Stupidity – Page 17 – Rolling Doughnut

“Voluntary” and “adult” always get tossed aside.

The UNAIDS country programme coordinator, Dr Kékoura Kourouma, has advised Rwandans to start circumcision with children at a tender age as one of the measures to protect them from acquiring with HIV/Aids.

“If the government plans to implement circumcision, it would be easier and cheaper when it targets children. This would enable the programme to achieve its targeted objectives”

UNAIDS will sell the rights of children for pennies. Imagine how many condoms and educational pamphlets we could buy in 2022 if governments would instead invest the money spent on circumcising today’s infant males.

He further said that the demand for male circumcision as a method of combating HIV/Aids is likely to increase dramatically due to the prevailing results from two studies, in Kenya and Uganda.

Of course, even though those two studies looked at the affect of voluntary, adult circumcision, not forced infant circumcision. Demand increases now because UNAIDS promotes fear and snake oil solution. Demand increases in the future because today’s circumcised infants embrace the West’s cognitive dissonance. This has been the only plan since the beginning. And the United States willingly extorts those foreskins in cooperation.

Random Bits

First, courtesy of John Cole, Virginia Republicans have a novel idea:

The State Board of Elections on Monday approved a state Republican Party request to require all who apply for a GOP primary ballot first vow in writing that they’ll vote for the party’s presidential nominee next fall.

There’s no practical way to enforce the oath. Virginia doesn’t require voters to register by party, and for years the state’s Republicans have fretted that Democrats might meddle in their open primaries.

I’ve voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries in the past. I planned to vote in one or the other next year to vote for the least objectionable candidate, a stance I don’t expect to carry out next November. Now I’m certain I’ll vote in the Republican primary. If they’re not compelled to keep their promises or act ethically, why should I grant them as much in my vote?

Next, grow up:

The Democratic National Committee, finding itself in the middle of labor disputes between television writers and CBS, announced this evening that it was canceling the debate among Democratic presidential candidates that had been scheduled to be broadcast on some of the network’s stations on Dec. 10.

The last thing we need is another of these press conferences, but seriously, grow up. This is why Democrats are no better than Republicans and why, in the face of colossal mistakes by Republicans, Democrats haven’t dominated. Stop worrying about meaningless appearances and act like a leader. It’s tough and ugly to do so, but it’s all that’s effective in the end. And it’s the only thing that will ever earn my vote again.

Last, Quote of the Day:

There’s a disturbing tendency to think that every problem is the result of inadequate regulation.

The quote is from Megan McArdle regarding sub-prime lending and what some think Alan Greenspan should have done to prevent it, but that line is more than serviceable in so many areas.

The disease is feelgooditis.

Grover Norquist offers support for a rather peculiar, anti-liberty amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

A bipartisan revulsion at this recrudescence of an aristocracy – Democrats think there have been too many Bushes, Republicans think there have been too many Clintons – has led concerned citizens (OK, me) to launch a campaign to enact a constitutional amendment to ban this practice. The draft now circulating was written by the legal scholar Bruce Fein and reads:

Section 1. No spouse, sibling or child of an elected or appointed federal, state or local official outside the civil service may immediately succeed that official in the same elected or appointed office.
…

This amendment is in keeping with other restrictions on who can run for office in the US. Presidents must be at least 35 years old; senators, 30; congressmen, 25. Presidents must be born in the US. Fifteen states have enacted term limits on state legislators of six, eight or 12 years.

Indeed there have been too many Bushes and we’re certainly poised to have too many Clintons. Voters already have the power to avoid that outcome, although it’s still unclear whether enough will exercise such wisdom, so that isn’t the point. The problem is wrapped up in Norquist’s precedent.

This proposed amendment is not in keeping with other restrictions. The restrictions he cites are tailored specifically to individuals, designed to preserve the best opportunity for a qualified person concerned first with America’s interests to arise to the office of President. With some of the charlatans we’ve had, it clearly isn’t foolproof. But the design is obvious and easy to defend.

Instead of such wise, minimal restrictions equally applied to every individual American (natural-born, of course), this proposed amendment offers further restrictions for a tiny minority of citizens. To prevent something we feel is terrible – something that has never occurred in the office of president – we wish to prevent possible “unfair” benefits by placing unfair burdens. We would deny equal opportunity to individuals for what is not their doing.

Worse, Norquist understands the faulty logic at work:

… While our amendment would not have forbidden George W. Bush from running for president eight years after his father or Hillary Clinton eight years after her husband, both Republicans and Democrats see this amendment as sending a message about the other party’s abuse of familial power.

The Constitution is apparently no longer¹ the place to protect the rights of individuals by defining the limits on our government. “Sending a message” to a few dozen individuals is sufficient justification. Again, we should just ignore that voters already have the power to prevent the hideous possibility of dynastic democracy. We’ve generally shown our indifference. I don’t like it, but I also understand that liberty is more important. Supporting it sends a message.

Link via Andrew Sullivan.

¹ The 18th Amendment made this clear. Did the 21st Amendment teach us nothing?

Turned back by force, not turning back by choice.

In his column today, Michael Gerson wrote a disheveled mess on our society’s improvement, allegedly at the hands of government and morals.

On cultural issues, conservatives have been ambushed by hope. …

We’ve had 8 years of hope and 7 years of compassion from our government. The primary results we have to show for it: oral sex in the Oval Office, a never-ending war based on lies, discriminatory laws and amendments, torture by Americans, and a national debt that grows by $500,000,000,000 per year. I’ll accept the word “ambushed”, although we should know better by now. But I’d nix the nonsense about “hope” and government policy.

Still, there’s no amount of change that Gerson can’t attribute to hope expressed through government:

First, societies can, over time, recognize their own self-destructive tendencies and reassert old norms — not just arresting decline but even reversing it. Many Americans, for example, have seen the damaging effects of divorce on children — sometimes from the firsthand perspective of their own childhoods — and divorce rates, especially among upper-income couples, have fallen. …

I’d like to see his data on this. Does staying in a bad marriage harm children? Is it all about the children, or about the sanctity of marriage? Argue either, but don’t mix the two without admitting as much. Rather than seeing divorce rates decline because we’ve seen the harm it does to children, it requires an easier assumption that the age when individuals get married suggests that they’re more mature and developed into people who understand themselves and can co-exist in a stable relationship. Correlation is not causation.

Gerson continues:

… Over the decades the social wreckage of drug use has become undeniable — and the social judgment on this practice has shifted from “stylish rebellion” to “suicidal idiocy.” In many cases, our culture has benefited from the natural healing mechanism of simple sanity¹.

It’s also undeniable that much of the social wreckage is a direct result of government action against drug use, not the drug use itself. The blame does not rest entirely with the user. Surely the moralizer can accept his share.

Also, among my peers, drug use, particularly marijuana, is not seen as stylish rebellion or suicidal idiocy. It’s seen as fun and harmless, a conclusion derived from multiple experiences. I have not tried any recreational drug, as I’ve written before. I don’t even drink. But I understand that my preference isn’t necessarily everyone else’s.

Still, hope overcomes:

Wehner and Levin find that the law of unintended consequences, unlike the law of gravity, admits large exceptions.

Stop and re-read that sentence. I have no doubt that Gerson wins the Internets’ “Stupidest Statement of the Day” award.

What Wehner and Levin actually wrote in their essay, “Crime, Drugs, Welfare — and Other Good News“, the basis for Gerson’s argument²:

There will always be unintended consequences, but even these need not always be for the worse, and the prospect of such unintended consequences should not paralyze us from taking action.

Unintended consequences can be positive. I don’t think there’s any half-intelligent person who would deny this. But they are unintended. Gerson seems so determined to enact government solutions that he’s willing to pretend that it’s possible to design perfect government policies – with only lollipops and rainbows – if we just have enough hope about what government can do. The mere suggestion is absurd but more so the practice, as evidenced by the handiwork of politicians throughout history.

There’s a name for Gerson’s essay: the Care Bear Stare.

¹ Gerson should be a little more consistent about the “healing mechanism of simple sanity”. I recall him actively embracing insanity in June.

² Unlike Gerson, Wehner and Levin seem to place less emphasis on government’s role, noting that the declining divorce rate only appears among the well-educated, upper-income couples. Gerson’s logic implies that poorer people with less education don’t care about the harm to their children. No doubt, he can think of a government program or twenty that might fix that.

Does “administer justice” mean “put druggies in jail”?

I received a questionnaire in the mail yesterday informing me that I’ve been randomly selected for juror qualification, and that I may be placed in the pool of potential jurors for the 01/08 – 12/09 term. Exciting, except I can think of few less productive ways for me to spend my time. But it’s required by law. It’s also “one of the cornerstones of our democracy and is an opportunity to help administer justice.” I know, because the letter placed behind the questionnaire told me.

I enjoy question 10:

Should I ask why there’s a part a) and part b) to a multiple-choice question?

I want to know how to inform the government that my ethnicity is my business, so I read the note on the reverse side:

Apart from the missing comma, how is checking ethnicity a greater guarantee of non-discrimination than not looking at it because there is no indication at all? If I’m truly randomly selected for jury duty, the “proper” racial mix among the entire pool will occur if the sample size is large enough. I don’t remember as much from my Statistics class as I’d like, but I remember that. It’d be nice if a Congressman or two could, as well, when they’re busy mandating such foolishness.

P.S. Thanks for sending me a form that requires a No. 2 pencil. I’m 34 and childless. I have dozens of those on my desk just waiting for happy occasions such as this.

Simple Arithmetic Without the Economics

Writing on the implications of the proposed Sirius-XM merger, Marc Fisher engages in a discussion of competition based on dubious assumptions. Consider:

Think about it: Can you name one example of a new consumer technology that was guaranteed to a single provider and still served customers well? (Don’t everyone say “cable TV” at once.)

Fair enough on the surface, but how is it economically any more sane to guarantee two and only two competitors in a new consumer technology, as the FCC did? How might the market have shaped up had the federal government not impeded the natural development of satellite radio? We’ll never know, of course, but that isn’t sufficient to say we’ve achieved the optimal market condition. Only the central planner is so presumptuous as to assume such nonsense.

[Sirius CEO Mel] Karmazin, who would be chief executive of the combined satellite provider and is leading the charge for a merger, counters that listeners would benefit by getting the best of both services without having to pay for two subscriptions. To bolster that claim, the companies propose a menu of pricing options: Subscribers could keep their current service at the same price they pay now; add the “best of” the other service for an extra $4 a month; or choose to get fewer channels at a lower price. But while the companies tout these choices as the a la carte offering that cable TV has never consented to, the fact remains that if you want more channels under a combined XM-Sirius operation, you will have to pay more.

I think that last argument is supposed to be a zinger. If you want more, you must pay more. Holy Batman, the injustice! It’s good to clear that up, since under the current dictate from the FCC, if I want more channels, I have to pay… more? Oh, wait.

The danger in offering packages with fewer channels is the same risk cable TV companies have warned against for years: If consumers can pick and choose channels, that undermines the whole business, because inevitably, the bulk of the audience will spend most of their time listening to a relative handful of channels. Less popular channels, now subsidized by a flat subscription fee, would wither away.

We must have competition, except when it interferes with anyone’s preference for what should be offered.

How long would more obscure, low-rated satellite programming such as Sirius’s Underground Garage rock or NPR Talk channels or XM’s Cinemagic movie music or choral classical outlets survive in a monopoly, a la carte system? And if the range of programming narrows, what is satellite offering that AM and FM do not?

And if a merged Sirius-XM stopped offering content compelling enough to “force” people to pay, wouldn’t the departure of subscribers to free radio be a fairly important incentive to offer more content? How does this competition thing work again?

Virtually anyone can start an Internet radio station these days [ed. note: if you can afford the exorbitant royalty fees for a format that generates little revenue.] and play an intriguing mix of music. But only XM and Sirius — and National Public Radio, perhaps — have the resources to produce a great range of creative, professionally produced programming: Bob Dylan’s explorations in music and storytelling on XM; original radio dramas; XM’s Artist Confidential series of sessions with big-name performers; and specialized programs for truckers, gays, Latinos, NASCAR fans, Broadway lovers, opera buffs, movie-music mavens, presidential campaign addicts and on and on.

That programming diversity is what justifies giving XM and Sirius a chunk of the government-licensed radio spectrum. …

No, the central planner’s belief that such programming diversity is the correct mix for customers, whether customers want it in sufficient quantity to justify its cost, is the excuse offered to perpetuate a two – and only two – competitor market. This, despite the evidence cited earlier in the essay that most subscribers to either service listen to a small subset of the offered channels.

… Reducing the two services to a satellite monopoly will inevitably bring about a diminution of choices, along with higher prices. …

This is a blanket statement unsupported by the case made in the essay. Prices only rise if the subscriber wants more content. I know I’m supposed to be outraged by that, but I’m not. And if the merged company dumps the niche programming he likes, he cancels his subscription. That’s a useful signal to the company. If it happens enough, imagine how the company might respond with some combination of more content and lower prices. But that only occurs if there are two – and only two – competitors. Because that’s the free market.

… At XM’s Washington headquarters, the number of producers and DJs would decline, meaning more formulaic programming — if XM even remained here. How long would Karmazin keep production facilities in both the District and New York, where Sirius is based?

An individual how lives in Butte and wants to hear both Howard Stern and her beloved Pittsburgh Pirates should care about the employment prospects of producers and DJs in the Washington, DC area, why? Based on what Sirius and XM have said, she could get both for less money than she would have to pay now, but only if the companies merge. How is she harmed?

Aside from the gain I’d likely receive as a Sirius investor and the definitive gain I’d receive if my Sirius subscription included Major League Baseball, this merger should occur because the government has no legitimate basis to be involved, much less deny a free market outcome based on some subjective criteria of consumer benefit.

We must break the law to defend the law.

In its editorial today, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board demonstrates its abandonment of liberty in favor of authoritarianism and reverence for acting tough. It’s not necessary to go beyond the opening to know that the editors have lost all intellectual credibility:

Democrats welcomed Michael Mukasey as a “consensus choice” for Attorney General only weeks ago, but incredibly his confirmation is now an open question. The judge’s supposed offense is that he has refused to declare “illegal” a single interrogation technique that the CIA has used on rare occasions against mass murderers.

Why the mock scare quotes on illegal? If it’s just one interrogation technique, presumably among many, why worry if it gets singled out and prohibited? Assuming that waterboarding amounts to torture, does it matter how many times it’s been used, or how awful the alleged mass murders committed by the tortured?

But the editors can’t help themselves:

… [All of the Democratic Presidential candidates would] disqualify a man of impeccable judicial temperament and credentials merely because he’s willing to give U.S. interrogators the benefit of the legal doubt before he has top-secret clearance.

Since when do government officials get the benefit of the doubt before prisoners? Last I checked, the government must prove guilt. Until it does, the accused is presumed innocent. It’s quite the anti-conservative stance to trust government first and only.

But it’s possible to give some credibility to the stated position. Judge Mukasey hasn’t reviewed the documents. That means he can’t and shouldn’t rule on whether or not specific U.S. interrogators have engaged in torture. That would be for later inquiry. However, it is possible to state whether or not waterboarding as an interrogation technique constitutes torture, absent any details or facts from alleged instances of its use.

Could there be a clearer demonstration of why voters don’t trust Democrats with national security? In the war against al Qaeda, interrogation and electronic surveillance are our most effective weapons. Yet Democrats have for years waged a guerrilla war against both of these tools, trying to impose procedural and legal limits that can only reduce their effectiveness. Judge Mukasey is merely collateral damage in this larger effort.

The editors are no doubt aware that the question is not the validity of using interrogation and electronic surveillance to uncover threats to the United States. The misdirection is telling about their character, but I’m more concerned with why they would be so opposed to procedural and legal limits. Effectiveness over costs? If that’s your position, be honest and agitate for a police state. You’ll argue what you want without falsely smearing opponents.

There are a few more informative points in the editorial:

Most important, [Mukasey’s] discretion serves the American people by helping to keep our enemies in some doubt about what they will face if they are captured.

Right, because if we say we don’t torture, then they won’t waste time preparing for torture. They’ll spend more time planning ways to kill every American. That’s time they now spend figuring out ways to avoid folding after being ~~tortured~~ interrogated. See, being forthright that we’re moral and humane would mean we lose.

What’s really at stake here is whether U.S. officials are going to have the basic tools required to extract information from America’s enemies.

U.S. officials have always had sophisticated (i.e. not basic) interrogation tools required to extract information. Those sophisticated tools were developed using our intelligence and reliance on the credibility of the information extracted. But the might-is-right crowd have dismissed intelligence in favor of brute force. When you’re too stupid to understand that sophisticated psychological techniques are more effective, you begin to think that torture is good and should be considered a basic tool.

But about that information:

Yet those interrogations have generated “thousands of intelligence reports.”

Thousands of intelligence reports… hmmm. How many of those proved accurate and how many proved to be a say-anything-please-make-the-torture-stop fiction that wasted U.S. resources in pursuit of a dead-end?

As for waterboarding, it is mostly a political sideshow. The CIA’s view seems to be that some version of waterboarding is effective in breaking especially tough cases quickly. Press reports say it has been used only against a few high-value al Qaeda operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Zubaydah.

The CIA does not dictate what is and is not a legal interrogation method in the United States, alleged effectiveness notwithstanding. But that doesn’t matter, right? We only use it on deserving individuals. See, those who ~~have been convicted of crimes in a court of law~~ deserve it. Moral relativism, anyone?

It is possible to be serious on the threat facing our nation from enemies without getting hysterical and dismissing the reason our country exists as a quaint relic of the past.

It’s not someone else’s fault if you’re a bad businessman.

Right, Apple is the problem:

NBC Universal topper Jeff Zucker warned Monday that new digital business models are turning media revenues “from dollars into pennies” and revealed that NBC U booked just $15 million in revenue during the last year of its deal with Apple’s iTunes.
…

“Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content, and made a lot of money,” Zucker said. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.”

So many points. Without Apple’s hardware, NBC likely would’ve made significantly less than the small revenue stream it saw.

Spare the story of oppresion, too. I doubt seriously anyone from Apple held a gun to Zucker’s head and demanded its content. NBC had to mutually agree with Apple for Apple to offer the video.

NBC seems to have expected an ability to adjust prices upward after customers became comfortable with downloading legal video. But in its woe-is-me tale of how Apple isn’t being fair, NBC also tries to discredit Apple by saying that the product that customers will pay 50% more than they’re now willing to pay didn’t sell well. Which is it?

Link via Wired.

Not only does he think to the left, Robert Reich can’t see to the right.

I’m extra-ashamed today that I ever voted for someone who would give Robert Reich any job involving economic policy. From his blog today (emphasis mine):

No candidate for president has suggested that the nation should raise the marginal tax rate on the richest beyond the 38 percent rate it was under Clinton (it’s now 35 percent, but the richest of the rich, as I’ll explain in a moment, are paying only 15 percent). Yet new data from the IRS show that income inequality continues to widen. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are earning more than 21 percent of all income (the data are from 2005, the latest the IRS has examined). That’s a postwar record. The bottom fifty percent of all Americans, when all their incomes are combined together, is earning just 12.8 percent of the nation’s income.

This is an incomplete picture, and I’m sure Reich knows it. Look at the full picture using the same tax data Reich uses, but fails to link:

[I don’t know why this image won’t appear. I’m looking into it, but until then, the link works.]

Click to enlarge

On their 21.2 percent of all income, the top 1 percent pay 39.38 percent of all taxes. On their 12.8 percent of all income, the bottom fifty percent pay 3.07 percent of all taxes. Those number are in the above table. Strangely, they’re in the column immediately to the right of the column Reich uses to select his data. Reich is intellectually dishonest.

Looking further at the tax tables, consider:

Click to enlarge

Aside from the brief blip of President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, the tax burden for the top 1 percent of income earners has steadily increased since 1980, more than doubling in 25 years. The tax burden for the bottom 50 percent of income earners has steadily decreased since 1980, more than halving in 25 years. Still, Reich has the gall to write this:

If the rich and super-rich don’t pay their fair share of this tab, the middle class will get socked with the bill.

How are the top income earners not paying their fair share? They do not receive ~~handouts~~ benefits in anywhere near the proportion that middle- and low-income earners receive from their tax dollars, yet they’re still cheating the rest of America? Reich is a liar.

There is much more to analyze from Reich’s entry, but it’s the usual nonsense. Head over to Greg Mankiw, from whence the link came, for a brief synopsis of Reich’s idiotic redistributionist tax proposal.

Wow.

I’m sure the Left wouldn’t politicize this office.

How far off the rails we’ve gone:

The Bush administration again has appointed a chief of family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who has been critical of contraception.

Susan Orr, most recently an associate commissioner in the Administration for Children and Families, was appointed Monday to be acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs. She will oversee $283 million in annual grants to provide low-income families and others with contraceptive services, counseling and preventive screenings.

Why do we need an Office of Population Affairs? Since when is it a right to have everyone else pay for you to have (mostly) consequence-free sex? I don’t recall seeing that in the Constitution as a federal power.

The furor, of course, will be about Orr’s presumed position on birth control versus abstinence, as she seems to be an ideal political bone to toss to the social conservative base, as if this will suddenly improve our nation’s morals.

Update: I do not want to remove this because it was here when I first posted the entry. But I can’t find a link to this alleged statement from Orr, via Think Progress. Until I can verify, the quote shouldn’t be here. See comments for more explanation. ~~See this rundown at Think Progress, via John Cole. Particularly this (emphasis in original):~~

In a 2000 Weekly Standard article, Orr railed against requiring health insurance plans to cover contraceptives. “It’s not about choice,” said Orr. “It’s not about health care. It’s about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death.”

Wonderfully intellectual, no?

~~Something in Orr’s past intrigues, similar to her position above.~~

From the Washington Post article:

In a 2001 article in The Washington Post, Orr applauded a Bush proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad range of birth control. “We’re quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease,” said Orr, then an official with the Family Research Council.

I support the goal to stop requiring insurance to cover it, although I would aim for a full reversal rather than just for federal employees. Government should not mandate coverage for any particular service or product. Still, within her limited scope here, Orr gets a temporary pass.

However, she’s an intellectual joke if she wants to pander that fertility is not a disease, by which I think she means “it’s not worth covering under insurance”. There are more ways than just heterosexual, missionary-position intercourse to create a family, and none of them are any less moral or Godly. There are many people who need fertility services and want that coverage. The market should decide whether or not it’s covered.

Even if it’s just normal, boring contraceptive services, government has no justification for interference. Since people need and want these services, there is inevitably a market for it, at some price. Maybe that price isn’t conducive to a deal for some services, but that’s economics, not theology. Covering it shouldn’t be mandated, but it shouldn’t be prohibited, either, which is what I think social conservatives want.

This is the problem with the Bush administration specifically, and politics in general. It can’t ever do the right thing for no other reason than it’s the principled action. It can’t control itself from using its own subjective, selfish reasons. Occasionally it’ll hit the correct bullseye, but usually there are intended consequences that are incorrect. Shameful.

P.S. Think Progress bolds Orr’s “fertility is not a disease” comment without reflecting on the validity of such a mandate for insurance. That’s probably an indirect comment on what Think Progress believes about that validity, but I’m not familiar enough with the site to draw a definitive conclusion.