Review of “Paranoia & Heart-Break; Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility” by Jerome Gold

Jerome Gold worked for fifteen years as a counselor in a juvenile detention facility in Washington State, from 1991 to 2005, and this is his day-to-day journal.  It’s a gripping read, and the reader soon begins to care as much about some of these kids as the author does himself.

The first thing that strikes you is the terrible histories of these kids, and the fact that each was once a victim of a violent crime or abuse at an appalling young age.  Many, but not all, of the kids are gang members or have older siblings or fathers who were involved in gangs.  Gold was working at a time when the crack cocaine epidemic was taking its worst toll on impoverished communities, and he spent much of his time trying to teach these kids how to resist drugs and gang culture.

But violence isn’t solely the province of gang activity; poverty and isolation are also big factors.  Most of these kids were trying to make the best choices they could when their options were severely limited.  In most of their families, violence and sexual abuse was passed down through generations.  And Gold and his colleagues do their best to break the cycle.  But the author also makes it clear that they’re trying to counteract the effects of a racist and dysfunctional system.

About halfway through the book the author describes a conversation with a friend, who’s a parole officer: “I deal with a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic kids—disproportionate to their numbers in society—whose families are impoverished, who almost always come from single-parent families, whose mom or dad or both have a drug or alcohol problem, whose mom or dad themselves may have served time or are serving time. So let’s face it: society doesn’t love these kids and wants them exactly where they are: in prison. And I am society’s representative. I am the father society wants them to have, even though I despise society for all the reasons the best of my generation despises society. So, however I want to see myself, I do represent oppression.”

He describes the inherent conflict in trying to teach kids to follow the rules of the system—go to school, get a job, live by society’s standards—but at the same time he has to teach them how to question the authority of gang leaders, abusive parents, and criminal justice authorities who don’t treat them fairly.

And this is where Gold’s book really shines.  He doesn’t just talk about the children in the facility, he also illuminates how these facilities are run, by whom, and for what objectives.  And like any institution, some employees are good at their jobs, and some are terrible.  Meanwhile, the administrators have no clue what it’s like to work directly with the kids, and sometimes they make terrible decisions.  Some psychiatrists are good, but others are wedded to a treatment agenda that won’t work for every kid, and they refuse to adapt accordingly.  Adequate funding is always a problem.  And beneath it all is a persistent struggle by staff to avoid burnout and to see each new kid in the system as someone who can be rescued and rehabilitated.

This book should be required reading for politicians and public policy makers.  But everyone can benefit from a better understanding of why kids commit crimes and how hard it is to piece together a normal life once a child has been abused, acts out, and then is incarcerated.

Not All Guns Are Created Equal

Seven killed at a Sikh temple.  Twelve killed and 58 wounded at a movie theater.  What do these two mass murders have in common?  The weapons used.

When we talk about gun control, gun advocates repeat the old refrain:  “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  While there’s truth in that, we should also add:  “the type of gun used can make one murder into a mass murder in a matter of seconds.”

The shooting two weeks ago in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was accomplished with three weapons:  a 12-guage, pump-action shotgun; a Smith & Wesson M&P15 semiautomatic rifle; and a Glock 0.40-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

To kill 12 people and wound 58, the shooter had to fire a huge number of rounds in a matter of a few minutes.  The gunman started with the shotgun, which probably fired about 5 rounds, then switched to the semiautomatic rifle, which was fitted with a 100-round ammunition barrel.  He sprayed the crowded theater with a shower of bullets until the ammunition barrel jammed, then he dumped the rifle and pulled the semiautomatic pistol.

Now, the semiautomatic rifle he used is an AR-15, which is similar to the military’s fully automatic M-16.  The AR-15 rifle used to be restricted for civilian purchase and use under the 1994 assault weapons ban.  The ban expired in 2004, and politicians have been too cowardly to renew it ever since.  The high number of casualties and wounded in the Aurora shooting is a direct result.

The 0.40-caliber Glock pistol is similar to 9-mm handguns, which are popular with drug gangs and are used in the vast majority of mass murders in the U.S.  Gun control advocates have been trying for decades, with the help of the nation’s police departments, to restrict the manufacture and sale of 9-mm handguns for those very reasons.  We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that the man who shot up a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, yesterday also used a 9-mm handgun as his weapon of choice.

In debates about gun control we should always remember that not all guns are created equal.  Some can raise the death toll from two or three people to a dozen within a matter of minutes.  As a society we have to ask ourselves:  should we allow everyone the freedom to rain death on the maximum number of people in the shortest amount of time?

Is a few people’s “fun”—the ability to spray targets at the local gun range with a semiautomatic weapon—worth the lives of so many innocent and unsuspecting people, some as old as your beloved grandparents, and some as young as the unborn child lost by a pregnant woman wounded in the Aurora, Colorado, shooting?

The answer is no.  Gun control is not the all-or-nothing proposition that the NRA would have you believe.  The type of gun matters, and Americans and the politicians who represent us need to realize that sooner and not later.

 

To Bain or Not To Bain: That’s Not the Question

The media continues to obsess about whether Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital from 1999 through 2001.  As the New York Times puts it, “At stake is whether Democrats can hold Mr. Romney responsible for a series of now-controversial investments Bain made during the period in question, including companies that specialized in outsourcing, laid off some of their workers, or declared bankruptcy.”

Yes, Democrats have run ads that question Romney’s responsibility for outsourcing American jobs.  And, yes, Romney has denied that he was in charge of managing investments at Bain during the period in question, when he was living in Utah working at his new job managing the Olympic Games.

During that three-year period Romney was still listed as the chief executive and sole owner of the parent company Bain Capital Inc. and his name appeared on 142 different documents that were filed with federal regulators.  But in practice, he probably didn’t have anything to do with making specific decisions on which companies were bought and sold by Bain’s various funds.

This is an aspect of Wall Street that’s difficult for most working class Americans to understand.  A rich man’s name may be on the legal documents of a company and he may draw a six-figure salary (as Romney did, receiving at least $100,000 from Bain Capital in 2001) for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with putting in an honest day’s work.  Sometimes wealthy people are paid only for the use of their names, and they never sign any documents, read any of the documents they do sign, never attend board meetings, never provide any advice, and never make any decisions.

Nice work if you can get it.

Remember, though, that the money paid to rich people for the use of their names is part of the enormous profit squeezed out of the companies owned and managed by hedge funds and private equity companies like Bain Capital Inc.  Jobs are outsourced and companies run into the ground so that outsized profits can be wrung out of them in order to pay wasteful overhead, including outsized salaries to rich people who don’t do anything.  Mitt Romney has benefited enormously from this disgusting practice, and he’s never condemned it.

Mr. Romney claims that he was never involved in outsourcing jobs.  But he did profit from the practice.  And he’s never actually said that jobs should stay in America and that everyone should invest in America.  According to his 2010 tax return—the only one he’s made public—he has many investments in offshore funds through his Bain Capital holdings.  Most of those offshore funds were set up so that clients of Bain Capital could avoid paying U.S. taxes.

The real issue is whether working class Americans think a man like Mitt Romney represents their interests.  After all, that’s the main question we should ask ourselves before we vote for any politician:  does this person understand and agree with my interests and concerns, and can he represent me?

The answer is that Romney neither understands nor cares about the economic conditions under which most Americans live.  He’s been content up till now to live off the profits of a system that has shrunk the “middle” class to a handful of people making over six figures a year and plunged the majority of Americans into poverty and insecurity.

And he’s happy about that.

King 5’s Cowardly Reporting

On Monday, local TV station King 5 aired a special report on their 11:00 news hour about ocean acidification and its effect on the local shellfish industry.  They spent several minutes on the topic, but managed to avoid mentioning the words “global warming.”

 
They did give a partial reason for ocean acidification:  more CO2 in the water causes the water to become more acidic, and there’s more CO2 in the water because there’s more CO2 in the air.  But they didn’t go on to say anything about the sources of all the extra CO2 in the air.

Ocean acidification is a well understood and predictable side-effect of global warming, and the fact that it’s now observable and progressing much more rapidly than climate scientists predicted is a major piece of proof in the global warming hypothesis.

Furthermore, King 5 viewers need to know where CO2 comes from:  coal-burning power plants (which make up about half of our utility plants in the US), certain industries (especially oil refining and extraction), and the tail pipes of our automobiles (unless you drive a fully electric car or one that burns cooking oil).

Maybe Americans didn’t realize that they were choosing to drive their SUV’s at the expense of being able to eat shellfish in the future, but that’s no excuse for hiding that fact now.  Ocean acidification is man-made, not some mysterious natural event, which is what the King 5 report implied.

There’s no excuse for such an act of journalistic malfeasance.  I felt sorry for Lori Matsukawa, who looked as if she could barely keep herself from blurting out the words “global warming, folks, that’s what this is all about.”

We have a scientific community that accepts global warming as a fact.  We have a President who accepts global warming as a fact.  Our higher courts have ruled that global warming is a fact.  It’s past time for the media to report it as a fact.  Because, as the King 5 report proved, you can’t accurately report on the effects of global warming, if you can’t admit that it even exists.