The Biggest Winners of Last Week's Supreme Court Decisions

Obama may be taking a victory lap over the final determinations of the U.S. Supreme Court this session, but he wasn't the biggest winner. Obama may have been happy, but in keeping an eye toward 2016, Charles and David Koch took home the ultimate prize. A quick look at each decision, and the impact, with a score from 10 to -10 to track the points the Koch Camp scores with each decision:

Lethal Injection (-1)
In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS ruled that a drug linked to three different botched executions could continue to be used. This didn't favor the Koch Camp, but you can't win them all. Liberals seeking to paint the brothers as pure evil would be surprised (on this and a list of other issues) that there's more agreement than not on criminal justice policies between the two sides. The Kochs have spent millions promoting criminal justice reform - including donations to (GASP!) the ACLU.

The Kochs are much more rational actors than they're given credit for, and disprove of criminal justice as it's practice in America. And while they'd never promote additional services to help the poor, they're opposed to actively punishing them for their socioeconomic status. Sure, they're appalled by the government spending billions to incarcerate people because those prisons are funded via taxes, but they've also been aligning with groups outright opposed to the death penalty.

Do they really care that much about the death penalty itself, or just the system's treatment of minorities committing low-level drug offenses? Hard to say, but the Charles Koch Institute is definitely devoted to reforming the system. Ergo, we rate this a -1, because I've no better score to argue for.

Same Sex Marraige (+7)
This victory is two-fold. The first is that gay marriage initiatives are major wins for Democrats. States putting the issue on the ballot in elections turns out the liberal vote, and colors elections blue. Depriving more States the opportunity to vote on the issue prevents this scenario. Additionally, while Koch Enterprises is headquartered in Kansas, the Kochs are New York City residents. They're not prejudiced people who discriminate based on skin color or sexual orientation.

Health Care Subsidies (+4)
Most people aren't aware of what the ACA decision actually did. The impact was the decision that the  federal government may subsidies to individuals in states that opted not to provide marketplaces for insurance coverage (in those instances, the feds came in and set up insurance exchanges sans state support). There are 6.4 million people in 34 states receiving $1.7 billion monthly who would be effected.

On the surface, the Koch Camp hates this decision. It deprived the country of the opportunity to take a nice bite out of Obamacare and makes future reforms to the law more difficult. However, significant writing has been devoted to the pressure such a result would put on officials in swing districts. The biggest conservative fear of Obamacare was that, once you give someone something, it's hard to take it away. Those receiving healthcare assistance now expect to continue receiving it, and if you don't promise to return, they'll vote for someone who will. The ruling Republicans wanted could have very well precipitated a blue wave that actually strengthened the ACA. This ruling, considering everything, may have been the best outcome.

Pollution Limits (+10)
This was the win no one is talking about. The decision wasn't earth-shattering, but did rule the EPA was failing to properly conduct cost-benefit analysis in setting emissions limits. The EPA was headed down a path of requiring more expensive scrubbers and other technology that significantly impacted the bottom line of polluting industries. Given the portfolio of Koch Industries, the brothers' wallets will be larger in future years as a direct result of this outcome.

Which Race Has The Smartest Inmate Population?

I want to do this study sometime. Not because I'm particularly interested in issues of race, crime, or any of that jazz, but because political correctness will bear down on the results with the fervor of 300 angry Spartans. I would like to feel that.

It began when I was reading about average prison IQ in general - it appears to going down. This makes sense - 50 years ago most people could find a menial yet somewhat supportive job. Chalk it up to collective laziness or globalization or the destruction of unions or whatever, but that's no longer the case.

When most people could be reasonably expected of being capable of providing for themselves, the prison population would be driven by what we consider "bad people." Those that commit crimes because they get thrills out of stealing, don't value human life, or can't control their addictions. Those people still end up in jail, but the economic realities of 21st century America mean more and more people are left behind. And there's a pretty stark correlation between intelligence and ability to provide for yourself. So low IQ citizens go without, and the likelihood of committing crime (either out of frustration or as a means to supplement income) goes up. And thus, average prison IQ goes down.

I haven't come across the empirical study backing this up, but that logic is pretty unassailable. However, that's not what I want to study. Looking at prison populations, the racial make up is well known. A significantly greater proportion of the black community is locked up than the white community. And we're not arguing causes (environment, opportunity, culture, institutional racism, poverty all play roles to some degree). I want to look at whether the average black inmate is more intelligent than the average white inmate.

The thinking goes like this: whites, on average, have more opportunities than blacks. They, on average, go to better schools, come from homes with more money, are subject to more constructive expectations, and are more likely to have two-parent homes. Therefore, we expect the next generation to hold better jobs. On average, the whites that don't succeed are more likely to fail due to low IQ (and thus lack of use to society) than a black peer due to the issues discussed above. Painting an example: a white citizen with an IQ of 100 holds the same likelihood of achievement as a black citizen with an IQ of 105 (I'm just picking numbers out of the air here) due to those embedded obstacles.

Let's say the level of achievement hypothesized above is a job with a working wage, consumate with the ability to put a serviceable amount of food on the table, rent for a sanitized apartment, and basic health care. It's on the margin, and one IQ point below means that citizen can't lock down a working wage position and is put at a considerably higher likelihood of committing crime. That would mean an IQ of 99 for your Caucasian, and 104 for your African American. Which means whites are more likely to go to jail if they have IQs of 99 and lower. Blacks, with IQs of 104 and lower. Which would create a prison population wherein one race has an appreciatively higher IQ than another.

Other factors go into this, of course. I believe this would be a driver though. I can also never run for public office.

Gettin' Our G-Walk On

I'm referring to gunwalking here, obviously. A couple facts about the Fast and Furious scandal that Republicans need to be made cognizant of:

• This was a Bush-era program. Obama let it perpetuate, he didn't establish it.
• If you subscribe to the idea that "if we outlaw guns, then only criminals will have them," with gun ownership being important to defend yourself against criminals who will find ways to acquire firearms regardless of their legality, then we have to acknowledge these crimes probably would've happened anyway. The weapons involved just would've originated elsewhere.

Conversely, what I would like to remind Democrats of:

• See bullet #1 - your boy was responsible for perpetuating the program. Also, this administration has been a bunch of dicks about it.

This country seems to have a problem with supplying weapons to people and having the supply come back and bite us in the ass. Look to Afghanistan, look to the Contras, just look somewhere (yes folks, Reagan sent a lot more bullets to outlaws down in Central America than anyone who's held the office recently). When you purposefully let terrorists acquire instruments manufactured for the sole purpose of killing people, don't act surprised if it occasionally comes back to bite you in the ass; at the end of the day, you're still dealing with terrorists.

The next paragraph is where I offer my own insightful analysis on how to bring down higher-level traffickers and the cartels they supply without having to rely on gunwalking:

 

White, Black, Green: I Like Bags of Tea, Ranked Thusly

I don't have any great desire to live in a house - as long as I've a decent sized kitchen and some storage space an apartment is just fine. What I would miss is a garage/work area. That's the real reason home ownership is important to me.

We've had a week now to examine the impacts of last Tuesday's primary results. The Tea Party (Express) caught more than a few stares, and has proven itself a force to be reckoned with. I want to respect these guys as a small government proponent, I really do. But until I see a Palin rally highlighting the inappropriateness of government intervention in prostitution, marriage, and drug use (particularly marijuana), I fear the rhetoric remains superficial. Also, you can't be neocons anymore - even your misguided attempts to idolize Reagan gloss over the fact he got the hell outta Lebanon and was much more prudent about putting troops on the ground (terrorization of Nicaraguans notwithstanding). True conservatives hate meddling in the affairs of other nations, particularly via military action. The best hope for tempering this teabag movement of with reasoning may come from an unlikely source: the man once mocked for hosting a show with puppets making crank calls as a lead in (more on this later in the week).

I set a really lofty goal for myself yesterday. I'm scared to reveal it because there's a fair chance I'll fall flat on my face, and talk without action is bragging without having done anything. But I'm gonna try, cognizant of the fact that sometimes you simply bite off more than you can chew. Like a hippo.

Tosh.0, Doobies, and Other Non-Intellectual Pursuits

My sophomore year I almost got a job doing database entry for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and the only questions they asked were if I had ever smoked marijuana or been convicted of a crime. Anyone seeking a security clearance is asked the same question on marijuana - this government is serious about preventing hardened criminals from infiltrating the system. Yet assuming the nation becomes more reasonable and legalizes the substance, is this question still appropriate? Personal feelings of how idiotic present drug laws are aside, it begs a pondering.

The reversal of a law denotes an acknowledgment of either 1. misplaced judgment in crafting the original statute; or 2. a change in circumstances making the original reasoning no longer relevant. An altered marijuana policy scenario is likely both - present policy is wrong, which was reflected by a change in public opinion which shifts to legalization. However, there's no real moral high ground in breaking the current law - it's a law you're expected to abide by, even if you don't agree with it. A democracy is generally better off when people follow the laws prescribed by government. Problems arise when individuals only obey what they believe should apply to them, for no individual should be above others.

So, is it appropriate to expect a security clearance seeker to have abstained from the sticky icky, even after its legal reception? While I believe it should not be a question directly asked, abstinence remains an expectation. Though the codified criminal code is currently an infringement on civil rights, there is no moral righteousness in subverting it. Public defiance for the purpose of bringing attention to the issue is one thing - rolling a doobie and watching Tosh.0 in your living room is not. You've broken the law, yet in doing so failed to influence the trajectory of marijuana policy. Because even if I can provide a damn solid case against current policy, to say I'm more judicious than our lawmakers is more pretentious than cause for absolution - even if it's true.