear citizen, who keeps voting (or failing to vote) and thus sustains the status quo. You must be satisfied with it.

Unintended consequences

Boy, we really gave those bankers a good drubbing! Many greedy captains of finance have given back their ill-gotten bonuses under threat of confiscatory 90% taxes. Many others have been fired. Doesn’t it feel great to be winning the class warfare battle?

Meanwhile, things are getting dicey in Providence (“RI gang mediators bracing for violence,” 4/4). Seems that the nonprofit Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence is facing a huge budget shortfall. Teny Gross, the institute’s executive director, says “Everyone is sending an apology. It feels a lot more desperate. There are VIPs of banks and investment places that used to donate… are now out of a job.”

Too bad we can’t learn from our mistakes. An attempt in 1990 to tax the luxuries of the evil rich resulted in “the loss of 330 jobs in jewelry manufacturing, 1,470 in the aircraft industry and 7,600 in the boating industry” (George Will, JWR Insight, Oct 28 1999), disproportionately devastating to little Rhodie. It was blue collar workers who suffered, not the rich.

Imagine that – the rich actually do something with their money – like spend it in the broader economy or make charitable donations. I always thought that they hunched over huge piles of cash in a darkened room hissing “Yessss, my precious…”

Politics abounds with unintended consequences. Sometimes the simplest solutions are best. It might do to tone down the class warfare rhetoric and allow the productive, entrepreneurial, and creative among us to make and spend their money. We would all benefit.

The Grapes of Wrath -- do-over

An article in the weekend Wall Street Journal (“’Youth Magnet’ Cities Hit Midlife Crisis”, 5/16/09) describes the migration patterns of some of our most prized citizens. College educated, single people between 25 and 39 years old are the basis for economic rejuvenation, high pay (and high tax revenue) jobs, and cultural vibrancy that make them greatly sought after. A study of these patterns reveals the top 20 cities which are the beneficiaries of this net, in-migration. Because these productive citizens are motivated both by climate and the “cool” factor, it is not surprising that Phoenix and Seattle top the list.

Question: what do Boston, Providence, Hartford, Portland ME, Burlington VT, and Concord NH have in common? Answer: they are not on the list. As a matter of fact, neither is any other city in New England, nor the top three megaplexes: New York, Chicago or Los Angles. No, these places are all donors of the young, cool, educated, productive workforce; not recipients.

How does one explain this phenomenon? There are many factors, but here’s something to consider – freedom.

Earlier this year, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University published an analysis, “Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom.” This study ranks the 50 states in terms of social, personal, and economic freedom. The aberrant New England “live free or die” state of New Hampshire ranked first, with the greatest overall freedom, whereas New York state ranked dead last by a country mile. The other New England states (MA, RI, CT, VT, ME) averaged a stultifying 42^nd. The megaplex states (NY, CA, IL) averaged 46^th overall. The land of the free isn’t very much so in great swathes of the country.

How did the top-20 destination cities mentioned above fare? Two of them are in California (Sacramento and Riverside), a bow to climate and “cool” in spite of California’s 47^th place freedom ranking. The remaining 18 destination cities are in states whose average ranking is 15^th – much better than average. And the top destination state (Texas, with 4 of the top 20 cities) ranks 5^th. Hmmm – there may be something to this theory.

Recent news item – Rhode Island, with a total population just over 1,000,000 people, has about 400,000 people employed. Let’s put this into perspective. Imagine a prehistoric tribe of 10 persons including children and the elderly. The survival of the clan rests entirely on 4 individuals. For every rabbit snared, the 4 workers must feed themselves and 6 additional mouths. They must, at times, feel a bit put-upon and wonder if the others might at least gather some berries. In fact, they might just be tempted to pull up stakes and move to Texas.