TM Lutas

What did those veterans do?

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While we’re honoring America’s veterans, I thought it would be interesting to see what it is the were doing to earn that honored status.

There is a site on the Internet called the Joint Electronic Library (and it’s slightly restricted cousin the JEL+). It’s where the American military officially plans what is to be done when the job’s big enough that sometimes different military services are going to be doing it next to each other.

What military people do is essentially a task list. The military publishes an unclassified universal task list every three months. It currently has 1,285 tasks. They each have performance indicators. The whole list looks very little like how civilians discuss war or think of all the things that go into the military. Exploring this disconnect and how it makes the lives of our military harder and even increases casualties is a post for another time. This is Veterans Day, not Memorial day.

What’s most important?

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If you had one thing, one piece of information that you could get out to the people of your town/county/state/country what would it be? Insofar as news goes, this is an interview question that gets at what is most important. I’ve come to the conclusion that if american journalism asked that question and compiled the answers of every influencer they interviewed, they would, at very little cost and effort, compile a pretty good reporting program.

Recently, I had an opportunity to grab a data point. At a pre-election rally, there was Indiana’s Attorney General, Greg Zoeller, making his way through those seated and he wasn’t being mobbed. So I asked for, and got a little bit of time and he laid out the most important thing that he thinks people should pay attention to.

In AG Zoeller’s case it was electoral turnout. He pretty eloquently made the case that without sufficient turnout, elections are not legitimate expressions of the will of the people and that we need to make sure that the government doesn’t lose legitimacy. It’s an interesting window into the mind of a pretty impressive politician. It’s also entirely counter to the media narrative of the GOP as the party interested in suppressing voter turnout. We’ll see in the next legislative session how that determination to improve turnout will turn into bills and hopefully a new law. I won’t steal the legislature’s thunder but if they execute, Indiana’s going to make some noise in 2015.

How many ebola cases before a travel ban is justified?

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The usual formulation for discussing air travel bans is how many ebola cases making it to the US before President Obama is forced to stop air travel to and from west Africa. But there’s another variant of the question, how many ebola cases in the US before others will stop air or sea travel to and from the this country?

I do not think it likely that we will reach such numbers in this outbreak but it’s an interesting change from the usual breathless journalistic speculation of the US imposing a ban. If we don’t keep our house in order, others will isolate us to keep themselves safe.

10/22
Update: Since this post was written the arrival of travelers from the ebola hot zone have been restricted five airports where screening has been put in place and just now the CDC has announced that all arrivals will be under 21 day observation from entry in a sort of loose post entry disease defense regime. If they travel, they need to notify the CDC and they need to call in daily temperature readings and report any ebola-like symptoms. This might work, and considerably reduces the possibility that we will be under travel ban because we let ebola come in and get out of control.

Simple Question: Why are property taxes public but income taxes aren’t?

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In the US, property taxes are public record. Income taxes are not. It’s viewed as an intrusive violation of one’s right to privacy to view a person’s 1040 without good cause but everybody can go over the property taxes without justification. After a bit of research there doesn’t seem to be a lot of discussion why that is. It’s like there’s deep consensus that this is the way that things should be but no justification laid out in living memory to keep things this way. I agree with the consensus, that property tax records should be public. I just don’t like the thought that I don’t know why and I don’t know why income taxes are categorically different.

Open thread – simple questions

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I’m finding that a lot of our assumed shared vocabulary isn’t as shared as we think it is. Whether it’s “ISIS is not Islamic”, what is “combat” or “war”, or even what is “equality”, we fight an awful lot about issues that depend on terms that we haven’t defined well at all or have tribally defined them and assign our tribal definition of the term to somebody who holds a different definition.

Simple questions can clarify this sort of thing.
What is Islamic
What are the various categories of military action
How do you assess equality

So what simple questions have you found to be thought provoking or interesting? My current list will be in comments.