Category: Stupidity

I’m worth mass redistribution. Or maybe it’s just my vote.

I’m a few days late on this, thanks to being wrapped up in fantasy football, but John Edwards cares about me.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”
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“The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death,” he said.

If I’m going to be in the system… How quaint. Do I have a choice? If and when I choose not to be part of the system, do I get to keep that part of my taxes devoted to covering me, as well as the portion that is my charitable “gift” to everyone else in this scheme?

Obviously he wouldn’t emphasize the womb-to-tomb feature bug if the answer to any of my questions was yes. Also obvious is the basic fact that, being unable to understand that government is the problem in health care, his proposal relies on reducing everyone to a lower level rather than working on (effective) ways to enable the unintentionally uninsured minority to mitigate their financial risk. Note, of course, that Edwards – and every other health care nanny currently running for president – misses this true issue in his quest for womb-to-tomb government services. That won’t earn my vote.

More thoughts at A Stitch in Haste and Cato @ Liberty

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I wouldn’t expect anyone else to have mentioned it, but a side issue from Edwards’ proposal involves routine infant male circumcision. As I’ve written, a liberal, progressive argument for universal health care and/or coverage is that the government will cease paying for unnecessary male circumcision. This will not stop.

Governments already fund unnecessary circumcisions today, when resources are limited. There is no significant push among politicians to redirect those funds into medically necessary expenditures (or taxpayer pockets). They do not care about the necessity of any particular intervention, or even health care in general. Universal health care is simply a means to create a new, dependent constituent group. If that constituency wants infant male circumcision, politicians will cover it. (I’d make an argument that bureaucrats will make the decisions, but doctors make the same mistake in an effort to please their constituents constituents’ parents.)

Politicians believe there is always another group to demonize and tax to fund whatever gift needs to be made to voters for their votes. I am unwilling to hope that any government run by these fools will miraculously reverse its stupidity. Such short-sighted adherence to self-interest is inherent in government whenever it’s controlled by those interested in the exercise of power. Neither rights nor logic plays any part.

Now add the context of a politician like Edwards who wants to mandate that you and I will undergo preventive care. Is it really a long leap to assume that such a stupid person could read the splashy headlines about male circumcision and HIV and ignore the context of voluntary and adult, as well as the truth that condoms remain far more effective at reducing the risk of HIV? Almost everyone in our culture has ignored these last three points in the two years since the first preliminary results were announced, so the answer is a clear “no”.

Politicians will continue to make the erroneous, incomplete argument that the cost-benefit analysis of infant male circumcision is a one-sided consideration, with benefits the only deciding factor. They rarely even recognize potential before the word benefit. If there’s a potential benefit to chase, they will assume that means one less disease to pay for out of the collective in the future. That is incomplete and morally defective, since it ignores the risks, the complications, and the rights interest of the child in making this subjective, medically unnecessary decision. That politicians, parents, and doctors make this error every day proves the fallacy of trusting in the economics of universal health care to rectify an ethical failing.

Should government miraculously reverse itself and stop funding infant circumcision, I still argue that this is largely irrelevant. Many parents will just pay for it themselves. I’ve read too many blog entries of parents fretting over the hundreds of dollars it will cost, yet, considering genital cutting either an “investment” in their son or a “necessary” expenditure so that the boy will be normal common, they proceed anyway, out of their own pockets. To be fair, there will be a long-term reduction, as fence-sitters will decide unnecessary surgery isn’t worth the money, but there will still be many boys facing the knife who should be protected. I’m not okay with that.

Anyway, who will make the argument that politicians embrace the individual rights of their children and refrain from removing healthy body parts from their own sons? I’ll theorize that at least one candidate running for president with a universal health care platform has ignored the violation of his¹ son’s rights and circumcised the boy, to say nothing of the members of the theoretical decision-making apparatus should a universal health care scheme be implemented.

¹ This ignores Sen. Clinton because I assume she did not have her daughter’s genitals cut. However, she should be included in any consideration of politicians and bureaucrats willing to perpetuate the violation of the genitals of male children.

Providing me something I want exploits me.

The FTC decided that no “price-gouging” occurred last year when the price of gasoline rose to $3-per-gallon. That’s the right answer, since “price-gouging” is a nonsensical concept rooted in politics rather than economics. But one member of the 5-member commission voted that “price-gouging” occurred.

The one dissenting commissioner, Jon Leibowitz, suggested that the commission had started with an answer and then found a way to justify it. He said the FTC had found “some plausible justifications for the unexpected and dramatic price spikes that bedeviled consumers in the Spring and Summer of 2006.”

“The question you ask, determines the answer you get: whatever theoretical justifications exist don’t exclude the real world threat that there was profiteering at the expense of consumers,” Leibowitz wrote.

Commissioner Leibowitz should be fired immediately for incompetence. Name one business that doesn’t profiteer at the expense of consumers and I’ll name a business that has or will soon fail.

Commissioner Leibowitz seems to believe that there is a correct level of profit that must not be exceeded. Why? If customers don’t like the price, with its assumed profit built in, they may refrain from buying the product. If a sufficient number of customers value their money more than the product (a gallon of gasoline), the price will fall to encourage more sales. Absent that quorum of uninterested customers, their subjective preferences were overruled by other subjective preferences.

Style over substance is not integrity.

Speaking of dress codes:

During the second inning of Wednesday night’s 4-3 loss to the New York Yankees, Francona was called out of the dugout so an MLB security official could make sure he was wearing his uniform top under his usual Boston pullover jacket.

“When Derek Jeter is on second base and I got somebody coming from the league making me go down the runway, I was a little perturbed,” Francona said Thursday.

“That was about as embarrassed as I’ve been in a long time, for baseball.”

The rule requiring managers to wear a uniform is rather silly to begin with, since baseball is the only sport to do so. But it’s traditional and most seem to like it. As a fan, I’m perfectly with managers wearing whatever they want. If a manager today wants to wear a suit like Connie Mack used to do, let him. Simply prohibit anyone (other than the trainer) from the field if he isn’t dressed in a uniform. The manager can then decide how important those mound visits are to him.

But I’ll concede for the rest of this entry that managers should wear uniforms. Does it make sense to pull a manager out of the dugout during an inning? During the game is bad enough, they couldn’t wait until the game was between half-innings? That’s a farce.

“I’m not talking about that, and I’m disappointed that they talked about it. And there will be something said about that,” [MLB vice president Bob] Watson said. “That’s in house.”

When a policy is built on secrecy, someone in management should question the validity of that policy. But Bud Selig is running the show, so I’m not surprised. He must be out of local governments to shake down for a new stadium, so this is how his idle mind fills the time while it’s completely uninterested in the integrity of the game.

Update: Baseball states that “timing was an issue“. No kidding.

Don’t get me started on neckties.

I hate dress codes. In almost every instance, it’s merely a tool designed to control people because someone in charge doesn’t trust people to have any common sense. I do not believe that people will dress perfectly without a dress code, but shouldn’t an employer want to know who doesn’t understand what’s appropriate and when? The dress code serves to mask an underlying problem until it can come out in a more damaging way.

So I read this story with that in mind:

Trips to the dry cleaner and mini shopping sprees at stores like Brooks Brothers are just some of the tasks awaiting undergraduate marketing students at Illinois State University’s College of Business this school year. Starting Aug. 27, all students taking classes in the marketing department are required to adhere to a strict business casual code, one that requires them to come to class in items such as pressed polo shirts, pants with finished seams, and dress heels. Students tested out the policy during a grace period last week.
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[Marketing professor Linda] Showers and other faculty drew up the “Business Casual Professional Dress Code” requirements last winter, sending out a memo to students this summer with details on the code, along with the school’s rationale for the move. Included in the memo were detailed guidelines that cautioned students against wearing dresses or skirts “shorter than four inches above the knee,” and prohibited them from wearing cargo pants, jeans, and sweatpants, among other items. “Clothing that works well for the beach, yard work, dance clubs, exercise sessions, and sports contests are not appropriate for a professional appearance,” the memo reads. Hats are also not permitted, though allowances are made for students who need to wear head covering for religious or cultural reasons.

If students don’t adhere to the dress code, they get a zero for the day and are asked to leave the classroom. The faculty member that implements the punishment is required to talk with the student about why the outfit is inappropriate for the classroom.

College “kids” are almost never kids. Clearly Illinois State is content with the nanny-state mentality that someone in administration must give orders for fear of chaos breaking out. Without this, clearly these “kids” would show up to class sans clothing. This policy doesn’t even show respect for the faculty members, since they must act as glorified babysitters.

If I attended a school that did this, I’d deal with it in two specific ways. First, I would take no marketing classes this fall. Second, I’d transfer at the end of the semester.

The first part is not true, actually. I’d take a marketing class or four. I’d show up in casual dress every single class. The professor would ask me to leave. I’d make a scene. I’d leave. And I’d drop all marketing classes on the last day to drop without penalty.

College is a time to learn, preferably to think. If students can’t figure out for themselves that there are different expectations for different situations without being forced to conform, the college is not doing its job, either in the admissions office or the classroom.

Until I live in your house, I’m not responsible for your mortgage.

I, like you, am going to be at least indirectly hit by the current “liquidity crisis” mortgage bubble, even though I had enough sense to contract for a fixed-rate mortgage when I bought my house. (The wisdom of buying when I did, on the other hand…) That’s just the cumulative reality of living in a capitalist system. Some people will make stupid, avoidable mistakes, but the overall economy can absorb it and survive. Scott Adams talked about this wonderful reality of capitalism today:

This story made me think about one of the great wonders of capitalism: It is driven by morons who are circling the drain, and yet. . . it works!

Exactly.

I’d planned to write up this short-sighted essay that calls for a bail-out of homeowners.

The ultimate solution must not emanate from the Fed but from the White House. Fiscal, not monetary, policy should be the preferred remedy. In the early 1990s the government absorbed the bad debts of the failing savings and loan industry. Why is it possible to rescue corrupt S&L buccaneers yet 2 million homeowners must be thrown to the wolves today? If we can bail out Chrysler, why can’t we support American homeowners?

That’s nonsense, of course. Kip beat me to it and said everything necessary. Particularly, this:

…(Again, and this is important: The spike in foreclosures is not Mr. & Mrs. Bluecollar being kicked out of their single-family home; it’s Mrs. & Mr. Infomercial failing to flip their 20 “no money down” speculative properties. That’s one investor, twenty foreclosures, zero homelessness.)

If there are anecdotal cases of institutions engaging in false advertising, deceptive accounting, manipulating the legally incompetent, then fine — pursue them with the full force of the law. But the mere fact that many otherwise competent people, including financial professionals, happened to make very bad decisions is no claim check on the Fed, Congress, or taxpayers’ wallets.

Issuing that claim check would indeed induce an eventual moral hazard, even though “there’s never been a problem in terms of national housing price [sic] bubbles until recently”. If we assume that this price mortgage bubble is a one-off and won’t happen again, the pattern still exists for bailing individuals out of their mistakes. In the essay, we’re supposed to understand that such rescues work, thanks to the examples of Chrysler and the S&L mess. (The author doesn’t mention deposit insurance. Quite disappointing.) Yet, the presence of that pattern doesn’t constitute an incentive to behave badly? Really?

The government should not bail out people who made bad choices just because they made bad choices. Leave individuals and businesses to experience the consequences (and successes) of their actions when the consequences are merit-based. (Luck, in this context, is merit-based.) That’s the only way to build discipline in financial transactions. Intervention only negates the need to develop those skills.

Government-approved degrees, for free!

Via Hit & Run comes the news of a proposal from Sen. Max Baucus, a classic example of government’s perpetual ability to ignore incentives and consequences:

Montana Senator Max Baucus says he wants free college tuition to be offered for students majoring in math and science.

The Democrat says he plans to introduce legislation in the coming months that would give full scholarships to high school graduates majoring in math, engineering, sciences or technology.

Naturally, Sen. Baucus proposes this because the U.S. needs to be more competitive with students around the world. No doubt he has an idea of the perfect mix of math and science to non-math and science college degrees in the U.S. Central planners always do, since who could be silly enough to rely on something as outdated and obscure as salary to be an indicator of what’s in demand and what’s not. No, it’s much better to trust Congress. That way, everyone can be a rich scientist.

Sen. Baucus does have one hitch in his plan to prevent gaming the system for a free education. Students would have to “to work or teach in a related field for at least four years after graduation.” That should suffice to weed out the undesirables who want to use the system for personal gain. They’ll clearly just give of themselves for the greater good instead of getting a degree in math or science, working four years at a job they may or may not like, and then retreating to graduate school to retool with four years of salary and no debt. But the incentive to do that once they have a government-funded love of technology instilled in them is too low to contemplate.

And I bet no one would think to get a dual degree in science and . The extra classes would still be on the taxpayer dime since most schools don’t charge for extra classes beyond a certain threshold per term. But that would be absurd. No, we can expect the best and brightest to finally shake off their aversion to intellectually stimulating fields and choose to go into the already highest-paying fields because the benevolent government would now deem them worthy.

What’s next, federal athletic scholarships for American high school athletes to enable us to better compete against foreigners? It’s not right that our professional leagues are being taken over by kids from the Dominican Republic and David Beckham.

The “do anything, as long as it’s something” mentality of politicians never ceases to make my brain hurt.

P.S. There is a stipulation in the funding based on merit, right? One not already met by merit scholarships provided by universities and private charities?

I retract my praise of the Bush Administration.

Remember back to October when I wrote about this story:

In its statement, USAID said the funding “should not have occurred, and there will be no further circumcisions performed with U.S. Government funds until the PEPFAR Scientific Steering Committee reviews data from ongoing clinical trials and considers any recommendations on male circumcision from the normative international Agencies.” PEPFAR is the Bush anti-AIDS program.

I guess the “results” are in. Were they even in doubt?

President Bush’s $15 billion anti-AIDS program will begin investing [SIC!] significant money in making circumcision available to African men seeking to protect themselves from HIV, top U.S. health officials said Sunday.

Recent research showing that circumcision dramatically cuts the rate of HIV infection is highly convincing [ed. note: <sarcasm>I’m shocked.</sarcasm>], a delegation of U.S. officials, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, told reporters in Johannesburg.

Countries taking part in the President’s Emergency Program For AIDS Relief have been invited to seek money to expand access to the procedure.

If you want to know how carefully our $15,000,000,000 will be spent, guess:

Circumcision funding would be small at first, with budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for individual countries. But it is likely to grow to be “an important part” of the program in coming months and years, said Kent R. Hill, an assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Small at first, but likely to grow in the coming months. Surely we’ll have a definitive answer by then.

The cells in the foreskin of a penis are especially vulnerable [ed. note: Are we sure?] to HIV, and removing the foreskin makes a man about 60 percent less likely to contract the virus, studies in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda have shown. The research reinforces studies showing that regions with high circumcision rates generally have lower rates of HIV.

About those regions… “Generally” isn’t enough, unless you’re world health experts or the United States government. Then definitive proof isn’t necessary, nor is the obvious point that $15,000,000,000 buys a lot of condoms, which have a definitive, significantly higher success rate at preventing HIV, pregnancy, and other STDs than male circumcision’s “about 60%”. I’m sure the Bush administration is waiting for “broad international consensus” on the issue of condoms and their effectiveness.

As I said in October:

I’m not sure where funding AIDS prevention in Africa falls within the Constitutional responsibilities granted to the United States government, but that’s not my issue.

Today, it’s my issue. Where is funding AIDS prevention circumcision in Africa noted within the Constitution? Which article grants that power? All of the immoral actions of our government weren’t enough, so we had to have this? Really?

Of course, what could possibly go wrong with government handling HIV/AIDS policy? I’m sure our $15,000,000,000 will be spent wisely. It sure will buy a lot of garlic, beetroot, lemons and African potatoes.

Unfortunately, this is also support for another belief of mine. There is a push within the anti-circumcision movement to promote a single-payer health care system in the United States because it would presumably require the bureaucrats to stop funding unnecessary surgeries to fund necessary medical care. This will not work because our politicians are short-sighted. They make decisions for political gain. As long as there is a desire by parents to hack away parts of their sons and an ignorant denial of science and ethics acceptance that this is okay, infant circumcision will continue in America. It doesn’t matter if it’s funded by insurance, government, or parents. It will continue. Just because rationing decisions must be made does not mean that rational decisions will be made.

The worst part of this is easy to predict. This money will be used to fund infant circumcisions, regardless of what the parties involved are now claiming. That’s just the inevitable line of (non-)thinking from public health officials. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have seen the push for infant circumcision six days after the latest findings on voluntary, adult circumcision were released in December. Voluntary and adult always get lost. Always.

His clarification shifts him from stupidity to ignorance.

To “libertarians” like Glenn Reynolds, nonsense like this is federalism:

In an interview with CNN today, former Senator Fred Thompson’s position on constitutional amendments concerning gay marriage was unclear.

Thompson believes that states should be able to adopt their own laws on marriage consistent with the views of their citizens.

He does not believe that one state should be able to impose its marriage laws on other states, or that activist judges should construe the constitution to require that.

If necessary, he would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting states from imposing their laws on marriage on other states.

Fred Thompson does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. [ed. note: I’ve added the strike-through on this line about Fred Thompson’s position. See the comments for an explanation.]

Aside from the typical blather about “activist judges”, is there a better indication that the new “federalists” are more concerned with permitting their own agenda than with Constitutional rights. Marriage belongs at the state level. Marriage equality belongs at the federal level.

It’s okay for one state to declare that individuals can marry at 16 and another state to declare that individuals can only marry once they turn 18. It’s okay for one state to mandate that a six-month separation must precede divorce and another state to permit immediate divorce with consent from both parties. That’s federalism.

It is not okay for any state to say that females can marry at 16 while males can only marry once they turn 18. That is discrimination, not federalism. State laws must still adhere to protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The new “federalists” want you to believe otherwise. They want everyone to believe that marriage is a shared right rather than an individual right exercised by two people. They’re okay with discrimination, as long as it’s their preferred discrimination. That can’t be achieved with federalism, so they must push “federalism”. They must redefine it into an empty, meaningless concept, lest their fraud be dismissed.

More thoughts from John Cole.

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Is there a more ridiculous presidential candidate flirter than Fred Thompson? Further demonstrating his idiocy:

On the issue of Iraq, Thompson refused to provide a timeline for how much longer US forces would remain in the country under his administration, but said, “We need to make every effort to make sure that we don’t get run out of there with our tail between our legs before we’ve done the job of securing that place.”

Asked about critics who call him “too lazy” to put in the long hours necessary to run for president, Thompson said: “If I have critics in Washington it’s not going to come as a surprise to me. I’ll have more by the end of this campaign,” adding, “The proof’s in the pudding. I think that’s curable.”

I’m sure these sound bytes were quite folksy in Thompson’s southern drawl, but our president should be a leader, not a guy who can unfurl a meaningless cliché to avoid answering a question.

Too conditioned to question the system?

Kevin, MD links to a story from England. The headline to the story states “I was too shy to talk to my doctor – and it nearly killed me”. That’s an interesting way of characterizing the facts. While the man, Andrew Wilson, did delay seeking treatment for six months, in part out of embarrassment, he also said he was too busy. If it said his delay almost killed him, it’d be much closer to the truth.

Unfortunately, the headline ignored what was clearly a much larger factor. Consider:

‘But as I doubled over in agony, I thought: ‘I wonder if…’ His GP gave him a prescription to treat an upset stomach. ‘Having suffered bowel problems for six months, I mentioned bowel cancer, but he said there was nothing to worry about and told me to come back if the pain persisted.
…

‘I rang my GP but he told me not to worry – “It’s probably piles,” he said.
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‘My GP had said to me before I left for the States: “Don’t go on the internet and look up your symptoms or you will give yourself a fright.” But I was already frightened.’

The easier of at least two conclusions is medical incompetence for ignoring the symptoms because Mr. Wilson didn’t fit the typical bowel cancer case. But is it possible that in addition to, or in place of, incompetence, socialized medicine is to blame? The people are paying and the people don’t want to waste money on low probabilities, even though low probabilities mean that someone will actually have cancer. That’s sane?

The “right” to health care doesn’t include the right to live in spite of the well-considered economic rationing decisions of the majority? No. The article makes a cursory nod to its own title when it includes “many people are too embarrassed to report symptoms until they become debilitating.” That does not justify the title.

Before we rush into socialized medicine, we should understand the warning signs cancerous economics. Or are we too embarrassed to consider that economic populism is wrong?

It’s not my drug war, but thanks for offering.

This essay by Roger Noriega demonstrates the irrational outcome of pursuing policies and placing blames based on subjective moral valuations absent any cause and effect analysis.

U.S. and Mexican authorities are nearing agreement on an aid package to support Mexico’s courageous new offensive against the deadly drug syndicates that threaten both our nations. The stakes are high for the United States: We depend on Mexico as a cooperative neighbor and trade partner, and most of the marijuana and as much as 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in this country pours over our southern border. If Mexico cannot make significant headway against the bloodthirsty cartels, our security and our people will suffer the consequences.

The drug syndicates wouldn’t be deadly if drugs weren’t illegal. Instead, this is a consequence directly attributable to the moral crusade against drugs that readily ignores any notion of liberty. If people were free to make choices that some disapprove of, there would be no need to insert violence into the process of commerce. The persistent demand for drugs will not disappear. It is not the problem. Our relentless at-all-cost war is.

Other elements will prove to be more challenging to legislate or to implement. Congress and the Bush team will have to set aside feelings of distrust and polarization if they are to forge a deal that can win ample funding and long-term, bipartisan backing. U.S. lawmakers need to be brought into the negotiating process so that they can have confidence in the plan and will not seek to micromanage the fight against drugs in a way that will demoralize our Mexican friends. We must strike a balance between congressional meddling and the oversight necessary to sustain funding and political support. Moreover, waiting for the regular appropriations cycle means an eight-month delay. President Bush should move quickly to request urgent supplemental funds, and Congress should do its duty by acting with the urgency this task demands. Our government must reassure its Mexican counterparts that meaningful help is on the way.

Congress must fund the war and let the Bush administration handle the details. It’s their duty to know as much as it takes to continue funding the initiative, but not enough to question whether or not it makes sense. That’s a recipe for success. Aside from the quite unsuccessful war on drugs, I think we have another example in the news that shows how well such Congressional adherence to “duty” works. What sane person could argue that this is good?