Author: Tony

“I think I’m a little concussed.”

I’m a fan of Jackass. There’s still a 12-year-old boy inside me who laughs with such stupidity. And it’s quite libertarian to believe that no one should stand in the way of people doing stupid things to and with their own bodies. So I was quite excited to read that Jackass 2.5 would debut for free on The Internets today. When I checked the website, a curious sight met me:


There is no such thing as a “silly little registration process”. From the FAQ:

Can I watch jackass 2.5 without registering?
No. You must register and confirm your email address in order to watch jackass 2.5.

Microsoft is free to set whatever rules it wants in its license for Silverlight™. I’m free to refuse to give over my e-mail address, even though I have an account I use specifically to soak up the inevitable abuse such nonsense creates. I don’t care how likely or unlikely it is that Silverlight™ delivers “the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web”. Interpreting that as Microsoft-speak for “locking users into a restricted, ‘preferred’ experience” makes so much more sense.

And then, there’s this:

How long is the movie available?
jackass 2.5 will be available for FREE exclusively on this site until 12/25/07. Starting 12/26/07, you can rent or purchase Jackass 2.5 at BLOCKBUSTER® stores and blockbuster.com, and download it at movielink.com.

Content-providers are free to offer their material as widely or as narrowly as they please. But I refuse to participate in such silliness. That kind of closed-minded thinking is the mark of a dinosaur. I prefer Netflix to Blockbuster, and I’d never deal with the DRM madness of a site like movielink, in which the viewing experience is tied exclusively to the crap that is Windows Media Player. There is a business-model here that (unintentionally) excludes someone like me. I can live with that. How long can they live with that?

Title reference here.

“Your home” requires ownership or contractual permission.

Government bans on smoking in public [sic] private places are antithetical to liberty and basic property rights. I will not change my view against them, but I find it impossible to get worked up about this story out of Seattle.

… The King County Housing Authority is banning smoking in all units at Plaza 17, the 70-unit apartment complex where [Jackie] Brooks has lived for 14 years.
…

In addition to the Plaza 17 in Auburn, the authority banned smoking at its 70-unit Northridge 1 in Shoreline and its 82-unit Nia Apartments at Greenbridge project under construction in White Center. The ban starts next month.

Some residents are upset, some are happy. The article also talks about the “strong national movement” to ban smoking, as if such populist demands matter. And the only mention of rights completely ignores property rights, the primary factor involved and so readily violated. None of this surprises.

Still, as a libertarian, I can’t get upset about a smoking ban in public housing. Whether or not government should be providing housing, sure. But it does. That’s the playing field we’re on. So the rules the government sets for our its property is its decision. Don’t like the smoking ban? Buy your own property or rent from an owner who does not mind smoking on her premises. Get it in the lease.

The article doesn’t mention any specifics of the current rental agreement between the tenants and the housing authority. If such a prohibition is an illegal alteration of the existing contract, argue that. I’ll support such an argument against this ban. But this issue is about property rights. Always has been, always will be, even when it leads to an outcome we wouldn’t choose for our property.

Via Radley Balko.

What’s good for us is not good for them.

So many nuggets in this story.

The federal budget deficit would have been 69 percent higher than the $162.8 billion reported two months ago if the government had used the same accounting methods as private companies, the Bush administration reported Monday.
…

The report was released by the Treasury Department and the president’s Office of Management and Budget. Under the accrual method of accounting, expenses are recorded when they are incurred rather than when they are paid. That raises the costs for liabilities such as pensions and health insurance.

Imagine that. Look at the picture as a whole and it looks worse. Now, why would Congress reject such accuracy?

The new report indicates that funding for Social Security and Medicare will come up $45 trillion short in the next 75 years in paying for projected benefits over that time frame.

Oh, right. But what’s a mere $45,000,000,000,000 in the grand scope of caring about people through government?

As it has for every report, the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditing arm, said it could not sign off on the books because of problems at various agencies, most notably the Defense Department.

In a letter, GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker did note that his agency was able to sign off on the financial statement for the Social Security and Medicare programs.

“The federal government did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, including safeguarding assets, and compliance with significant laws and regulations,” Walker said in his letter.

If you or I did that in our record-keeping, the government would assume our guilt, take everything we own and throw us in jail.

**********
Then there’s this:

“The 2.6 trillion in record-breaking revenues that flowed into the Treasury this year reflect a healthy economy,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in a statement accompanying the new report.

It could just as easily reflect that Congress is taxing the American people heavily. Granted, I’d go along the lines of arguing that the $275,500,000,000 deficit reflects that the Congress and President are willing to spend beyond all rational bounds of fiscal responsibility. But that wouldn’t make anyone look favorable, so it must not be true. Right?

Rejecting a collectivist concept of human rights.

Following up on my entry questioning Dr. Richard Shweder’s analysis in defending subjective justifications of male genital cutting by eliminating any consideration for the individual. He responded with more:

In an earlier comment (comment #59) I made brief note of some of the weaknesses in the standard human rights discussions of this topic (both there and here I am recounting published material in the two essays for which links were provided on the November 30 and December 5 Tierneylab). What I did not note in my earlier comment was that one of the more problematic aspects of a human rights argument for those engaged in the global eradication campaign is that the global eradication campaign itself appears to violate several recognizable or conceivable human rights. A short list of such rights includes the right of peoples and nations to autonomy and self-determination, the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, the right of members of a family to be free of government intrusion into decisions that are private, the right of members of a group to favor their own cultural traditions in the education and socialization of their children, even the right to freedom of religion. …

I can only believe that Dr. Shweder is making this up as he goes along. He has a desired outcome. When no map to his outcome exists, he’ll create one and pretend it represents reality. Note the key foundation he uses, “recognizable or conceivable human rights.” He’s on an island with his conception. The whole notion is absurd.

Conceivably, conceivable could work. Standards of civilization progress, as evidenced by so many changes mankind has brought about demonstrate. Two hundred years ago, slavery fit within the widely accepted notion of a natural order. Today we not only know that to be false, we do not pardon those who believed such blasphemy over what they should’ve known. We understand the context, of course, but it doesn’t alter the fundamental problem.

Dr. Shweder doesn’t seek to progress properly. He ignores the individual’s supreme role in the existence of competing rights. Should the individual’s right face conflict from the group’s alleged claim on his body, Dr. Shweder does not dismiss the latter as subservient. The individual may choose to submit, but choice must exist. Dr. Shweder leaves as reasonable that the group may legitimately override the potentially contrary wishes of the individual. If enough people agree, the majority owns the minority. Unless we’re resurrecting the notion that slavery has a place in mankind, the conflict Dr. Shweder imagines is a mistake. Without medical need, it can never be correct to force bodily modification on another person. The “right of members of a family to be free of government intrusion into decisions that are private” does not grant members of a family to harm other members of the family.

Dr. Shweder writes of the “right of peoples and nations to autonomy and self-determination,” but only the individual has such a right. Collectively groups must reach their own outcomes. Extraneous, subjective input may be provide guidance, but it must never dictate. Still, that outcome must be a never-ending series of individual choices resulting in macro-level reality within society. Dr. Shweder’s suggestion leaves open the question of whether or not it’s legitimate to force downward from within, when that question is a settled “no” beyond the realm of the individual.

The uniquely American love of baseball throughout the 20th century is an example. Citizen or immigrant, rich or poor, white or black, distinction didn’t matter; Americans loved baseball. It inspired heroes and poetry, dreams and faith. The individual who did not embrace baseball may have faced scrutiny, but attempts to force him to love baseball would’ve violated a core more valuable and basic than baseball. No man is less an American if he fails to include baseball in his life.

The same truth exists for the individual who wishes to reject the surgical alteration of his or her genitals. He may not exercise his right to reject it, but he must be given the choice. Any category of supposed rights that excludes this is a fallacy not consisting of actual rights. Such a category must be discarded from the debate.

Use the word “torture” in the headline.

Speaking of “evolving standards of decency”, we’re not always moving in the correct direction:

The House approved legislation yesterday that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, drawing an immediate veto threat from the White House and setting up another political showdown over what constitutes torture.

The measure, approved by a largely party-line vote of 222 to 199, would require U.S. intelligence agencies to follow Army rules adopted last year that explicitly forbid waterboarding. It also would require interrogators to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. The rules, required by Congress for all Defense Department personnel, also ban sexual humiliation, “mock” executions and the use of attack dogs, and prohibit the withholding of food and medical care.
…

The White House vowed to veto the measure. Limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual “would prevent the United States from conducting lawful interrogations of senior al Qaeda terrorists to obtain intelligence needed to protect Americans from attack,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.

The passage of this bill in the House is correct, although it’s years overdue. The Senate should do the same.

The Bush administration’s immediate rejection of adhering to our existing laws and treaty commitments is shameful. It wants only vague restrictions on itself, with the option to define the interpretation of those vague rules. That is contrary to everything our republic is supposed to represent. Few are still shocked by this, but that does not validate its approach.

Other provisions of the intelligence bill also drew criticism from the White House, including a measure that would require regular reports to Congress on the CIA’s detention and interrogation methods, and on any Justice Department legal justifications for those methods.

This provision, the OMB said, would require from the president “information that may be constitutionally protected from disclosure,” which, if made public, “could impair foreign relations [and] national security.”

If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to be afraid of. Right? Isn’t that what we’re told when the administration wants the option to spy at will? Of course the truth is more complicated, but the Bush administration needs to be accountable to the American people, not the other way around. This is not a dictatorship, despite its apparent aspirations.

John Cole is right when he states:

Bush is a petulant child surrounded by a coterie of scared men who seem to think the world is so dangerous they need not act in accordance to established law, and they really don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks. They want all the benefits of pretending to be the world’s moral authority, all the while behaving like despots. January 2009 can not come fast enough.

I’ll echo the last sentence, but only because Congress is guilty of dereliction carrying out its duties. There is no valid reason that President Bush should still be in office.

Good Riddance

I commend this news, even if it doesn’t become a trend:

New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday became the first in the nation to abolish the death penalty since the Supreme Court restored it in 1976. Opponents of capital punishment hope the state’s action may prompt a rethinking of the moral and practical implications of the practice in other states.

New Jersey’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly voted 44 to 36 on Thursday to repeal the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without parole. The action followed a similar vote by the state Senate on Monday. Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat and a death penalty opponent, has said he will sign the legislation.

The repeal bill follows the recommendation of a state commission that reported in January that the death penalty “is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.” …

Indeed. But how this happens is a useful lesson, whatever the topic.

… But equally persuasive to lawmakers was not saving lives but money — it costs more to keep a prisoner indefinitely on death row than incarcerated for life.

There can be a hierarchy of valid reasons to undertake (or prohibit) an action. But what the advocate deems most important is irrelevant in a debate. Convincing others is a better achievement than demonstrating one’s own brilliance.

But mostly, ending the death penalty is great.

Steroids can’t make a pitch curve.

I don’t have much to say about the newly-released Mitchell Report. It’s an illegitimate waste of government time in pursuit of a political quest for ever-expanding power. Not interested. As I wrote when Rep. Tom Davis first brought this nonsense into the federal sphere:

When Rep. Davis called the inquiry into steroids in Major League Baseball, how was that not a conspiracy to seize power? It may have involved one sport industry, but Rep. Davis seemed to enjoy threatening MLB with greater congressional control if it didn’t implement a policy banning a drug that’s already illegal. I don’t think any major sport in America explicitly bans its players from money laundering, drunk driving, murder or income tax evasion, yet we never have hearings about those, even though players have been involved in all of those offenses.

My stance is unchanged. And my basic understanding of liberty requires that steroids be decriminalized.

As for the situation at hand, Major League Baseball would ban steroids in my ideal world. As a group of consenting individuals, it would be free to do so. It would level the playing field to talent alone, which is what I want to see as a fan.

Of course, it would be free to ignore my preference, too, which it clearly did throughout the latter part of the ’90s. John Cole expresses my sentiments on the shock at the report’s finding:

Imagine if, in ten years, the GOP and the media decide to get outraged about intelligence being finessed before the Iraq war, they launch an investigation, and then get shocked when they see what they find. That is the level of stupid this baseball steroid report is right now.

Naturally that doesn’t preclude politicians from going to the for the children defense of our collective outrage:

Recalling that he had raised the steroids issue in a State of the Union speech a couple of years ago, Bush said he did so “because I understand the impact that professional athletes can have on our nation’s youth.” He urged athletes “to understand that when they violate their bodies, they’re sending a terrible signal to America’s young.”

When we force our subjective opinions onto the actions of others, it sends a terrible signal to America’s young that it’s okay to be meddlesome moralists opposed to the liberty of the individual. For the mental development of our youth, I’d say what we’re teaching is far worse than what a handful of athletes are (allegedly) teaching.

Post Script: Russ Roberts sums up the best way to read the names on the list and how detrimental these allegations are (not) to my opinion of the players.

“It’s kind of a random proximity thing.”

I’m not going to claim a large tale of woe. I’m fine, and I expect to stay that way. But having a chunk of my neck excised to remove my first basal cell carcinoma marks today as less than one of the highlights of my life. I say first because, with my fair skin, I don’t expect it to be my last. Joy. Wear sunscreen.

Rather than meditate on life in a way that seems irrationally melodramatic given the circumstances, I’ll take this opportunity to say how grateful I am for American health care. Whatever its faults may be, it worked for me in this instance. I say that even though I’m paying the entire expense out-of-pocket because I have a high-deductible insurance plan. (Sometimes, I actually walk my talk.) We need to be very careful how we encourage politicians to interfere. Turn them lose and they’ll bulldoze our system of care, not the system of political incentives that are the real problem.

With that, my wound is throbbing. I’m going to mindlessly play video games.

P.S. Link title reference here.

Be scared to scar your baby boy.

Bernadine Healy M.D. writes an ethics-free, logic-free essay in the latest U.S. News & World Report on male circumcision. She mostly offers the recycled nonsense promoted by people uninterested in thinking the issue through. However, Dr. Healy searches for a new bottom in the discussion. She comes as close to stating it as anyone I’ve read:

I caution parents, however, against delaying the decision until the child is old enough to decide for himself. Get real. Not many teenage boys would relish the discussion, let alone the act. Nor do I think they would have the perspective to weigh the medical pros and cons.

So, because he would not relish the discussion or the act, it’s better to force it on him as an infant? As if his presumed refusal as a teenager is not a timeless opinion, as true when he’s 13 hours old as it is when he’s 13 years old. And how unfairly low does your opinion of teens have to be to guess that he wouldn’t have the perspective to understand that his foreskin is healthy and doesn’t require surgical removal? How unfairly high is your opinion of parents if you trust that they’re worried more about his (absurdly low) risk of HIV than the risk that daddy junior will freak when he sees that junior daddy looks different?

In a time when it is appropriate to question the use or overuse of certain medical procedures, however minor they might seem, having these discussions in medical journals and in public circles is healthy.

Just don’t have them with your kid when it’s his genitals at stake. He might not understand. He might even say “no”. Otherwise, yeah, let’s discuss this.

What is not healthy in this free flow of ideas is to diminish the real abuse of female genital mutilation with a trumped-up portrayal of the “abuse” that infant circumcision allegedly exacts on our helpless baby boys.

This is the obtuse thinking of a dullard. For (not) the last time, comparing male and female genital cutting does not diminish what is done to girls. That is evil. It is unnecessary. It should not occur. It is a basic violation of the right to remain free from harm.

But the exact same thing is perpetrated upon boys. That is evil. It is unnecessary. It should not occur. It is a basic violation of the right to remain free from harm.

There is nothing complicated about understanding this. The mutilation of boys rises to the level of unacceptability of what is done to girls. No one is saying that the comparison now justifies cutting girls. Stop hearing what you want to hear and listen to what is being said. Medically unnecessary genital cutting on non-consenting individuals is wrong, ethically and morally. Gender is not a factor in the violation.