Category: Government

Who wants to post bail for me? The $40 won’t be enough.

To review:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

That’s the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Tomorrow, my government intends to violate that amendment by requiring me to report for jury duty under threat of fine and/or imprisonment. It has charged me with no crime. It has convicted me of no crime. Yet I am being forced into involuntary servitude. I must accept the revocation of one liberty to avoid the revocation of another liberty. This is supposedly my duty in exchange for exercising my Constitutional right to vote. That is immoral.

I love the United States Constitution. Tomorrow appears to be the day I finally grasp that my country does not.

We can’t question because it’s for the children.

Speaking about the need for critical thinking in media, here’s another scare story [emphasis mine]:

At least 82 children have died in recent years as a result of playing the “choking” game, a bizarre but increasingly common practice, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The game, which involves intentionally trying to choke oneself to create a brief high, has been around for years, but it appears to be spreading. …

The deaths identified by the C.D.C. are based on media reports of the game over the past decade, but more than 60 of the deaths have occurred since 2005. The agency says the number of deaths is probably understated, and other experts agree, noting that choking game deaths, which involve accidental strangulation with a rope or belt, often look like suicides.

Anecdotes do not necessarily equal statistics. Did this data comes from a C.D.C. press release? And it’s also plausible that deaths ruled a choking game accident are actually suicides.

I’m not suggesting that kids engaging in this type of activity isn’t serious or that there isn’t a cause for concern. I never heard of this as a kid, but I know others who did. I’m also smart enough to realize that kids are incredibly short-sighted and possess under-developed skills at considering consequences. But going into speculative hysteria will not protect kids.

From the C.D.C. press release the journalist clearly used as the source, two teen deaths linked to the choking game:

Case 1. In February 2006, an adolescent boy aged 13 years came home from school in a good mood and had dinner with his family. He then went to his bedroom to do his homework. Approximately 1 hour later, his mother went to check on him and discovered him slumped in a corner with a belt around his neck. His face was blue. The mother began cardiopulmonary resuscitation while one of the other children called an ambulance. The boy died at a local hospital 1 hour later. No suicide note was found. The county medical examiner ruled that the death resulted from accidental asphyxiation by hanging. In the weeks following his death, multiple teens told the director of a local counseling agency that the choking game had been played at local parties.

Case 2. In April 2005, an adolescent girl aged 13 years was found dead, hanging from a belt and shoelace made into a noose on the door of her bedroom closet, after her brother went to her room to see why she had not come down for breakfast. No suicide note was found. The medical examiner determined that the teen had died at 9:30 p.m. the previous night. After the teen’s death, the family learned that the girl had confided in a cousin that she recently had played the choking game in the locker room at school and that a group of girls at her school had been suspended for playing the choking game.

Both deaths involve speculation. I’m comfortable that the conclusion from case 2 is an educated guess with a high probability of accuracy. I’m not so sure about case 1. It has signals that may be reasonably interpreted as the choking game, but are those signals enough to merit inclusion as a statistic? Even the more solid case 2 raises that question.

Reporting with journalistic caution seems the most appropriate choice here. Reading through the press release and the article suggests only that the latter is a regurgitation of the former. The ability to organize an argument into a concise package is not journalism.

The definition of “semantics” mentions political propaganda.

Here’s a headline from yesterday’s New York Times:

Waterboarding Not Legal Now, Justice Dept. Lawyer Says

I opened the article with a twinge of optimism.

Steven G. Bradbury, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, seemed set to shake up one of the fiercest debates in Washington today by offering a clear and concise statement about the controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

‘’There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law,’’ he says in prepared remarks for a House hearing today that were obtained in advance by The Associated Press.

Bradbury proffered all the words necessary to reach the conclusion stated in the headline, but only if you’re anxious to accept the assurance you’re looking for at any hint of its existence. Sadly, Bradbury is not stating that waterboarding, or any other torture technique, is illegal. He left open the government’s option to later make the determination of whether or not current law permits torture. (I weep for my country that I must write that sentence.)

Non-answers like this are a fundamental aspect of politics. The Bush administration is only the current, flagrant example. It is why rules restricting government should be as specific and as clear as possible. Such rules should be as extensive as necessary to prevent any uncertainty.

Only waterboarding three detainees is still three human beings too many. The Bush administration is populated by war criminals. They must be prosecuted. And every excuse-peddler in government who helps to support such crimes must be shown the door.

A hard-hitting question or twenty from journalists wouldn’t hurt, either. Lapping up the Bush administration’s persistent line of crap is damaging.

Question of the Day

From A Stitch in Haste, Kip asks a useful question based on the Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling (pdf) that overturned a Texas statute banning the sale of sex toys [emphasis in original]:

Wouldn’t it be nice if, rather than perpetually litigating, re-litigating, appealing, re-appealing, circuit-splitting and certiorari-petitioning the question of what the right to privacy (i.e., sexual substantive due process) does and does not mean, we instead recognized the right of property and simply allowed individuals to buy or rent a plot of land, build or rent a store on it, and sell whatever he pleased, at least to competent consenting adults (i.e., economic substantive due process)?

Indeed.

If I wanted class warfare, I would’ve supported John Edwards.

Via Greg Mankiw, here’s Senator Obama on NAFTA:

… We can’t keep playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result – because it’s a game that ordinary Americans are losing.

It’s a game where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits, while you pay the price at the pump, and our planet is put at risk. That’s what happens when lobbyists set the agenda, and that’s why they won’t drown out your voices anymore when I am President of the United States of America.

It’s a game where trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart. That’s what happens when the American worker doesn’t have a voice at the negotiating table, when leaders change their positions on trade with the politics of the moment, and that’s why we need a President who will listen to Main Street – not just Wall Street; a President who will stand with workers not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.

Kip offers an excellent rebuttal on Obama’s pandering to the Wal-Mart and Exxon non-angles, so I’ll point you there.

What struck me most in this nonsense is the last line. Apart from missing the truth that we need a President who understands that the President’s primary role in the economy is to get out of the way, Senator Obama is backwards on his spin. Telling people we’re going to erect barriers to free trade in an effort to protect domestic interests is easy. Telling people we’re going to stop listening to lobbyists while indirectly telling them we’re going to start listening to a different set of lobbyists is easy. Pitting one group of people against another group of people in order to win votes is easy.

The only hard task in American politics is telling people no. I haven’t seen a politician in my lifetime capable of doing that. Barack Obama is a politician.

The free market – which we do not have – works. There are winners and losers in the short-term as change disrupts the existing manner of operations. That is inevitable, and we can discuss a minimum safety next mechanism (public or private) necessary to squeeze through the turmoil. There will also be winners and losers in the long-term, but that hinges much less on individual skills and much more on motivation to adapt. Specific losing is not inevitable in the long-term.

Pandering to this type of class warfare, which is exactly what Sen. Obama engaged in, will lead to economic turmoil as government intervention designed on fixing perceived injustices only creates different injustice. It skews market incentives. It distorts individual tastes and preferences. It encourages inefficient economic behavior. That is not leadership. To any extent that he believes pretends otherwise, Senator Obama is not running on a platform of change.

No right to digital television exists in the Constitution.

While watching television last night, Fox subjected me to a commercial about digital television from the National Association of Broadcasters’ digital television (DTV) transition campaign. Normally I could phase out and not care. But in the middle of the commercial, this:

That’s an interesting claim. Am I to take from this the idea that Congress is smart enough to know what’s good and what isn’t good? It’s marketing, yes, but people showed up to vote in multiple states yesterday where a primary won’t be held for at least a week. Anything that further cements in anyone’s mind that Congress’ central planning is wise and informed can only be considered detrimental. It shouldn’t be too hard to make the correct connection based on the commercial’s mention of the converter box coupon, a giveaway that most people don’t need and no one deserves.

He’s a Knight? He should only be allowed to ride a horse.

The article says this idea won’t go anywhere, but it’s a suggestion to the EU, so I wouldn’t quite discount it so quickly:

The former head of Royal Dutch Shell has gone way out on a limb and urged the European Union to ban all vehicles that get less than 35 mpg, saying it is the only way to significantly address global climate change and force the auto industry to build more efficient vehicles.
…

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, who spent his career working for the giant oil company, says an outright ban is needed because so-called “gas-guzzler” taxes do not work – and aren’t fair because they let those with the means to pay them skirt responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Gas guzzler taxes are only ineffective – permitting “those with the means to pay skirt responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions – to the extent that politicians direct those gas guzzler taxes to the general fund to pay for expenditures not related to reducing the effects of greenhouse gases. The fault does not rest with those who pay the tax.

“‘It is a social thing,” he explained. “We mustn’t say the wealthy can avoid doing what is needed by society. When we eliminated coal fires in London we didn’t say to people in Chelsea you can pay a bit more and toast your crumpets in front of an open fire. We we [sic] nobody, but nobody, could have an open fire.”
…

Moody-Stuart, who is currently chairman of the mining group Anglo American, says he is a great fan of the free market, “but like most things, they have a failing. Without regulation to channel their power, markets will not deliver things which are of no immediate benefit to the individual making his or her choice, even though they may be beneficial to society.”

We all know who gets to decide what is (allegedly) needed by society.

And of course Moody-Stuart is a “great fan of the free market”, but it’s just not quite right. Some human needs to be the guiding hand rather than the invisible hand. The PC? When that showed up, Altair IBM sold 70 billion PCs the first year because they knew it would sere an immediate benefit. The iPod? When that showed up, Apple sold 98 billion of them in the first 3 weeks. The incandescent fluorescent light bulb? Don’t even get me started on those ridiculous sales when the government regulator gave Edison the idea.

Every time one of these imbeciles opens his mouth, I wonder if he’s ever opened a book.

Will Doctor Corps be voluntary?

Kevin, M.D. makes a key point today in the discussion about the reality of implementing universal/single-payer health care in the United States:

2) My take on Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Care considering cutting physician reimbursements: it demonstrates a profound of lack of insight by the politicians trying to fix health care. Unbelievably, this plan proposes year-to-year reimbursement increases that lag even Medicaid. Good luck finding any doctor accepting Commonwealth Care, once again making universal coverage useless without physician access.

Since the laws of economics cannot be altered, the only long-term solutions to the inevitable physician shortage from socialized medicine are forced-service or higher taxes to provide physicians with reimbursements close enough to a market wage for these intelligent, skilled individuals to choose to remain in medicine. Since the former solution requires either a violation or revocation of the 13th Amendment, I’m guessing politicians will rely on the latter. (Not a given, though.) That leaves only the latter, higher taxes. Inevitably, some politician(s) will suggest imposing user fees on patients (i.e. taxpayers), but that only begs the question of why not leave the entire system to the market to more efficiently and effectively allocate limited resources. Neither ignorance is justifiable as policy.

When politicians offer their rainbows and puppies version of single-payer financing, they lie.

Four commas times three is madness.

Check in on any political blog today and you’ll see mention of President Bush’s proposed budget for FY2009 (which starts Oct. 1st). Much of the attack has already been made in better detail, so, other than pointing out that 3 trillion dollars is $3,000,000,000,000, the only budgetary point I’m going to mention is this:

The document also assumes $70 billion in costs for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars next year, a fraction of the true costs, which could reach $200 billion in 2008. Beyond 2009, the budget includes no war costs at all.

Lying, in addition to not being very Christian, is an interesting way of “supporting the troops”. I wonder if he’s trying to be snarky to indicate what he expects will happen if Obama or Clinton wins in November. That would require more foresight and less middle-finger-waving than the Bush administration has shown in the last seven years, so I doubt it. Regardless, it’s a significant political abuse of our money to ignore what will eventually be taken from us.

However, as awful as that is, this poor reporting from the article is embarrassing (emphasis mine).

Budget analysts and Democrats say the good news in later year is likely illusory. The Bush budget plan makes room for $61 billion in 2009 to stop the growth of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to make sure the rich pay income tax that is increasingly squeezing the middle class. The cost of an AMT fix will continue to grow each year, but the budget makes no more allowances for the cost of that fix.

This is simply devoid of any historical accuracy.

Why Was the AMT Enacted?
Congress enacted the AMT in 1969 following testimony by the Secretary of the Treasury that 155 people with adjusted gross income above $200,000 had paid zero federal income tax on their 1967 tax returns. … In inflation-adjusted terms, those 1967 incomes would be roughly $1.17 million in today’s [ed. note: the article is from May 2005] dollars.

The Washington Post article can’t believe that 155 people in 1969 constituted “the rich”. Details matter with the AMT because its egregiousness becomes more apparent to the typical voter who doesn’t dwell on such details. The goal in reporting is not to convince him that it is egregious, but omitting specifics deprives him of a relevant fact necessary for him to reach an informed conclusion. Omitting specifics becomes a method for endorsing the policy. Maybe we can’t expect the average voter to seek out The Tax Foundation, but presumably he does read a mass-market source of information.

Also, while I agree with concern that the AMT is “squeezing” the middle class, it’s irrational to believe that we should fix “middle class” rather than “squeezing”. See here.

I don’t know which post I like better.

Two excellent posts from Cato@Liberty. First, Michael Tanner provides an update on how well RomneyCare is working in Massachusetts.

Faced with rising costs that threaten to put the program $150–400 million per year over budget, the Massachusetts Connector Authority is now adopting a number of changes to RomneyCare. They include:

  1. Pressuring insurers not to increase premiums (ie. premium caps).
  2. Ordering insurers to cut reimbursements to hospitals and physicians by 3–5 percent.
  3. Reduce the choices available to consumers.

It seems that in the fight between economics and political dreams, economics wins. <sarcasm>How shocking.</sarcasm>

Second, Jim Harper discusses an issue separating Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with implications far beyond the purported scope of what’s barely been discussed.

Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) disagree quite starkly on whether illegal immigrants should be licensed — or, more accurately, on whether driver licensing and proof of immigration status should be linked.
…

The right answer here isn’t obvious, but it is important.

Many people believe that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be “rewarded” with drivers’ licenses. Fair enough: the rule of law is important. There’s also a theory that denying illegal immigrants “benefits” like driver licensing will make the country inhospitable enough that they will leave. This has not borne out, however. Denying illegal immigrants licenses has merely caused unlicensed and untrained driving, with the hit-and-run accidents and higher insurance rates that flow from that.

The major reason, though, why I agree with Senator Obama is because the linking of driver licensing and immigration status is part of the move to convert the driver’s license into a national ID card. Mission-creep at the country’s DMVs is not just causing growth in one of the least-liked bureaucracies. It’s creating the infrastructure for direct regulatory control of individuals by the federal government.

I agree with this. As a libertarian concern about unintended consequences drives some of my disdain for anything more than limited government. But as a libertarian who understands a little about history and tyrants, concern about intended consequences drives me more. Stupidity in government is bad. Evil in government is worse. Any politician who supports a national ID system is evil and must be stopped from enacting his or her plans.