A Philosopher's Blog

Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects

Preying on Veterans

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While most profess respect for veterans, there are also those who prey upon them. There are two main reasons veterans are so often targeted by scammers. One is that they are a conduit to federal money that can easily be tapped. The second is that veterans are often vulnerable. One aspect of this vulnerability is, ironically, financial. While veterans have access to federal money, they are often in short term financial need. Another aspect of this vulnerability is inexperience. This can be financial inexperience—someone who has spent years in the military may be unfamiliar with the workings of the civilian economy. Another example is higher education—veterans are often the first in the family to attend college and can be targeted by for-profit colleges that are essentially scams to direct federal money into private pockets.

One recently exposed strategy of targeting financially vulnerable veterans is the practice of paying a veteran a lump sum in return for all or some of their monthly benefits check for a length of time. There are two main problems with this practice. The first that it targets veterans who are in financial difficulties and need money now (for example, to buy a car so they can get to their job). The second is that there are extremely high commissions (up to 50%), hidden fees and interest rates of up to 240%. As an illustration, one veteran received $2,700 to put a down payment on a car but ended up owing $27,000. Targeting the vulnerable and engaging in such predatory financial practices would be bad enough; going after veterans merely makes it worse. There is also the concern that these exploiters are scamming federal money—something that should enrage those who are outraged when they hear tales of welfare fraud.

It could be objected that these practices are simply how the free market operates. If someone freely gives informed consent to agreement and they fail to consider the consequences, then what happens is on them. They are not forced into the agreement and the purpose of business is t maximize profit, not to worry about whether veterans are being driven into debt and bankruptcy.

The easy an obvious response is that they are not freely giving informed consent. As noted above, veterans typically accept such agreements when they are in times of financial difficulty—they are effectively coerced into desperate actions. They are also not informed. As noted above, veterans (like many non-veterans) are often ill-prepared to deal with financial matters and many of the details of the agreements are hidden from them. As such, these agreements are often entered under coercion and in ignorance. Naturally, if a financially well-off veteran who fully understood everything wanted to engage in this sort of agreement, then the consequences would be on them. But a well-off and informed person would not engage in such an agreement. As such, this practice is wrong.

Assuming that such agreements are wrong, the practical matter is what to do about it. One thing that is already being done is that lawsuits are being brought against those running these schemes. Unfortunately, the scammers can easily operate online and simply create a new company when the old one is shut down. There are also laws being proposed against such practices, but if they are not federal, then the scammers can simply operate out of a scam friendly state.

There are also possible solutions that would address the factors that make veterans prey. The first is to provide veteran’s with basic training in finance and scam recognition. The challenge is to make the training non-boring and effective; otherwise it will just be a box-check sort of thing. The second is to do more to address the financial vulnerability of veterans. One option would be to have non-predatory versions of these payments that allow veterans to tap into their long-term benefits to address short-term needs without getting into financial ruin. A better option would be to address what gets veterans (and non-veterans) into these desperate situations. After all, if veterans were not in dire financial situations, they would not need to seek such desperate and harmful “solutions.”

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Elections & Legitimacy

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In a true democracy, the legitimacy of an elected official depends on the validity of the election that put them in office. While properly defining a valid election is a subject worthy of a book, I will endeavor to lay out some obvious standards and briefly discuss their state going into the 2020 presidential election.

First, every eligible citizen must have reasonable and reliable access to the voting process. This includes registering to vote and the actual casting of the vote. A citizen can freely choose not to participate but if this choice is due to unjust barriers, then this would undercut the legitimacy of the election.

While registering to vote is easy, it should be automatic for eligible citizens—the default should be that every eligible citizen is registered with an option to opt out. This would increase the number of registered voters and might slightly increase participation.

Republicans have focused considerable effort on suppressing voters, most especially minority voters. These efforts take various forms and include such tactics as voter ID laws, closing of poling stations, limiting early voting, and restricting voting hours. Experts disagree about the actual impact of these tactics but even if they had little impact, they would serve to damage the legitimacy of elections—especially when Republicans win. After all, one can always ask whether the Republican only won because voters were suppressed.

Republicans contend that their efforts are aimed at preventing voter fraud. They are right to consider this matter since the second standard is that those who are justly ineligible to vote must be prevented from voting. If ineligible people vote (or someone votes for them), then the legitimacy of the election is damaged. Fortunately, voter fraud is all but nonexistent in the United States, despite concerted efforts to find it. As such, while election officials should remain vigilant against the possibility, an official is more likely to be struck by lightning than witness actual voter fraud. There have been cases of election fraud, which is the third standard: the election must be run properly to ensure that each legitimate ballot is counted, and no illegitimate ballots are counted.

Somewhat ironically (but not surprising) the most recent election fraud was conducted by a Republican operative in North Carolina. The fraud was detected and addressed, but the same Republicans who cry wolf about voter fraud remained silent about this episode. Democrats did, of course, run some rather famous election frauds in Chicago over the years—this is a bipartisan thing. Fortunately, election fraud is still relatively rare—but recent and past occurrences show that elections need to be diligently policed to root out such fraud.

The fourth standard deals with the election equipment. If the means of collecting and tallying the votes are not secure and reliable, then the legitimacy of an election is in question. Unfortunately, this area is a disaster.

One major concern is that the voting machines are woefully insecure and most can be easily hacked with very basic skills. Even if no one is actively trying to sabotage an election, the machines can fail, and errors can occur that impact the election. As such it is reasonable to wonder if votes are being properly recorded and counted. Since Russia and other foreign actors seem to favor Trump and the Republicans, this vulnerability favors them. The possibility of errors favors neither party, since errors could benefit either. Also of concern is the fact that many of the machines do not create a paper trail, so the results cannot be confirmed.

While a perfect machine is impossible, a better machine is certainly a very real possibility and machines that create a paper trail can be easily made. Unfortunately, the Republicans have not been very interested in addressing these matters, most likely because they have been winning. However, this should be a bipartisan concern since the next election shenanigans might not favor the Republicans.

In addition to outside actors and machine failures, there is also the concern that 85% of voting machines are manufactured by two vendors. Both vendors are owned by private equity and hence their funding and control are unknown. This raises the worry that the machines could be manipulated by the vendors to swing elections. While this might sound like a movie plot, a Global/Diebold machine “lost” 16,00o Gore votes in 2000 and there are connections between these companies and Paul Manafort. While errors are to be expected, the voting machines issues of these companies seem to have consistently favored Republicans—thus raising serious concerns about the integrity of the election.

One proposed solution is to develop an open source voting machine and having the machine’s manufacturers operate with transparency would go a long way. While some might think that open source would make them vulnerable, this is actually the opposite—open source software is, in a seeming paradox, more secure.

Given that the legitimacy of elected officials rests on the legitimacy of the elections, these problems should be addressed. To the degree they are not, officials will lack legitimacy—especially those in the party engaging in election misdeeds.

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Mike’s Free Encounter #18: Death Captain

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This is the 18th in an ongoing series aimed to provide the overworked DM with ready-to run encounters. The PCs face off against a death captain

The encounter includes:

  • History/Background for the encounter.
  • New Monsters: Death Captain and Lightning Skeleton.
  • New Magic Item: Betrayer’s Blade
  • Encounter guide.
  • Color Maps

The companion ZIP file contains:

  • JPEG and Campaign Cartographer versions of the maps (with and without grid).
  • Hero Lab file for the encounter.
  • Word file of the encounter.
  • PDF of the character sheets for all the monsters.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/294312/Mikes-Free-Encounter-18-Death-Captain

Impeachment or Election?

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As the impeachment process plays out, the 2020 presidential election grows ever closer. Up until recently even many of Trump’s detractors asserted that because the election is so close, Trump should not be impeached. The infamous Ukraine call changed the view of some on this matter, but Trump’s defenders still use this argument. Some also argue that impeachment would overturn the 2016 election and thus should not be done. There are thus matters to be considered—whether impeachment should not occur when an election is close and whether impeachment wrongly overturns an election.

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As Trump’s defenders rightly note, Trump was elected president. As his detractors note, he lost the popular vote by a large margin. The impeachment process could result in Trump being removed from office and one could claim that this would overturn the election. But this would be an error.

First there is the obvious point that impeachment is in the constitution and thus is intended to be an option—if the founders saw it as a wrongful overturning of elections, they would have presumably not included it. While the Republicans praise the wisdom of the founders when it matches their agenda of the moment, the founds were but men and could be wrong.

Second, the purpose of impeachment is to remove a person from office who has committed misdeeds that warrant removal. This is not to say that impeachment cannot be abused, but to reject impeachment because someone might abuse it would be analogous to rejecting criminal courts because they might be abused by some judge. It is not the process but the abuse of the process that would be a problem. If this Republican defense worked, then they would have just proven that they were wrong to impeach Bill Clinton and have shown that no one (even a Democrat) should ever be impeached in the future. I suspect that those advancing this defense of Trump would not apply it to Clinton or a future Democrat but I could be wrong about that—perhaps they have a strong and abiding commitment to the principle that impeachment is always wrong because the person being impeached was elected.

Third, an analogy can be used to show that this defense is flawed. If the principle is that when a decision is made by people to select someone for a position, that person should never be removed until the time comes to again select for that position, then no one should ever be fired, and no one should ever be divorced. This is clearly absurd.  Now, what about the upcoming election defense?

It could be argued that with an election coming up, the people should get to decide whether the president remains in office or not. One challenge here is sorting out a time limit for this. Trump has over a year left in his term, so if the defense holds now, then a president would be immune to impeachment for about 25% of their term. This seems odd. If the president is justly impeachable, allowing them a year (or even a month) to continue to engage in misdeeds seems wrong and harmful.

Consider the following analogy. Suppose that Hillary is hired by the board to be the CEO of a corporation. In her contract, she will be up for review in four years. Hillary engages in misdeeds, including efforts to corrupt the review process. Imagine that the corporation has a policy that allows such CEOs to be removed for bad behavior, but Hillary insists that terminating her before then would overturn the vote of the board, so she should be allowed to stay and to continue her subversion of the voting process and commit even more misdeeds. This is absurd and would merely allow her more time to commit crimes and work on unjustly keeping her position. The same holds true for Trump.

As another example, imagine a professor who is using their position to extort favors from students. They are caught, but the university says that since they are up for tenure review in a year, they should not be fired—this matter will be sorted out by the vote of the tenure committee. This is also absurd—even if the vote is coming up the next day, these misdeeds should be addressed. The same applies to Trump.

Thus, the election defense of Trump has no merit. This also holds true for any other president—even a Democrat.

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Two Sides Problems: Impeachment Defense

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As this is being written, Nancy Pelosi is leading the House Democrats down the path to impeaching president Trump. The Republicans have rushed or reluctantly shuffled to defend him. There are two main focuses for their defense: substance and process.

The substance defense is (or was) a rolling defense. The first line was to deny anything had happened, which ceased to be an option when the text of the call was released, and officials started admitting the facts in public. The second line is to deny that there was anything wrong with what was done. This defense has proven problematic, so the focus has been on the process defense.

The process defense, obviously enough, involves attacking the process used by the Democrats in the house. One argument is that the process is unconstitutional and unlawful and hence Trump should not be impeached. The obvious flaw with this argument is that impeachment is constitutional and lawful as per Article II, Section 4: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The constitution also specifies that the House has the sole power to impeach. Since this defense is directly contradicted by readily accessible facts, any power it has must be psychological—people will feel that it is good because it is a defense made by their side. Naturally, to think that it is defective because it is made by the other side would be an error—though the argument is defective.

Another defense is to attack the specifics of the process followed by the Democrats. Some of these are attempts to apply the standards of a criminal trial (facing the accuser and so on) to the impeachment process. This might be part of a intentional strategy to confuse the public (impeachment is not a criminal trial conducted by the judiciary and does not follow the same rules) or simple ignorance about how the process works. This sort of defense has no merit and draws all its influence from psychology.

In the current episode, the Democrats face the impossible task of crafting rules that the Republicans will accept—for there are no such rules (unless they guarantee that Trump is not impeached). As such, the Republicans can always complain that the process is unfair, because their position seems to be that any process would be unfair. This is not based in good reasons, but a matter of wanting their side to win.

Another defense has been to use ad hominem attacks. The main talking point seems, bizarrely enough, to accuse the Democrats of using a “Soviet-Style impeachment process.” This attack took me back to my younger days, when the Soviet Union existed and Russia was seen as an enemy. The fact that the Soviet Union does not exist does not undermine the “argument”, but the power of this attack is psychological. After all, the Soviets did not remove leaders through an impeachment process. This could also be taken as drawing an analogy between how the Soviet Union was run and the way the Democrats are acting—but this analogy breaks down rapidly. Those using this analogy do not carefully go through the points of similarity and offer arguments as to why these are bad, they merely offer an ad hominem comparison. It is also odd for the Republicans to bring up the Soviet Union so much, given the Russian issues faced by Trump.

It is certainly reasonable for Trump’s defenders to argue that there are unfair, immoral or problematic aspects to the process—but these need to be grounded in facts rather than mere rhetoric or factual errors (or lies). There is a general problem with trying to argue about the process—it is not specified in the constitution. When Bill Clinton was impeached, the Republicans created the process (and the Democrats complained—since their side was under attack). The Republicans were obviously fine with that approach when they were on the side trying to impeach the president. What has changed is, of course, that they are now playing defense. A seemingly sensible solution would be for congress to work out a set of rules when there is not an impeachment in progress and to agree to follow them the next time an impeachment arises. This is unlikely, since each side wants to craft the rules to its advantage the next time it happens. So when the Republicans try to impeach a Democrat, I will most likely be able to reuse most of this essay.  

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Two Sides Problems: Heroes & Villains

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After the White House released a damning transcript of Trump’s conversation with the leader of Ukraine and Trump and his fellows essentially confessed on television to their misdeeds, Trump’s defenders continue to rally around him. A key part of his early defense was claiming the whistle blower did not directly hear the conversation, therefore their assertions are but hearsay. This defense has been torpedoed as first-hand witnesses have begun testifying. One of these is Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.

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Given what the transcript already reveals, it is hardly surprising that Vindman’s testimony would be damaging to Trump. In response, Trump’s defenders have rushed to discredit Vindman. Addressing the credibility of a witness is a legitimate tactic, provided that the assessment is on relevant grounds. These include such factors as the witness’ knowledge and objectivity. In the case of Vindman, his expertise is not in question, so the focus is on his objectivity.  

It is at this point that a Two Sides Problem arises. Trump’s defenders are one side, his foes on the other side. In this situation, the manifestation of the problem is that Trump’s side is concerned with winning; that is defending Trump regardless of what he has done. These defenders will certainly paint their opponents with the same brush, seeing them as concerned only with defeating Trump by any means necessary.

When people focus solely on winning, they are not following on any principle beyond victory for their side. Because of this, they are often willing to use whatever means will help them achieve this goal. Considerations of truth, morality, and justice often seem to have no weight. People caught up in this Two Sides situation also accept claims offered by their side and reject those presented by the other side simply because of their origin rather than their merit.

 Naturally, a utilitarian moral argument could be used to try to justify this approach—the good generated by the Trump presidency warrants all means to keep him in office. Or the evil generated by the Trump presidency warrants any means to remove him from office.

It is worth noting that to simply assume that because there are two sides that both must automatically fall into this Two Sides trap would be an error. People can resist the psychological and pragmatic appeal of sticking to their side in the face of the truth and goodness. Also, it would be an error to infer that because there are two sides with a stake in the matter, that they must be equally bad or in error. One side can be better, although both could be bad.

In this case, Trump’s defenders seem to be the worse side—the facts, law and morality are against them. Naturally, a clever Trump defender will assert that I must be a victim of the Two Sides problem and infer that I am therefore wrong. This logic would look like this:

Premise 1. Person A says X.

Premise 2. Person A is on the other side (not mine).

Conclusion: X is false.

This is simply a variant of an ad hominem and thus a fallacy. What would be needed is more than pointing out I am on the non-Trump side; evidence is needed to show that I am wrong.

As would be expected in a Two Sides situation like this, there has been a concerted effort to try to demonize those who are testifying.  Trump’s Defenders been advancing the narrative that Vindman might have been secretly working for Ukrainian interests at the expense of the United States. One piece of “evidence” being offered is the assertion that Vindman is from Ukraine and this is supposed to affect his loyalty. The historical fact is that Vindman’s family was forced to flee the Soviet Union, which seems an unlikely basis for an alleged loyalty to Ukraine. This accusation of dual loyalty is also especially insulting because Vindman is Jewish and this is a stock tool of anti-Semitism. They are trying to cast Vindman as a villain. Those who disagree with Trump, while right to defend Vindman using good methods need to beware of falling into the hero trap—believing that someone who advances your side must thus be right and good. This does not follow and is a positive ad hominem fallacy.

Trump’s defenders have been working this talking point asserting that Vindman has an “affinity for the Ukraine.” Sean Duffy presented this in a rather odd argument. Duffy tried to smear Vindman by asserting that he had an affinity for Ukraine and hence would put the defense of Ukraine ahead of the defense of the United States. When challenged on this point, Duffy referenced his own Irish heritage and asserted that he had an affinity for Ireland. Interviewer John Berman drew the obvious inference from what Duffy said, inquiring if he would pick Irish defense over U.S. defense.

While Duffy is correct that many Americans with foreign heritage have an affinity for these countries, it is quite a leap from that to the notion that most would prioritize these countries over the United States. If Duffy were right that Americans with foreign heritage (which would include Trump’s wife and children) should be regarded as likely traitors, then it would follow that nearly all Americans are likely to be traitors. To his credit, Duffy seemed to be making that very point about himself.

Accepting that America is a nation of traitors seems to be a high price to pay to discredit Vindman. But when victory for one’s side is all that matters, there seem to be few limits on the means employed. Fortunately, Duffy is relying on an inductive generalization from a sample of one (himself) to make this point. Since the strength of an inductive generalization depends on the size and representativeness of the sample, Duffy’s argument here is extremely weak. Even if he harbors treasonous thoughts in favor of Ireland over the United States, it hardly follows that others do.

Duffy could also be seen as making an argument by analogy. He seemed to be asserting that he would pick Ireland over the United States because of his Irish heritage and inferring from this that Vindman would do the same for his country of origin. Being an argument by analogy, this would be assessed in terms of the similarity between the two men. Vindman is a Lieutenant Colonel who received a Purple Heart in combat and has served his country well. Duffy’s claim to fame is his time served on MTV’s The Real World and Real World/Road Rules Challenge. As such, the two men are not that alike, and it would be a poor argument to draw an inference about Vindman’s loyalty to America from Duffy’s apparent profession of a lack of loyalty.

It must be noted that it is legitimate to consider the objectivity of a witness. If there was actual evidence that Vindman was biased or had dual loyalty, then this would undermine his credibility. But the attacks against him simply assert that because he has a foreign origin, he must be biased or have a dual loyalty. As noted above, this attack would discredit almost all Americans if it worked. As such, until evidence that specifically shows that Vindman is biased or has dual loyalty, then these attacks are baseless.

These attacks against Vindman show how those trapped in the Two Sides Problem can quickly cast those they present as heroes as villains whenever the need suits them—that is, when they believe doing so will help their side win. Republicans and Trump are happy to exploit the troops and rush to use them for political purposes (such as in Trump’s attacks on Colin Kaepernick), but when a soldier shows true patriotism by doing what is right and putting country over Trump, then Trump and many Republicans rush to cast him as a villain.

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