Author: Tony

“I decided I don’t need it.”

There is a lesson here on individual responsibility.

[Outfielder So] Taguchi, signed by the Phillies this winter, is the only Japanese player on a major-league contract this spring who does not use an interpreter around the ballpark, according to Gaku Tashiro, the big-dog ball writer from Japan’s Sankei News.

Taguchi used an interpreter when he first signed with St. Louis in 2002. However, he was sent to the minors that season and with the demotion came this message: You want an interpreter, you pay for it.

“I decided I don’t need it,” Taguchi said with a laugh the other day.

Though his wife, Emiko, spoke English, Taguchi spoke virtually none when he headed off to minor-league outposts in New Haven, Conn., and Memphis. Over time, he picked up enough to get by. When he made it to St. Louis in 2004, the Cardinals offered to get him an interpreter.

Taguchi said no thanks.

In perfect English.

“It was tough,” he said, recalling life around the ballpark without an interpreter. “But it was a good thing. I had to do everything by myself. It helped me learn.”

The Cardinals are a private organization¹, but this story informs the debate on public policy. People can and do help themselves when required to be responsible for the burden involved in helping themselves.

¹ Congress doesn’t seem to agree.

Root for individual liberty and America will succeed.

I fully expect to vote for myself in November, if I bother to vote at all. But just for fun, I’m researching some of the Libertarian Party candidates. On my first look – in this case, Wayne Allen Root – I’m not so thrilled. Consider some of his positions:

I support the Line Item Veto. I will push relentlessly and tirelessly to make this a crucial part of the President’s arsenal to fight the deficit, cut waste, and balance the budget.

Saying how he intends to achieve this is important, since it explains his understanding of the government process. However, he does not say how he intends to do this, so I will not assume his preferred path for achieving this. But I will suggest Article 1, Section 7 of the United States Constitution as a starting point:

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it.

This requires the President to address each bill in its entirety. He may not isolate the pieces he likes from the pieces he detests. The only valid approach to the line item veto is a Constitutional amendment.

My preference on this is simple. The Congress should narrow the focus of bills it presents to the President for approval. A defense bill shouldn’t have education issues attached, for example. The President should reject every bill that doesn’t meet this test until Congress begins legislating in this manner. This isn’t perfect because Congress gets leeway in how narrow it defines a topic, but it is an immediate solution.

Next, Mr. Root offers this:

I support gay rights and civil unions. Gay marriage however is not a federal issue. It is a States’ Rights issue only.

This raises two problems. First, the 16th Amendment forbids the states from denying “to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Marriage, as a civil contract, is an individual right to enter into a voluntary agreement. It is not a group right belonging to two people. Such an idea is absurd, given our understanding of individual liberty, but it also assumes that two people share a right before they meet. Whoever you will marry shares this right with you. That’s ridiculous. Defining the individual right to contract down from the right to enter into a contract with another competent, willing individual to a right to enter into a contract with another competent, willing, opposite-sex individual is anti-individual liberty. That incorrectly achieves equal at the expense of liberty.

Second, states rights appears multiple times in Mr. Root’s positions. No government has rights. Governments have powers. These powers are granted from the people, not because the government has a legitimate claim to them, but because the people trade some amount of liberty in exchange for specific outcomes. I trade my “right” to harm to protect my right to remain free from harm. Government does not grant rights. It protects inherent rights.

In other words, it is little consolation to be oppressed by my neighbors through my state/local government instead of my countrymen in another state through our federal government. This sort of nonsense appears multiple times in Mr. Root’s positions. It’s the same fallacy made by Ron Paul in too many of his positions. (Remember, Ron Paul is not a libertarian.)

Here’s one last position from Mr. Root:

I support the separation of church and state. However I also believe in tolerance for rights of religious Americans too. I believe in school prayer, God in our pledge of allegiance and on our currency. To remove these religious symbols would be to deny the rights and freedoms of religious Americans. I would also protect the rights of those who do not believe in God or religion to not participate in any public prayer or religious activities.

This is troubling. Removing these religious symbols from the private sphere would be to deny the rights and freedoms of religious Americans. To remove them from the public sphere denies nothing.

School prayer is fine, in a private school. That is not what is up for debate. Arguing otherwise suggests dubious integrity. Mention of God in our pledge of allegiance, as legislated by Congress, is problematic. We do not have a private currency, and the government actively seeks to stamp out such efforts, so “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency is a violation of the First Amendment. While the latter two are minor in scope, if not principle, none of the three are valid in government as public requirements. They have nothing to do with tolerance for individual rights.

I do not wish to suggest that there is a libertarian purity test based on policy recommendations. I don’t; I think that fallacy is counter-productive. However, I think there is a valid libertarian purity test on thought process. If Mr. Root argues for legislation to grant the line item veto, he ignores the Constitution’s text. Where Mr. Root argues for states’ rights, he misses the point of individual liberty and government of, for, and by the people. Where Mr. Root argues to overlook Congressional indifference to the First Amendment in favor of “tolerance”, he abandons the reasoning for a Constitution. None of these positions rely on libertarian principles, which is a valid criteria for judging a candidates credentials.

To clarify, the big libertarian test right now seems to be Iraq. Most libertarians agree that our experiment in Iraq is a mistake. It is a preemptive war without justification based in national security. Unlike Afghanistan, a legitimate war of self-defense, Iraq carried no such immediate threats to U.S. security.

I agree with that analysis. I also think there are libertarians who disagree. I don’t mean “people who (mistakenly) call themselves libertarians” disagree. For example, Timothy Sandefur supports the war in Iraq on national security grounds. I disagree with his conclusion from the facts, but he is basing his support on his intellectually-considered conclusion within the framework of libertarian principles of self-defense. It’s okay to disagree with him. Such debate pushes us to a better conclusion, in general. But it would be idiotic to suggest that he is not a libertarian because of this policy recommendation.

As another example, I’m clearly against any circumcision of a child that isn’t based in an immediate medical need. That is a libertarian position focused on the individual’s right to keep his foreskin (i.e. his property) and his right to remain free from harm. Freedom of/from religion is also an individual right, with the child having a claim equal to his parents. It is an invalid excuse. There can be no libertarian disagreement on this.

When there is a medical issue, there can be a disagreement on whether that medical issue requires circumcision rather than some less invasive treatment. The answer requires judgment. I would seek out those less invasive treatments for a child before resorting to circumcision. I think ethics demand all parents and medical personnel do the same. But proxy consent in the face of legitimate medical issues for a legally incompetent individual is valid in libertarian principle, even when it leads to child circumcision.

The likelihood of having the perfect candidate without running for office myself is almost non-existent. Ultimately, the best we can hope for is a candidate who process information
through the correct filters. It’s too much to expect the same conclusion on every issue. It’s reasonable to expect the same respect for individual rights.

Who buys the BMW on a Kia budget?

Thankfully there are no calls for government action, but Michelle Singletary still offers a troubling assessment on money and personal responsibility.

Just consider the advertising campaign, “Life Takes Visa.” The credit card giant has been running commercials in which people are hustling through checkout lines at fast food and retail stores. They buy what they want by merely waving or swiping their plastic Visa cards.

But when a customer pulls out cash, everything comes to a screeching halt. The cash-paying customer gets harsh looks from fellow shoppers and the cashier. Then we hear an announcer say: “Don’t let cash slow you down.”

The commercials are funny. But the subliminal message isn’t. It’s diabolical.

The subliminal message is not diabolical (i.e. of or pertaining to the devil). Visa wants customers to use their cards for everything because Visa gets a cut of that, unlike a customer’s cash transactions. Banks issue cards under the Visa brand. These banks want customers to carry a balance on their cards because it generates interest. The message of the commercial is only the first, given that Visa and the banks that issue Visa cards are separate entities.

Immediately following the diabolical conclusion, this from Stuart Vyse, author of Going Broke: Why Americans Can’t Hold On to Their Money, the subject of the article:

“Much of the difficulty stems from new retail technologies that make it easy to act without thinking,” Vyse says.

That is an entirely reasonable conclusion because it places the responsibility for thinking or not thinking on the individual using the card. It does not involve any satanic machinations on the part of large corporations to force Americans into a vicious cycle of debt.

This is similar to the common refrain on guns, that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. That’s correct but too semantically succinct. Of course guns kill people because it’s a method to do so. But Smith & Wesson doesn’t pull the trigger for the murderer.

And Visa doesn’t provide the card number to retailers when there’s no money in the bank to pay for the expenditure.

How many times does Lucy have to pull the football?

From Politico on Sen. Obama and gay equal rights:

So he took a different tack: “Now I’m a Christian, and I praise Jesus every Sunday,” he said, to a sudden wave of noisy applause and cheers.

“I hear people saying things that I don’t think are very Christian with respect to people who are gay and lesbian,” he said, and the crowd seemed to come along with him this time.

…his ability to sell gay rights in the black church is unique and appealing.

To which Andrew Sullivan replies:

Now you may have many reasons not to vote for Obama, and no gay voter should vote on one issue. But solely with respect to gay matters, there is simply no choice here. Obama’s positions, candor, courage, generation and religious embrace of us are dispositive.

Why is there no choice? Or, to be clear, why is there a different choice other than choosing neither candidate in this election on equal rights for gay Americans, just like every other election leading up to this one?

Sen. Obama is not selling equal rights. He’s said nothing more than so-called Christians are saying nasty things about gay Americans. He’s calling for such rhetoric to stop. He did not call for action to correct the separate legal treatment. For several years now, he’s had the opportunity to act, to sponsor legislation ending official United States bigotry. Has he sponsored a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the most obvious target available to him as a senator?

At least the traveling salesman carries a product sample when he pitches grandiose claims as he stands on your front porch.

That’s true, that’s true.

While I’m being a little tender, reading blogs over the last five years or so has revealed an interesting demographic slant. Science-fiction loving atheists write almost 100% of the blogs I enjoy.

As I’ve learned, that’s a large population of libertarians, but it still seems strange to me. I’m not religious, in that organized religion is too interested in doctrine without concern for actual faith. I’m not much of a joiner, either. Still, I’m not an atheist. I move closer to that position all the time, but I doubt I’ll ever move further than my present agnostic-bent.

The love for science-fiction¹ is entirely new to me. I enjoy sci-fi movies like many Americans. I’ve just never given much thought to those stories in written form. I don’t know why. Probably the socially-awkward, introverted nerd stereotype blocked me, which is strange because, with a little more showering than the stereotype, I am the stereotype. But I’ve figured out that I should question my perception and be open-minded about it. I might like it. I’ve bought one audiobook novel, and I’ll probably borrow a few paperbacks from the library to give it a shot. (I’m open to suggestions for novels.)

I don’t find either of these mysterious. The connection to libertarianism is not only prevalent, it’s obvious. Reason provides the objective link to how individuals should be treated. I will abandon faith whenever reason demands it. And I love technology. I’m just amazed at how effortlessly, and without thought of wanting to know more about those two areas, that I came to having them both central in what I want to learn.

¹ I don’t foresee any future interest in Fantasy. Harry Potter is about as far into the fantasy genre as I can get.

I want readers. I don’t need readers.

I know I use Rolling Doughnut as a pulpit for a wide range of topics, and not all of these are interesting to the same people. I think about that, but when I blog, I aim for this advice, which Wil Wheaton summarizes today:

Back in the days when Tony Pierce wasn’t spending his time trolling his own commenters and generating controversy for the sake of building page views, he wrote a fantastic post about avoiding blogging burn out, which was something we were all talking about in those days when we were all sort of defining what blogging was and wasn’t, making it up as we went along (but not admitting that we were.) I forget exactly what the advice was (and it’s all massively awesome advice that should be required reading for everyone — including Tony, today — who aspires to do more than talk about their cats with their blog) but it can be distilled down to a couple of things: write what you want to, write what’s on your mind, and don’t worry about who is reading it. It’s such simple and logical advice, but clearly isn’t easy to absorb and put into practice, because I need to remind myself about it at least twice a year. I used to worry a lot about wasting people’s time with my blog, but now I save that obsessing for my books.

The italicized advice is how I think about what I write. On this path, I’m never going to be the top blogger who gets thousands of hits per day. I realize that’s solely an “indictment” of my interests and (lack of) focus rather than a claim that the most popular bloggers are somehow focused on the wrong things or worse, are selling out. Hammering away at circumcision doesn’t help, either. In general, but at least on that, I hope I can educate someone who hasn’t considered it from an ethical/logical approach. If so, wonderful. If not, so be it.

UNAIDS needs to rebuild its ethical framework.

Following on the last entry, UNAIDS issued another press release (pdf):

Two United Nations agencies have issued a joint call to boost protection of the human rights of people regardless of their sexual orientation or their actual or presumed HIV status.

In a statement, the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) urged “all governments to be vigilant in respecting and protecting the rights of individuals in this regard, in particular the rights of all to be free from murder, torture, violence, arbitrary arrest and vilification, regardless of their HIV status or sexual orientation.”

The bodies voiced their concern over reports of forced HIV testing, arbitrary detention on the basis of HIV status and the disclosure of one’s HIV status without consent.

Again, this is a noble goal. I agree with it. But UNAIDS fascinates me with where it draws its lines on human rights. Forced HIV testing is bad. Forced genital mutilation¹ is good. Taking a person’s blood, which the body will replace, is bad. Taking a male’s foreskin, which his body will not replace, is good.

What?

Does this have something to do with intent? Presumably governments are forcing HIV tests on people to facilitate persecution and/or exclusion. That’s inarguably bad, since individual liberty based on human rights is a valid principle. Presumably parents are forcing genital mutilation on their male children for its potential to prevent reduce the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission. Even if I assume this intention is Good&#153, condoms and behavior modification achieve better results. They are the specific, identifiable reasons why we must not abandon the fair and equal protection of human rights, regardless of gender. Yet, UNAIDS rebukes this understanding of rights in favor of fear and panic, with an additional nod to tradition².

Any idea that a right to remain free from unnecessary, unjustified force vests after some extraneous condition is met is invalid. I suspect UNAIDS would argue against that interpretation of its actions. Its actions argue against any other interpretation.

¹ But ONLY on boys; UNAIDS has ethics and how dare anyone who suggests otherwise.

² This argument strikes me as succumbing to fear. It’s easier to accept a human rights violation than it is to call it out and risk being criticized by those who practice the tradition. This is the coward’s path.

The number of X chromosomes should not matter.

The push for separate rights based on gender has never been so obvious.

Ten U.N. agencies have launched a campaign to significantly reduce female circumcision by 2015 and eradicate the damaging practice within a generation.

In a statement released Wednesday, the agencies said female circumcision violates the rights of women and girls to health, protection and even life since the procedure sometimes results in death.

That is, of course, a noble goal. But how is permitting encouraging male genital cutting any less worthy? (I’ll get to “health” in a moment.) Do boys not deserve the same respect? Does every boy facing the circumciser’s blade survive his ordeal?

“Today, we must stand and firmly oppose this practice because it clashes with our core universal values and constitutes a challenge to human dignity and health,” Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told the Commission on the Status of Women where the campaign was launched.

“The consequences of genital mutilation are unacceptable anywhere, anytime and by any moral and ethical standard,” she said. “Often, female genital mutilation is carried out on minors, violating the rights of a child to free and full consent on matters concerning her body and body functions.”

These agencies¹ argue that males don’t require human dignity. They argue that males don’t require their full, healthy bodies. They argue that moral and ethical standards do not fully apply to males. They ignore that unnecessary genital surgery is carried out on male minors. They reject the notion that a male child has an equal human right to free and full consent on matters concerning his body and body functions.

They defend this idiocy with the following note in the press release (pdf):

In contrast to female genital mutilation, male circumcision has significant health benefits that outweigh the very low risk of complications when performed by adequately-equipped and welltrained providers in hygienic settings Circumcision has been shown to lower men’s risk for HIV acquisition by about 60% (Auvert et al., 2005; Bailey et al., 2007; Gray et al., 2007) and is now recognized as an additional intervention to reduce infection in men in settings where there is a high prevalence of HIV (UNAIDS, 2007).

Significant is subjective. The missing word potential before “health benefits” is necessary, since most males have a healthy foreskin with no history of problems when they are circumcised². Very low is subjective. But the key word in that note is outweigh. Who is the appropriate person to evaluate the balance of those two sides? For example, who decides that the inherent risk of death is low enough? These agencies claim that every female must decide for herself from birth, but every male is subject to the decision of his parents until he reaches the age of majority. Females are assumed to be against medically unnecessary cutting until they state otherwise. Males are assumed to be indifferent, at worst, to medically unnecessary cutting until they state otherwise, when it’s too late because a portion of their genitals are already gone forever.

The ten agencies involved place political correctness before principle. They possess no moral or ethical credibility.

¹ The agencies are The Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS; the U.N. Development Program; the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa; the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; the U.N. Population Fund; the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights; the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR; the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF; the U.N. Development Fund for Women and the World Health Organization.

² This omission is damning to the intellectual integrity of the agencies.

House Votes to Shift the Deck Chairs

I’m hard-pressed to imagine a scenario in which simplifying the tax structure is bad. Although this legislation would only achieve it on the front-end, replacing simplification with complication elsewhere, the front-end suggestion is good.

The House of Representatives brushed aside threats of a White House veto yesterday and voted 236 to 182 in favor of an $18 billion tax package that would rescind a tax break for the five biggest oil companies and use the revenue to boost incentives for wind and solar energy and energy efficiency.

There is no reason for Congress to pick winners and losers by giving tax breaks. (Again, redirecting those breaks to favored groups is not a principled stance by Congress.) As always, Congress is horribly short-sighted and unaware of unintended consequences.

The Bush administration, Republican lawmakers and big oil companies condemned the bill, which they said would raise fuel prices for consumers, discourage oil and gas exploration in the United States and unfairly discriminate against a single industry while other manufacturers continue to enjoy tax breaks.

Of course fuel prices will go up. If I could find a reason not to be cynical, I’d ignore the probability that members of Congress want this to happen so they have a continuation of one of their favorite targets to bully in populist, economically-ignorant rants. But I’m cynical, so I think they know this. How else to explain the nonsense my local Fox affiliate bombarded me with last night in claiming that a gallon of gasoline could rise to the “outrageous” price of $4. Adjectives require more than one data point.

That the price of a gallon of gas already includes – inefficiently – the $18 billion cost of the existing tax break. Removing inefficient tax breaks would push the price of gas (closer) to its true market price. That’s problematic?

On the second point, profit alone should encourage or discourage oil and gas exploration. Let the market figure out the details. The ongoing results will also work to push for alternative energy without requiring shifting tax breaks from one group to another. And, no, arguing that one industry will get tax breaks does not justify giving them to another.

Lazy Journalism: Or, words have meanings.

I had this article open in my browser from earlier this morning. I should’ve taken a snapshot before refreshing. One error is gone, but the same error still exists. The title of the article is “Economy Slows to Near Crawl”.

The economy skidded to a near halt in the final quarter of last year, clobbered by dual slumps in housing and credit that caused people and businesses to spend and invest more sparingly.

I don’t recall having trouble buying luxury items in the last quarter of 2007. I definitely don’t recall having trouble buying necessities in the same time period. Has the economy really skidded to a near “halt”, meaning that it has skidded to a near stop?

I don’t think the new headline, replacing halt with crawl, is much better. Surely there’s a better word for the apparent lack of expansion, given that we’re not quite at breadline status. Semantically, I’d choose stagnant, but that might have some Americans who weren’t six when the ’70s ended concerned. Not that it doesn’t concern me, but I recognize it from the intellectual, not the experiential.

Or the AP could’ve taken the easy way, reporting “Economic Growth Slows to Near Halt,” or some other such evaluation of the facts.