Category: Stupidity

The Internet is closed?

Is there a better way to jump back into blogging than to return with a rant?

Like most everyone these days, I pay my bills online. It’s convenient, it saves postage, and I don’t have to deal with humans. It’s the trifecta of incentives. I haven’t purchased new checks in nearly six years, as a result. I love the Internets. But apparently there are operating hours for the Internets. Encountered tonight while attempting to pay my health insurance:

The online self-service feature you have requested is unavailable at this time. Our regular system operating hours are Monday through Friday from 4:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., Saturday from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

I’m familiar enough with IT to base my livelihood on knowing it. I’m fairly certain that no computer system, regardless of the business’ size, needs 53 hours of maintenance per week. I suppose the gerbils behind the scenes are unionized, so anything more than a a 68.5% up-time would be abusive.

If it wasn’t such a hassle (and irrational), I’d change my insurance company. It’s not too much to ask to be able to submit a few bits representing money at 7:30 on a Sunday night.

I move closer to hoarding my savings in cash.

Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president:

“I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that downpayment on their first home,” she said.

I recently purchased a new car. I like the idea of getting that car for free. I suspect the dealership will even hand over the keys to me and call it free, as long as I set up a separate transaction where I relinquish a specific number of dollars – strangely matching the value of the car – to the dealership’s possession.

Interestingly, that sounds much like the tax charade that would occur for every child “given” $5,000 from their own future earnings.

It’s possible that funding could come from the earnings of another person currently working (parents?) or who will work in the future. Regardless, I’m sure the “trust fund” aspect will remain an IOU rather than asset-based, with the present tax dollars used for some other socialist adventure. And I discount the possibility that funding would come from the child’s parents, since that would imply a measure of fiscal responsibility wrapped inside this socialism. Since that would also discourage poor people from having children if they have to fund an extra $5,000 up front, there’s no way Sen. Clinton would suggest such a thing. She’ll cave once that possibility arises and claim it’s society’s job to support all children, especially those of the poor, with the poor to be defined loosely later.

More thoughts at A Stitch in Haste, no third solution, and Catallarchy.

The process of getting it shows why it will fail to deliver utopia.

Medpundit offers a concise summary of the fallacy that U.S. universal health care/coverage will mimic other established universal systems. It also explains why I don’t believe that universal health care/insurance will lead to the end of routine infant circumcision in America. (I removed the links from this excerpt because they make it appear too busy, but they’re worth reviewing at the original entry. Emphasis here is in original text.)

The British are often held up as the standard to which we should aspire. But we don’t live under a British style of government. We live under a government that’s truly government of the people, by the people, for the people. And what the people want, the people get. Witness the influence of disease activism even now on disease specific government funding and treatment mandates. In England, the government only pays for colonoscopies to check for colon cancer if there are symptoms suggestive of cancer or a family history of colon cancer. In the United States, the Medicare pays for a colonoscopy every ten years for everyone over 50, regardless of symptoms or risk. So do many insurance companies., sometimes if not by choice, by mandate. In England, mammograms are only covered for women between the ages of 50 and 70, and then only every three years. In the United States, we pay for mammograms beginning at age 40, yearly, and with no upper age limit. We just don’t have the heart for rationing that they have in other countries.

It’s possible, probable even, that universal coverage would reduce the number of unnecessary circumcisions performed as compared to our quasi-private system now. However, I suspect the decrease will be neither significant nor long-lasting. The fundamental flaw in populism is that it can’t say “no” if a majority demand a “yes”. Principles and rules do not matter. The rights of the minority do not matter.

In this particular procedure, the opinion of the patient will continue to not matter. He is treated as a statistic, at best. If the procedure has the potential to prevent a problem later on, regardless of the actual risk faced, the foreskin’s contribution to that risk, or the consequences of that risk, the illogical defense allowing parents to continue cutting the healthy genitals of their sons will continue.

Remember that populism doesn’t care about proper context in cost-benefit, or even the existence of such analysis. As long as the case could be made, every parent is assumed to be making it. And every infant is assumed to be pleased at that assumption, depsite the undeniable evidence that intact adult males almost never choose or need circumcision.

The out-of-context nonsense we use today is illogical to anyone seriously considering all the evidence. The risks are small. There are less-invasive treatments and preventions available. Comparable countries that do not circumcise manage to achieve the same low levels of disease. These facts are ignored because they contradict our mental conditioning. We believe of circumcision what we want to believe, not what is true. That is why we hear that male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection by 60% rather than the more honest explanation of how much it reduces the absolute risk. Sixty percent is far more persuasive than two percent.

For the United States we must be honest and ask if a central planner wannabe who is immune to the rights of individuals enough to issue mandates wouldn’t also be immune to fiscal rationing for non-medically-indicated circumcision, as long as it pleases “the people”.

Via Kevin, MD

If you have ears, allow something rational to pass through them to your brain.

In what can only be described as the most bizarre pro-circumcision editorial you’ll ever read, Hilary Bainemigisha urges men in Uganda to get circumcised to fight HIV. There are soccer metaphors and a weird belief in the penis as the “author of life”. All of it is idiotic, and the circumcision claims are irrational, as usual, including a recitation of the “circumcision is the best HIV prevention strategy” myth. There’s even a claim that men should get circumcised, no wait, get the facts and decide for yourself, then get circumcised. And then we’re graced with this, which is supposed to show how necessary circumcision is:

A study in the 12 months before the population survey revealed that 32% of HIV-positive women and 22% of HIV-positive men had sex with non-regular partners in the past year. 34% men and 5% women who were HIV-positive had sex with more than two partners. Of these, only 16% men and 17% women used condoms. And among discordants (where one partner is positive and the other negative), 5% used condoms consistently.

I’m beginning to wonder if people really are this stupid and blind to reality. If you have unprotected sex with multiple partners and a significant percentage of those partners are already HIV-positive, you will become HIV-positive. It is inevitable. Yet, the author asks:

Is this the environment you and your sons want to swim through with an uncircumcised [sic] tail?

If I were you, I would look at my penis, look at all the male members of my family and think about the five million who die annually of HIV. Then I would mobilise all of us, at whatever age, to get to hospital. I would also vow to afford the same protection to any newly born son to the family.

Not only is he indifferent to what he’s just demonstrated, he’s now lumped male children into the push for circumcision based on studies that looked exclusively at voluntary adult circumcision. If you’re going to live in your own world, devoid of facts, you might as well throw in a lack of ethics, I suppose.

Also, I’m proposing a new maxim. The trustworthiness of the circumcision proponent decreases exponentially with each euphemism for penis. If you can’t be mature enough to write penis instead of tail, you do not deserve to be taken seriously¹.

But remember, circumcision does not make you invincible. It only improves your escape chances by 60%. You still need to move along with the Abstinence Be Faithful, Use a Condom (ABC) approach, if you want to see your grandchildren.

No kidding. So why is it so difficult to understand that with the ABC approach, the risk of HIV is reduced for all, including intact males?

Finally, I call upon our female population to add a voice to my plea.

Find a way of getting men off their behinds to face the knife. The tool in question belongs to you as much as it belongs to men and had it not been for you, there would not be need to circumcise it.

First, see my new maxim in relation to tool².

More importantly, no, the man’s penis doesn’t belong to his partner (or should I say “partners”, given the statistic offered and ignored). Just like a child’s penis does not belong to his parents. We do not accept such thinking for men wishing to change the bodies of their female partners or daughters. The same must hold true for the author’s contention.

Update: The original version of this entry incorrectly referred to Hilary Bainemigisha using the pronoun she. It’s been corrected. I apologize for the confusion.

¹ To the extent that anyone proposing circumcision to prevent HIV should be taken seriously.

² I find member most common, which is the best proof of the immaturity on this issue.

Sen. Obama’s class warfare isn’t refreshing.

For all the talk about a change in the politics of the Left signaled by the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, I’d expect to see change rather than the same class-based stupidity.

“In our new economy, there is no shortage of new wealth,” he told the Tax Policy Center. “But wages are not keeping pace…This isn’t the invisible hand of a market at work. It’s the successful work of special interests. For decades, we’ve seen successful strategies to ride anti-tax sentiment in this country towards tax cuts that favor wealth, not work. And for decades, we’ve seen the gaps in wealth in this country grow wider, while the costs to working people are greater.”

I wish that Sen. Obama meant the perverse nature of tax incentives and the inefficient complexity of the tax code because that would be a conversation worth pursuing. Instead, he’s doing little more than imitating John Edwards.

Sen. Obama seems to believe that U.S. income taxes are regressive, so he’s advocating $80 billion in tax cuts for “work”. This is in a system in which the bulk of the burden is already carried by the group allegedly “favored” so much in Washington. That $80 billion has to come from somewhere, so that’ll be from “wealth”.

I guess I should be grateful such a rebel is running for high office.

For specific analysis of Sen. Obama’s plan, I recommend this entry by Chris Edwards at Cato @ Liberty. For example:

Third, Obama proposed special tax breaks for seniors, which would take 7 million more elderly completely off the tax rolls. But that would inject a very unfair element of age discrimination into the tax code. Old folks are already taking young folks to the cleaners in terms of federal fiscal policy. Obama would make the injustice worse, yet he had the chutzpah to claim in his tax speech: “It’s time to stand up to the special interest carve outs.”

Vote for Sen. Obama and you too can have other people pay your share.

$8,965,000,000,000

Who needs to act responsibly when that can be pushed off to another generation day?

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress on Wednesday that the federal government will hit the current debt ceiling on Oct. 1.

He urged quick action to increase the limit, saying it was essential to protect the “full faith and credit” of the country, especially at a time of financial market turmoil.

Wouldn’t the “full faith and credit” of the country be better protected by not spending more money than we have?

This request isn’t unusual, since it happens every year or so when the Treasury has to follow the law at the same time our elected representatives are spending recklessly the fruits of redistribution. Remember this from March 2006:

“I know that you share the president’s and my commitment to maintaining the full faith and credit of the U.S. government,” [then-Treasury Secretary John] Snow said in his letter to leaders in the House and Senate.

Our script is stuck on stupid, apparently.

To put this in perspective, the debt ceiling was $5.95 trillion when President Bush took office. The Senate Finance Committee recently approved a new debt ceiling of $9.82 trillion. Just shy of $6 trillion in debt in more than 200 years. Just over $3 trillion more in under 7 years, with a new request for the ability to accrue another $900 billion. Heckuva job.

The Wacky World of Politicized Economics

Michael Kinsley analyzes the federal student loan program and forgets that more than two scenarios are possible.

Here’s how the program works: Banks and other private companies lend money to students. The federal government pays part or all of the interest — currently 7 or 8 percent. The government also guarantees the loans.

What is wrong with this picture? Well, the government itself borrows the odd nickel to finance the national debt. This borrowing, obviously, is also guaranteed by the government. For that reason, it carries an interest rate of only 3 or 4 percent. If the government can borrow money at 3 or 4 percent, why should it pay 7 or 8 percent for the privilege of guaranteeing loans to someone else? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the government to lend the money itself?

The third possibility is that the government could remove itself from student loans entirely, which is the only legitimate position for it to take. Let the market develop solutions, including appropriate insurance mechanisms to pool the risk of adults without a credit history borrowing money for an activity that can’t be securitized. Let’s find out that it can’t or won’t be provided by the private market before we decide it must be provided by the government.

But there’s a bigger flaw here. If the government begins taking on more and more borrowing responsibility, it will not be able to continue at its rates. At some point that guarantee becomes worthless. Or more likely, people realize that the guarantee isn’t as guaranteed as it’s been sold.

Think about the IOU issued for social security. Carry the logic further, as Mr. Kinsley wishes us to do here, into trusting the government to provide all sorts of services. At what point do we reach the threshold where there aren’t enough people in private industry to create sufficient new wealth for the government to redirect this wealth into “guaranteed” services, via taxes? At some point, money becomes worthless and life becomes nationalized. That attractive 3 or 4 percent interest rate will mean nothing.

I won’t pretend to know what that threshold is. I think we’re closer than we collectively believe. I’d suggest that people like Mr. Kinsley think we’re further away, but I fear that’s giving them too much credit. I don’t think they believe a threshold exists, much less where we are in relation to it. That’s dangerous.

**********

Mr. Kinsley demonstrates his contempt for individual preferences in his conclusion:

… the “one-size-fits-all direct loan program.” This would be no bad thing, but it doesn’t seem to have been the case. I’m not sure what “one size fits all” means here, but if it refers to the interest rate that students and their families have to pay, it’s true that there is only one rate in the government program, compared with many in the private one — all of them higher, but maybe there are people for whom the variety is worth it.

Who doesn’t want a free lunch, right? But let me make an effort.

The variety is worth it for me, since I am not in the process of taking out student loans, nor do I expect to do so in the future. A variety of interest rates, even if they’re higher, would be preferable. That way he who engages in the risk takes on the cost of the risk. Why should I help pay for every college student’s default risk through my taxes, which is how that interest subsidy is funded now, and would be funded under Mr. Kinsley’s plan?

As a matter of disclosure, I have an existing student loan from my college years that was and is subject to government guarantees. I would not have used the system as it was/is, if I’d had a choice. As I think I’ve written, a significant portion of my undergraduate debt was in my mother’s name. That’s just as irrational. The entire student loan situation in the United States relies on the faulty notion that college students are irresponsible children. Worse, we’ve added lending institutions and the American taxpayer to this assumption. Mr. Kinsley’s idea would deepen this idiocy.

Economics hurts women. Let’s hurt it back.

The United States is in great company:

Why is there deep bias against mothers? It turns out our country lacks basic supports for families. Out of 173 countries, only four have no paid leave for new mothers — Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Liberia and the U.S.A.

The essay contains many other out-of-context abuses of economics, but this one is sufficient. But first, this:

We know how to fix this problem.

Of course we do. The nanny statists always do.

The U.S. does not have mandatory paid leave, legislated by Congress. And yet, how many new mothers go completely without pay immediately following childbirth? Every time I’ve encountered a co-worker who will be taking maternity leave, she and her family have planned during the pregnancy for the coming lack of income by saving vacation days. They have nine months, after all. This needs to be considered without nonsense like this:

It turns out that having a child is the top cause of a “poverty spell” for families, a time when income dips below what’s needed for basic living expenses like food and rent.

The burden is on the parents, not the state, to properly plan a family’s finances in the event of a child. If a child will cause a “poverty spell”, do not have a child. Couples may procreate but they may not expect society to pay for that choice.

Most frustrating is that the author almost understands the truth.

The good news is businesses that are adapting to the human need for flexibility are thriving.

Still, we must lament that the United States sits with Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Liberia in not mandating paid maternity leave.

So let’s assume the U.S. mandates paid maternity leave. Who will fund the new state expense? Since it’s a burden deriving from businesses, the tax burden will be placed on them. They will simply pass this expense to employees in the form of lower wages. Where there is an existing wage gap, it’s logical to assume that the cost for an extra benefit to women, all else equal, will be passed to women. We’re essentially down to shifting financial planning for children from parents to the state.

This might bypass women past child-bearing age, though how that will be determined opens a can of worms. But it will inevitably ignore the women who choose not to have children. Even though they do not need to financially plan for children, they will be financially planning for other people’s children, through the state. But I’m sure this is one extra law from Congress away from being rectified.

And what about paid paternity leave?

Via FARK

Stupid HIV Defense Quotes – A Contest

I have two competing quotes, but I can’t decide which is dumber. First, from the article I referenced in yesterday’s entry:

“It’s now the most proven, effective HIV prevention strategy we have for male heterosexuals, so it’s really important that we make this widely available,” said Robert C. Bailey, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who oversaw the Kenyan trial in nearby Kisumu.

You might remember Mr. Bailey, as he’s made two appearances at Rolling Doughnut with the same basic quote. (I guess this makes him our returning champion.) His statement is egregious, since abstinence, monogamy, and condoms are undeniably more effective.

Next, from Archbishop Manase Buthelezi of the Lutheran Church in South Africa:

Virginity inspection helps protect our children from HIV-Aids.

I’m not really sure how, as it’s a ex post facto check, unless he’s relying on the shame of “failing” the inspection to discourage sex.

I’m voting for Bailey, because he’s more certain, so unthinking individuals will be less likely to dispute him. As evidence, read the article. You won’t find any dispute from the reporter to such a ridiculous claim. What do you think?

**********

To strengthen his position, Archbishop Buthelezi offered this:

“We have never heard of any maiden who died because of virginity inspection. But we have many young boys killed in mountains during circumcision. And there is no big noise about that.

“If there are people who want to stop virginity inspection they must do the same with circumcision. Virginity testing is about abstinence from sex, which we preach in church,” he said.

As you can predict, he doesn’t make this comparison to discuss how reprehensible both are, but how beneficial virginity inspection is. He glosses over circumcision deaths to defend church doctrine. And then he states that virginity inspection “brings back humanity and respect to our children.”

Maybe that should’ve been his entry.

California bans force. Mostly?

California is addressing the possibility of forced RFID implantation:

California’s senate passed a bill last week that would protect people from having RFID tags forcibly implanted beneath their skin. All that’s left is for Governor Schwarzenegger to sign it, and then the state will become the third to pass such legislation (after Wisconsin and North Dakota).

The motivations for the bill were to prevent people from being forcibly tracked and to protect them from identity theft should someone electronically sniff data stored on the tag.

Kip already debunked the flaw in this plan:

It’s quite simple really: Only the government (or an armed thug) can “force” anyone to do anything. No employer can ever “force” an employee to accept any rule, policy or prerequisite.

I have nothing to add to that, but in light of what I wrote last week, there is another component. First, a word from the bill’s sponsor, Senator Joe Simitian:

“At the very least, we should be able to agree that the forced implanting of under-the-skin technology into human beings is just plain wrong,” he says.

I’ve read through the bill (pdf), and it clearly addresses what to do in the event a minor (or dependent adult) suffers a forced RFID chip implantation, but I can only find this for the possibility that it’s the parent forcing the child rather than an outside party:

This section shall not in any way modify existing statutory or case law regarding the rights of parents or guardians, the rights of children or minors, or the rights of dependent adults.

I’m not an attorney, so it’s possible, probable even, that I’m missing something in my analysis. But I doubt it. I have a strong suspicion that no one in the California legislature is much interested in the ethical issues posed by parents implanting an RFID chip into their children. Obviously it’s better to address a nearly impossible scenario with a new law, while leaving the entirely plausible scenario unprotected in order to guarantee parental “rights”.