Kalamazoo shooting: an interesting use of the wild DoubleQuote
[ by Charles Cameron — comparisons may or may not be invidious ]
.
once again, @CNN mentions Abigail, one of the survivors of the #KalamazooShooting but not Tiana Carruthers ? pic.twitter.com/ydIt9LAiSt
— baeDILLA (@baeElectronica) March 7, 2016
**
Okay, that’s a compare and contrast situation, with the implication that one victim is less well-treated than the other. Hpw well is it borne out?
CBS News showed a photo of seven victims:
— along with a caption that spoke of six dead and two wounded:
Kalamazoo shooting victims
A dedicated teacher who mentored numerous students, a gardener who enjoyed sharing what she grew, and a high school senior who always had a smile on his face are among the victims of a weekend shooting rampage in western Michigan authorities said was carried out by Jason Dalton, 45, Feb. 20, 2016. All told, six people were killed and one was left in critical condition. Four of them were killed in two vehicles outside of a restaurant, while a father and son were shot at a car dealership.
Dalton admitted “his involvement in these incidents,” according to Kalamazoo County prosecutor Jeff Getting, and was charged Feb. 22, 2016, with six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder in the series of random shootings.
Here’s a look at the victims…
— with individual photos, again, of seven, and no photo of Tiana Carruthers.
Is color the issue here?
**
Then from CNN we have Kalamazoo victims were car shopping, enjoying a night out:
The two victims who survived
One woman was wounded when the first shooting occurred. Tiana Carruthers was in an apartment complex with her three children, police said, and is expected to recover.
Abigail, the girl shot at the Cracker Barrel, is still on a ventilator, critically ill, according to Dr. Aaron Lane-Davies. He told CNN affiliate WOOD that Abigail’s heart had stopped and doctors at Bronson Methodist Hospital got it beating again.
There’s a difference in the severity of the injuries suffered by the two survivors. Does that perhaps explain the discrepancy between the two sums raised on their respective behalfs?
The richest possible knowledge of context is important in drawing conclusions from comparisons, a reminder — to myself at least — that all DoubleQuotes deserve critical appraisal.
**
Also of possible interest in this instance, from the Kalamazoon County DA’s office:
Crime Victim Rights Grant
The federal Victims of Crime Act of 1984 (VOCA) ushered in a new era in crime victim assistance in America. In response to findings and recommendations issued by the Presidents Task Force on Victims of Crime and the Attorney Generals Task Force on Violent Crime, VOCA established the first significant national program in support of crime victim services. Under VOCA, federal funding is available to every state to support crime victim assistance and compensation programs. Support for the Crime Victims Fund created by VOCA is derived from federal criminal fines and forfeitures.
For over 20 years, the Kalamazoo County Office of the Prosecuting Attorney has used various forms of grant funding to provide these mandated services to victims. This practice has permitted our local Kalamazoo County dollars to be used to fund other mandated services for which there is no grant funding available.
Onwards!
March 8th, 2016 at 2:34 pm
This is a comment on the twitter link:
“It’s sad we as a nation have to rely on “Go Fund Me” to help those involved in these horrific attacks.”
.
A couple years ago a family I know lost their home in a tornado, as did many of their neighbors. The Red Cross came to town and put on a telethon which raised close to a million dollars. No one in the neighborhood ever saw any of that money. They’re still wondering where it all went.
.
However, this family started a Go Fund Me page and people directly gave them money. The father was in the hospital with a cracked vertebrate, so they were in more immediate need than most. The word rapidly spread on social networks. They got all the money they needed and more to tide them over until insurance claims could go through. The extra they got they shared with their neighbors.
.
My experience with Go Fund Me has been nothing but positive. I’m glad it’s around. I’ll never give to charities again when I can give directly to people instead.
Government disaster relief is also suspect. There were thousands of cases of fraud when the government was passing out money for Hurricane Katrina.
USAID spent $1.5 billion in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, but less than 1% went towards actual relief for Haitians.
March 9th, 2016 at 11:58 pm
“The Red Cross came to town and put on a telethon which raised close to a million dollars. No one in the neighborhood ever saw any of that money. They’re still wondering where it all went.”
*
Just wondering, did anyone in the neighborhood see the Red Cross? I mean money is the easiest things to ask for in these situations and actual help the hardest to render. People actually able to help is not always wanted, because of logistics. Did the Red Cross render any help, or did the neighborhood only have themselves to go to in their time of need? Maybe FEMA? I mean 44,000 sounds like a lot, but what is that, 3-4 days in intensive care? I am not sure what you mean when you say, “They got all the money they needed and more to tide them over until insurance claims could go through.” In Oregon about all poor people have in the ability to raise cash money is the Bottle Bill. Perhaps there could be a Go Fund Me set up for them? It sounds to me like Go Fund Me is a bit of a scam, but I like the fact they shared it with their neighbors, and the fact that the people who donated the money seemly didn’t care where it went. Bravo to them.By scam I mean people actually expect something for nothing, and one born everyday.
March 10th, 2016 at 4:02 pm
A Red Cross truck was seen in the first 24 hours passing out blankets and food, but that was it.
In fairness, this was a Middle American middle class area, so most of the people could turned to friends, relatives, employers, insurance etc. The tornado came through on Sunday morning, so a lot of people were at Church. Many stayed there, and they were put up for the night and given meals and clothes.
.
FEMA wasn’t any help either because they refused to declare it a disaster area. They have a simple formula where they take the state’s population and multiply it by some number. The resulting amount is what they expect the state to be able to pay. They make a quick estimate of the damages, and if it’s above the threshold they will step in. FEMA is really only going to be helpful to lower population states and rural areas. If you’re in a big state or big city, you’re on your own.
.
So this being a community with a tight social fabric and extensive resources to draw on, I suppose it makes sense that large charities and government agencies didn’t take a lead role. The Red Cross probably wasn’t needed, but they also really had no business raising so much money there either. You would think they would have more of a role in poor locations like Haiti, but there too they have problems. After the earthquake they raised a half million dollars and only ended up building six houses. Too much corruption and mismanagement meant most of the money just went to enrich a few local cronies.
.
Go Fund Me works well if you can tap into a social network and community. I don’t think it would work too well as a scam. Donors are mostly people who know the recipient or can more easily verify their specific needs unlike for a large, opaque, monolithic charity. Some people can and will game the system, no doubt. That’s going to be the case anytime money changes hands anywhere, but individual scammers have fewer places to hide than big charities hiding behind their big brands and PR campaigns.
.
You do make a good point that the poor don’t always have the network or community or resources to raise funds in this way. People are growing more physically isolated in general, so those not able to leverage social networking are going to be left behind. Another problem is charities and non-profit agencies are now also using these funding websites, so they could easily crowd out individuals. A solution could be a managed platform sort of like peer-to-peer lending websites, but then you quickly run into the middle man problem again. The administrative costs come out of donations. The bigger the platform gets the bigger the overhead and the less money gets to people in need.
.
Some alternate solutions may be benefit corporations or low-profit limited liability companies. I believe the latter is what Zuckerburg just set up for his daughter’s charity. These are charities that make a profit. I know this doesn’t necessarily solve the overhead problem, but it does make the charity accountable to shareholders who would presumably be more demanding than donors.
So you could found Larry Dunbar’s Oregon Bottlers, LLC, and backed by like minded investors start an emergency relief service to help the poor. You would teach them welding skills or something and then provide salvage and reconstruction services to cover shareholder dividends.
March 13th, 2016 at 1:48 am
“So you could found Larry Dunbar’s Oregon Bottlers, LLC, and backed by like minded investors start an emergency relief service to help the poor. You would teach them welding skills or something and then provide salvage and reconstruction services to cover shareholder dividends.”
*
Ha! Nice! You have really been paying attention Grurray.
*
But to what end? The poor that rely on bottles for cash in Oregon are, from what I have observed, pretty efficient. I would be the last one who would mess with them or their system.
*
On the second point, I am a very poor teacher. Even though I have been called “teacher”, I couldn’t even teach my brother in-law how to weld. A fellow worker, who we had to re-train every time our team needed him, was a much better teacher than myself. It seems that I don’t remember how hard it was to learn something, after I have learn it.
*
There must be something to the thought (mine)that I can’t show empathy for the person I am trying to teach.
*
Salvage and reconstruction services is another matter. A little D&C, destruction and construction, within the loop? I mean, if all I have to do is pay shareholder dividends, that doesn’t seem too hard.
*
Who are the shareholders? Do they include you? 🙂
March 14th, 2016 at 9:59 pm
More to the point, the Bottle Bill has evolved into a process that gives advantage to two distinct orientations, I.e. those who are of “means by no means”, but still need, and those in need but are working.
*
A training program to help increase resources for those working might appeal to like minded investors, but the business model couldn’t exclude those who are not the working poor.
*
You see those people of means by no means everyday on our roads and city streets hustling bottles (working) to keep themselves living. How do you help them without taking away their freedom of choice? This freedom of choice seems to be very important to them, as it should be for all of us. I mean when you get down to it, they probably have more to teach than learn. My father died not really owing anyone, but to people like Trump, and there are many, he may be called a loser, because he died without wealth.
*
On the other hand, I believe I learn from my father every day, and, most likely, he would have been a big supporter of Trump. I guess I would have to find investors who are like-minded and willing to back losers, such as myself.
*
Good luck with that. 🙂
March 15th, 2016 at 3:39 pm
It’s a common business dilemma –
How to scale up without getting killed by the old methods that worked before when you were small.
How to help them scale without squashing the potential and initiative that prompted you to help in the first place.
.
My first thought is if the poor are so good at scavenging, why not expand their domain to all trash? They couldn’t do much worse than current corrupt waste haulers. I just googled it and see Venkat Rao proposed an ‘Uber for waste management’ on Twitter once.
March 15th, 2016 at 6:27 pm
“My first thought is if the poor are so good at scavenging, why not expand their domain to all trash?”
*
First of all I am not talking about “the poor”. I am talking about the people who are taking advantage of what “bottles” have to offer. It’s from their observations in the environment of their workspace that they become what you observe to be good scavengers. They don’t want your trash–they want the stuff you decline to take advantage of. So you need to step back from your orientation and enter theirs. While stepping is work moving upward or downward, it is also movement laterally.
*
To your first point, you make a very good and helpful statement. Business is in a dilemma. Structure is very important, but keeping oneself focused has to be considered important also. A small structured business model is really mostly socialist in nature, even when they are ran by a decentralized structured network of some franchise. On the other hand, some big-box store in a community is structured more capitalistic, but there are a greater number of people who can be observed to use the store that lean to the Left.So the environment in the big-box store has an insurgency trying to eat it up, while the small business gets nearly ignored because the market is containing both stores.
*
So that is where strategy comes in. Welding and typing were edges setup for people entering the market for the first time. You can tell if a person can weld or not, and give them basic instructions how to weld, but one really has to know what it is you are going to need welded, before that person can become a welder. Perhaps it would even be accurate to say that manufacturing and processing are environments that one forms an orientation to, and according to, what works. So we need to understand what works here, in The Dalles, OR, and form a plan towards that end. We already know what the process is.
March 17th, 2016 at 12:23 am
“I believe the latter is what Zuckerburg just set up for his daughter’s charity. These are charities that make a profit.”
*
I believe Google was in the lead in creating charities that make a profit, and it makes me wonder. Is profit equal to the task that souls once took on?
*
I mean: is, in the name of charity, there a corporate node that is really able to move the corporate entity, in a moment of inertia, as the soul once did, to those in power to a new level, i.e. the ability to move from one dimension to the next? Do corporate persons, such as Donald Trump, even think in that context?
*
Trump seems to be pretty much one dimensional, big dick and wealth handed down, is really all there is, in the power of the game. I have a hard time believing Trump plans, much like Mother Teresa, on the event of moving on to another generational dimension, such as heaven.
*
If Mother Teresa can lose her faith, what hopes does the Trump have?
March 17th, 2016 at 8:24 pm
Mother Teresa didn’t lose her faith. She suffered from a condition called acedia. Common among ascetics (and increasingly a scourge of our modern world), it’s the origin of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Nowadays sloth is equated with laziness, but the religious definition is a spiritual despondency once thought long ago to be caused by a demon, specifically the noon day demon, daemonio meridiano.
.
The biggest complaint about Mother Teresa was that she didn’t necessarily try to solve poverty and suffering but counseled dealing with it by embracing it. She was labeled a masochist and fanatic by modern atheists, who apparently ignore all history and reality. One of the foundations of Buddhism, for example, is all unenlightened people experience inevitable suffering because of their connection to the material world. Modernists would have us believe the very materialism that causes our suffering will somehow end it. It hasn’t worked out that way so far.
.
Regardless of what you think about Mother Teresa’s philosophy, she practiced what she preached and embraced her own suffering. Suffering, she believed, brought her closer to Christ’s suffering on the cross, and salvation comes from taking up your own cross. She saw her own suffering, her cross, as that doubt and despondency, and, therefore, it was a gift from Christ. It was a way to separate the soul from the body, sever the material hold on the soul, and eventually unite the soul to the spirit.
.
The monks of old had some ideas about it, and they developed certain methods to nip it in the bud. Among St. Benedict’s rules were ‘When evil thoughts come into your heart, dash them at once on the rock of Christ’ and also to ‘keep death daily before our eyes’, which was meant to keep your eye on the endgame – transcendence from this world.
.
St. John Cassian believed in contemplative prayer and prescribed repetition of Psalm 69, and from there the Eastern Church eventually developed the Jesus Prayer. His methods are seen as emphasizing the power of individual intention and perseverance in turning toward God’s grace. For the early church, believe it or not, this was seen as skirting heresy http://ow.ly/ZDd12.
.
Keeping St John Cassian in mind, now consider Trump, who has stated he is a disciple of Norman Vincent Peale. Peale once said, “Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast.”.
He also said, “Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.”
.
Peale believed it was in the individual’s power to deliberately turn to God, which for him was more of an eternal force. By doing so you align your soul with the eternal peace and truth of that force. To Peale the material world and the soul were one, and they emanate down from the eternal.
.
Will Trump be motivated by the promise of transit to another dimension? If he really follows Peale as he says he does, he may believe he doesn’t necessarily have to go anywhere towards something as much as pivot around in the direction of it.
March 17th, 2016 at 9:39 pm
On the topic of charities and profits, two major figures in the early history of eBay, Pierre Omidyar (founder) and Jeffrey Skoll (first President) eacxh used their considerable financial stake to create foundations featuring the concept of social entrepreneurship, ie the creation of for-profit ventures where the company’s primary purpose was doing good, the profit side allowing the good doing to continue and expand.
.
I used to work for Skoll’s foundation some years back.