A Stitch in Haste

The New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in New York) has announced that it will not grant expedited review of the cases concerning same-sex marriage, including the NYC victory in Hernandez v. Robles. The cases will have to first go through the intermediate appellate courts before reaching the highest court.

My hasty-stitchy take is that this is, if anything, a postive for two reasons:

1. The couples in Robles are represented by Lambda Legal, the heroes who brought you Lawrence v. Texas. They have very deep pockets and very wide staff rolls. To the extent that this becomes a battle of attrition, that can only work in favor of the gay couples.


2. A possible reason for declining to grant expedited review is to allow for more “stuff” (i.e., briefs and rulings) for the Court of Appeals to digest. Since, generally, opponents of same-sex marriage rely on simplistic arguments (e.g., “it’s about tradition”) rather than sophisticated ones (e.g., “it’s about due process”), I would think that, when the issue finally does reach the Court of Appeals, “more is better.”

Or this could all mean absolutely nothing.

In related news, the San Francisco judge who declared California’s DOMA unconstitutional stayed his own ruling to allow the appeals process to proceed unhastened. How “activist” of him.

Also, a Connecticut judge makes an important but unsurprising decision: Since Massachusetts same-sex marriages are not recognized in Connecticut, it follows logically that Connecticut cannot annul them, and the parties must go back to Massachusetts to adjudicate. I say the ruling is important because it is an early example of “DOMA versus Full Faith and Credit.” In this case, the two yield the same result and there is nothing exciting. But the two won’t always agree, and somewhere down the road there will be a fact pattern where DOMA and FFC collide head-on. And anyone who claims the outcome will be a no-brainer is either a liar or a fool.

And the band plays on...

There’s more separating Ohio and Illinois than just Indiana:

Ohio --

A state lawmaker from northeast Ohio says he'll introduce a bill this week to close a perceived loophole in the domestic-violence law created by the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Democratic state Representative William Healy of Canton says his bill would define domestic violence as an act committed when [heterosexual] individuals reside together, regardless of marital status.

State judges have issued differing rulings recently on whether the amendment bars prosecutors from charging unmarried [heterosexual] people with domestic violence. Two Ohio judges have issued differing rulings in the past week on that issue.

Supporters of Ohio's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage said the state's domestic violence law should be revised to make it clear that it applies to unmarried [heterosexual] couples. "These (domestic-violence) crimes should have the same penalty whether you're married or not," said Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values and chairman of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, a group that was key in pushing for the amendment's passage.

However, the change in the law will only affect heterosexuals in non married relationships. The domestic abuse law will not apply to same-sex couples because of the constitutional amendment.

MY TAKE: One of the elements of the “counter-backlash” against the states that enacted bigot laws has been the exposure of the bait-and-switch deceptions so often used by their proponents. How many times did voters hear “It’s only about marriage – we promise nothing else will change.” Then, presto, it’s also about beating people up. And by the way, if the bigot laws are truly about “defending marriage,” then why is the “Campaign to Protect Marriage” interested in unmarried couples one way or the other? But of course it’s not about marriage at all -- it’s about sanctioning and codifying bigotry.

Illinois --
With Gay Games VII coming to Chicago in July 2006, the state is launching its first targeted push for gay and lesbian travelers, broadening its efforts to sell Illinois to niche markets.

"We will have our first-ever media-familiarization trip focusing on the affluent gay and lesbian market," Jan Kostner, deputy director of the Illinois Bureau of Tourism, told 600 travel professionals gathered Wednesday at the 18th annual Illinois Governor's Conference on Tourism.
...
In August, the state and city will host members of the gay press, showing them the charms of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. "We will promote the Gay Games, and Chicago and Illinois, as gay-friendly destinations," Kostner said in an interview. "We want to get the city on the radar screen."
...
The Gay Games, with 23 sports competitions, are expected to draw 12,000 participants and to generate more than $25 million in spending in the city.

MY TAKE: Obviously no gay enters into a relationship expecting to be the victim of domestic violence. And there’s more to lifestyle decisions than whether you get to see a sports festival every so often or where you go on vacation. But, in general, where do you think gays (and straights of goodwill) are more likely to live, or party, or sightsee, or whatever – Ohio or Illinois?

When it comes to anti-gay activism: Be careful what you campaign for -- you may get it.

POST SCRIPT: The story of why it’s called “Gay Games” rather than “Gay Olympics” is an old and sad one, and was one of many embarassments for the Supreme Court on the broad topic of gay rights. See San Francisco Arts & Athletics v. US Olympic Committee, 483 U.S. 522 (1987), or, generally, “Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court."

Here are two quick updates to previous technology-related posts of mine:

ITEM: Microsoft continues to suppress its gag reflex for the Eurocrats –

Microsoft said Tuesday it will adopt all of the main changes demanded by European Union antitrust regulators for its stripped-down version of Windows sold without the Media Player program.
...
Microsoft officials said they had accepted the European Union's offer to call the European version of Windows sold without Media Player "Windows XP Home Edition N" - with "N" standing for "not with media player."
...
The EU has said it could impose additional prohibitive fines of up to 5 percent of the company's daily global sales if Microsoft refuses to cooperate with last year's ruling.

MY TAKE: With this particular story, always keep in mind two things: (1) There was no evidence anywhere that customers actually wanted this stripped-down version of Windows. This was done for Microsoft’s competitors, not its customers. (2) Why should Europe have the right to impose fines based on Microsoft’s global sales, rather than its European sales? (Previous post with archive here.)

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ITEM: I blogged previously about the disgraceful abuse of the Politics of Pull by an online dating company called true.com. This would-be monopolist, as the only service that performs background checks, is — surprise — lobbying states to require that all online dating services provide the same service or be required to display huge warnings and disclaimers on their listings and emails. Here’s an update from Michigan:

Sandie Cornillie did a double take when she first heard about a bill that would force online dating sites to say whether criminal background checks have been conducted on their members.

The 46-year-old divorcee from Portage prefers finding dates on the Internet over visiting the local bar or relying on a friend to play matchmaker. The Web is less intimidating, more convenient and arguably safer, she said.
...
Some lawmakers, though, say that as online dating becomes more popular, users need better protection from predators. ... The [Michigan] Senate is considering legislation that would require an Internet dating company serving Michigan residents to disclose on its Web site whether it has conducted criminal background checks on users, based solely on the names provided. ... Republican Sen. Alan Cropsey of DeWitt is sponsoring the bill. "There are inherent dangers in the whole area of the Internet," he said. "Something needs to be done."

MY TAKE: Something needs to be done? Um, why exactly? Are people being slaughtered day in and day out by fiendish online dating ghouls everywhere we turn? But of course, with politicians, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The piece also notes the painfully obvious: People on the Internet use fake names! Go figure. UPDATE: Wired has a detailed piece about alternatives to true.com. Marginal Revolution also has a post on the subject.

In view of the recent exposure of a Boy Scout executive as an admitted child porn fiend, I am reprinting this blogpost about financial corruption in the Boy Scout leadership.

Should gays really want to play in this sandbox?

TowleRoad has more on the current Douglas Smith scandal.

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Ahem:

Boy Scout volunteer Tom Willis knew something was wrong when he saw that 20 youngsters on the list for a scouting program all had the same last name: Doe.

Willis said it appeared someone was listing fake members to boost enrollment, perhaps to bring in more funding from agencies like the United Way or to make paid Boy Scout recruiters look better.

"It was just so blatant. They didn't even try to make up names," said Willis, a dentist from Decatur and a former Eagle Scout who serves on the board of the Greater Alabama Boy Scout Council, which runs scouting programs in northeastern Alabama.

Now the FBI is investigating whether the council padded its membership rolls. It is just the latest investigation around the country into whether the Boy Scouts have inflated their numbers.
...
Suspicions have led to investigations elsewhere. In Texas, a Scout group removed thousands of names from its membership rolls and a federal grand jury two years ago looked into the matter. No charges were filed.

In Atlanta, independent auditors are investigating claims the metropolitan area's Boy Scouts inflated black membership numbers to 20,000 to gain more donations. A civil rights leader contends there are no more than 500 blacks actively involved.

To review:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Not my area of expertise, but might the Boy Scouts have committed RICO violations? Maybe some asset forfeitures are in order?

As the Scouts are also fond of saying: "Be prepared..."

Keep in mind also that this occurred in Alabama, home of (ex) Judge Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore, same-sex marriage bans, sex toy bans and other fine upstanding examples of fine upstanding folk doing fine upstanding things...like committing fraud against charitable organizations.

The view is so breathtaking up here on the Moral High Ground.

Related Post:
The Ghost of Dale Continues to Haunt

I was never a fan of GayPatriot or his website. I found him generally to be a Republican shill and an intellectual lightweight, whose “impressive” traffic stats were merely bought via heavy advertising, especially on Instapundit (reminder: A Stitch in Haste has never, not once, bought an ad on another blog).

As for the current brouhaha regarding his withdrawal from the Blogosphere, I might remind readers that GayPatriot launched his blog for the primary purpose of attacking Michael Rogers. See, e.g., his first few posts, especially the last one. GayPatriot fired the first shot.

Take whichever side you want in the outing debate (my position is simple: private people are entitled to private lives; public people less so; public officials even less than that; but closeted gay politicians who advocate anti-gay policies deserve to be exposed as do all hypocrite politicians when someone catches them in their hypocrisy).

But the simple truth of the GayPatriot saga is, um, simple, regardless of whose side you're on:

GayPatriot declared war on Michael Rogers … and lost.

And now GP is crying “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!” on his way out the door?

Um, no. Too bad, so sad, thanks for playing. He may be selling, but I’m not buying.

Meanwhile, I did have a chance to exchange emails a while back with the Luke to his Anakin, GayPatriotWest, and GPW struck me as a far more level-headed chap than GP. So, in the spirit of reciprocal blogrolling and The New Civility, I’m now provisionally adding GayPatriot (the Blog) to my blogroll. This should not be construed in any way as a show of support for GP the Ex-Blogger in his war against Michael Rogers.

All the usual suspects have already chimed in on the incident; I’m late to the party. Start at Christian Grantham. See also Downtown Lad, Rick Sincere, TRL, Lloydletta.

ITEM: Apparently the word “virtual” doesn’t appear anywhere in the New York State Tax Code --

A telecommuter who lives out of state while working by computer for a New York employer must pay New York tax on his full income, the state's highest court ruled Tuesday in a case that could have wide implications in the growing practice. [Huckaby v. New York State Division of Tax Appeals, PDF – 33 pages]

The Court of Appeals said that computer programmer Thomas Huckaby who lives in Nashville, Tenn., owed New York income tax for his full salary, not just the time he spent working at his employer's New York offices.

"New York has the right to tax 100 percent of a nonresident employee's income derived from New York sources," according to the 4-3 decision by Court of Appeals. The court relied on a fairness rule called the "convenience of the employer" under law that says a worker's income is taxable if he chooses to live outside the state, as opposed to if he or she was transferred there.

In a strong dissent, Judge Robert Smith argued that the basis of the majority's decision that all income is taxable is "that the commissioner says it is ... The majority cites no authority at all, and offers no persuasive reason, in support of this new interpretation."

MY TAKE: Telecommuting – and “teletaxation” – are the wave of the future. This nonsensical ruling is just Twenty-First Century “Penny in Your Pocket” jurisprudence. Unfortunately, New York is a highly persuasive jurisdiction in financial litigation – expect many other states to invoke this ruling. This could be the Poletown of the next centrury. Hit & Run chimes in, as does Out of Control.

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ITEM: The tax cheat cometh --

Americans' unpaid taxes are now topping $300 billion a year, with people who underreport their income the biggest culprits.
...
The IRS estimated the tax gap, the difference between taxes owed and taxes due, after auditing 46,000 people and combining those findings with older estimates of unpaid corporate, payroll and unemployment taxes. The report Tuesday estimated the gap at $312 billion to $353 billion for 2001, about 15 percent of the total taxes owed. Taxpayers were slightly less likely to comply with tax laws than they had been at the time of the latest previous study, completed in 1988.
...
The audits found frequent mistakes reporting alimony income, unemployment compensation and state income tax refunds.

Everson said the tax agency will probably never collect every dollar owed. "No one should think we can totally eliminate the gap," he said. "That would take draconian measures and make the government too intrusive."

MY TAKE: The more oppressive taxes become (see the first item of this post), the more likely people are to try both to avoid (legal) and to evade (illegal) paying income taxes. Meanwhile, the more complicated taxes become, the more likely that people will make mistakes. In other words, is anybody really surprised by a story like this?

A litany of litigation.

ITEM: Blockbuster settles “no late fees” suit --

Blockbuster Inc., the top U.S. video rental chain, will pay $630,000 to settle 47 states' claims that its "No Late Fees" policy deceived customers, the company said on Tuesday.

Blockbuster will also refund customers who claim they were misled and charged restocking fees or the full price of rented movies if they were returned a week after the due date, according to a statement from Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett.

The agreement, which also includes the District of Columbia, would also dramatically alter the way Blockbuster advertises its "No Late Fees" policy in the future.

MY TAKE: Company provides the best service and makes money. Company stops providing the best service and stops making money. Company tries shenanigans and gets a smackdown. Remind me again why we need antitrust laws?

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ITEM: It’s hard to deliver a baby in handcuffs --

A police officer who stopped a doctor for speeding on his way to deliver a baby, and then took him to the maternity ward in handcuffs, has agreed to an unpaid suspension for lack of judgment.

Dr. Anthony Chidiac was driving his motorcycle 10 miles above the 25 mph speed limit last March when he was stopped by 15-year veteran Officer William Lilliston.

According to records released Monday from an internal police investigation, when the doctor explained he was going to a delivery, the officer allegedly asked if he was delivering a pizza and later said, "If you're a doctor, I'm Mickey Mouse or Joe Blow."

Lilliston called the hospital to confirm Chidiac's story, and drove him to the hospital as the baby's head was showing. The officer then asked to see the doctor's driver's license before letting Chidiac change into scrubs.

MY TAKE: Well, at least he didn’t handcuff the baby. (See also this related post.)

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ITEM: It’s okay to beat your wife, just not for too long --

[F]our models say their images have taken a beating since posing as woman-batterers for a city ad campaign.

"Employee of the month. Soccer coach. Wife beater," reads one of the ads featuring the four men, which was supposed to run for all of four weeks back in 2002.

But in a $4 million Manhattan Supreme Court suit, Christopher Dorm, Triple Edwards, Daniel Royer and Javier Velarde say the ads are still up in some places, and are taking a toll on their careers and friendships.
...
All four initially said no, but relented thanks to the booking agency's "assurances and promises" the ads would only run for one month and only in the transit system, the suit says. …They later discovered the city had given out 20,000 posters "to any organizations, people or entities that wished to take them," including station houses, doctor's offices and various charities.

MY TAKE: I remember in the early days of the AIDS crisis, subway posters for HIV drugs, or public health ads to promote safe sex, often had fine print that read “Models do not have HIV.” That’s how intense the stigma was. Now models trip over themselves to appear in Valtrex ads. On the other hand, who thinks Anthony Hopkins really goes around eating people? Still, a contract is a contract, but good luck proving damages.

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ITEM: Hack politician wants to RFID ex-cons with surgical implants --

A Butler County commissioner has suggested that computer microchips be implanted in ex-convicts on probation so they can be tracked and located at any time.

"People have these GPS chips put in their pets and, in some cases, in their children, in the event they are lost or kidnapped," Michael Fox, a Republican, said on Monday. "I don't see why the same can't be done with probationers."

MY TAKE: Despite my support of denying felons the right to vote, I see no reason to demean probationers with a “yellow ticket of leave” like this. We chip our dogs because we love them, we would be chipping ex-cons because we hate them. Slight difference. (See also this related post.)

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ITEM: Guess who’s coming to dinner ... and not leaving?

A Queens live-in health aide has been fired for allegedly neglecting an Alzheimer's patient — but she's refusing to move out of his house.

"It's insane that this stranger — a worker I fired — is just able to take over the house," said Adam Fisher, 45, whose dad, David, 86, had been under the aide's care. "Whenever I asked her to leave, she said, 'This is my home. I'm a resident [sic] here.' "

The aide, Katherine Rowe, is taking advantage of a law that prohibits landlords from summarily evicting people who've lived in a residence for more than 30 days.
...
But Fisher fears that Rowe ... will ignore a letter from his lawyers demanding that she leave, forcing him to take her to court to enforce an eviction. "She knows the system. She has no intention of leaving. She's banking on a payout," a cop told Fisher yesterday after Rowe called police to complain of being approached by a reporter.

MY TAKE: My property professor was the worst teacher I had in law school, but I was still able to learn that only tenants should be protected from unlawful eviction, not trespassers. Guess New York politicians had even worse Property professors (perhaps they went to CUNY law school). Related story here. UPDATE: She got the hint. Money quote from the homeowner: “The system didn’t work but The New York Post did.”

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ITEM: Good thing Michael Schiavo doesn’t live in North Carolina --

A Pender County dispatcher forced to quit her job last year after the sheriff discovered she had a live-in boyfriend is suing to overturn a N.C. law that makes living together a crime.

Sheriff Carson Smith told Debora Lynn Hobbs, 40, that she would have to marry, move or leave her job, said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina.

Living together as an unmarried couple is a misdemeanor punishable by as many as 60 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

In North Carolina, one of about half a dozen states with such a law, 33 people have been charged with the crime and 25 people have been convicted since 1997, according to the ACLU. There are 118,781 unmarried people of opposite sexes living in the same households in the state, according to the latest Census figures.

MY TAKE: Maybe the grounds for the lawsuit should be that the law unfarily discriminates against heterosexuals.

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ITEM: “My what big buns you have...”

A TV advert for fast food chain KFC has been banned for misleading people about the size of a burger.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld five complaints that the chicken fillet was larger in the TV commercial than in real-life. It found the advertised bun was thicker than those it bought in a London outlet and that there was "more filling and the lettuce was a different type".

KFC said the advert burgers were within the "standard range of dimensions". It suggested the women in the advert may have had small hands - thus making the burger appear bigger - and that the name of the burger indicated it was smaller than other burgers.

MY TAKE: Next they’ll be suing Abercrombie & Fitch for misleading customers (“Oh, definitely, that’ll make you look as sexy as the model, for sure...”)

I perused parts of the Colorado Supreme Court decision in which a death sentence was overturned after it was discovered that a juror used the Bible to convince another juror to vote in favor of death. (Actually the CSC was only upholding the trial court's finding that the death sentence was invalid). The ruling can be found here (PDF – 64 pages).

Although I was hesitant at first, I’m now convinced that this was the correct outcome. The issue wasn’t really so much using the Bible in deliberations (so what?), or even bringing Bibles to the jury room (more troubling, but probably okay). The really issue was this:

Juror EatonOchoa brought a Bible into the jury room Saturday morning when deliberations resumed. Other jurors testified that more than one juror brought in a Bible, and that one of the Bibles present contained a study index with which a reader could locate passages on particular subjects. Jurors EatonOchoa and Trujillo also brought their notes on biblical passages into the jury room. Juror EatonOchoa showed juror Cordova the Bible text from Leviticus commanding the death penalty for murder, as well as the Romans text.

Clearly that's inappropriate -- the jury instructions were quite clear -- no outside materials were to be brought into the jury room. In other words, the problem isn't the Bible, but notes. So I think the decision was probably correct.

But that still leaves unresolved the bigger issue – suppose the jurors had been able to recite Leviticus 24:21 and Romans 13:1 from memory and had done so during the deliberations, would that have been "juror misconduct"? I'm not so sure.

More thoughts at Hit & Run and Overlawyered (which adds two important observations that I missed: first, that the prosecutor invoked the Bible in his closing arguments – not a good idea; second, that jurors were subpoenaed to testify eight years after the trial – talk about "Twelve Angry Men"...)

UPDATE: The prosecution is seeking to appeal the decision to the United States Supreme Court. The decision whether to grant certiorari of course will not come until the Court reconvenes in October. Stay tuned.

Steve Landsburg’s latest Slate piece, on Terri Schiavo and respecting or disregarding the wishes of the dead (or not dead, or not quite dead), is generating quite a buzz. See the posts, and comments sections, at Asymmetrical Information, Catallarchy, Outside the Beltway and Marginal Revolution.

I have two problems with Landsburg’s “a corpse is just another resource” thesis, (three if you include its straightforward offensiveness). First is his less-than-a-sentence glossing over of why his argument is tautologically invalid:

Suppose there is a segment of the population who wants to censor, oh, say, the radical thought of William Saletan. Many of us get a lot of pleasure from reading Saletan, but the anti-Saletanians would get (let us suppose) far more pleasure from banning him. Once we've agreed on an appropriate way to measure that pleasure, a strict cost-benefit analysis might argue for a ban from which a libertarian would recoil.

But Landsburg knows damn well that there is no way to measure pleasure across individuals. Interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible. I can make intrapersonal utility comparisons for myself (e.g., I prefer a Snickers Bar over a Milky Way bar; I prefer a dime over an issue of the New York Times), but between two people who both like Snickers Bars it is meaningless to ask who “prefers” the Snickers Bar more or who would get “more utility” from the Snickers Bar. So, since there can be no “appropriate way to measure that pleasure” (Landsburg’s term), the whole rest of his thesis (i.e., that a “cost-benefit analysis” over whether to censor Saletan, or who “values” Terri’s body/corpse more) is nonsense.

The second criticism I have is an error or omission on Landsburg’s part – another reason why we respect both the dead (i.e., corpses) and the wishes of the dead. I made a similar argument in a previous post on animal cruelty.

While it is correct that, “animals have no rights” (i.e., they are living but non-human) and “corpses have no preferences” (i.e., they are human but non-living), we nevertheless show them “respect” because not to do so imposes externalities on living human beings. In other words, we are not so much respecting animals and corpses so much as we are respecting ourselves by not disgusting each other through tasering pigs or using corpses as crash-test dummies. The pig doesn’t count. The corpse doesn’t count. But I count and you count.

Now circle back to Terri Schiavo. Since interpersonal utility comparisons are meaningless, we cannot, as Landsburg proposes, somehow “measure” whether Michael Schiavo or Terri’s parents would derive “more utility” from the control of Terri’s corpse. Neither can we “maximize social welfare” by repackaging Schaivo’s corpse as a “resource” to one or both sides. We can, however, directly observe the externalities to society that are generated whenever we hear tales of disrespect for the dead.

Despite the fact that Landsburg calls himself a “libertarian,” he seems to have quite a penchant for central planning (e.g., my previous post). One of the worst tricks central planners use is to invoke false interpersonal utility comparisons (remember the monstrosity known as the “social welfare function” from your basic economics class?). The notion that playing fast and loose with the dead somehow “maximizes social utility” is both anti-social and anti-utility.

And it’s definitely not libertarian.

POST SCRIPT: You saw the story about corpses as crash dummies – but did you see this?

I guess this isn't a joke:

Actor Christopher Eccleston has quit as Doctor Who after just one episode of the new series has been screened, the BBC has confirmed. Eccleston, whose first appearance as the ninth Time Lord attracted around 10 million viewers, feared being typecast. Talks are taking place to replace him with Casanova star David Tennant. A second series of the new Doctor Who, which will again be written by Russell T Davies and produced by BBC Wales, has already been commissioned. ... Eccleston - whose last appearance is expected to be in a Christmas special - said he was also planning new projects and that he found filming the series gruelling.

Americans haven't even had a chance to check him out yet. Go figure. Speaking of which, does anyone have any ideas on that subject? Are any copies making their way across the pond? Legal methods are preferable but not mandatory.

My one too-frequent surrender to fast food is the breakfast sandwich — either McDonald’s Sausage Biscuit (no egg or cheese) or a Burger King Croissan'wich (again, sausage but no egg or cheese).

Anyway, sesame seeds give me heartburn, so I won’t be opting for this:

Burger King has unveiled a new breakfast sandwich that's a huge bet that not everyone is dieting.

The No. 2 fast food chain debuted its Enormous Omelet Sandwich Monday. The sandwich has one sausage patty, two eggs, two American cheese slices and three strips of bacon. That works out to 730 calories and 47 grams of fat — more than a Whopper sandwich, which the Burger King Web site said has 700 calories and 42 grams of fat.

"It's designed for people who like to start the day with a hearty breakfast," said Denny Post, chief product officer at Burger King.

--and then end the day with a “heart-y attack.”



By way of comparison:

[Denny's] Fabulous French Toast Platter — with three slices of French toast, two bacon strips and two sausage links — contains 1261 calories and 79 grams of fat.
…
The new sandwich comes about four months after Hardee's also bucked the "health trend" in fast food restaurants by offering a burger it dubbed the "Monster Thickburger," with 1,400 calories and 107 grams of fat.

Look on the bright side: it might help alleviate the Social Security crisis.

News flash – income is subject to the income tax. Go figure.

Hawking baby and children's clothes — along with some garage-sale and thrift-store bargains — on eBay helps Sunni Wojnarowsky bring in some extra money so she can afford to stay home with her two young boys.

The additional dollars are great, but does she really need to hassle with the paperwork and report her small profit to the Internal Revenue Service? Her question, posed to the online auction site's discussion board for sellers, generated much advice — and more confusion.

In tax law, no clear, bright line separates fun from profit, or a hobby from a business. But IRS instructions make it clear that all income — a category that includes bribes, gambling winnings, kickbacks and money made in illegal activities — can be taxed.

The real takeaway from this story is not so much to decry the IRS for the umpteenth time, but rather to demonstrate yet again the folly of “tax reform” and especially proposals to replace the federal income tax with a federal sales tax. Besides the risk that switching from an income tax today to a sales tax tomorrow merely invites having both the day after tomorrow, the idea that a sales tax will be any less complicated than the income tax is unrealistic wishful thinking.

Just as so often happens at the state level, even if you begin by taxing everything, the Politics of Pull will eventually begin exempting this item or that item, or sales from this industry or that industry, or over this medium or that medium. And before you can say “flat tax,” you’ll have a federal sales tax code that just as long as the Internal Revenue Code is now.

No thanks.

And of course, why is an oppressively high sales tax any better than an oppressively high income tax? And how does any of this change the Social Security crisis?

In this era of the tax-and-spend Republicans, the idea of suggesting any new tax platform should be downright terrifying.

Like I said: no thanks.

Hit and Run also chimes in.

Related Posts:
loomberg: "Be Glad We Don't Take It All"
Sales Taxes and "Helping the Poor"
Should State & Local Taxes Be Deductible?

Is it time to abolish lifetime tenure for Article III judges? Paul Jacob seems to think so:

Norman Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, writes in The Washington Post that "to prevent this partisan warfare from going nuclear: amend the Constitution to eliminate lifetime tenure in favor of single 15-year terms, at least for Supreme Court justices and federal appeals court judges."
...
But a plethora of decisions reflect a court drunk with power, out of touch with the people and our Constitution. The court no longer seems independent of the other branches nor removed from politics.

Huh? Are these the same “activist judges” who Jacobs complains are not “independent of the other branches nor removed from politics”? Which is it? News flash: being “independent” means, um, being independent. It isn’t “independence” if it means always having to agree with you, or with the legislature, or with the whims of the mob.

More:

Calls for a limit on judicial terms are long overdue. One of the best proposals is House Joint Resolution 55, a constitutional amendment introduced by Texas Rep. John Culberson (R-Houston), that would require federal district court judges to be retained every 10 years by both the state legislature and the governor where the judge serves. That strengthens federalism by interconnecting the federal courts with state governments, which are closer to the people.

Another bait-and-switch. Is the issue separation of powers or is it federalism? As I understand it, the whole point, historically speaking, of an expansive federal court system — and expansive federal jurisdiction — was precisely to protect litigants from the petty politics of state courts and state politicians.

But what does this bizarre Culberson proposal have to do with judicial term limits? And besides, “federalism” — a false god that I do not worship — used to mean keeping the federal government out of domains that had traditionally been administered by the states. Since when does it mean allowing state politicians to muck around in the federal government? Two wrongs make a right? To the extent “federalism” ever meant anything positive, it meant limiting government intertwinings, not expanding them.

One last thought. Another false god is the gobbledygook of “Framers Intent.” Now, given that the Framers never anticipated judges, or anybody else, living so long as we do now, why don’t we simply blank out Article III, Section 1 and impose term limits anyway?

What’s that? You can’t simply “blank out” parts of the Consitution? But we do it all the time — the Ninth Amendment; Article IV Privileges and Immunities; Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 (War Powers); the Thirteenth Amendment (draft as “involuntary servitude”); most of the Fourth Amendment and a huge chunk of the Fifth (eminent domain), and soon, most likely, the Twenty-First (state power to control alcohol imports).

Isn’t it amazing how the Constitution can “mean what says and say what it means” sometimes and be an "inkblot" other times?

Red Cans Canned in Red State:

The Riverton [Wyoming] school board has decided to remove pop and candy machines from public schools within the next year.

The pop and candy will be replaced by juice/milk and nutritional snack vending machines.

The only beverages allowed for sale on school grounds on a regular basis will be milk, water, and 100 percent fruit juices. Candy will be replaced with nutrient-dense foods such as whole grain snacks, fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products.

Board member Carl Manning said Tuesday the change was "a worthwhile cause," saying the board needs to address obesity concerns.

MY TAKE: Um, milk and juice are fattening too. What’s wrong with a vending machine full of Caffeine Free Diet XX? And I’ll bet dollars to donuts (assuming one can even find donuts anymore) that many soda-free school vending machines will carry chocolate milk, “not quite juices” like Gatorade or Sunny Delight (which is just Kool-Aid on steroids), or perhaps even Red Bull. This is nothing more than the Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling, and will accomplish nothing.

--

Blue Cans Canned in Blue State:

When the Philadelphia School District banned the sale of carbonated soft drinks in city schools last year, a nonprofit nutrition advocacy group considered the decision a sweet victory for its activists.

Since then, the Philadelphia-based Food Trust has been working to build statewide momentum for its cause. With funding from the state Agriculture Department, it has developed a "Healthy Beverage Toolkit" - a primer on how other communities can marshal support for similar policies.

"We figured that if Philadelphia could do it, then it's a slam-dunk that anybody throughout the state can do it," said R. Duane Perry, the group's executive director. "Now is the right time."

The Food Trust and other school-nutrition advocates view the presence of soft drinks in schools as a key contributor to the childhood obesity epidemic. A state Health Department survey last year found that while 72 percent of Pennsylvania high schools with vending machines offer bottled water, carbonated drinks and sugary sports drinks were present in 60 percent of those high schools.

MY TAKE: Again, I wonder whether school cafeterias serve Philly cheesesteaks in Philly.

---

Duck Bill Platitude:

At Hurley's restaurant in hip Northwest Portland [Oregon], foie gras isn't anywhere on the menu. You have to ask for it.
...
Hurley's is among several Portland restaurants that have removed foie gras from their menus because of protests by animal rights activists, who would gather outside restaurants with gruesome images of dead and diseased ducks they say are the result of inhumane force-feeding techniques used to produce foie gras.

Opponents say the practice should be outlawed, and persuaded the California Legislature last year to pass a bill that will ban foie gras in 2012 unless producers can prove the technique is humane.

Legislation also is being considered in Oregon, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts that would make it a criminal act even to possess the delicacy. Activists recently persuaded about 10 restaurants to stop serving foie gras in Pittsburgh.
...
Some say the protesters -- and now legislators -- are clueless, and scoff at the idea that birds whose livers alone are worth $75 a pound are mistreated.
...
Francine Bradley, a poultry specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension Service, said foie gras farms simply take advantage of ducks' natural ability to store a large amount of fat.

MY TAKE: Here’s Sonoma Foie Gras’ description of how they treat their ducks. Here’s the Humane Society’s critique of the practice. We blog, you decide. Obviously wherever there is animal farming there are going to be incidents of animal cruelty, and it should be punished. But a flat-out ban strikes me as an example of “progressive lifestyle regulation” (i.e., pass laws that affect the rich more than the poor, like foie gras bans, because it’s easier and more headline-grabbing).

---

Speaking of Bird-Brained:

José Ramos, who attended Unity HS in SoHo, charged that safety agent Tiffany Delin wouldn't let him leave his math class to participate in a student council event on Oct. 17, 2003.

Ramos said he had received permission to participate in "Hispanic Day" festivities. But, according to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, Delin ordered Ramos to sit down, saying she had never seen the student volunteer before. Ramos told the officer to contact the principal, who had approved his participation.

"Officer Delin responded by shoving Mr. Ramos and telling him to sit down," the suit says. When Ramos, who's now in college, persisted, Delin responded in a loud voice, "Just go and sit down, you boy or whatever it is that you are," the suit claims.
...
Delin handcuffed Ramos after he refused to sit down and said he was "going to the precinct," the young man claims. She then took him to the vice principal's office, the suit says. As it turned out, Ramos said he was not charged with a criminal offense nor disciplined by school authorities for any wrongdoing.

The suit also charges that in the past, Delin was heard calling another student a "f-ing faggot."

MY TAKE: “School safety agent”? Another euphemism for “someone with a police fetish but is too intellectually deficient to actually qualify as a cop.” I’d say “sue ‘em into the ground!” But, as a taxpayer, guess who would have to pay the judgment. Grrr... Meanwhile, here are previous posts about kids in handcuffs.

I’ll give the Christian Science Monitor credit: they are probably the most honest proponents of the “Penny in Your Pocket Rule” I’ve seen to date:

[T]he income gap between the rich and poor in the United States has gotten wider again. A reformed Social Security could help readjust that balance.

It's unclear whether President Bush's plan will do that. But Social Security could be altered to accomplish that goal, says Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale University. He frets that the growing rich-poor gap "is going to fester eventually. It will be a source of resentment."

So he suggests that both the federal income tax and Social Security be indexed so that any growth in this income gap be offset by raising the progressivity of the tax and retirement systems.
...
A more modest proposal would be to raise the level of earnings subject to the Social Security tax. Currently, the system taxes only the first $90,000 of income, while a growing number of Americans earn more. In 2001, for example, 15 percent of Social Security contributors made more than the taxable earnings maximum, up from 10 percent in 1983.

Some hasty stitches:

--Why is it fair to talk about the uneven distribution of income but not the uneven distribution of the income tax? The bottom 50% of households pay no federal income tax. So why are the poor entitled to feel “resentment” over their (relative) poverty but taxpayers are not entitled to feel resentment over their (relative and absolute) tax burden? Stated differently, why are the poor entitled to feel “resentment” over the distribution of income but not expected to feel gratitude over the lack of an income tax burden that follows from it?

--On the other hand, if there is “resentment” to be felt by the working poor, shouldn’t it be over the 12.4% of their paycheck that is confiscated by Social Security taxes?

--Social Security is already an extremely progressive redistribution scheme. I have blogged about this repeatedly, but the simple way to remember it is that someone who pays twice as much Social Security tax over his working life receives far less than twice as much in benefits. That’s progressive redistribution of income, folks.

--Lamenting the Social Security cap of “only” $90,000 ignores the fact that the cap has increased every single year and will continue to do so from here to eternity. So with each passing year Social Security becomes ever more progressive in its redistribution of income. And still Shiller and the CSM want more. Penny in your pocket...

--Since the Social Security “trust fund” is a fraud, the entire federal tax framework is set to become ever more progressive than it already is, beginning in 2018 2017, as the trust fund “assets” (i.e., mere promises to raise income taxes in the future) are “redeemed.” In other words, when income taxes start going up to satisfy the “trust fund,” does anyone honestly believe they will increase in a regressive way? Of course not.

--And don’t forget the Alternative Minimum Tax.

One final thought:

When first proposed, Social Security was billed as insurance, even though it clearly redistributed income, especially to many early recipients of pensions who had paid little or nothing into the system. The reason, one key drafter of the bill told Frank Genovese, an economist emeritus at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., was that Americans did not believe in redistributing income to the poor. They did believe in insurance.

In other words, the government deliberately lied to taxpayers back in the 1930s.

What is that called again? Oh yeah – “FDR’s legacy.”

Related Recent Posts:
Social Security: Doomsday Comes a Year Earlier
Just Because the Trust Fund "Exists" Doesn't Mean It Exists
Who Faces the "Risk" of Social Security Reform?
Has Social Security Been a "Success"?
What is the Purpose of Social Security?

Downtown Lad provides an update to a topic I blogged about previously — namely an example of the "counter-backlash" against anti-gay laws, in this case in Wisconsin:

At least three gay professors at the University of Wisconsin have left for other schools, since the University will not give benefits to partners of gay faculty. This includes two professors in the nation's top ranked Sociology Department (not for long I suspect).
...
Expect other gay professors to vote with their feet. And expect the University to suffer as other people, including straight professors and students, refuse to attend a University that practices discrimination.

We need to keep in mind of course that this is not the University of Wisconsin's doing — indeed, they were quite vocal in denouncing Wisconsin's mini-DOMA and predicted exactly this sort of brain drain, as I observed in my previous post on the subject.

Be careful what anti-gay laws you wish for...you may get them.
UPDATE: PurpleScarf has more.
Related Posts:
Markets in Gay Rights: University of Wisconsin "Losing Outstanding Candidates"
Markets in Gay Rights: Virginia to Scrap Anti-Gay "No Benefits" Law
Markets in Gay Rights: Auto Companies Give Money — and a Warning
Cincinnati Follows Through on Repeal of Anti-Gay Law

I'm not sure why this story is only hitting the AP now -- I blogged about it over six weeks ago.

But here it is again, just for good measure:

A federal judge in Alabama has announced he will not consider Yale Law students for clerkships to protest the university's policy of limiting military recruiters' access to students.

William M. Acker Jr., a senior judge with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in Birmingham and a 1952 graduate of Yale Law School, last month wrote to Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh about his decision.

"Please consider this an act of loyalty to YLS," Acker wrote.
...
Koh said Acker is the only judge he knows of who has acted against Yale in that way.
...
Carl C. Monk, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools, said in the 15 years he has been with the organization he has not heard of a judge withholding employment from an entire law school.

As I blogged back in February:

Of course, this loon isn't just hurting himself or the Yale grads (including the straight ones) who have nothing to do with setting policy. He's also hurting the people of Alabama by depriving them of fine young lawyers, who often go on to become law professors or even judges themselves. So much for "public servant."

Related Post:
Anti-Gay Judge: No Yalies Need Apply After Recruiter Ban

So first one of my loyal readers castigates me for my antipathy toward the Chinese Communist regime, which he assures me is only a "mild dictatorship."

With mild like this, who needs hot n' spicy?

Shuimu.com is just one of China's thousands of Internet chat rooms. But when non-students were barred this month from using the site at Tsinghua University in Beijing, it triggered a rare burst of outrage.

A brief protest erupted at the school. Users posted appeals on other sites for Web surfers to speak up, with some comparing the crackdown to persecution in Nazi Germany.

Until a few days ago, Shuimu was the largest university forum in China. For 10 years, students, alumni and others used it for lively debates on everything from physics to politics. But on March 16, communist authorities closed the site to users outside the university campus, apparently aiming to prevent critics from posting anti-government comments online.
...
Several other top universities also posted notices on their bulletin boards this month saying users had to register. Outsiders and anonymous postings were banned.

Then I have to read about some Orwellian gobbledygook called "libertarian paternalism" --

Choice is the driving force of capitalism. Choosy consumers determine what products and companies thrive or die as they pick among tubes of toothpaste or plans for cellphone service. Choice fuels competition, innovation and efficiency.

These days, consumer choice has claimed a prominent new position as a policy tool: the prescription for everything from improving public schools to paring bloated health care costs to saving Social Security.

Yet even as choice is brought to bear on the nation's most pressing problems, critics point out that expanding consumers' options is not always a good idea. People, they argue, often do not know how to choose properly or they simply refuse to choose. Sometimes, critics argue, government should limit people's choices. That is, choose for them.
...
The key is whether people understand their choices, said Richard H. Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago. "People have to know what their preferences are and they have to know how the options they have map onto their preferences," he said. This might be easy when choosing between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. But it gets progressively more difficult as the number of flavors increases. When the risks are high and the decisions complex -- as when choosing between medical procedures or investment portfolios -- consumers may become easily flummoxed.
...
Mr. Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School suggested that it is proper for the government, or an employer, to set boundaries to choice to achieve desired social objectives, an approach they call "libertarian paternalism."

See here and here and here and here. I expect many more responses are forthcoming. The bottom line, of course, is: "social objectives...desired by whom?" At that point (i.e., step one) the word "libertarian" ceases to apply and the whole thesis is just recycled central planning, with of course Thaler and Sunstein as the would-be central planners. Go figure.

There is nothing new under the Sun[stein]...

Related Posts:
Who are China's "Capitalists"?
China's (and NYC's) Totalitarianism
The Great Mall of China
(Mis)behavioral Economics and Social Security Reform

Newspaper morphing into a blog:

At the News & Record, a 93,000-daily circulation newspaper in Greensboro [North Carolina], reporters and editors are asking tough questions about the paper itself. The biggest questions: If the paper needs to change to survive, what changes should be made? What can it do, especially online, to make itself the electronic equivalent of a town square? Seeking the answers, the paper has launched an audacious online experiment.

The News & Record's Web site features 11 staff-written Web journals, or blogs, including one by the editor that answers readers' questions, addresses their criticisms and discusses how the paper is run. That puts the paper way ahead of even much larger news organizations. The News & Record's blogs range from "just-the-facts, ma'am," to slightly spicy.

There's a page for reader-submitted articles, another for letters to the editor and an online tips' form. The Web site hosts online forums on 23 topics, including safety at a local high school, FedEx Corp.'s move to the area and cameras at local stoplights. Traffic cams monitor local road conditions. The site posts up-to-date public records on property ownership, marriages and divorce.

"When the paper's overhaul is complete, it may be a model for the sort of 21st century paper that many journalism big thinkers have been talking about, chewing over, and confabbing on for the last few years," wrote the industry-watching magazine Editor & Publisher. "Greensboro will be the first place where this conceptually newfangled newspaper actually exists."
...
Why the interest? Declining circulation, vitriolic criticism of everything from the media's obsession with celebrity trials to its coverage of the 2004 election, plus a series of scandals involving reporters who made up facts has led to industry-wide soul-searching. ...Readership has also eroded, especially among young people.

Read the whole thing.

I think it's time to go through that rite of passage generally referred to as "Damn Blogger Sucks!" and explore the idea of www.kipesquire.com -- which invites this bleg.

Who's gone through it, who likes which hosting services, blogging software tools, etc.

Not to be obnoxious, but money is no object -- time and headaches are.

Open thread -- picks and pans regarding hosting services, MT, migrating Blogger posts onto a new blog, etc.

Thanks.

(MAJOR UPDATE BELOW.)

On the one hand, I've been pounding the table for quite some time that the nature of marriage qua legal status is extremely important and cannot always be replicated by gays under federal DOMA or in states with "mini-DOMA" laws.

On the other hand, I've emphasized in the Schiavo tragedy that Michael Schiavo's status as Terri's legal guardian is not, or ought not be, plenary.

Which raises the question — has Michael Schiavo forfeited his spousal power over Terri given his conduct?

My Little Corner phrases the issue well:

I've heard several commentators refer to Michael Schiavo's living arrangements as being a common law marriage. Common law marriage has not been recognized in the state of Florida since, oh, 1967 or thereabouts. Common law marriages in effect at the time were "grandfathered" into the law, but no relationship after that would be considered as common law. Just living together and having children together does not create a common law marriage.

As I commented at that post:

Where I come from (New York), what Michael Schiavo is doing isn't called common law marriage. It's called adultery.

Ironically, under New York law Terri could divorce him for it and he would forfeit his "legal guardian" status.

Now I know exactly nothing about Florida marital law (I'm told it's a no-fault divorce state), and I don't even know that much about New York marital law, but I wonder why the Schindlers waited until it was far too late to pursue this course (i.e., of trying to obtain a divorce for Terri). I don't think it's too much of a cognitive leap to posit a rebuttable presumption that a spouse, even one in Terri's condition, might want to divorce an adulterous spouse who has fathered two children out of wedlock. (SIDEBAR: The response seems to be that, since the trial court has found, rightly or wrongly, that as a question of fact Terri's wishes were to die by dehydration, divorcing Michael would have been irrelevant — her parents still could not have ordered the reinsertion of her feeding tube.)

What was it that Rehnquist said about "taking the bitter with the sweet"? If Michael Schiavo wants the power of a spouse, then he should have honored the duties of a spouse and kept his zipper up.

And before the comments start flying, let me say, yet again, that I am not arguing for keeping Terri Schiavo alive. I am arguing for not letting her die by dehydration, which is gruesome and inhumane. If you believe in humane euthanasia — as I do — then fine. But this ain't it.

MAJOR UPDATE: If you think the issue is moot because Terri will soon be dead, or because of the jurisprudential sidebar I mentioned above — it isn't:

So bitter and vindictive is the family feud over whether Terri Schiavo lives or dies that her husband and parents couldn't even agree on what priest should administer last rites or what should happen to her body after death.

Once embraced by them, Michael Schiavo hasn't spoken to his in-laws, Bob and Mary Schindler, since 1993. The Schindlers have fought his effort to remove his brain-damaged wife's feeding tube so she can die, painting him as an abusive monster who wants her out of the way so he can inherit her money and marry his longtime girlfriend. They've tried for more than a decade to have him removed as Terri's guardian.
...
Michael Schiavo has restricted who may visit his wife and when they can come, and a judge was asked recently to sort out such issues as whether the Schindlers could take photos of her before her death and what would happen to her body.

"I think a lot of the reason Michael is doing this is because of vindictiveness and maybe anger toward my family for whatever reason," said Terri Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler. "It doesn't make any sense to me why he's doing this."
...
The Schindlers had asked Circuit Judge George Greer to allow Terri to be buried in Florida with her body intact, but the judge refused to intervene in Michael Schiavo's plans to have her cremated and interred in their native Pennsylvania.

In a court filing, the Schindlers insisted that Terri would not choose cremation. "To Mrs. Schiavo and her nuclear family, burial without cremation is a central tenet of the Roman Catholic faith," the motion said. "They are wholly motivated by their religious belief that burial without cremation will comfort Mrs. Schiavo in death."
...
The Schindlers wanted to take photographs and video of their daughter before she died, but Michael Schiavo opposed it and Greer agreed with him. The Schindlers also were unable to persuade Greer to grant their daughter a divorce so she could die with the Schindler surname.

Michael Schiavo agreed to have a priest give last rites to his wife, but when the Schindler family priest, Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski, went into her room shortly before her feeding tube was removed March 18, he found another priest at her bedside, one who was brought in by the hospice at Michael Schiavo's direction.

Still think an adulterous spouse should unconditionally have plenary and irrebuttable "legal guardian" status?

Related Posts:
On Terri Schiavo
More on Terri Schiavo
One More Schiavo Post

When I visited my aunt and uncle in Frankfurt am Main for the first time back in 1994, I tried, in my best "six semesters of college" German, to ask about Die Wiedervereinigung, the reunification. My uncle summed it up in gesture, pointing "Hier ist West; dort ist Ost, and then mimed a pile with his hands:

"Hier ist Geld [i.e. money]."

"Ja, ich verstehe." ["Okay, I understand."]

He then mimed shoveling the pile from West to East. "Das ist Weidervereinigung!"

Well, more than a decade later, I guess that pile is running low, and many people are upset:

Nearly a quarter of western Germans and 12 percent of easterners want the Berlin Wall back -- more than 15 years after the fall of the barrier that split Germany during the Cold War, according to a new survey.

The results of the poll, published Saturday, reflected die-hard animosities over high reunification costs lowering western standards of living and economic turmoil in the east.
...
The Berlin Wall was breached on Nov. 9, 1989, paving the way for the unification of Communist East Germany with the West on Oct. 3, 1990. But billions of euros (dollars) spent rebuilding the east have failed to prop up the depressed region, which is plagued by high unemployment and a shrinking population.

My take regarding Germany is the same as with all things ex-Communist: One has to expect it to take as much as a full generation before the costs, which are really investments, begin to pay off. The citizenries of the former Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain often had horrible educations, cultural starvation, runaway substance abuse, not to mention the low expectations and low rewards of centrally-planned economies, neglected infrastructures, and so on. A decade, even fifteen years, is nothing, even for the German economic powerhouse. You'll probably see exactly the same delays when it comes time for a free Cuba, North Korea, and one day China.

Yes, we're seeing amazing rapidity in some ex-Communist republics and some aspects (free elections, equitable taxation, beer, etc.). But while capitalism and individual liberties (notice that I didn't say "democracy") are the solutions, that doesn't mean they're miracles.

Stay the course, Meine Freunden, stay the course!

Related Posts:
Germany's Race to the Bottom Paycheck
Bork: "Put the Berlin Wall Back Up"
Russky Brewski Brouhaha
Why are Bulgarians Getting Drunk?
The Great Mall of China

Dumb Jury?

District Attorney Steve Cooley said the jurors who acquitted actor Robert Blake of murder are “incredibly stupid.”
...
“Quite frankly, based on my review of the evidence, he is as guilty as sin. He is a miserable human being,” Cooley said Wednesday, noting that prosecutors presented a strong case.

One juror said Cooley is upset simply because he lost a big case. “To hear him say we aren’t a smart jury is sour grapes,” said Chuck Safko. “They didn’t have a good case. Their case was built around witnesses who weren’t truthful.”

MY TAKE: As I recall, group defamation is actionable if it is clear that the alleged defamer means to include every single member of the group in the defamation and the group is well-defined. Should this qualify?

---

Smart Jury?

Members of a federal jury, fearing for their own safety, begged out of hearing any more evidence in a civil suit involving the bloody assault of a suspected prison snitch by a reputed member of the Terminators gang.

Senior U.S. District Judge Warren W. Eginton discharged the six-men, two-women jury after learning of their "profound fear" of continuing. Their discharge Tuesday led to a mistrial in the day-old trial.
...
Kevin Rowe, clerk of the federal courts in Connecticut, said this is the first time he could recall in the past 30 years that a jury begged out of a case.

"Certainly, something like this [a jury wanting out of a trial] is exceedingly rare," said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who once served as Connecticut's U.S. attorney. "Particularly since this was not a criminal prosecution." Nor were any members of the Terminators, a onetime violent Bridgeport drug gang, or the Latin Kings, another alleged drug gang, a party to the case.

MY TAKE: Of course, stories like this fall under the category of “man bites dog” and the overwhelming majority of jury trials are uneventful. Still, given that there is supposedly a selection bias in jury pools (jury = 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty), one wonders, as I have previously, whether the whole system should be reconsidered. (Hat tip to How Appealing.)

Related Posts:
Should We Move to Professional Jurors?
Are Juries "Too Expensive"?

Is it possible that the U.S. is now more socialist than Germany?

A new German employment site shows just how bad the country's job market has become.

JobDumping.de is like no other career portal. Employers still list jobs, but prospective workers log on and bid -- downward.

Want a job as a cleaner? Log on and offer to do the work for 10 euros an hour. If someone else bids 8 euros per hour, they get the job. Would-be workers engage in a race to the bottom, continually lowering the ante to get the job.

Opinion is divided as to whether this is naked capitalist exploitation or just the free market at work.
...
The site's founder, Fabian Loew, devised the idea of applying the eBay model to employment. He thinks the site's economic shock therapy is just what the country needs. "One in 10 people in the street is jobless," he said. "We've been a mighty economy in the world, and people have learned to live in luxury.

"Wage costs, compared on an inter-European level, are unreasonably high in Germany. They have to be completely renegotiated. Only if wages fall can more employment be generated by companies," Loew said.
...
Loew's theory is that if everyone in Germany earned a little less money, productivity would increase, goods would become cheaper, money would be worth more and the economy would thus improve.

The labor unions are not impressed with Loew's idea. The Federal Republic of Germany, which since 1945 has developed a noted socialist tradition, has enjoyed high wages and excellent working conditions as a result of the strength of its labor movement. Unions have told prospective bidders not to accept less than 5 euros per hour (about $6.60) for work obtained through the site. Unlike European counterparts such as Great Britain, Germany does not have a minimum-wage law.

Milton Friedman said it best (adjusted for inflation and currency): It’s better to be employed at 8 euros an hour than unemployed at 10 hours an hour.

Related Posts:
On Getting a Good (French) Blowjob
Sacré Booze!
Why Doesn't Antitrust Apply to Labor Unions?
An Econ 101 Moment

Just because you win an election doesn’t mean you’re smart.

ITEM: “Kids, leave them teachers alone...”

Republicans on the [Florida] House Choice and Innovation Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to pass a bill that aims to stamp out “leftist totalitarianism” by “dictator professors” in the classrooms of Florida’s universities.

The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, passed 8-to-2 despite strenuous objections from the only two Democrats on the committee.
...
According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.

Students who believe their professor is singling them out for “public ridicule” — for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class — would also be given the right to sue.

MY TAKE: If this silly law passes, then I hope Hans Hoppe relocates to a Florida college.

---

ITEM: The never-ending quest to find more ways to expand Medicare marches on --

Medicare will immediately start covering the cost of counseling for certain beneficiaries who want to quit tobacco.

Medicare's new smoking cessation program "has great potential to save and improve lives for millions of seniors," said Mark McClellan, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
...
Medicare officials said Tuesday they did not have an estimate of how much the new program would cost or how many people would be eligible for it. It covers only counseling sessions, not the cost of nicotine patches and gum or products pitched to help smokers quit.
...
Dr. Ronald Sturm, a senior economist with the RAND Institute, a nonprofit research group, said Medicare's decision to limit the annual benefit to two cessation attempts per year — each including a maximum of four counseling sessions — would limit the program's costs. Still, elderly people who have smoked throughout much of their life aren't typically the best candidates to quit smoking — unless they are facing a life-threatening scenario. "Will they quit smoking in their last few years? Not likely," Sturm said. "It's not going to change much. It's not going to cost much."

MY TAKE: If it’s not going to change much, then, um, why bother? Assuming you’re going to have Medicare at all, I can maybe see nicotine-replacement therapy. But paying for 10-minute bull sessions with a counselor? You would think that people who already have smoking-related illness wouldn’t need much counseling. Can obesity counseling for seniors be far behind?

---

ITEM: Ohio gay marriage ban means no domestic violence charges for domestic partners --

Domestic violence charges cannot be filed against unmarried people because of Ohio's new constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Stuart Friedman changed a felony domestic violence charge against Frederick Burk to a misdemeanor assault charge. Prosecutors immediately appealed.

Judges and others across the country have been waiting for a ruling on how the gay marriage ban, among the nation's broadest, would affect Ohio's 25-year-old domestic violence law, which previously wasn't limited to married people.

MY TAKE: Heck, what’s a little collateral damage in the War on Gays? Like they say, it’s all about “defending marriage” (as opposed to defending people from mere physical violence).

---

ITEM: Not exactly consistent with the above, but I’ll toss it in anyway --

Voters in Estes Park, Colo., removed town trustee David Habecker from office Tuesday in a recall election that hinged on his refusal to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at town meetings.

Mr. Habecker, who lost by a vote of 903-605, said he is considering whether to pursue further legal action to overturn the recall outcome, arguing that the voters had infringed upon his First Amendment rights.
...
The debate began in May, when Mrs. Jeffrey-Clark proposed that the town board of trustees recite the Pledge before each meeting. Her proposal was approved, and trustees said the Pledge without incident for several months.

Then Mr. Habecker said he would no longer recite the oath, arguing that it infringed upon his rights to free speech and freedom of religion. Instead, he sat during the Pledge.

Mr. Clark and others began organizing a recall shortly thereafter, collecting enough signatures to put the proposal on the Feb. 15 ballot.

MY TAKE: Is refusing to recite the Pledge really so bad that it couldn’t wait until the next election? This is a classic example of the Madness of Crowds. Our slow sordid descent into unbridled democracy (i.e., mob rule) continues...

I blogged yesterday that, regarding the Social Security crisis, 2017 (when benefits exceed taxes) is the real doomsday date rather than 2041 (when the system begins reneging on its “guaranteed” benefits).

Is it any surprise then that today’s New York Times editorial doesn’t mention the 2017 date at all, choosing to pooh-pooh the 2041 date instead?

But I actually want to micro-fisk a different part of the Times’ piece:

Compounding the subterfuge is that the difference between this year's $11 trillion eyepopper and last year's number - $600 billion - is being used as evidence of a scary deterioration in Social Security's finances. That's just wrong. The two monster numbers are actually the same quantity - different ways of expressing an unchanging level of debt at two different points in time. If you owe someone $1,000 in 10 years, for instance, you could retire the debt now with $500, or next year with $530. Your level of debt doesn't change, just the time point.

That’s all well and good, assuming that I have now, or am certain that I will have in the future, the $1,000 I owe in 10 years. But if I am uncertain about whether I’ll have the money – or, worse, I am certain that I won’t have the money when it’s due, then sitting back and allowing time to pass as that $500 grows to $530 and beyond, while claiming that “it’s all just different points in time” -- that’s the real “subterfuge.”

I guess it’s just easier to understand that when you’re the one who's owed the $1,000 rather than the one who owes it.

Related Post (With Archive):
Social Security: Doomsday Comes a Year Earlier

Radley Balko has yet another piece in which he attempts to carve out a “right” to drink and drive:

When President Clinton signed a law in 2000 that lowered the federal blood-alcohol limit for drivers to .08, opponents pointed out that the effect of such a law would be to tie up law enforcement resources going after motorists between .08 and .10, motorists who studies show are no more impaired than someone talking on a cell phone, or who has kids in the back seat.

First, the cell phone study Balko is probably thinking of is bunk, as I pointed out in a previous post. Second, does a cop get tied up enforcing the law “only” as it applies to those with BAC between 0.08 and 0.10? Balko seems to suggest that roadblocks “only” stop those “less drunk” drivers and not the “really drunk” drivers, but of course that’s nonsense.

But more important is Balko’s rather fast and furious use of non sequitur reasoning. Of course havng a more restrictive law “consumes more law enforcement resources” -- so what?

Balko is engaging in a bait-and-switch. There is a difference between arguing that a law is “wrong” (i.e., an affront to libertarian principles) and arguing that it’s “bad” (i.e., an affront to economics). Balko is so desperate to prove the former that he cheats by invoking the latter and then summarily pronouncing “our civil liberties are being carved up!”

Consider my favorite analogy to DUI -- dog leash laws. There is absolutely zero enforcement of the leash law along Diamond’s favorite promenade. If the city decides to deploy one police officer to patrol the promenade eight hours a day, then the simple doctrine of opportunity cost dictates that yes, that cop is now not out performing some other law enforcement activity (this assumes of course a fixed supply of “law enforcement,” which itself is an unrealistic assumption by Balko). But again -- so what? If the leash law is a good idea, and if enforcing it is a good idea (i.e., if the opporunity cost of the cop is less than the benefit of the cop’s presence), then the cop should be there. But that analysis has absolutely nothing to do with whether the leash law is “wrong.” I don’t think anyone would argue that it is.

As I’ve blogged previously, there is no right to drink and drive, so no law that deters or punishes drinking and driving can summarily be deemed “wrong.” Inefficient -- perhaps. Expensive -- perhaps. But these laws are not infringements on fundamental liberties and cannot be decried on that basis alone.

Back to dogs: having an unleashed dog in public is per se reckless behavior. There is no “constitutional right” to have an unleashed dog in a public space (compare: in the privacy of your own home, almost anything goes). But no dog owner has the right to subsititute her judgment for society’s over whether her dog is or is not a threat or safety hazard to others (i.e., to impose externalities on her neighbors). Society has objectively decided that any unleashed dog is a safety hazard and reserves the right to proscribe unleashed dogs and to punish lawbreakers. How best to enforce that law -- with no police (probably too little), one officer (probably optimal), or one hundred officers (probably inefficient) -- has absolutely nothing to do with whether the law itself is proper; it undeniably is.

Drinking in any quantity whatsoever and then driving is likewise per se reckless behavior, as defined by the objective “reasonable person standard” prevalent in our tort law. It imposes externalities in the form of probabilistic harm (i.e., the increased risk of accident or injury), which the drinking driver has no right to impose on others using public roads based on his personal, subjective conclusion that “just two beers” is no big deal for him. Perhaps a 0.08 BAC enforcement is optimal, or perhaps 0.10 is. Perhaps ubiquitous roadblocks are optimal, perhaps they’re too expensive. I applaud Balko or anyone else who wants to do that math -- assuming they do it honestly. I don’t think Balko does. And skip the “civil liberties” screed -- it’s facially invalid.

More:

Roadblocks are by design intended to catch those motorists who may be a hair above the newly-lowered legal limit, but aren't driving erratically enough to get caught by cops on routine patrol.

Um, no. The roadblocks are there to catch those who are breaking the law. It’s not about BAC; it’s about drinking and driving. Erratic or no, drinking impairs one’s ability to drive, which increases the probability of the drinking driver causing, worsening, or failing to avoid an accident. That’s illegal, with or without BAC measurements. Call it reckless endangerment, call it public intoxication, call ir criminal mischief -- it doesn’t matter. The overlay offense of “DUI” based on BAC is simply a way to make the enforcement of the underlying criminal recklessness easier (and, contrary to Balko’s assertion, cheaper). The refusal to recognize this fact runs through all Balko’s writings on this subject.

If we look at "fatalities" instead of "accidents," drivers with a BAC above .10 account for 77% of the alcohol-related body count. And the average BAC in fatal accidents involving alcohol is .17. Put another way, motorists with very high blood-alcohol levels account for an increasing percentage of highway fatalities, but a decreasing percentage of arrests. Clearly, we're allocating limited law enforcement resources toward the wrong pool of offenders.

But why should we only concern ourselves only with fatalities? Plain old accidents don’t count? Injuries don’t count? Fender-benders don’t count? Lies, damn lies, and…

This is classic post hoc ergo propter hoc. It assumes, inter alia, that law enforcement resources are not “limited” but actually fixed -- that every cop at a roadblock is a cop that would have been chasing down hardcore drunk drivers. This is a blatant fallacy. In fact, it actually assumes that there are also no possible alternative explanations for changing DUI trends -- maybe liquor is cheaper, who knows? Balko assumes “all else being equal,” but all else is never equal.

I do think there is some validity in Balko’s point that there is a difference between the “hardcore” drunk driver and the “just two beers” crowd. But that doesn’t change the fact that having “just two beers” and then driving is still illegal, and for good reason. Laws that seek to make people fully consider the risks they impose on others and that internalize externalities, cannot be dismissed as "wrong." Again, they may be "bad" (i.e., inefficient), but that is not the same as “wrong.”

It's time for some common sense in impaired driving policy. We need laws that draw on science and statistics, not hysteria. In an effort to get "get tough" on drunken driving, lawmakers are not only needlessly carving into our civil liberties, they're actually making our highways and roads more dangerous than they were before.

Again, I applaud any attempt to expose bad laws, those that are inefficient and expensive; it's the libertarian thing to do. But Balko doesn't practice what he preaches. Engaging in such analysis, in statistically dubious ways, as a front to really argue that there is some fundamental constitutional right to “just two beers” (i.e., that BAC laws are not bad, but wrong) is exactly the kind of radicalism that drives real-word people away from libertarianism. It confuses "wrong" with "bad." And that's both wrong and bad.

Related Posts:
Tobias Beecher: Criminal or Victim?
My DUI "Convictions"
DUI v. Cell-Phones: Don't Go There
Should Alcohol Be Banned from Stadiums?
The Libertarian Case for DUI Laws

Marginal Revolution had a brief post today citing a study on the demographics of suicide. It is of no interest to me whatsoever.

But the post is a good excuse to revisit a different kind of suicide watch -- gay suicide.

The conventional wisdom is that gay teens, especially gay male teens, are far more likely to commit suicide, or at least to attempt or contemplate suicide. Whether gays represent a higher proportion of completed suicides is unsettled.

Exact statistics regarding anything having to do with gays are always hard to come by, as I have noted in previous blogposts. But here's a site with, among other pages, a summary of the academic literature -- which, contrary to the lies of some very vile bigots, is quite extensive.

Those of you who worship the false gods of federalism and the "democratic process," who believe that bigotry and second-class status for some is perfectly permissible so long as it's passed by a two-thirds majority of the legislature or by a referendum of your Great Unwashed neighbors, stop for a moment and fully contemplate the pain you inflict and the potential consequences of your actions.

Consequences like this one:

Dear Family and Friends,

I'm sorry it had to end this way but it was my fate. I couldn't handle life anymore. You see, the reason I ran away before to commit suicide is the same reason I did again. I'm gay. I never wanted to be and I always wished it would change, but it didn't. I wanted to live a normal life but God created me this way for some reason and there was nothing I could do to change it. I was born this way, believe me I would not choose this way of life for I know how hard and unaccepted it is. I'm painfully sorry you all had to deal with this but I couldn't deal with it. This way I could live a peaceful afterlife instead of a life of fear, agony, and manic depressiveness. Please realize I did not want to hurt anyone I just wanted to end my own pain. I love you all dearly and will someday see you all again hopefully with your understanding hearts and souls. I just hope God will bring me to heaven.

Love always and eternally, Bruce

Bruce was 21 years old. He killed himself by jumping from the Grand Canyon's "No Name Point."

Or, rather than suicide, was it murder by bigotry?

Who needs the FEC when you have Dogbert?

I know exactly nothing about the law of Indian affairs and reservations, but I know I don’t like this:

Police in this Indian reservation town [of Red Lake, Minnesota] have imposed strict limits on journalists trying to cover the nation's deadliest school shooting since Columbine, even arresting two photographers who allegedly violated the rules.
…
Reporters and photographers were told later not to knock on doors to speak with residents and were ordered not to leave the main highway that runs through town.
…
Later, tribal police went a step further, arresting two photographers, including one working for The Associated Press. …The AP photographer, J. Pat Carter, said the two were driving on the main highway, which they believed was permissible, taking pictures of a roadside memorial. A moment later, several police cars pulled them over and confronted the pair with guns drawn.
…
In most U.S. communities, police could not chase journalists off public streets. But the Red Lake tribe considers itself a sovereign nation. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Indian tribes are "domestic dependent nations." While Congress has power over Indian affairs, tribes have sovereign powers over their members and their territory.

With all due respect and solemnity to the sad history of the slaughter of the American Indian, this is the Twenty-First Century and it’s time for all this “tribal nation” intellectual pretzel-twisting to stop. American Indians are American citizens living in the United States. It’s time to relegate history to, um, history. And to subject all the lands of the United States, whether held by Indian tribes or by anyone else, to the same constitutional strictures and protections as everywhere else.

Meanwhile, here's another story describing Red Lake:

Life is not easy here. The unemployment rate was estimated in the 2000 Census at 40 percent, but others...say it may actually be as high as 65 percent.
...
Many live below the poverty line, dependent on state and federal aid. School test scores rank among the lowest in Minnesota. Drug and alcohol abuse is a crippling problem; there is a treatment center for juveniles here.

This is somehow "empowering" Indians?

Remember all the hoopla over Gmail accounts? Still think it’s a big deal to have one?

Yahoo Inc. is quadrupling the amount of storage provided with its free e-mail accounts and upgrading its desktop search software in its ongoing duel with rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Yahoo said late Tuesday that it will provide 1 gigabyte of storage for each free e-mail account. The current limit is 250 megabytes.
…
The expanded e-mail storage enables Yahoo to catch up with online search engine leader Google, which offers an invitation-only service that has been offering 1 gigabyte of storage for nearly a year.

Two observations:

--It takes very few competitors to catalyze competition. Those who fear the “evil mega-corporations” such as Yahoo, Google or Microsoft forget why such corporations come to exist and continue to exist: by providing ever better, ever cheaper products and services.

--Imagine if, five years ago, a municipality had decided to offer “free” (actually “taxpayer-funded”) email service to all residents, either as a gift to the poor or as a marketing gimmick to foster business and investment (“Locate your business in Kipsville -- we have free email!”). They’d be looking pretty dumb now, wouldn’t they? Yet many people, including libertarians, continue to support the indefensible notion of municipally-provided wireless Internet access for no other reason than because it sounds “neat-o” to them. Frivolous disruption of a market is never “neat-o” and it never works. Five years from now, any wi-fi technology that exists today will probably be obsolete -- and any city that deploys it will be stuck with it. But those who let for-profit telecom, cable and other companies continue to provide access as a private good will, by contrast, always have access to the latest technology, and probably cheaper than it is today.

Now that’s “neat-o!”

Related Posts:
Municipal Wi-Fi Update
The Folly of Public Provision of Private Goods
Antitrust in One Lesson, with a Complimentary Case Study

The Social Security Trustees have issued their 2005 Annual Report, in which they accelerate by one year both the "surpluses become deficits" date (from 2018 to 2017) and the "unable to pay promised benefits" date (from 2042 to 2041).

This is a good occasion to emphasize that the 2017 date is the far more important date, because that is when the “Trust Fund” will irrefutably be exposed as the fraud it is and the fiscal pain of that fraud will be felt throughout the economy.

To review, the "Trust Fund" is nothing more than an accounting entry on the federal government’s books (in a file cabinet in Virginia). It consists of economically meaningless IOUs from the federal government to itself. Just as an IOU from yourself to yourself is worthless economically, so too are the IOUs in the “Trust Fund” worthless economically.

These IOUs are not politically meaningless, however. The monies pledged by those “securities” will certainly have to be found by the Treasury to pay to Social Security; as the opponents of reform like to chant incessantly, the U.S. Government indeed does not default on its debts.

But what exactly does this mean? It means that the Treasury will have to start raising extra money, apparently now beginning in 2017, to pay back its debt to Social Security.

And how does the Treasury raise money? There are only two ways: higher taxes or higher debt.

So beginning in 2017, give or take a year or two, either income taxes or budget deficits (or both) will start to increase, and will continue to increase year after year, even more than they already would have without the Social Security crisis (and remember, we appear to now be in the era of the tax-and-spend Republicans, who can’t even cut entitlements by less than one percent or cut Amtrak, the stupidest of federal boondoggles).

Therefore, sometime around 2017, we will see the crippling effects of either higher taxes or chronically higher interest rates. And that’s just to keep Social Security afloat for an extra 25 years, not to fix it.

The 2041 estimate, while real, is still therefore something of a straw man -- 2017 is the true doomsday date.

And in case your calculator is broken, that’s only 12 years away. I'll be 50. How old will you be?

Related Posts:
More Social Security "Good News / Bad News"
More Americans Cheating Social Security (By Not Dying)
Who Faces the "Risk" of Social Security Reform?
Has Social Security Been a "Success"?
What is the Purpose of Social Security?

The Supreme Court has handed down yet another troubling Fourth Amendment case, one which seems to have been overlooked by the blawgosphere. That’s unfortunate because this new case, Muehler v. Mena (PDF – 22 pages), when coupled with the Court’s atrocious recent holding in Illinois v. Caballes, signals a serious long-term threat to the very notion of probable cause as a check on police power in this country.

The facts of Mena were straightforward:

[Police] obtained a search warrant for 1363 Patricia Avenue that authorized a broad search of the house and premises for, among other things, deadly weapons and evidence of gang membership. In light of the high degree of risk involved in searching a house suspected of housing at least one, and perhaps multiple, armed gang members, a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team was used to secure the residence and grounds before the search.

At 7 a.m. on February 3, 1998, petitioners, along with the SWAT team and other officers, executed the warrant. Mena was asleep in her bed when the SWAT team, clad in helmets and black vests adorned with badges and the word "POLICE," entered her bedroom and placed her in hand­cuffs at gunpoint. The SWAT team also handcuffed three other individuals found on the property. The SWAT team then took those individuals and Mena into a converted garage, which contained several beds and some other bed­room furniture. While the search proceeded, one or two officers guarded the four detainees, who were allowed to move around the garage but remained in handcuffs.

Mena, a legal immigrant (not to mention a woman) who was not the target of the search, was held in handcuffs for three hours.

The court held that being detained for "only" two or three hours did not violate Mena’s reasonable expectation of privacy. In other words, if you happen to innocently be in a house that is subject to a search warrant executed by a SWAT team, then you should "expect" to be detained in handcuffs for…well, for however long it takes.

Now combine this ominous holding with that of Caballes, which now gives police permission to perform a dog sniff of your vehicle without probable cause as long as you’re not "inconvenienced." But hold on -- Mena now holds that even three hours in handcuffs isn’t "unreasonable." How much of a cognitive leap will it be to argue, in light of Mena, that detaining you and your car for "just a few minutes” while the officer who pulled you over waits for the sniff dog to show up is also “reasonable”?

As I blogged previously regarding Caballes, there is no clear reason why mass sweeps, without individualized suspicion, of parked cars on public roads or in public garages by sniff dogs would now not be deemed permissible. Now add in Mena and all restraint on automotive searches and detentions may now be extinct.

It should be noted that Justice Stevens, joined by three other justices did submit a concurring opinion that would have left the issue of the reasonableness of the duration of the search to a jury (i.e., via a 42 USC 1983 lawsuit for violation of Mena's civil rights). Justice Stevens' presentation of the facts tells a much more detailed (and sympathetic) version for Mena (e.g., that she was barefoot and it was raining, hence she was hardly a flight risk).

The only other post I’ve seen on Mena is at Crime & Federalism, and it's good.

Related Post:
Supreme Court Upholds "Quick" Dog Sniff of Vehicle
Maryland's Idiot Judges: Police Dogs "Part of the Family"
A Search & Seizure Double-Play
Hair-Shaving and the Fourth Amendment
Tipping and the Bill of Rights

Harriet McBryde Johnson, a disability-rights lawyer, has an excellent article in Slate that sums up my views on the subject better than I have been able to. I strongly recommend it.

Johnson posits ten theses, each of which I either accept as correct (1-8) or take no position on (9 & 10):

1. Ms. Schiavo is not terminally ill.

2. Ms. Schiavo is not dependent on life support.

3. This is not a case about a patient's right to refuse treatment.

4. There is a genuine dispute as to Ms. Schiavo's awareness and consciousness.

5. There is a genuine dispute as to what Ms. Schiavo believed and expressed about life with severe disability before she herself became incapacitated.

6. Ms. Schiavo, like all people, incapacitated or not, has a federal constitutional right not to be deprived of her life without due process of law.

7. Ms. Schiavo has statutory rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

8. Federal courts are available to make sure state courts respect federally protected rights.

9. While we should not assume that disability prejudice tainted the Florida courts, we cannot reasonably assume that it did not.

10. The last-minute federal legislation enabling Ms. Schiavo's parents to sue did not take sides in the so-called culture wars.

Read the whole thing.

Related Posts:
On Terri Schiavo
More on Terri Schiavo

The New York City Council is set to pass a resolution denouncing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" --

"It is long overdue for the Council to speak out about this unfair and discriminatory policy," said Council Member Alan Jay Gerson, the prime sponsor of the resolution.

"For the military to be discharging Arabic translators and people who have served their country with distinction solely on the basis of their sexual orientation is both foolish and unfair. Lesbians and Gay Men have served in the military for the entire history of our country, and they should be allowed to serve openly,"
...
The resolution is expected to be approved by the Committee next week and then go to a vote by the full City Council in the near future. The resolution does not need mayor Michael Bloomberg's signature.

Gee, I feel so much better -- not!

What exactly does nonsense like this accomplish? While New York City, led by fiscal drunken sailor, tax-and-spend Republican Mayor Bloomberg races headlong toward a new fiscal crisis, while our schools are flunking a third of its students, while entire lines on the subway break down on an almost daily basis, these buffoons waste time declaring that, gee, DADT isn't very nice?

Tell us New Yorkers something we don't already know.

Does the City Council really believe that New York's gay population -- or anyone else -- needs these overwhelmingly neophyte politicians to chime in on DADT? Does Councilman Gerber really think he knows more about the issue than gays do, or that he reaches more people and educates them about DADT more than gay NYC bloggers do?

Forgive my lack of humility, but we gays don't need you local hack politicians wasting time, taxpayer money and legislative resources on resolutions such as this. We need you to fix this city. To lower our city income, sales and property taxes. To cut runaway entitlement spending and the unimaginably bloated municipal bureaucracy. And a school system that wasn't utterly pathetic would be nice, as would a mass transit system that worked reasonably well (and, while I'm building a wish list, how about one that operated without taxpayer subsidies).

Stick to your knitting, kids, because there is much knitting to do. And DADT isn't part of it.

POST SCRIPT: As always, I remind my readers that both DADT and DOMA were brought to you courtesy of the Democrat pervert-president, Bill Clinton. Don't be so quick to limit your indignation -- anti-gay discrimination is bipartisan.

Related Posts:
Log Cabin Republicans Sue Over DADT
On Civil Servants and Gay Marriage
Judge Rules Against "City's" Same-Sex Marriage Meddling

Okay, Downtown Lad has tagged me for the book meme. I normally don't do such things, neither do I partake of those online tests such as "Which action hero are you?" or "Which flavor of ice cream are you?" or "Which vertebra are you?"

But I can't (entirely) say no to my doppelgaenger. So I will answer the questions but not tag anyone else. Like my DNA, my post will not be passed on to future generations.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I'm going to cheat and choose a book that could actually be memorized (i.e., very short):

In the F451 dystopia, some basic metaphysics could come in very handy if the anti-knowledge regime were ever to fall.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Phineas of A Separate Peace. Not even so much for his physical attributes (which were quite nice), but rather because of his independence, nonchalance and apathy toward the rest of the school. He was my John Galt long before I had ever heard of John Galt.

The last book you bought is:
See column on the right of the screen.

The last book you read:
See column on the right of the screen.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.
1.

Deep thinking plus lots of cool pictures. What more does one need in a book?

2.

I'm a Houyhnhnm trapped in a Yahoo body.

3.

The protagonist of this story suffers a fate worse than being marooned on a desert island, and perseveres. I never read the Vampire Chronicles, but this Anne Rice novel was utterly amazing.

4.

Never read this particular version of the Arthurian legend, but it was the template for my all-time favorite movie.

5.

'Nuff said.

Who[m] are you going to pass this to and why?
I respectfully decline. Open thread for anyone who would like to contribute.

I rarely copy other bloggers' posts wholesale, but this one from Eclectic Econoclast is just too good not to:

Anti-trust in two easy lessons:

(1) you must compete;
(2) you must not win.

Here are three more lessons to learn about anti-trust economics:

--If you charge less than everybody else, it is called unfair competition.

--If you charge more than everybody else, it is called price gouging.

--If you charge the same as everybody else, it is called collusion.

Now apply these rules to Microsoft, which has been repeatedly harassed by Eurocrat antitrust regulators:

The European Union threatened Microsoft Corp. on Friday with new fines if the software company doesn't make it easier and cheaper for competitors to see the blueprints of its server software.
...
EU antitrust regulators fined Microsoft a record 497 million euros ($665 million) when they ruled a year ago that Microsoft abusively wielded its Windows software monopoly to lock competitors out of the market. They ordered, among other things, that Microsoft share Windows server code with rivals so their products can better communicate on networks with machines that run Windows operating systems.
...
Todd said the EU could impose prohibitive fines of up to 5 percent of the company's daily global sales if it refuses to better cooperate.

People tend to think "monopoly" is a bad word -- and it is, when it derives from government fiat. That has never, not once, been the case with Microsoft. Microsoft's products won in the past because they were better, cheaper or both. If that continues to be the case, then Microsoft will continue to win; if not, then Microsoft will fall from its perch.

So clearly the Eurocrats are not motivated by the best interests of consumers (those interests are, after all, better and cheaper products, are they not?). What else might the European regulators be after (besides the threatened shakedown of 5% of Microsoft's global sales)?

Antitrust is never about protecting competition -- competition never needs "protection." Only competitors need protection, and only the intrusive, competition-destroying power of government can provide that protection. It is basic "rob Peter to pay Paul" economics. The consumer simply does not factor into the political equation.

Antitrust sacrifices not only the successful competitor, but also the consumer, for the sake of the unsuccessful competitor. And that's not just bad policy, it's monstrous policy.

Class dismissed.

Related Posts:
E.U. to Force Microsoft to Sell a Product It Doesn't Make?
More on the "Evil Mega-Corporations"

Stuff I would have blogged about had I not been so busy not doing anything in West Palm Beach over the weekend:

--Slant Point has a post about the nonsensical subsidization of the New York City mass transit system. Politicians are so desperate to justify taxing people and businesses to prop up the perpetually-falling-down system that they will invent externalities where none exist.

--France is ready to abolish the 35-hour workweek. Turns out that when people are prevented from working, the economy suffers. Go figure.

--Speaking of not letting people work, Harvard doesn't like the idea of students cleaning each other's rooms for profit. In vino poverty veritas?

--Eclectic Econoclast, meanwhile, smears the protectionist politics of Quebec butter. Sacré bleu yellow!

--Speaking of anti-gay bigotry, Steve Sanders revisits the somewhat dormant issue of whether DOMA is constitutional. Analysis of the broad question of "same-sex marriage across state lines" has been very wide and very thin, and more people should be thinking about it, especially those with a background in conflict of laws, which is not exactly the same as full faith and credit but will, I think, be the source of the first litigations of this bramble bush.

--Speaking of crossing state lines, with last night's Texas-based episode, Boston Legal (a/k/a "NYPD Blue Spader") has gone from awful to disgustingly ultra-pathetic. Will these people at least get The Practice on DVD so I can again enjoy the time when Spader's conflicted character was actually intriguing and not just a pompous ass? Meanwhile, Red Guy in a Blue State asks whether Alan Shore would fight for Terri Schiavo. (SIDEBAR: It appears that Boston Legal is being booted from the supreme Sunday 10PM time slot to make way for Grey's Anatomy. The ABC website, meanwhile, simply states "The next episode of Boston Legal has not yet been scheduled." I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a different mercy killing: no second season for BL.)

Hey, looks like I beat Tyler Cowen to blogging about this one.

Stu Hemesath has earned $29.95 -- as a prom date. The high school senior from La Porte City auctioned himself off as a date on the Internet auction site eBay on Thursday. He will accompany Rachel Kay, 17, to her Cedar Falls prom. The two say they have never met.
...
Hemesath posted pictures of himself and a description to secure some bids -- which came from people as far away as Alaska.
...
Hemesath wasn't shy about his description, saying he's 5 feet 10 inches tall, 150 pounds, popular and a wrestler. He added: "I have a lot of girls telling me I'm pretty hot."

Gee, whenever I offer $30 bucks to a hot male high school student to go out with me, I'm labeled a pervert. Discrimination sucks...

I had previously predicted that Rudy Giuliani would not endorse Michael Bloomberg for mayor this year as he had done four years ago. I was proven wrong last week.

Now we know why.

Count Mayor Bloomberg among those writing checks to Rudy Giuliani's political action committee.

Records show Bloomberg chipped in $5,000 to Solutions America, Giuliani's PAC, on Feb. 28.

Giuliani aides said the money was recorded on that date but was actually for a fund-raiser held in January.

Last week, Giuliani -- to no one's surprise -- endorsed Bloomberg for re-election.

If these two had been Wall Streeters, then Eliot Spitzer would have been all over them like white on rice for pulling something like this. And if I were to link to Bloomberg's or Giuliani's or Spitzer's websites, then I might run afoul of campaign finance laws?

Puh-leeze.

Related Post:
Why I Hate New York Politicians -- Part One

The worst-governed state in the Union continues to prove itself such:

The state is delaying tax refunds to 1.3 million New Yorkers who got their tax returns in early to the state this year, The [New York] Post has learned.

Because of a state cash crunch, a total of $717 million in refunds are being held back until the beginning of the new fiscal year on April 1, state officials said. They should go out the first week in April, officials said.

"If the taxpayer owed taxes and was late, they would have to pay a fine," said state Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long. "Is the state going to pay a fine for holding back what they owe to individual taxpayers? Because that's what they should do," Long added.
...
Each year...state officials put a cap on how much tax refunds to pay out before the beginning of the new fiscal year. ... "This is an appropriate mechanism that is needed because the tax refunds are paid out over two different fiscal years," [a spokesman] said of the cap.
...
The state budget has been late for 20 straight years, a streak [Republican Governor] Pataki and legislative leaders said they hope to break.

If there were a computer glitch, or a postal strike, or some other exogenous event that prevented the refunds, then okay, fair enough. But how is this anything but theft? They're keeping the money, which is taxpayer money, money that already represents a year-long interest-free loan to the state government, for no other reason than to cover up their own budgetary malpractice (two decades worth).

It's also a fascinating -- and infuriating -- variation of the "Penny in Your Pocket Rule." Not only are they willing to tax every penny in your pocket, they'll even keep your refund out of your pocket as long as possible.

I hope every New York State taxpayer who faces a tax payment rather than a refund waits until the absolute last possible moment to pay it this year.

POST SCRIPT: The state can't find the money to pay tax refunds on time, but has no problems scrounging up $300 million to subsidize a football stadium? Puh-leeze!

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have already received my state refund. I'm just choosing to be indignant, because -- well, because I'm just so good at it.

Related Post:
Why I Hate New York Politicians -- Part Two

There's a fascinating (to some of us geeks) debate going on about whether law schools should provide free wireless Internet access in classrooms. Relevant posts from Stuart Buck, Crescat Sententia's Will Baude and Pejmanesque. I side unequivocally with Buck and against Baude and Pejman -- I am against any Internet access during class. I'd probably ban laptops from class altogether.

I'm pushing two years since I graduated (i.e., I went to law school in the Dark Ages). Laptop penetration way back then was perhaps 33%, definitely less than 50%. I of course presume that percentage is much higher these days.

I never once brought my laptop to class, opting instead to take notes longhand and type them up later (you don't learn by reading, you learn by writing). And I saw, even then, the tremendous negative impact that Internet access had (it was wired back then, not wireless) -- from web surfing to game playing to instant messaging (both classmates and others). I'm pretty sure that such moral hazards far outweigh the potential benefits of "instant research" or "paper reduction" that Baude posits in his post.

Also, I'm not sure whether any progress has been made on this front, but in the latter semesters of law school I always made a point of including a suggestion on professor evaluations: create designated laptop sections (or, depending on the numbers, no-laptop sections) in class, especially large, lecture-sized classes. In other words, have the laptops in the back and no laptops allowed in front. Being surrounded by laptop fans buzzing away and rat-tat-tatting of keyboards was such a distraction that it sometimes seriously impeded my ability to focus in class. The noise was unbearable sometimes. This is where Pejman is wrong -- he argues that it's okay to let goof-off students suffer the consequences, but what about those students without laptops who are trying not to goof off but bear the cost of enduring the Internet access of others?

There are negative externalities from laptop noise just as there are from smoking. Those who control the space (i.e., the professors) have an obligation to consider them when setting policy.

Okay, I'm back from my second vacation in two weeks (ain't Wall Street grand?) and expect to resume full-speed blogging fairly quickly.

I've been asked to clarify my position on Terri Schiavo (i.e., that it is never acceptable to withhold food and water from an otherwise "let them go" patient). I've never been very good at explaining axioms, so I'm not entirely sure how to "explain" it.

Food and water is not medical care. Food and water is, um, food and water. A feeding tube is not "aggressive medical care," but, um, food and water. It's not even a machine in most circumstances. A feeding tube simply does not rise to the same level of "medical intervention" that a respirator, shock paddles or antibiotics do. I consider this self-apparent.

Death by dehydration is neither "death by natural causes," nor "euthanasia," but rather, um, death by dehydration (which is a gruesome and grotesque way to die and is not "peaceful" or "dignified" as some are claiming). I consider this self-apparent.

I have no problem at all with ending Schiavo's life humanely, but that does not include death by dehydration. If you want to argue in favor of mercy killing, then fine, but that's not the case at bar here.

I'm also repeatedly stupefied by the willingness of people, on both sides of the issue, to both assume facts not in evidence and blank out facts that are in evidence regarding the Schiavo tragedy. For example:

--The fact that Schiavo's case has been repeatedly appealed does not change the fact that there is a serious question as to what exactly her neurological condition is. The original trial court made a quite controversial finding of fact (i.e., that Terri is in a "persistent vegetative state"). But appeals courts generally don't review findings of fact, only findings of law. Those however-many judges in however-many hearings and trials are not "re-approving" the lower court's dubious fact-finding, only the legal arguments based on it. I think this is why her particular circumstance has drawn so much scrutiny -- precisely because there is much to scrutinize. There are also differing medical opinions as to the potential for any improvement in her condition. I leave that to the physicians, but these questions are not "well settled" and should not be treated as such. UPDATE: NRO, by way of OpinionJournal, has an excellent explanation of this issue of what typically does, and does not, get reviewed in an appeal and how it factors into the Schiavo case.

--Similarly, I'm concerned over the willingness of people to presume that Terri's wishes are not in dispute. All we have is Michael Schiavo's hearsay statements versus the vague claims by her parents that, as a Catholic, Terri would definitely oppose the ending of her life in this manner. I find both sides utterly unpersuasive, which is again why this particular story is so complicated for so many of us.

--Michael Schiavo's status as Terri's legal guardian is not plenary. Parents are the legal guardians of their children, but that doesn't give them license to kill them -- or to infringe their pre-defined constitutional rights in any way. Indeed, given that Mr. Schiavo appears to have conflicts of interest, both pecuniary and non-pecuniary, does that not suggest that he should be disqualified as legal guardian? Whatever happened to the notion of a guardian ad litem?

As for the political wrangling over the past few days, I too find it depressing and unfortunate. I think most of the "shoot from the hip" constitutional analysis of the hastily enacted federal law is nonsense, but that doesn't mean that the law itself might not also be nonsense.

And the political indignation is well-deserved and should be directed at both sides of the aisle. There have been many fine posts by others, and I have little to add, except that we see yet again the folly of worshipping the false god of federalism -- does it really matter whether Schaivo's life is ended, or prolonged, by federal or by state processes? Shouldn't the debate be on the constitutional and moral planes rather than the "state v. federal" plane?

Related Post:
On Terri Schiavo

New York City property taxes at work:

Nearly one in three of the city's 1.1 million public-school students are in jeopardy of being held back, according to new city Department of Education figures.

Overall, 301,341 students recently received "promotion in doubt" letters -- a 2 percent jump over last year.

The warnings are particularly dire for the 29,647 third-graders and 24,837 fifth-graders who got them because of strict new passing requirements that prohibit "social promotion" in those grades.

Under the policy, which was in place for third grade last school year and expanded to fifth grade this year, students who score on the lowest level of standardized math and reading exams are automatically held back.

Plenty of blame to go around here -- teacher unions, the educrats, bilingual education, useless grandstanding politicians, lazy parents. Take your pick.

Ever more money for ever less results -- while generation after generation of city kids gets screwed.

But look on the bright side -- if Mayor Blooperberg gets his way, they'll at least have a nice new taxpayer-subsidized stadium to watch the Jets, or the 2012 Olympics, even if they can't read the scoreboard or locate all the visiting athletes' countries on a map.

UPDATE: More --

One in six students in California are children of illegal immigrants though many are born in the United States and therefore are U.S. citizens. Education for children of illegal immigrants costs Golden State taxpayers almost $8 billion a year. The state ranks 48th in student achievement; nearly 50 percent can't read at grade level, 40 percent underperform in math and 30 percent drop out.

As I blogged previously, having Americans who do not speak American (i.e., English), is expensive, not only for those who do speak English, but also for those who don't.

"We don't need no blog control..."

ITEM: Bad hair day = good court day --

Sally Miller says she might have been grateful if a school employee had given her son a good haircut. Miller, however, threatened to sue when her son returned home with "next to nothing" on his head.

The West Linn-Wilsonville School District recently agreed to pay Miller $10,000 because the employee cut the 8-year-old boy's hair without permission.

The boy, who is in the district's special education program at Cederoak Park Primary School, got the haircut Oct. 11.
...
"First I was shocked," Miller told the newspaper. "Then I was embarrassed that I didn't have the money to get him a haircut. And then I was mad...I thought, 'What nerve. How invasive.'"

MY TAKE: Twenty bucks for an 8-year old's haircut? I don't spend that much on my hair now. Seriously, how about a warning letter first?

---

ITEM: The infamous wound-licking coach is getting a lick slap on the wrist --

A state panel charged a high school coach with gross neglect of duty after investigating complaints that he licked the cuts of football and track athletes. Scott Reed, a science teacher and head football coach at Central Linn High School, can request a hearing before the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission.
...
The alleged incidents reported by parents involved athletes of both sexes, coached by Reed on either the football or track teams.

Linn County Sheriff Dave Burright called Reed's behavior "bizarre," but not criminal, since the contact wasn't forced or necessarily unwanted.

MY TAKE: As I blogged previously, this is probably battery, and should probably be prosecuted as such. (UPDATE: The coach received two years probation and was required to attend hygiene classes. Inadequate, in my opinion.)

---

ITEM: Another update to this post, this time for the loopy proposal that parents be required to attend drug awareness classes before their kids are allowed to participate in extra-curricular activities --

Prosecutors summoned parents of repeatedly truant children to attend a meeting about the law concerning excessive absences, but 241 of the adults didn't show up.

Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols mailed letters about the Tuesday evening meeting to 582 parents, and about 41 percent were absent.

State law allows prosecutors to to hold parents accountable for their children's school absences. Knox County in February arrested 19 parents whose children had 10 or more unexcused absences from school. Parents found guilty can be punished by a year in jail.

MY TAKE: The apple doesn't fall far...

---

ITEM: I can hear Scalia chuckling even from here in NYC --

Attorneys for a boy who was 12 when he killed his grandparents are citing the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ban on the death penalty for minors in arguing that their client's 30-year prison sentence should be reduced.
...
Chris Pittman, now 15, was convicted Feb. 15 of murder in the shotgun slayings of his grandparents — Joe Pittman, 66, and Joy Pittman, 62 — in November 2001. The jury rejected his claim that he was involuntarily intoxicated by the antidepressant Zoloft and didn't know right from wrong.
...
"A sentence of 30 years without parole is contrary to the evolving standards of decency which were identified, discussed and applied by the U.S. Supreme Court," Pittman's attorneys argued.

MY TAKE: If you really want to inflict cruel and unusual punishment, send the kid to Cedaroak Park Primary for a haircut, or perhaps have Coach Reed take a look at his scraped knee. Seriously though, can the majority opinion in Roper v. Simmons reasonably limited to capital crimes? I leave that question for Eighth Amendment specialists.

Another victory for the tax-and-spend Republicans:

The Senate voted Thursday to strip all proposed Medicaid cuts from the $2.6 trillion budget for next year, killing the heart of the plan's deficit reduction and dealing an embarrassing setback to President Bush and Republican leaders.

The amendment, whose chief sponsor was moderate Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., was approved 52-48 after days of heavy lobbying by both sides. It was widely seen as a test of the GOP-run Congress' taste for making even moderate reductions in popular benefit programs that consume two-thirds of the budget and are growing rapidly, even at a time of record federal deficits.
...
The showdown occurred as the House and Senate moved toward completing similar $2.6 trillion budgets for 2006.
...
For the first time since 1997, the House and Senate both want to carve savings out of benefit programs, which consume nearly two-thirds of the federal budget and are growing rapidly. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest, but neither Social Security or Medicare are on the chopping block this year.

Overall, these programs are projected to spend $7.7 trillion over the next five years. By law, they pay benefits to anyone who qualifies and cover inflation and growing numbers of recipients, so their spending increases automatically every year.

If the Republicans, with their new-found drunken-sailor budget policies, continue to consolidate their gains in Washington in 2006 and 2008, one wonders which will break first -- the libertarian-conservative marriage within the party, or the entire American economy.

It will definitely be one or the other, if not both.

Related Post (With Archive):
Two-Party System: Where Lies True "Happiness"?

A disturbing report on a new twist in the Politics of Pull:

Former U.S. Senator John Breaux, who retired in January, is still walking the halls of Congress. Instead of brokering deals with lawmakers, he's serving as a pipeline for a New York hedge fund.

Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat, is one of a growing cadre of lobbyists being hired by U.S. hedge funds to provide instant tips on the progress of potentially market-moving legislation, from the settlement of asbestos lawsuits to allowing oil drilling in an Alaskan refuge. It's a legal way of letting investors benefit from information gleaned from private conversations with lawmakers and aides. And it's a new twist in Washington lobbying because it has nothing to do with influencing laws or policy.
...
The practice is taking place under the radar, because federal disclosure rules only require a person to register as a lobbyist and disclose clients when active efforts are made to affect legislation.
...
Federal rules prohibit Breaux from lobbying former colleagues for at least a year. There's nothing stopping him from a lunch, cocktail, workout or phone call to Capitol Hill that might yield a tradable tip for a hedge fund.

Now many would respond to this new phenomenon by demanding that these new "not quite lobbyists" such as Breaux register as true lobbyists. Others might suggest revising congressional ethics rules. And both of those approaches would be a positive, I suppose.

But isn't the real issue, rather than the fact that such conduct occurs, actually the fact that there is any reason for it to occur in the first place? Stated differently, isn't it sad that Congress does so much, legislates so much, ($2.23 trillion worth) that there's a permanent, perpetual font of tradable information flowing from the legislative process? And that's just at the federal level -- how about at the state and local level, or the extra-legislative bureaucracy?

What does it say about the modern legislative process and the current thinking about the proper function of government that they produce enough "investment advice" to warrant the hiring of full-time "not quite lobbyists" (i.e., political "insider traders") such as Breaux?

I have access to reams of material nonpublic information about companies, information that would also greatly benefit investors if they were to have a "heads' up" to it. My job is actually to control and often outright prevent the flow of that information -- to keep the playing field fair for all investors as far as my employer is concerned. If I were to do what Breaux does, I would be fired, fined, banned from the securities industry for life, probably disbarred and possibly imprisoned.

But that's how "greedy" Wall Street works -- zero tolerance for misconduct. The "public servants" of Congresses present and past obviously have somewhat different standards.

Hat tip to JurisPundit.

Catallarchy has a post critical of the "English as Official Language" movement, which I support and about which I have blogged previously.

The Catallarchy post has four prongs:

1. "Historically speaking, all the previous immigrant waves in the United States were absorbed into the English language without this measure."

--But that's exactly the problem: providing multi-lingual education and government services are a powerful disincentive to assimilation. In olden times people learned English because they had no choice. Today they do, and they're making that choice, to their own detriment and the detriment of the civic fabric.

2. "Who really cares anyway? The large influx of Spanish speakers into Atlanta has produced, in addition to a larger, more dedicated labor pool, one extra step in ATM transactions, the one where you press one button for English and one button for Spanish. Even if English becomes the official language, there will still be a demand for Spanish language service, and since I can't imagine that the law would prohibit it entirely, that step will still be there."

--This is a complete non sequitur. No one gives a hoot about ATM buttons or that Univision and Telemundo are available on cable. It's about government documents, ballots, translators in court and other government agencies, and bilingual education in public schools. And it's not just about two languages, it's often about dozens of different languages. This has proven to be quite expensive.

3. "For people who worry that people who don't speak English will start demanding legal services in other languages, they can take it easy. Cases like this have come up in LA County, where there are lots of immigrants (assaulting the titanic California economy like icebergs, no doubt), and last I heard, they were still going to English-speaking courts."

--This is simply inaccurate as a matter of fact. Government at all levels spends (wastes?) tremendous resources catering to non-English-speaking citizens and immigrants. English-speaking courts, with taxpayer-provided translators, and schools that will only hire bilingual teachers, are not something I "take it easy" about.

4. "The most abstract reason, but the one that first came to my mind when I saw the legislative agenda, is that if the government at some level declares English the official language within its territory, won't they have to start controlling English?"

No, they won't. This assertion is so bizarre that I can't really respond to it. Yes, language evolves, yes there may be such a thing as "legalese," yes in some parts of the country it's "soda" and in others it's "pop" -- so what? How would making English the official and exclusive language of government change any of that or complicate matters any less than allowing any and every language on earth to be used?

English should be the exclusive language of American government, if for no other reason than for economic efficiency. I accept the premise that there are other reasons to advocate "English first," and that some of those reasons might not be entirely positive (e.g., anti-Mexican bigotry). But the honest justifications far outweigh the dishonest ones.

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Lingua Arabica?
"I Would Whip Them Hard for That"

Another libertarian underdog fight may get to the Supreme Court, if they're in the mood:

An Oklahoma regulation that requires the licensing of anyone who wants to sell caskets in the state should be buried six feet under, consumer groups are telling the Supreme Court this week.

At its conference Friday, the Court will consider whether to grant review in Powers v. Harris, No. 04-716, a case from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding Oklahoma's Funeral Services Licensing Act.

The challenge comes after Kim Powers and Dennis Bridges began selling caskets over the Internet in 2001 through their Oklahoma corporation, Memorial Concepts Online, at prices below the funeral home market price. They sell caskets out of state and have forgone sales in Oklahoma because of the licensing law, which requires two years of college coursework and graduation from an accredited mortuary science program, two exams, and a one-year apprenticeship in a funeral home, during which the apprentice embalms at least 25 bodies.
...
Although disagreeing with the regulation, [Chief Judge Deanell Reece] Tacha said it was not the court's role to strike the law. "While baseball may be the national pastime of the citizenry, dishing out special economic benefits to certain in-state industries remains the favored pastime of state and local governments," Tacha wrote. The court said Powers and Bridges had to turn to the legislature, not the courts, to change the law.

There's a circuit split over this issue, so it's possible that the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case, but my guess is that the prospects are slim. Unlike the recent case of Roper v. Simmons (the juvenile death penalty case), this Court seems to have found a new eagerness to defer to legislatures on all matters economic. For economic regulation, "rational basis review" continues to mean no review at all.

How exactly pumping a dead body full of embalming fluid makes someone more qualified to sell a casket defies all explanation. Making caskets more expensive by restricting supply, for the benefit of those who happen to have a license to sell them, requires no explanation at all -- it's the Politics of Pull.

When are you likely to be more susceptible to exploitation -- when you're grieving and sitting alone in a small room in a mortician's office or when you're strolling the aisles (or the web pages) of a variety of casket merchants? Just how defective can a casket be? How much "consumer protection" can possibly be required?

This law is an ideal test case. Which unfortunately still doesn't mean the prospects are good.

Meanwhile, here's the Institute for Justice website on the Oklahoma casket law and related licensure travesties.

FUN FACT: Until recently, morticians were unconditionally exempt from jury duty in New York State, under the rationalization that theirs was a "critical occupation." Talk about the Politics of Pull...

UPDATE: OpinionJournal has more.

Related Posts:
Licensing: A Thorny Bouquet
The Politics of Pull -- A Cyberspace Case Study

A while back I published this only semi-serious post about the U.S. market for symphony oboe players.

Now Marginal Revolution follows up with a far more serious story about the market for European musicians:

The reason for importing musicians from the east to play in countries like France is simple: money. "The tour would've been too expensive with French musicians, so there wouldn't have been a tour at all"... Musicians like the Bulgarians he was conducting, meanwhile, "need the work, they don't hold out for very high fees and they play well." "Artistically," he added, "the tour was a great success."
...
A German conductor, Volker Hartung, whose Cologne New Philharmonic was also employing some East European musicians, was arrested as he came out for an encore following a performance of Ravel's "Bolero" and Bizet's "Carmen." After also being held for two days, Mr. Hartung was released with a warning but, according to the Guardian newspaper, has been banned from performing in France "until further notice."

Read that again: the French are so irrationally protectionist that they would rather have no music than inexpensive music. And they're perfectly willing to arrest people, quite theatrically in fact, to prove it.

Sacré bleu!

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I generally avoid commenting on individual stocks, mainly because I've outgrown stockpicking as a hobby, but these two stories caught my eye.

First, General Motors has announced a major earnings shortfall -- nearly $1 billion for the last six months. The company's stock is at the lowest level in more than a decade.

Second, the continuing saga of Toys 'R Us appears to be finally winding down, as a consortium of financiers and real estate interests have reached a deal to buy the company.

What do these two very different companies tell us? Simple -- markets change. Companies change. Economies change.

It means that just because you're the biggest automaker today, or the largest toy seller today, it does not follow that you will remain so tomorrow.

It means that just because times are good today -- good enough to placate the anti-market demands of labor unions, environmentalists, anti-free-traders and hack politicians of every stripe -- it does not follow that those good times will last forever. And who suffers when the good times end? Typically not the labor unions, environmentalists, anti-free-traders or hack politicians.

It means that antitrust and other "anti-big" regulation at best lags market realities and at worst harms the economy more than it helps.

It means that management matters. Without naming names, let's just say that, with both these companies, "mistakes were made." But the converse is also true -- just as faltering companies falter for a reason, so too do successful companies succeed for a reason -- because their managements did something right, they contributed something positive to the firm and therefore to the economy. As I have blogged previously, it is not only wrong, but downright evil, to try to blank out the positive (or negative) role of entrepreneurship and risk-taking from economic analysis, to view managements as "bloat" and stockholders as "exploiters."

If management can take the blame, and shareholders suffer the losses, when things go wrong, then why shouldn't they receive the credit, and the profit, when things go right?

POST SCRIPT: Dave at Soul of Wit has an interesting pair of posts on a related subject -- should investor recoveries in the WorldCom settlements be limited by a requirement that their portfolios be diversified? Dave seems to say yes; I dissent in the comment section of the second post.

Related Post (With Archive):
Economics and Mathematical White-Out

I haven't been following this tragic story very closely, but here's the comment I've left on a few other blogs:

My basic feeling is that it's monstrous to starve a person to death in a hospital, which is what will happen to Schiavo. No respirator — fine. No shock paddles — fine. No surgery — fine. No medications — fine. But you don't starve a person to death in a hospital. It's murder, and it's monstrous.

Dissenting opinions welcome.

Other thoughts at Right Side.

POST SCRIPT: Oh, and draft a living will!

A small baby-step victory toward ending the disgrace known as Amtrak:

An effort in the Senate to increase federal subsidies for the beleaguered Amtrak system failed to pass Wednesday.

The amendment, offered by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., would have added $1.04 billion to government financial assistance for the system. It failed on a 52-46 vote. The amendment was cosponsored by 23 senators, mostly Democrats. Two Republican senators from the Northeast - Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island - also voted for it.

In his 2006 budget, President Bush proposed eliminating Amtrak's operating subsidy and setting aside $360 million to run trains along the Northeast Corridor if the railroad ceased operating. In the current budget year that ends Sept. 30, Amtrak is getting $1.2 billion in operating subsidies and capital investment.

The bait-and-switch maneuvering around Amtrak has been both consistent and constant. It goes something like this: "We can't afford to lose the Northeast corridor, so Amtrak must continue to be subsidized." But of course the Northeast corridor is the one part of Amtrak that actually runs a profit and therefore would not need a subsidy in the first place! It's precisely the routes that nobody rides that lose money (go figure).

Similar to my update earlier today with municipal wi-fi, passenger rail service is simply not a public good (a natural monopoly perhaps, but not a public good). Where there is a market for it, there, is, well, a market for it and therefore no need for subsidies. When there is no market (i.e., insufficient need), one must ask why, since no one uses the route, should it be propped up via a subsidy. This is wise fiscal policy -- spend money where it's not wanted?

And as for those who long for the days of it taking, um, days to travel cross-country: Is your nostalgic yearning for the "golden age of rail" a sufficient claim on taxpayers who prefer the Twenty-First Century?

I think not. Fortunately, neither did 52 senators. Perhaps this will truly be the beginning of the end for the pathetic boondoggle.

Related Post (With Archive):
Transportation Secretary Defends Proposed Amtrak "Cut" (Sorta Kinda)

In previous posts I have expressed my opposition to municipally-provided wi-fi access, for the simple reason that Internet access is neither a public good (it is perfectly excludable) nor a natural monopoly (competition can and does exist).

The issue first gained notoriety in Philadelphia. Here are two quick updates from other cities:

ITEM: Chicago is racing against the legislative clock to pass a wi-fi authorization before the state bans the practice altogether --

Chicago Alderman Edward Burke has gone into bureaucratic overdrive, hoping to craft legislation that will guarantee the city's right to run its own Wi-Fi service. Speed is key in this situation because the Illinois General Assembly will soon consider a ban on city-funded broadband networks. Chicago officials see a citywide wireless network as a potential revenue source, a way to bridge the digital divide and a means of attracting tourists. State officials, meanwhile, appear intent on making sure service providers can control wireless networks.

MY TAKE: It's loopy enough to try to argue that the poor shouldn't have to pay for wireless Internet access (should they have to pay for laptops?). It's another outrage altogether to suggest that a city should be allowed to usurp a business in a brazen money grab. Since when are local governments allowed to compete in a purely private industry for no other reason than "there's gold in them thar hills!"? It used to be that government provided certain goods and services precisely because they could not be provided profitably. How far we've fallen.

ITEM: A similar tussle may be occurring twixt Houston and Texas --

Will Reed envisions a mouse in every house -- computers, that is -- and high-speed Internet connections for all. A wired community, he says, is an empowered one.
...
Reed's organization, Technology for All, has pioneered this program to bridge the digital divide with help from Rice University and an enthusiastic Mayor Bill White, who has asked city libraries to join the effort. This small, wired neighborhood may eventually become a model for providing everyone in the city free, or low-cost, Internet access. Or not.

Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, has filed a massive telecommunications bill in Austin this session that, in part, bans Texas cities from participating in wireless information networks.
...
SBC Communications, which has more DSL customers in the nation than any other provider, said cities should be allowed to offer wireless Internet access in public places, such as parks and libraries. But they should not directly compete with private enterprises by providing services to residents and businesses, said company spokesman Gene Acuña.

MY TAKE: Again, here we have a bait-and-switch. If a non-profit organization wants to subsidize -- well, just about anything, including Internet access -- for the poor, then good luck and more power to them. But how does that mesh with a city, funded by taxpayers, giving away what is not only a private good but also really a luxury good and quashing a free market in the process? I also find the claim that allowing cities to build wi-fi networks would actually foster innovation utterly laughable -- does anyone really expect a municipality to exert the same effort to maintaining and upgrading Internet facilities as a telecom company would?

I stick to my guns -- if it's not a public good, then the government has no business providing it.

Related Posts:
Philadelphia's Rocky Wi-Fi Proposal
Philadelphia Persists in Wi-Fi Nonsense
Government-Provided Broadband: Um, Why?
Municipal Wi-Fi Update: Pennsylvania May Block Philly Plan
The Folly of Public Provision of Private Goods

Who better than a non-practicing attorney and his retired-for-19-years former NYPD father to comment on the slaughter in Atlanta? Here are our hasty-stitchy observations:

--Me: I suppose there's case law somewhere about how it's prejudicial to have a criminal defendant appear at trial in prison garb rather than civilian clothes. I say skroo that and bring back the bright orange jumpsuit and leg irons.

--Dad: As he recalls, at the courthouse in the Bronx that covered his precinct, everyone -- including police and definitely including court officers -- were unarmed -- cops had to check their weapons in lockboxes in a special and secure police entrance. The court officers had nightsticks only.

--Me: That makes quite a bit of sense -- Nichols would likely have killed no one, not even the court officer, with only a stolen nightstick.

--Me: Speaking of which -- WTF?!? This ex-linebacker was left alone with an armed 51-year old 5'0" grandmother? Scrap that nonsense ASAP. Not to get all Lawrence Summers or anything, but there simply have to be some physical fitness requirements that cannot be gender-neutralized away. If you can't take out the median defendant in hand-to-hand combat (or with a nightstick), then you shouldn't have the job. We shouldn't have fat court officers, or one-legged court officers, or court officers with a 70 IQ, or pipsqueak grandmother court officers. (Ever see the same nonsense on "COPS"? Often, when it really gets down and dirty, the female officers just get in the way.)

Me: And how about bringing back "the dock"? Would it be so bad to have a known violent defendant kept, if not in a cage, then in some kind of secure structure inside the courtroom?

Dad: He seems to recall seeing exactly such arrangements at least in some courtrooms and at least for arraignments if not trials -- typically plexiglass barricades.

Dad: And speaking of which -- why not just build criminal courtrooms inside the prisons themselves?

Me: Perhaps for violent defendants or violent crimes, sure, why not?

Me: There was much talk in the MSM about an "old courthouse" and a "new courthouse" that exhibited different security features and processes. I hope the "old courthouse" wasn't kept in use for no other reason than historic preservation. If a government building no longer meets its modern requirements, then tear it down or find an alternative use for it. If there had been a creaky stairway in that courthouse, then it would have been fixed immediately. But antiquated security infrastructure? Eh, no big deal. Just a judge's life, right?

More thoughts from the New York Times (concur), Crime & Federalism (dissent), MIPTC (concur), Overlawyered (concur), Point of Law (on the grandmother issue).

Okay, I'm (sorta kinda) back from my hiatus, at least for the next 36 hours, when I'm off to West Palm Beach to visit a friend.

Here are some of the things that I probably would have blogged about had I actually been blogging.

--Since I was off gambling, here are two gambling-related stories. First, a New Jersey politician wants to impose a special tax to pay for gambling addiction treatment. Now, before those of you who suffer from an excess of reasonableness say, "Sure, why not tax the casinos to internalize the externalities they generate?" note the fun part: the tax would not be on casinos, but on television networks that broadcast gambling, particularly poker tournaments. My take: The "penny in your pocket rule" doesn't just apply to people, but to businesses too.

--Second, New Jersey may ban smoking in casinos. My take: As with all smoking bans, there is no such thing as "smokers rights" or "non-smokers rights," there are only property rights. Let the market decide. See also this post.

--South Africa wants to spend $256 million to rename the capital, Pretoria, to a more "African" (i.e., tribal) name (as if the Afrikaaners and British-descended white natives aren't "African" themselves). My take: if you have the money to spend on rewriting maps, street names, government offices, etc., then I say go for it. But South Africa, which may be "rich" by sub-Saharan Africa standards, is hardly rich by rest-of-world standards, and is not at all immune from the AIDS disaster in Africa. The money (which, of course, would come from taxes) is better spent elsewhere, or perhaps not at all.

--Besieged consumer data company ChoicePoint learns that incompetence means always having to say you're sorry. My take: The best way to offer an apology is to buy one -- how about a cash settlement to every individual whose data were compromised?

--The school that tried to RFID tag its students has triggered a legislative backlash. My take: Schools should worry a little more about teaching kids and a little less about tracking them.

--Speaking of schools, one option I'd really like to explore after I retire is secondary school teaching. But I'm leery, after 13 years of college, of going back for an education degree, especially after reading that doing so might make me "inadequate to appalling."

[M]ost graduate education programs that train these school administrators are deeply flawed, suffering from irrelevant curriculum, low standards, weak faculty and little clinical instruction... Many programs are doing little more than dishing out higher degrees to teachers who are trying to qualify for salary increases...

My take: The whole "train educators, not teachers" racket has long been a disgrace that has crippled education in this country by keeping qualified people out of teaching. Scrap it.

--One more on schools:

A North Texas school district will make parents attend teen substance abuse seminars before their kids will be allowed extracurricular activities. The policy starts next school year at the Carroll Independent School District in the Fort Worth suburb of Southlake. It'll affect the parents of students in grades seven through 12 -- including those of student-athletes. The classes will address substance-abuse trends, warning signs, prevention and district drug policies.

My take: A classic case of the Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling. To politicians, especially local hick politicians, doing something, even something mind-bogglingly stupid, is always better than doing nothing. It seems to me that making it easier to entice kids to participate in extra-curricular activities is better than making it harder. My parents, who were about as anti-drug as possible, would never had agreed to pee away their time on nonsense like this, which would have meant no band or Math Team for me (yes I admit it -- I was on the Math Team). Grits for Breakfast has more.

--Want a "Buy" rating on your company's stock? Well, just, um, "Buy" one:

In Garvey v. Arkoosh, 2005 WL 273135 (D. Mass. Feb. 4, 2005), the court held that "nothing in the securities laws bars the issuer of a regulated security from paying an analyst for a stock recommendation." While the applicable regulatory scheme requires the person who publishes the report to disclose a conflict of interest (see Section 17(b) of the '33 Act), there is no similar duty imposed on the issuer who paid for the promotion.

My take: No conflicts to disclose here.

--Marginal Revolution has more on the New Jersey "Tomato as Vegetable" non-scandal. My take: Relying on Nineteenth Century Supreme Court precedent on tomatoes is as stupid as relying on Nineteenth Century Supreme Court precedent on marriage.

--The New York Times asks what role Islamic law should play in post-Saddam Iraq, while my buddy Steve Castellano asks what role Islamic law (and religion generally) should play on Wall Street. My take: In both instances, as small a role as possible.

--Speaking of church and state, here's an underreported story about how the federal government is allowing Mormons to keep non-believers off public lands. My take: Um, no.

--Toilet paper tax. My take: Flush it -- it would probably cost more than two cents per roll just to implement it.

--Related: A heartfelt thanks to every taxpayer outside New York City for paying, via a federal subsidy, for our rat-elimination program. Perhaps we can pay for something of yours via a federal subsidy too. My take: The death of fiscal federalism marches on.

--I've been perpetually shocked, shocked, by the total lack of libertarian interest in the return of Doctor Who. Just how young are you people (or just how old am I)? In any case, apparently even Time Lords get hacked.

--On the other hand, people are all over the new Star Wars Episode III trailer. My take: It seems somewhat busy and cluttered, which was a major problem with the first two movies, both of which I was relatively forgiving of. Am I going to finally join the ranks of the "Damn these movies suck!" crowd? Also: The end of the trailer says "The saga is complete [sic] May 19, 2005." Does that mean my own personal prophecy -- that there will not be a third trilogy after all -- shall be fulfilled?

I won my table in Round I today; I move on to Round II tomorrow.

It's interesting -- normally I'm too concerned with my own play, and my MGD, to really notice other players at the Blackjack table. But a tournament like this is different. Watching your opponents is critical.

Well, I now realize that most people suck terribly at the game, even sober.

More updates tomorrow night.

UPDATE: Round II came down literally to the last card. If the dealer busted, then I lost; if he didn't then I would win my table and proceed to Round III.

Dealer had a 6 showing.

Hole card was a 2 -- hooray.

Next card was another 2 -- extreme hooray.

Next card was a 6 -- not so hooray anymore.

Next card was a 10. Too bad, so sad, come back next month.

I had fun.

Some other hasty stitchy observations:

--If you happen to be at the Las Vegas Hilton and are tempted to see the new Star Trek Experience ride, Borg Invasion 4-D, well don't, it sucks. They're also still showing the original one with Jonathan Frakes, which didn't suck 10 years ago, but today -- eh. Not worth $35. If you want to sit in a chair and be poked and prodded in a sci-fi "experience," then try the Alien ride at Walt Disney World -- that was fun (but apparently has since been converted into some dorky kids ride -- oh well). And someone remind me again why a Nevada establishment is allowed to charge Nevada residents less? I'm too tired for Article IV Privileges & Immunities right now.

--Speaking of being tired, if you're ever traveling and expect to be extremely tired before, say, 5PM, then be sure to call Housekeeping and tell them exactly when you want your room made. It's really a bummer to drag yourself back to your room at 4:30, only to find the maid vacuuming it. Grrr...

--Pai Gow Poker can be really fun, except when you lose six hands in a row at it, which is about as probable as being struck by lightning...while indoors. Dang!

I really hope to return to substantive blogging soon, especially about the Atlanta courthouse murders. I have a lot to say.

I'm off to Vegas to win a million dollars, not to mention celebrate my father's seventieth birthday. Wow.

I'll be bringing my laptop with me, but mainly just to monitor my aggregators. I expect blogging to be very light through Tuesday night.



Some people pride themselves on their ability to play blackjack, which is silly. As I've blogged previously, blackjack is nothing more than applied arithmetic or "rule processing." Which is exactly why I love it. It's a wonderful way to turn down the volume knob in your head, and without getting a hangover the next morning.

On the other hand, a blackjack tournament like the one I've entered is much different, since you're playing not to come out ahead, but to win more than the other players in order to advance. So to some extent the traditional "rule processing" goes out the window and you end up doing some very bizarre things.

Like I said, I'll try to find some time to blog, but I can't promise much.

See you after the Krugman-Tanner debate on Social Security.

Related Posts:
Gambling on a Gaming Education
Taking Stock of Stock-Picking

I apologize for not (yet) following up on the infamous "UglyRipe" tomato scandal in Florida. It's on my to-do list.

Meanwhile, here's some more (ugly) tomato politics:

The humble tomato may technically be a fruit, but lawmakers here consider it a vegetable.

Members of the Assembly Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Monday approved a measure designating the Jersey tomato as the official state vegetable. A similar proposal is pending in a Senate committee.

Sponsors of the measure get around the fact that the tomato is considered a fruit by using a century-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling that slapped a vegetable tariff on tomatoes, similar to the tax placed on cucumbers, squashes and beans.

I think the whole notion of "Official State Goomba Goom" is unconditionally stupid, as is "National Gobbledygook Month." But if a state is going to designate Y as the "Official State X," then shouldn't Y actually be a member of the class "X"?

What's next, designating the brown bear as the official state bird? "Well, it's close enough -- 'bear'/'bird' -- they sound alike."

On the other hand, maybe this story can be used as a teaching tool, maybe regarding the protectionist underpinnings of tariffs, or the danger of over-reliance on ancient Supreme Court precedent?

Those are both very "ripe" issues...

Related Post:
You Say "Tomato," I Say "Unconstitutional"

Some very quick "Skool Daze" blurbs from around the 'Sphere:

ITEM: More warm-fuzzy-feeling maneuvers from local hack politicians regarding the childhood obesity "epidemic" --

The Arizona House on Tuesday voted to prohibit the sale of sugary and fatty foods in Arizona public schools but only in lower grades.

The House voted 39-19 for the bill (HB2544). Last week, the chamber deleted high schools from the proposed prohibition, making it apply only to elementary, middle and junior high schools. The bill, sent to the Senate, would require schools to replace sugar- and fat-laden foods such as candy and soft drinks with healthier fare.

The bill would restrict sales at cafeterias, snack bars and vending machines on school grounds during school hours. It would not apply to sales before or after school, so snacks sold at sporting events wouldn't be affected.

MY TAKE: Schwarzenegger's at it too, and see my two previous posts. It's been pretty well documented that the problem isn't with kids' caloric intake, but with their output. In other words, the problem isn't with junk food, but with TV, video games and the Internet. And, of course, the parents. Also, any proposal that keeps caffeine-free diet soda out of the vending machines but puts in milk, juice or Gatorade is being hypocritical — watch out for the Politics of Pull when you see such actions.

---

ITEM: Guess the Bactine budget fell short this year --

A state panel plans to investigate a high school football coach who acknowledged licking a bloody cut on the knee of one of his players.

The Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission decided to look at the case after a parent complained that Central Linn High School coach Scott Reed's behavior threatened student safety and health.

Reed, 34, who also teaches science, acknowledged the incident last year after the parent's complaint. The school district placed him on probation and required him to take a "bloodborne pathogens" course.

Police investigated, but Reed was not arrested. "Sometimes there are actions that are socially unacceptable or bizarre that aren't necessarily criminal," Linn County Sheriff Dave Burright said.

MY TAKE: Hey, depending on the gender and the body part, I enjoy giving a good lick as much as the next guy, but geez! Also, my inner 1L wonders whether this constitutes a battery, both criminally and tortiously, even though the student "consented" (which would typically constitute a defense to both the crime and the tort). Isn't the black-letter law that if one is defrauded into giving consent, then such consent is nullified? Also, this nut was a science teacher? (UPDATE: The coach received two years probation and was required to attend hygiene classes. Inadequate, in my opinion.)

---

ITEM: Speaking of budgets running out --

A letter sent to students' homes from a Brownsville elementary school advised parents to equip their children with disinfectants to combat the rat droppings and urine found on school desks.

District officials would not identify the employee, who warned parents of rat problems at El Jardin Elementary.

But while officials admitted the school has a recurring rat problem, they said students do not need to bring disinfectants to campus. Maintenance workers are handling the matter with mouse traps and glue boards, they said.

"I want to reassure all the parents that we have a very clean school even if we do have a problem with rats," said Principal Hector Hernandez, noting that the employee sent the letter without school permission.

MY TAKE: If it were a private school, or day care center, or restaurant, the authorities would swoop down faster than a rat could squeeze through a hole in the wall. But a public school? Eh, no big deal...

---

ITEM: Remember how Tom Cruise serendipitously tripped and stumbled his way into Princeton in "Risky Business"? Well, for every stupid action, there is an equal and opposite stupid...

In a blanket rejection issued Monday, Harvard dashed the hopes of 119 [hacker] applicants. MIT followed suit Tuesday, rejecting 32 applicants. Carnegie Mellon was the first to act, delivering the bad news to its "hacker" applicants last week.
...
Admissions sites of at least six schools were accessed by applicants for about 10 hours March 2 after a hacker posted instructions on the online forum. ...MIT's Sloan School of Management Dean Richard Schmalensee likened the hacking to an applicant using the keys to the admissions office to enter at night and see how his or her application fared.
...
Lee Metheny, chief executive and president of ApplyYourself, a Fairfax, Va.-based online application and notification program company used by all the schools, said those who accessed the restricted pages did so knowing they were unauthorized.

MY TAKE: Maybe all these idiots can start a chain of brothels in their parents' bedrooms. Either that or in Germany.

---

ITEM: Most intelligent Americans understand the historical logic (i.e., present-day illogic) of the standard nine-month school year with summers off. But now apparently some people think summer vacation has been elevated to the status of "entitlement" --

A judge threw out a high school student's lawsuit against mandatory summer homework, saying he and his father should have done a little more studying themselves before bringing the case.

Students in the Whitnall High School math course - honors pre-calculus - were supposed to do three assignments by certain dates over the summer. Peer Larson, 17, and his father, Bruce, had filed suit in Circuit Court, arguing that homework should not be required after the 180-day academic year is over.

The Larsons argued it was difficult for the boy to do the assignments because he had a summer job as a camp counselor. They also said students should be able to enjoy their summers free of homework.

But it's up to school boards to decide such things, Judge Richard J. Sankovitz ruled Tuesday.

MY TAKE: "Honors Pre-Calculus"? In other words, "Honors Arithmetic"? Whatever. It was optional — either do the work or drop out. I wonder how that looks on a college application — "Unsuccessfully sued school board for homework exemption..." He might want to hook up with the Harvard hackers.

---

ITEM: Just watch it, buster!

"...fool myself twice, um, ain't gonna happen" --

Workers at a Wal-Mart store in Windsor have voted against being unionized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Wal-Mart said store associates in the union's proposed bargaining unit voted 167 to 59 on Tuesday against joining the union, representing a 74 percent vote against certification.

The UFCW said it has asked the Ontario Labour Relations Board to consider a second certification vote at the Windsor Wal-Mart store because of "charges Wal-Mart conducted a campaign of intimidation leading up to a certification vote held at the store on Tuesday."

"A month ago, Wal-Mart posted a notice on the Windsor lunchroom bulletin board announcing they would be closing a store in Jonquiere (Quebec) that recently unionized. And throughout this week, department managers were taking employees one by one out to the parking lot to sign anti-union petitions," the union said in a prepared statement.
...
The organizing campaign by the UFCW was the second attempt at the Windsor store.

So posting a notice of 100% factual information ("Look what happened the last time a union won...") is now "intimidation"? Then what is requiring subsequent employees to join a unionized business against their wishes? Unions get to demand votes over and over and over again -- and if they win, just once, then they're in forever, like tenure. Why should that be?

Politicians have to be re-elected every two, four or six years -- why shouldn't union certifications only last for, say, ten years before a re-vote? Why is a "no" vote temporary but a "yes" vote permanent?

And why are labor unions exempt from antitrust laws and competition generally -- shouldn't the United Auto Workers be allowed to bid for representation of the workers currently represented by the United Steel Workers? (Of course, they're all shills for the AFL-CIO anyway, so that question is probably moot.)

And, lastly, why is it so difficult for the union to accept the possibility that maybe, just maybe, workers would prefer not to rock the boat and risk, as Milton Friedman would say, being unemployed at union wages rather than employed at non-union wages?

Related Posts:
Wyatt-Mart Closes Shop
"Men's Socks are Amazing..."
Why Doesn't Antitrust Apply to Labor Unions?
"Mr. Gettelfinger, You're Trying to Seduce Me..."
In Honor of Labor Day: Where the Heck is Beck?

Possibly of interest to gay New Yorkers who don't work for a living (why have something like this on a weekday?!?) --

New York University Review of Law and Social Change

presents

Continuing the Civil Rights Movement:
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Equality

Wednesday, March 30, 2005
9AM to 5PM

NYU School of Law
Greenberg Lounge, Vanderbilt Hall
40 Washington Square South
New York, NY

The Review of Law and Social Change invites you to participate in our annual colloquium. This year, we plan a rigorous debate on the efficacy of various advocacy strategies to advance LGBT rights. Specifically, we will focus on the costs and benefits of adopting particular advocacy strategies, paying close attention to the divergence that may exist between legal gains and losses versus social gains and losses, from the perspective of diverse LGBT communities.

CLE credits will be available.

Schedule:
8:30 - 9:00 Breakfast & CLE Registration
9:00 - 9:15 Opening Remarks
9:15 - 11:00 Panel One: On the Road to Freedom: From Marriage to Equality?
11:15 - 1:00 Panel Two: Violence Behind Closed Doors: Criminal Justice Response to LGBT Communities
2:30 - 4:15 Panel Three: Diagnosing Gender: Strategies for Transgender Rights Advocacy
4:30 - 5:00 Closing Remarks

Confirmed Speakers:
Paisley Currah, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY
Susana Fried, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
Adam Heintz, New York University School of Law
Nan Hunter, Brooklyn Law School
Andie Moss, National Institute of Correction
Dean Spade, Sylvia Rivera Law Project
Traci Weber, NYC Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence
Margaret Winter, ACLU National Prison Project

To RSVP, or for more information on this colloquium, email gaylynn@nyu.edu or contact the NYU Review of Law & Social Change at (212) 998-6370.

Damn, twice in two days! Positive Liberty's Jason Kuznicki is sidelining himself so he can write his dissertation. Ah the wasteful follies of youth... He must, as a result, relinquish his spot on The Elite Eleven.

Stepping up to the plate is my fast-rising doppelgaenger, Downtown Lad, just in case you're not getting enough gay libertarian thirty-something New Yorker indignation (too much is never enough!).

Congratulations DL, and hopefully we'll still see some cameo appearances from Jason.

What is "The Elite Eleven"?

Q: Does the LSAT accurately predict future success, either in law school or beyond?

A: I'm starting to think the answer might be "yes."

Yesterday came this post.

Then today comes this post (be sure to review the comments).

Spooky.

POST SCRIPT: Long before "Independence Day" or "The Day After Tomorrow," there was "When Worlds Collide." If you've never seen it, then Netflix it ASAP.

Remember how Munch's "Scream" was stolen in broad daylight from a (government-run) museum with essentially no security?

Well, here's "Scream 2" --

Three stolen works of art by Edvard Munch -- including a unique watercolor entitled "Blue Dress" -- were recovered Monday, less than 24 hours after thieves with crowbars pried them from the walls of an upscale restaurant. It was the second theft of the Norwegian master's work in less than seven months.
...
The three pieces stolen Sunday night from the restaurant at the upscale Hotel Refnes were valued at about $257,000. The most valuable -- the 1915 watercolor "Blue Dress" -- is worth as much as $160,857, Munch expert and auctioneer Knut Forsberg said.
...
The hotel's owner, Widar Salbuvik, said the thieves used crowbars to pry the artwork off the walls of the restaurant just after it had closed for the night. The hotel is near the city of Moss, about 30 miles south of Oslo.
...
The three Munch pictures stolen Sunday had been ripped fron their frames from the walls, Salbuvik said. The alarm system had been turned off. The upscale and exclusive hotel, built in 1767, will continue to display its art works, despite the theft, because it was important to his guests, he said.

There seems to a fashionable "reckless disregard" for art security in Norway. I originally blamed it on the government; perhaps this fool restauranteur is just an outlier, or maybe it's an intrinsic cultural flaw in the Norwegian people. In any case, hopefully it won't take a kitchen fire or innocent casualties from the next daytime museum robbery for Norwegian art owners to realize that valuable items should be treated as such. Capitalists tend to understand this principle quite easily. Go figure.

Meanwhile, those interested in museums and capitalism -- or the lack thereof -- should also review this OpinionJournal piece on how, when it comes to competition among art museums, size matters.

Related Post:
A Whisper to a "Scream"

Tim Sandefur of Freespace is taking a well-earned hiatus and must therefore relinquish his spot on The Elite Eleven.

In comes Miscellaneous Objections, the excellent blog of libertarian eduwonk Ryan Sager. Ryan is probably not a stranger to many of you, given his popular and sometimes controversial columns at The New York Post and Tech Central Station, but his blog is relatively under-read, the main criterion for inclusion in The Elite Eleven.

Hurry back, Tim, and congratulations Ryan!

What is "The Elite Eleven"?

A few days ago I blogged that I had essentially given up on trying to rationalize occupational licensing on economic efficiency grounds and was jumping on the more radical libertarian bandwagon that the "Politics of Pull" would almost always corrupt such potential benefits of a guild structure, at least in the lesser-skilled trades.

Yup:

In Louisiana, not just anyone can sell a bunch of pretty flowers. You have to have a license.

U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola ruled Wednesday that the state can keep its unique law requiring florists to pass a test and get a license to work on their own. Would-be florists had argued that the law unconstitutionally bars them from entering the occupation of their choice.

About half of all applicants fail the test, which includes a written exam and one in which they must create four floral arrangements in as many hours. Unlicensed "floral clerks" can only work in a shop which also has a licensed florist.

"There are few occupational licensing laws as crazy as this one in this country," said Clark Neily with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian nonprofit law firm in Washington, D.C. Neily said he will ask the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the ruling.

Neily has argued that the question of who has floral talent should be left to the market: people whose arrangements are ugly would soon find themselves without customers.

Gee, that almost sounds too easy. Customers go to those businesses that actually provide good service, without regard for licenses. Someone should found an economic system on that principle. Maybe give it an impressive-sounding name, like "capitalism" or something.

Licensing for doctors -- obviously. Lawyers -- too important not to. Hairdressers -- conceivably, perhaps. But florists? Puh-leeze.

UPDATE: Related --

A bozo Brooklyn cop took a bite out of crime -- by busting the dad of a Girl Scout for "not being properly licensed" as the child sold cookies.
...
The outrageous arrest unfolded at around 4:50 p.m. Saturday in front of 162 Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg, the family's old neighborhood. It's where Grace Marie Louis and her parents have been coming to sell the cookies since the girl was in first grade, her relatives said. The 13-year-old Scout, from Bethpage, L.I., had boxes that residents had already ordered and was delivering them and collecting money, relatives said. The teen also had extra boxes to sell in the family's van parked nearby.
...
"That's when a police captain pulled up like Mighty Joe," Taras said. The irate grandma said the captain and another cop from the 94th Precinct hopped out of an unmarked car and approached the family. ...The officers proceeded to slap the flabbergasted dad with a summons, which reads, in part, "Defendant observed offering for sale cookies w/o being properly licensed."
...
Apparently, the cop with the captain was upset, too. He did not want to ticket the dad but was strong-armed by his superior, police sources said.

Fortunately I get my Girl Scout Cookies from strictly legitimate sources.

Related Post:
The Politics of Pull -- A Cyberspace Case Study

This story caught my eye:

Moscow's increasingly conservative city fathers have had enough -- of sex, bare flesh and profanity. Fourteen years after the Soviet Union collapsed along with its stuffy moral precepts, Russian politicians have decided that the country's fabled liberality has gone too far. Across the country calls for a renaissance of Soviet-style puritanism and a return to moral order are being voiced with increasing frequency.
...
For the authorities, efforts to promote clean living and high moral standards often go hand in hand with patriotism. ...Church leaders say TV ads should not promote sex, alcohol or cigarettes. The government has fallen into line. Beer ads have been banned from radio and TV during the watershed, drinking is to be prohibited in a welter of public places and children under the age of 18 have finally been banned from buying beer, traditionally considered a soft drink in Russia.

Okay, fair enough, one might think. But "A Good Beer Blog" probes a little deeper:

The article, however, is really about the movement to address sexual morality in Moscow. Beer is thrown in as an after-thought near the end...

Which got me to wondering -- might the same be true over at the Kremlin?

Here's my point: There's an interesting little fact about the Russian beer industry: There ain't none! There appears to be only one major company that brews beer in Russia, Baltika, but it's not really a Russian company -- it's owned by ueber-brewers Carlsberg (Dutch Danish) and Scottish & Newcastle (British).

So might there be just a tiny bit of protectionism in cracking down on beer advertising only? "How unpatriotic of you youngsters to drink Dutch Danish, British or -- gasp! -- American beer! Here, have some proud Russian vodka instead!"

Just a thought. I certainly wouldn't put it past Comrade Putin and his cronies.

SIDEBAR: At least the Russians don't put pineapple in their beer -- blech! And a different kind of beer travesty here. Oh the humanity! (Cf., here.)

UPDATE: Tom corrects my flawed geography in the Comments and adds an interesting observation.

Related Post:
Why are Bulgarians Getting Drunk?

If there's one area where I really am a "greedy capitalist bastard," it's probably with regards to credit card debt:

For more than two years, special-education teacher Fatemeh Hosseini worked a second job to keep up with the $2,000 in monthly payments she collectively sent to five banks to try to pay $25,000 in credit card debt.

Even though she had not used the cards to buy anything more, her debt had nearly doubled to $49,574 by the time the Sunnyvale, Calif., resident filed for bankruptcy last June. That is because Hosseini's payments sometimes were tardy, triggering late fees ranging from $25 to $50 and doubling interest rates to nearly 30 percent. When the additional costs pushed her balance over her credit limit, the credit card companies added more penalties.

"I was really trying hard to make minimum payments," said Hosseini, whose financial problems began in the late 1990s when her husband left her and their three children. "All of my salary was going to the credit card companies, but there was no change in the balances because of that interest and those penalties."
...
Manassas resident Josephine McCarthy's Providian Visa bill increased to $5,357 from $4,888 in two years, even though McCarthy has used the card for only $218.16 in purchases and has made monthly payments totaling $3,058. Those payments, noted U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stephen S. Mitchell in Alexandria, all went to "pay finance charges (at a whopping 29.99%), late charges, over-limit fees, bad check fees and phone payment fees." Mitchell allowed the claim "because the debtor admitted owing it." McCarthy, through her lawyer, declined to be interviewed.

Sorry, I can only suppress the radical libertarian in me so many hours in a day.

Let's start with some basic first principles. I obviously don't have Ms. Hosseini's or Ms. McCarthy's credit card statements in front of me to audit, but I refuse to accept that first paragraph about Ms. Hosseini at face value: $2,000 per month (i.e., $24,000 per year) to finance $25,000 in debt simply did not happen. In fact, the $49,574 would also have been promptly paid down at $2,000 per month, even at 30% interest.

Meanwhile, just a few lines down we're told that Hosseini was struggling to make minimum payments, but that doesn't reconcile with paying $2,000 per month either -- the minimums totaled $2,000 per month? Um, no. Usually the criticism of the credit card companies (including in this WaPo article) is that they make the minimum payments too small, not too big. I guarantee you that the total minimum payments she faced from her $20,000 bill were not $2000, but far far less. So which is it? Are the minimum payments too high or too low? They can't be both simultaneously.

And of course, Hosseini acknowledges paying late -- who's fault is that, especially when it occurs on a recurring basis?

And what about transferring balances to capture lower rates -- people seem to make quite a pastime of that exercise.

Oh, and Hosseini is a teacher -- just how much of a naive little victim can she be before we start saying "now hold on a minute..."?

As for McCarthy, an increase in total due of less than ten percent over two years (from $4888 to $5357) hardly strikes me as usurious, especially in light of chronic late payments and bad check fees. Who exactly is abusing whom here?

We tend to forget why people like Hosseini and McCarthy end up paying higher interest rates, for credit cards and elsewhere. It's a cart-and-horse paradox. People aren't higher-risk because they face higher interest rates -- they face higher interest rates because they are higher-risk.

And what about the chilling effect of "protecting" the fools who can't manage their credit? If credit card companies can't make money loaning to the Hosseini's and McCarthy's of the country at 15% instead of 19%, then the Hosseini's and McCarthy's of the world simply won't be able to get credit cards -- even if they were to use credit wisely. In other words, as Milton Friedman might say, is it better to not have credit at 15% than to have it at 19%?

And of course if the banks can extend credit profitably at lower interest rates, then they will -- there is hardly a more competitive industry than credit cards -- how many pieces of credit card junk mail did you receive last week? I once heard that Capital One is the single largest user of the Postal Service in the country. We're not talking about OPEC here.

This issue reminds me of the recent "regulate salt" nonsense (see my previous post). What competent adult doesn't know about late fees, the folly of minimum payments, not to write a bad check, or the ruthless competition in the credit card industry? Can most really claim innocence or unconscionability? I'm unpersuaded.

When there's outright fraud, or deceptive advertising, then fine, go after the companies. Go after them hard. And I have no problem with "truth in lending" laws -- they're economically efficient when properly crafted and applied. And of course keep true unconscionability on the books as a defense against truly outrageous contracts.

But at the same time, how about a well-deserved dose of quitcher-bitchen every now and then?

Dissenting opinions at Right Side, Glittering Eye and Dean's World.

Related Post:
Getting Carded

A quick update from the trenches:

A conservative Christian group has been turned down in its bid to be heard at a suit challenging Connecticut's ban on same-sex marriage. A New Haven Superior Court judge has denied the Family Institute of Connecticut's request to become a party in the suit brought by seven same-sex couples seeking the right to marry. Judge Patty Jenkins Pittman ruled that the Institute had failed to prove that it has an interest in the case that is different from the interest of the public as a whole.

Pittman also denied a request from two Eastern Connecticut town clerks to enter the case. The clerks said their opposition to same-sex marriage would prevent them from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

How many times do we need to reinvent this wheel? It's really not very difficult:

--Clergy are not now nor would they ever be required to perform same-sex marriages against the teachings of their faith, just as they are not now required to perform any other marriages not sanctioned by their religion or their conscience (e.g., marrying a believer to a non-believer). This argument is a total red herring. There is only ever a right to a civil marriage; there is never a right to a religious marriage, for anyone.

--Clerks, meanwhile, are at the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Either perform the ministerial functions of your job, or quit. How dare you, the lowest-ranked paper-pushers in our government, with less authority than dog-catchers, claim the right of judicial review (or "conscientious objector") for yourselves? If you're so eager to perform only those marriages that you approve of, then quit the government and join the clergy.

--As for politicians, such as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, New Paltz Mayor Jason West, or the leaders of the "City" of Ithaca, New York, I merely reiterate my previous posts on the subject (see below).

Related Posts:
"I Left the Law...in San Francisco..."
Upstate NY "City" Sues State for Gay Marriage
New York Gay Marriage Fiskfest

Posted without comment:

Black boys [in the U.K.] may have to be separated from their classmates to help improve their school performance, says the Commission for Racial Equality.

The group's head, Trevor Phillips, also suggested black fathers should be denied access to their sons if they refuse to attend parents' evenings.

But teachers have warned the ideas could fall foul of anti-racism laws.

Last year 36% of Black Caribbean pupils in England got five or more C-grades at GCSE. The national average is 52%.
...
"If the only way to break through the wall of attitude that surrounds black boys is to teach them separately in some classes, then we should be ready for that," he said. It may be necessary to "embrace some new if unpalatable ideas both at home and at school" to avoid the mistakes of the past 40 years, Mr Phillips said.

Open thread -- comments invited and encouraged.

One wonders whether Tim Sandefur fully understands the nature of the arrangement he is about to enter into with his lovely fiance:

The right to marry is a right based on contract -- which means, based on the right of more than one person to exercise and trade their liberty as they see fit. The reason for recognition of gay marriage is that if two men wish to be married, that violates nobody else's rights, and therefore I don't have the right to stop them. (Well, that's the rough version.) If that theory is correct, then the exact same thing goes for consensual adult polygamy: a person certainly should be free to marry any person he loves, who is also a willing participant.

That's all very romantic and philosophical. It's also 100% wrong.

Marriage is not (or not only) a "right based on contract." It is a legal status that, to a very large extent, complements and sometimes even contradicts the concept of contract (e.g., in most states, a spouse's elective share supersedes a will provision disinheriting that spouse).

Herein lies the (not at all difficult) distinction between same-sex marriage and polygamy. Marriage by its nature qua legal status must, in a modern society, be limited to two people. A hypothetical polygamous "marriage" qua bundle of hypothetical contracts might be feasible in some hypothetical libertarian utopia. But that is not marriage as it exists, legally, in America today. The only way to validate "polygamous marriage" is to rewrite the fundamental definition, the fundamental nature, of marriage itself -- to blank out its nature as a legal status and replace it with some fictitious "bundle of contracts" doppelgaenger. But to do so reduces the whole debate down to mere question-begging. Which is not helpful.

As I blogged previously:

How would divorce be handled in polygamy? Could two "spouses" oust a third? What about property ownership -- could three out of seven spouses own property jointly apart from the others? Can a spouse in one polygamous marriage enter into another polygamous marriage without the consent of all the spouses of the original and the new marriages? What about inheritance? Tax returns? Child support? Powers of attorney? Right-to-die decisions?

The legal implications of the [modern] status of marriage require, metaphysically, that it be between two and only two people. But those same legal implications do not require, metaphysically, that it be between a man and a woman.

As for the hyper-anarcho-libertarians who try to short-circuit the entire gay marriage debate by moaning that "government should get of the marriage business altogether," well, even if such a lament somehow helped the real-world quest for equal treatment of gays (I don't see how it does), it's also, quite frankly, an unacceptably naive and simplistic worldview.

The great thing about marriage, qua legal status, is that it eliminates the need for the (extremely complicated) "bundle of strictly private contracts" that radical libertarians and defenders of theoretical polygamy (such as Sandefur) seem to think is such a "neat-o!" idea. Ask any gay couple who has actually tried to do it -- I guarantee you they'll say it's not so "neat-o."

Stated differently, marriage, qua legal status, is extremely efficient economically. It saves time. It saves resources (e.g., lawyers drafting documents). It saves money. It saves grief over lost, destroyed or badly-drafted contracts. In an (admittedly Rawlsian) sense, the shortcut of marriage, qua legal status, does the greatest good for the greatest number. It's simply a smart idea in a modern society.

Tinker around the edges all you want. Should there be a "marriage penalty" within the federal income tax? I doubt it. Should there be a spousal benefit under Social Security? I seriously doubt it. But these are overlays that don't go to the core of marriage qua legal status. The real meaning of marriage in modern society -- automatic property rights, automatic inheritance rights, automatic child custody rights, automatic healthcare rights, automatic decision-making rights of all kinds, these all derive not from some abstract "bundle of contracts" concept of marriage, but from the legal status concept.

And they require that marriage be limited to two people.

If consensual polygamists want to try to build a bird's nest from the individual twigs and strings of contractual arrangements, then by all means they have a right to do so (assuming no externalities, especially to the children of such arrangements). But the assertion that to draw the line at two-person marriage is "arbitrary" is nonsense.

Other prongs in this debate from Jason Kuznicki, Jon Rowe and Dispatches. Separate and distinct from this thread, meanwhile, Galois has a very intelligent post that echoes my concerns on "the new polygamy." On the other hand, here's a chap who demonstrates that it's a fine line between being a smartass and being a dumbass.

Related Post:
On the Polygamy Non-Argument

Two quick updates.

ITEM: The little critter that, had I a spare $700,000 lying around, would have been forever known as "Roark's Monkey," shall alas be named something else --

The right to name a new species of monkey sold Thursday for $650,000 in an online auction, with the funds going to protect the Bolivian habitat where the species lives, the Web site that handled the sale said.

The winning bidder, who outbid Ellen DeGeneres, chose to remain anonymous for now, said Kelly Fiore, director of business development for the New York-based auction venue, Charity Folks. There was no immediate information on what the winner planned to name the species, but an announcement might be made later, Fiore said.
...
The proceeds of the auction were to be given to Bolivia's park service to help protect Madidi and the many animals that live there. The conservation society said it was overjoyed.

MY TAKE: Same as in my previous post. The best way to save the environment is to buy it.

ITEM: Remember the two developmentally challenged boys who were dragged out of their school in handcuffs for "violent crayon drawings"? Well, perhaps they can have a playdate with this unfortunate kid --

Police arrested an 8-year-old boy who allegedly had a violent outburst in school, head-butting his teacher and kicking an assistant principal, when he was told he couldn't go outside to play with other students.

The 4-foot pupil was led away from Rawls Byrd Elementary School in handcuffs Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery.

"It's not something that happens every day," Maj. Stan Stout said of what could be the department's youngest arrest ever. Stout said the chair-tossing, desk-turning outburst occurred after a teacher, and later the assistant principal, attempted to stop the boy from joining his classmates.

The child was later released to his parents.

MY TAKE: My bookie is taking bets -- how long before we start seeing reports of eight-year olds being tasered in school by teachers and cops? Maybe some of that Roper v. Simmons wisdom nonsense whatever, about "how young is too young?", will trickle down to handcuff rules for minors.

I don't care how "violent" an eight-year old is -- after the incident is over there is no need to "perp walk" him out of a school. Suspend him, expel him, even arrest him after the fact if the prosecutor (not the police) deems it appropriate. But handcuffs? Eight-year olds? Just plain wrong. "Lost enforcement" strikes again.

UPDATE: Freeman wins the bet by reminding us that there have already been at least two incidents of police tasering a child:

[Miami] Police have acknowledged using a stun gun to immobilize a 12-year-old girl just weeks after an officer jolted a first-grader with 50,000 volts.

Police Director Bobby Parker defended the decision to use a Taser on the 6-year-old boy last month because he was threatening to injure himself with a shard of glass. But Parker said Friday that he could not defend the decision to shock the fleeing girl, who was skipping school and apparently was drunk.
...
The first incident had already exposed the department to criticism for its use of Tasers. The 6-year-old boy was shocked Oct. 20 in the principal's office at Kelsey Pharr Elementary School. Principal Maria Mason called 911 after the child broke a picture frame in her office and waved a piece of glass, holding a security guard back. The boy had cut himself under his eye and on his hand when officers arrived.

I might -- might -- give a pass for tasering a kid cutting himself with glass, but now we have to ask: When it comes to non-lethal weapons, will "less injury" be offset by "greater abuse"? See also this Amnesty International press release.

More indicia that the "backlash" is not only petering out, but also backpedaling ever so slightly:

The Virginia House of Delegates approved a bill recently that will lead to repeal of a law that makes Virginia the only state in the union to prohibit private companies from offering health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of their employees.

The "no insurance" law prohibited health insurance providers, such as Blue Cross-Blue Shield, from providing employee health insurance policies to categories of persons other than an employee's married spouse or blood relative.

The effort to repeal the law was spearheaded by Virginia businesses, concerned about the competitive disadvantage created by the law. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce took the lead in the fight, noting that large businesses were declining to locate in Virginia because of the ban.

Virginia, land of the infamous (and short-lived) "bigot plate" proposal and renegade anti-gay school board members, tiptoed back from the Pit of Eternal Peril and is poised to scuttle an especially vicious law. And this symbolic if small victory comes fresh on the heels of the slightly smaller yet far more symbolic double-trouncing of Topeka's particularly obnoxious and loopy Reverend Fred Phelps and his would-be politician daughter.

Remind me again who has the momentum regarding gay rights?

It's one thing to choose the wrong side of history; it's quite another to choose the wrong side of capitalism. You'll lose every time, and you'll end up far more bloodied and bruised.

Meanwhile, PurpleScarf has much more on how another anti-gay Virginia delegate almost shot his state in the foot again, this time by using (and abusing) blood donor criteria as a front to further his bigotry agenda. Read his whole post -- funny and sad at the same time.

Related Posts:
A Quick "Democracy At All Costs" Question
Markets in Gay Rights: Auto Companies Give Money -- and a Warning
Markets in Gay Rights: University of Wisconsin "Losing Outstanding Candidates"
Who Has the Gay Marriage Momentum?
On Gay "Neighborhoods"

A hodgepodge of quick updates to a variety of past topics:

ITEM: Who better to protest against government than ... the government?

I arrived late and was actually disappointed to see that by 5:45 the troops were already trooping back to their publicly funded school-bus transportation... I had to scramble around to get a few quotes from the ever moving crowd who were either chasing buses or the TV camera's [sic] a lot faster than I could write.

I also had a tough time finding an authentic non-aligned "parent". The crowd appeared to be comprised of mostly teachers, teachers union rep's, public school administrators and their lobbyist's [sic]...

This is a description of a rally, at the Minnesota state capital, for more teacher funding. Public employees (i.e., taxpayer-funded) using public resources (i.e., taxpayer-funded) to protest the state's public school finance scheme (i.e., taxpayer-funded). And of course, had any of those school buses been in an accident, then who would have funded the lawsuits afterwards?

"Why Should I Care?" I have a real problem with people who engage in what I call "political child abuse." Previous posts here and here and here. You want to protest? Fine, but use your own vehicles and your own money and leave the kids at home. It's wrong to use them as props. You would think that teachers might have more ethics than that. I guess they're union drones first, custodians of the future second.

ITEM: Kobe Bryant settles his infamous sexual assault case --

With a terse news release and an even terser court filing, the sordid sexual assault case against Kobe Bryant that gripped the nation abruptly ended with an agreement that ensures the NBA star never goes to trial for what happened in a hotel room two years ago.
...
"The parties and their attorneys have agreed that no further comments about the matter can or will be made," the statement said. A one-sentence motion for dismissal stipulating that the case can never be refiled was filed simultaneously in Denver federal court.

"Why Should I Care?" The real news about this case was the bizarre, and inexcusable, abuse of the system in allowing the victim to remain anonymous in the civil lawsuit. I blogged about it at length -- see here and here. It's one thing to protect the identity of a child in court, or someone who faces physical harm should they testify in a criminal prosecution. But to then allow this woman to sue and to remain anonymous was, in my opinion, a denial of the public's right to a public trial. And now the case goes out with a whimper (and a settlement). What a bad procedural precedent to set.

ITEM: "House Panel Approves $284B Highway Bill" --

A House committee on Wednesday cleared the road for action on a six-year, $284 billion highway and mass transit bill, a major jobs and infrastructure initiative that stalled last year over a money dispute between the White House and Congress.

This year, with the White House on board and the threat of a presidential veto removed, chances for passage are improved, although some in the Senate are still pressing for more money and there's still an issue over how to most fairly distribute the funds among the states.

"Why Should I Care?" Federal highway funding is an excellent introduction to the death of fiscal federalism -- see here and here. Is there any particular reason why states shouldn't build (and pay for) their own roads? Wouldn't that be the way to "most fairly distribute the funds"? I've blogged about highway funding before, and about the single biggest parasite from it -- Alaska (see also here).

ITEM: ChoicePoint, the data collection company that got into some hot water recently for getting scammed into revealing confidential information on countless individuals, seems to have a pattern of being duped --

Two Nigerian-born siblings were arrested in 2002 on charges of tapping into ChoicePoint Inc.'s vast database of personal information, a security breach similar to one announced by the data warehouser last month, a newspaper reported Wednesday. A company spokesman said he did not know if the problem was made public.

Bibiana Benson, 39, and her brother, Adedayo Benson, 38, gained access to at least 7,000 people and used their identities to buy at least $1 million in merchandise, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing court documents.

"Why Should I Care?" The ChoicePoint debacle, coupled with the Paris Hilton cellphone incident, may, according to CNET, create the "perfect storm" to jump-start Congress into passing new electronic privacy law:

That avalanche of high-profile breaches in the last month has captured the attention of a growing number of U.S. senators, mainly Democrats, who have called for new laws as a response. Sen. Arlen Specter has pledged to convene hearings in his Judiciary committee, often an initial step in the legislative process.

It seems odd to me: When people want to see a "right to privacy," they have no problem whatsoever finding one and working to protect it. But when "privacy" is about what goes on in the bedroom, suddenly the "right to privacy" seems to evaporate in the eyes of many politicians and jurists. Strange. (Hat tip to PrivacySpot.)

The Good News:

An appeals court in New Jersey upheld the trial court's dismissal of defamation claims against a community website forum operator, invoking an immunity provision of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 [47 USC 270].
...
In 1999 defendant Moldow created a website featuring information about local government activities in the New Jersey town of Emerson. The site contained various features including a message forum where citizens could post messages anonymously.

After some time, certain anonymous visitors to the website began posting defamatory messages in the forum about various local elected officials, including [the plaintiffs, who] filed suit against Moldow alleging defamation and other causes of action, on the theory that Moldow was liable for defamation as a publisher of the statements in his capacity as operator of the website.

The trial court dismissed the action against Moldow, finding that he was immune from liability under a provision of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 which provides that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider," and a related "good samaritan" provision discussed below. The appellate court affirmed...

MY TAKE: A small lower court victory, perhaps, but a welcome one. Just as Justice Cardozo reminded us that there is no such thing as "negligence in the air," so too should there be no liability for "defamation in the air" (or in the Blogosphere). I have no problem cleaning up the comments on my blog for my own sake and the sake of my readers, but I shouldn't feel compelled to do so out of a fear of liability. The chilling effect is simply too great for too little benefit. Liability should generally be limited to the person actually posting the comment. (Hat tip to PrivacySpot.)

The bad news:

Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision.
...
Smith and the other two Republican commissioners wanted to appeal the Internet-related sections. But because they couldn't get the three Democrats to go along with them, what Smith describes as a "bizarre" regulatory process now is under way.

MY TAKE: From my cold, dead keyboard. Read the whole thing.

I'm a little late to the party, but I wanted to bring everyone's attention to this must-read post and corresponding TCS piece by Arnold Kling on the mathematization of academic economics:

The raising of the mathematical bar in graduate schools over the past several decades has driven many intelligent men and women (perhaps women especially) to pursue other fields. The graduate training process filters out students who might contribute from a perspective of anthropology, biology, psychology, history, or even intense curiosity about economic issues. Instead, the top graduate schools behave as if their goal were to produce a sort of idiot-savant, capable of appreciating and adding to the mathematical contributions of other idiot-savants, but not necessarily possessed of any interest in or ability to comprehend the world to which an economist ought to pay attention.

Oh dear lord, the flashbacks, the flashbacks! The voices equations in my head have returned! Oh god, make them stop!

Actually I was able to muddle through most of my Ivy League graduate economics education without much issue. My calculus was fine, my matrix algebra adequate, and I could even handle (some of) the differential topology in my Advanced Microeconomic Theory Seminar with Yves Balasko. (Of course, differential topology is so relevant to real-world economics -- comes in quite handy when you're trying to choose between Colgate and Crest at the local Wal-Mart, assuming you have a local Wal-Mart. Try reducing that travesty to a mathematical equation!)

Anyway, Kling's main thesis -- that mathematics "blanks out" too much real-world economic phenomena -- is hardly limited to the uppermost echelons of graduate programs. I'm willing to bet you encountered it in your high school or freshman economics courses.

Remember about "factors of production" -- the stuff that makes other stuff? How many of you learned that there were three: land, labor and capital? Each metric was easy to measure, either in real terms (e.g., acres) or dollar-denominated (e.g., purchased machinery). You might have learned that each factor had a "return" associated with it -- rent for land, wage for labor, interest for capital. You might have learned that "profit" was merely a residual, what was left over after the "returns" were paid to the "factors of production."

There are two reasons why basic microeconomics might be taught this way. One is because it lends itself to mathematics: Y = f(L, l, K). P = q(p-c) - F, etc. (Please forgive me if I don't waste energy on figuring out how to paste symbols in Blogger.)

But, as Kling explains, this is all wrong. There's a fourth factor of production: entrepreneurship, just as real and just as vital as land, workers or machines. And profit is not merely a "residual," it's the return to entrepreneurship, just like rent is to land or wages are to employees.

But entrepreneurship doesn't lend itself well to mathematical representation. It consists of two separate activities: innovation and risk-taking. Finance theorists (i.e., the MBAs rather than the Ph.D.s) have done a fairly good job of mathematizing the latter (again, Kling rightly points this out), but how do you reduce innovation to an equation? How do you model it mathematically? For the most part, the mathematical economists can't, so they simply blank it out. And in the process they completely emasculate advanced theoretical economics.

The other reason mathematical economics is a bad idea, the reason I think Kling overlooks, is political. Once you blank out entrepreneurship, it's very easy to blank out the entrepreneur. He too becomes a "residual," unimportant and ignored by economic theory. At most, he becomes a blackjack player -- not really "doing" anything except processing rules, plugging inputs into these cherished equations, and occasionally making mistakes in the process. But he himself exists outside the equations, contributing little if anything to them, and therefore contributing little if anything to the economy.

From there it's only a few baby steps to Karl Marx. Why should there even be such a thing as "profit"? If entrepreneurship doesn't count, if it isn't part of the equation, then why should the owners even get a profit --why should profit itself be part of the equation? In fact, why should there even be owners? They too are outside the equation -- the mathematicians say so!

The rest, tragically, is history.

Other thoughts on the Kling piece at Catallarchy and Eclectic Econoclast.

Related Posts:
An Econ 101 Moment
How Evolution is Like Economics
Three More Centuries of Malthus Being Wrong
A Real Turkey...Or Is It Nominal?
(Mis)behavioral Economics and Social Security Reform

We all know that a principal tenet of anti-gay bigots is the elevation of unbridled democracy (a/k/a mob rule) over the protection of the rights of individuals and insular minorities.

So what was up with this?

An effort to repeal a city ordinance that protects gays from discrimination failed on Tuesday night, and a lesbian city councilwoman turned back a primary challenge by the granddaughter of the minister who orchestrated the repeal campaign.

The minister, the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., who is known for picketing the funerals of AIDS victims, wanted to remove from the books a city ordinance that prohibits discrimination against gays in municipal hiring. The repeal ... would have barred Topeka from reinstating such protections for 10 years.

So if, hypothetically, the initiative had passed and after, say, five years, the people of Topeka collectively decided, "Oops, maybe this wasn't such a bright idea..." and subsequently wanted to repeal the repeal, they, um, couldn't? How is that respectful of the "democratic process?"

But of course the bigots have no interest whatsoever in the "democratic process." For one thing, judicial review (oh, sorry, the "activist judge") is as much a part of the "democratic process" in our constitutional republic as is the voting booth.

Moreover, those who pray (and offer human sacrifices) at the altar of the "democratic process" should not be interested in enacting state constitutional amendments (let alone a federal marriage amendment), since such measures are decidedly undemocratic. Surely a mundane, plain vanilla law -- one that can more easily be amended or repealed as the will of the electorate changes -- is more "democratic" than a rigid, constitutional amendment with its high hurdles.

Stated differently, why are the bigots so afraid of the "democratic process" -- which they claim to cherish -- that they strive so hard to quash it when it might work against them?

Could it be because they know they're on the wrong side of history, and because they know that it's just a matter of time before their failure is complete, so the best they can hope for in the meantime is to make the quest for equal treatment as difficult as possible before it's finally and inevitably won?

"Scorched-earth policy" as applied to democracy -- better to destroy it than let the opposition benefit from it.

Remind me again how it's not about naked bigotry?

Related Posts:
Who Has the Gay Marriage Momentum?
Do The Gay Marriage Math -- Part Two
Naked Bigotry Update: Kansas Church to Protest Other Churches
What's the Matter with (Statutory Rape in) Kansas?
Damn Right They're Bigots

Not exactly as blogworthy as the Roper Supreme Court juvenile death penalty decision, but I wanted to get this latest example of sloppiness from 365news.com into the 'sphere:

Hotel billionaire Leona Helmsley is too old to be sued for making alleged death threats against a gay former employee a New York City judge has ruled.
...
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub said going to trial would be unfair to Helmsley, 84. He said that Helmsley is a "woman of advanced years" who shouldn't be forced to reconstruct the past.

Well that certainly doesn't sound fair to the poor gay plaintiff. Perhaps the judge is a bigot too. Typical anti-gay bias. Let the outrage commence!

Just one problem: that's not what happened.

Ward, 49, made the charges in court papers hoping he could boost the damages in a 2002 lawsuit from $10 million to $55 million.

But Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub said adding claims would be unfair to Helmsley, 84, whom he called a "woman of advanced years" who shouldn't be forced to reconstruct the past.
...
Ward sued Helmsley for wrongful termination in 2001 in federal court. They settled the suit, though he now says he was intimidated into settling. He sued her again in state court for $10 million for breaching the settlement by talking about him to a reporter.

There's a slight difference, well actually a huge difference, between being too old to be sued and being protected by res judicata. The (victorious) gay plaintiff had his bite at the legal apple and is now looking for seconds at the expense of the (old) Helmsley, who had already been haled into court three years ago and had a judgment entered against her.

Without getting into all the procedural muck (which isn't my area of expertise anyway), the basic rule is that if you decide to sue someone, you typically are required to sue for everything you can, all at once. Defendants (and courts) aren't ATMs to keep hitting up over and over for the same incident ("transaction or occurrence" in legalese).

But that isn't sufficiently anti-gay sounding for a gay news service, so some creative paraphrasing and omitting was required, and -- presto! -- a gay bias headline.

Sad. We have enough bias and bigotry problems without sensationalist gay wires inventing false ones.

Related Posts:
Bush Not as Anti-Gay as He's Spun to Be?
"Gays are So Rich... (How Rich are They? ...)"
Market Research Firm Puts Out Another Questionable Gay Report
I Swore I Wouldn't Blog About Martha...

One word: Seigniorage --

Amid the drama of American Indian drumming, singing and dancing, in the presence of the revered American Bison, United States Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore presented the new 2005 American Bison nickel to the American people in a Capitol Hill ceremony. [Image.]

"The 2005 American Bison nickel will look significantly different from any nickels you’ve seen," she told the crowd. "It marks the first time that the image of President Jefferson has ever changed on the nickel, and we have the word Liberty in his handwriting." Looking at Cody, the live Buffalo, she added, "There is a beautiful, strong, classic American bison on the reverse."

But wait, there's more:

The post office is giving a nod to the plants and animals of the Northeastern forests in a new set of stamps being issued Thursday. The 10-stamp set shows a forest scene with 27 plants and animals featured. The common and scientific names are printed on the back of the stamps. The Northeast Deciduous Forst sheet is the latest in a series detailing various environments across the country.

Talk about easy money -- just keep banging out new coins and new stamps and all those numismatists and philatelists will completely finance the government by feeding their addiction for new collectibles. So, through the magic of seigniorage, the (plain vanilla) money just keeps pouring in! Voila -- no Social Security crisis, no budget deficits!

Looking at some numbers: The United States Mint generated $1.65 billion in revenue in FY 2004 and contributed $665 million in earnings to the Treasury. So, since the total federal budget for FY2004 was $2.23 trillion, we only need to expand the U.S. Mint's seigniorage program by a factor of 3,352 to eliminate all federal taxes -- either come up with 3,352 times as many new coins like the buffalo bison nickel, or get 3,352 times as many people to start collecting coins.

Well, that was a nice little libertarian fantasy -- lasted almost 10 minutes.

In just one year, $2.23 trillion dollars spent by the federal government -- an awful lot of (buffalo) (bison) nickels and dimes (state) quarters.

(As for stamp collecting, unlike the braggarts at the U.S. Mint, the U.S. Postal Service is suspiciously secretive about how much revenue it derives from philately. I was unable to find any hard data on the topic.)

POST SCRIPT: Oh wait, the government could also start selling baseball cards to raise money! Oops, sorry -- that money flows the other way.

(Hat tip to Arkanssouri.)

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New York City Mayor Bloomberg refuses to rule out future tax increases:

Read Mayor Bloomberg's lips: no promises when it comes to possible tax hikes.

"Nobody could prudently predict what would go on in the future," Bloomberg said when asked at a Crain's forum if he'd commit to no tax increases in his second term.

This is of course invalid on its face. Fiscal entities -- whether cities, states, nations, businesses or plain old individuals -- strive to predict the future and plan for it all the time. The entire Social Security reform debate centers on people trying to predict the future (or lying about those predictions). All of my field (equity research), indeed all of investment banking, indeed all of Wall Street itself, is predicated on trying to predict the future. One might even dare posit that Bloomberg's own company is a grand exercise in aiding the quest for reliable prognostication.

But Bloomberg, borrowing every fiscal policy mistake from another failed Republican, hides behind the cloak of "wouldn't be prudent." Apparently Bloomberg not only can't see the future, but he also has trouble seeing the past. Go figure.

But wait, there's more:

"My objective would be to try to bring taxes down. But when you say taxes are too high, you're talking about a number out of context. The real issue is after you pay your taxes, what kind of a life do you have?" he said.

Read that again -- don't focus on what we take in taxes, focus on what we let you keep.

Can't afford to go to the movies every week because of high income taxes? So what -- you can still go every other week. Can't afford the property taxes on a doorman one-bedroom on the Upper East Side? So what -- we're letting you afford a walk-up studio in Hell's Kitchen. Can't afford to send your kids to private school? So what -- look at this magnificent free public school system that your kids might actually survive.

This is without doubt the most brazen acknowledgement of the penny in your pocket rule I have ever seen from a politician -- even worse than Hillary's neo-communism. So of course it's coming from a "Wall Street Republican." Only in New York.

Oh, and as a denouement:

In his first State of the City speech, Bloomberg pledged not to raise taxes -- only to follow up a year later by imposing increases on property, income and sales taxes.

Well, I suppose Bloomberg wasn't totally untrue -- after all, he certainly couldn't predict the future very well back then, could he?

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For those of you who followed the flu vaccine crisis of last autumn, Chiron, the company whose U.K. manufacturing facility was shut down by regulators due to concerns over contamination, has been given clearance to resume operations. Just in time for the flu season to have passed.

In the end, the U.S. government "guidelines" (which of course turned out to be rules) resulted in a severe misdeployment and waste of what vaccine was available. The government's overreactive intervention ended up worsening the shortage, in a sad farce that I dubbed "Keynesian vaccination policy."

Let's hope the politicians and health-o-crats let this sad episode pass into memory without any long-term interventionist damage to our vaccine supply (i.e., our vaccine market).

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Fun with newsfeeds:

Fishermen often utter obscenities and throw their catch back in the water after hooking the long, skinny, ugly fish known as a garfish.

What they probably don't know is that, according to Alabama law, they are supposed to suddenly become the garfish's executioner.

The Alabama House passed a bill Tuesday to repeal a 1943 law requiring fishermen who catch a garfish -- also called "junk fish" or "trash fish" -- to kill it rather than throw it back in the water to be caught again.

Rep. Jeff McLaughlin said he's not sure why lawmakers initially wanted to kill the garfish. But he said the bill he sponsored is part of his effort to highlight some of Alabama's archaic laws and outdated language in the state constitution.

"I just want to point out the odd laws we don't need anymore," he said.

McLaughlin has also introduced a bill to remove language from the constitution that requires the Legislature to regulate dueling.

No word yet on whether the 1943 law can be constitutionally applied to 16- and 17-year old garfish.

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A well-deserved hat tip to Urban Grind for unearthing this piece in the Fashion section [sic!] of the New York Times:

There was a time not long ago when earning six figures was a significant milestone among upwardly mobile professionals. If you were young and single in one of the nation's big cities, you could live in a building with a doorman, drive a European car, eat at fine restaurants and vacation in Jackson Hole. For married people it meant a suburban home and college savings accounts for the children.

Beyond the lifestyle, $100,000 was a psychic achievement; it meant joining the meritocratic elite. The prospect of "six figures" kept white-collar workers toiling for 20 years, confident that hard work would be rewarded and that the American social contract was securely in place.
...
Even in New York City, only 7.5 percent of full-time workers make that much. But $100,000 isn't what it used to be. It has been devalued, in the practical sense by inflation and psychologically because it is now a relatively common salary for newcomers in fields like law and banking. For today's executive strivers in the more affluent cities, there is a new grail: $200,000.

The piece is full of little factoids about inflation, geography, occupational strata, etc., not to mention the obligatory "being rich sucks" comment from my own personal Saruman, Robert Frank (my dissertation adviser in grad school). But the real kicker about the piece is identified by Urban Grind:

As I see it, these "chi chi" types would have more money in their hands if their asses weren't being taxed so heavily. But this being The New York Times, no mention is made of taxes.

The Times probably didn't have the column-inches to discuss all the different taxes paid by New Yorkers: city income tax, city sales tax, city property tax, general corporation tax, plus dozens of nickel-and-dime taxes that no one could possibly keep track of.

Here's a good if dated summary of New York City's stratospheric tax burden by Steven Malanga; a slightly more recent analysis here. Read them and weep.

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This really annoys me:

Herb Vest believes that true love should come with a criminal-background check. Vest is the chief executive of True.com, an online dating service that pledges to verify whether your dream date is a convicted felon or, worse yet, already married.
...
This would be an engaging but otherwise unremarkable business plan, except for one twist. Instead of competing head-to-head with his rivals in the business world, Vest has veered into the political world by pressing for new laws that would put True.com's competitors at a severe disadvantage.

Vest has managed to convince legislators in states including California, Texas, Virginia, and Michigan to sponsor bills that would target rival dating sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Spring Street Networks, craigslist and eHarmony.

Those sites would be required to stamp this stark warning atop every e-mail and personal ad, in no less than 12-point type:

"WARNING: WE HAVE NOT CONDUCTED A FELONY-CONVICTION SEARCH OR FBI SEARCH ON THIS INDIVIDUAL."
...
True.com, of course, has ensured that it would be exempt from the warning requirement. So would any other Internet matchmaker -- not that any other company qualifies -- that "conducts a search for the person's felony and sexual offense convictions through a regularly updated database" that "contains more than 170 million criminal records and sex offender registries."

It used to be "build a better mousetrap." Now it's "buy a better politician."

But of course this is just new technology, not new tactics. Government-imposed barriers to entry (i.e., the politics of pull) are the quick and easy way to make a buck. Quality, variety, innovation and, of course, price cutting (i.e., capitalism) are the hard way. Go figure.

I've been somewhat silent and inactive on the whole topic of domestic trade barriers such as licensure and credentialing. If you want to learn about some other horror stories, the heroes at the Institute for Justice have plenty for you.

It's a sad point to concede, really. Licensing can, if implemented honestly, be an economically efficient operating framework within a jurisdiction. Consumers, in theory, not only know that the licensed practitioner has demonstrated a certain minimum quantum of education, training or competence, but also -- and this was why I was a holdout -- have easier recourse in the case of a dispute. If you're licensed, then the state knows where to find you (e.g., for service of process), making it easier for substandard practitioners to be sued, fined, barred, etc.

But I'm coming to the realization that these benefits are negated, by orders of magnitude, via the anti-competitive impact of reduced supply and innovation.

Oh well.

Hopefully this obnoxious maneuver by Vest will wither on the vine as its sheer stupidity, not to mention its fundamental unfairness, are exposed by the media and the blogosphere. If not, then perhaps some merry libertarian litigators will find the time to help all those looking for love -- non-felon or otherwise -- in cyberspace.

Hat tip to PrivacySpot.

"Gay white libertarian lawyer-banker; 38; literate, over-educated and rich with cute dog, seeks non-felon for..."

Via Ryan Sager comes word that the Manhattan Libertarian Party (we actually have one?) is suing to block the city's excessively generous campaign finance program, about which I blogged back in October:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Campaign Finance Board Chairman Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., the Campaign Finance Board, and the City of New York are named as defendants in the complaint. The complaint alleges that compelling taxpayers to bankroll political speech with which they disagree violates the free speech clauses of the New York State and U.S. Constitutions. [Party Chair Jim] Lesczynski is asking the court for a permanent injunction blocking the Campaign Finance Program.

Yeah, right, good luck with that. Not my area of expertise, but it seems to me that if they can do it at the presidential level then they can do it at the city level. On the other hand, perhaps the New York State Constitution may be interpreted to bar such a program at the state and local level. Stay tuned...

What concerned me more in my October post was the unequal treatment the City Council was trying to impose on Mayor Bloomberg:

Currently, candidates for city office get $4 in taxpayer money for each dollar they raise, in exchange for limiting individual donations and overall spending. Under the new legislation, when one candidate spends more than $2.8 million, the others get 5-1 matching, or 6-1 matching if one candidate spends more than $17 million.

As I wrote back then: "And these are the same people who may run against Blooperberg in the next race?!? Boss Tweed would be proud. Even Congress can't give themselves money that sleazily."

I see no reason to change that view.

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Who else but the Ayn Rand Institute? Actually not a bad job either, and not as impudent as one might expect from a direct Rand disciple like Harry Binswanger. These guys are getting mellow in their old age (sorta kinda). Give it a read.

UPDATE: Here's a similar but more legally-oriented fisking by leading law scholar Douglas Laycock:

So we've got three out the 10 that have some corresponding provision in law. Now, it turns out, of course, that killing, stealing, perjuring and defamation are very basic principles that appear early in every legal system, including legal systems not affected by the Ten Commandments.

Dispatches culls down the key portions of Laycock's presentation.

Earlier today I blogged about how Americans are not only living longer, but also living healthier and more active in their old age.

Turns out this fact has not be overlooked by the AARP:

The AARP launched an online service Monday designed to link workers aged 50 and older with job opportunities from a group of preselected employers -- the latest in AARP's efforts to draw attention to the concerns of an aging work force.

The program, which AARP calls its Workforce Initiative, centers on a Web site that highlights 13 employers, including information about their benefits programs, locations and work conditions. The site also allows members to link to the employers' Web sites for further information or to fill out job applications. Several of the selected employers are also staffing agencies that will attempt to link job searchers with their clients.
...
The idea for AARP's Workforce Initiative grew out of a partnership with Home Depot, which attempts to diversify its work force by linking with government agencies and nonprofits, like AARP. Home Depot's partnership with AARP was launched in February 2004, and the group was immediately inundated with calls from members, said Allen.

First and foremost, I wonder how those "pre-selected employers" are actually pre-selected -- might some Ka-Ching! be involved in the form of kickbacks to the AARP? Wouldn't be the first time.

Anyway, if it weren't for the Social Security disaster, I might suggest that a program such as this is exactly what an organization like the AARP should be doing. But AARP can't have it both ways, arguing against any changes to a program that its own initiatives demonstrate are totally obsolete. If today's older Americans don't need to retire when they used to, and don't want to retire when they used to, then why should younger workers forfeit one-eighth of they paycheck to subsidize those same healthier, more active older Americans to do what they neither need nor want to do? How exactly is that "old age insurance" and not a brazen redistributionist bribe?

And as for private accounts: since, as the AARP initiative demonstrates, older Americans not only can work longer but often actually want to work longer, that only argues even more strongly for private accounts -- the longer you work, the more you can save, with less annual volatility in your expected returns should you choose to invest in stocks (and always remember incidentally what opponents of reform want you to forget -- private accounts would include a cash or money-market option; absolutely no one would ever be required to invest in the "risky" stock market).

Meanwhile, the current Social Security system, which the AARP claims is a "success" in "no need of reform," includes harsh penalties for those who actually do choose to work past retirement. Not only are Social Security benefits now subject in part to federal income tax (a "guarantee" that the government flagrantly revoked), but benefits are reduced for those who continue to work after Social Security's early retirement age (the infamous "two-for-one" rule, which reduces Social Security benefits by $1 for every $2 earned in wages before "full retirement" at 65).

Well, AARP, which is it? Is the current system "correct" and your worker initiative "wrong" ... or the other way around? Hmm?

That's what I thought...

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Those following the asbestos settlement fund proposal currently before the Senate Judiciary Committee should review the op-ed in today's Washington Times by its principal sponsor, Senator Arlen Specter.

As Specter emphasizes:

Workers exposed to asbestos would be paid based on severity of injuries like workmen's compensation without proving in court who would be liable under existing tort laws, eliminating high costs of litigation and contingent attorneys' fees. Unlike current law where exposure may be compensated for potential future injuries, damages can be collected only on proof of existing harm.

Sounds about right. Compensating people for the probabilistic harm of future injury is not necessarily a bad idea; neither is awarding the costs of medical monitoring. But in the case of asbestos, where resources to pay claims are limited (because most of the companies have gone or are going bankrupt), preserving those funds for actual harm of future victims must take precedent over potential harm of present victims. There simply isn't enough money to go around. Judgment-proof, or near-judgment-proof, defendants are a sad fact of judicial life.

The asbestos fund proposal is a mammoth piece of legislation covering a mammoth issue, yet seems to be receiving scant media attention (as opposed to the relentless barrage of television commercials for personal injury attorneys trolling for asbestos clients). As Specter notes:

[A] unique experiment was undertaken with Senior Federal Judge Edward R. Becker agreeing to serve as a mediator. Judge Becker and I have met the stakeholders in 36 mediation sessions since August 2003, working through hundreds of issues. Those conferences produced many compromises and narrowed areas of disagreement on many issues. I think it accurate to say that no bill has received such extensive "defacto" hearings or mark-up. I cannot conceive of more strenuous effort being directed to any legislation. Twenty-seven Senate offices have participated.

In light of the looming COX-2 litigation explosion, not to mention whatever other product liability nightmares loom in our future, this issue and this bill should be on more people's radar screens.

UPDATE: Point of Law Forum -- "In any event, the devil will be in the details of how claims are to be processed and what medical standards will be used..." No disagreement from me.

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A quick follow-up to my previous post on the reliability (or lack thereof) of Social Security actuarial assumptions:

Declines in death rates from most major causes -- including heart disease and cancer -- have pushed Americans' life expectancy to a record 77.6 years. Women are still living longer than men, but the gap is narrowing.
...
Research indicates there also is an increase in active life expectancy, said Mary A. Salmon, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina.

"It's not that we're having a lot of very old, sick people," she said in a telephone interview.

She added, "There has been lots of speculation on how this will affect Social Security, of course."

A common retort to the assertion that life expectancies will just keep going up and up forever is that most of the "easy" gains have already been achieved (e.g. hygiene and sanitation). Fair enough. But it is simply undeniable that, as smoking rates decline and death-preventing drugs such as statins and HIV medications become more powerful, and more ubiquitous, there are still major gains to be had in life expectancy.

Note also that is not only length of life, but also quality and health of life that is improving. Which, cold as it may sound, begs the question: If older Americans are so much healthier for so much longer, then do they still need to be bribed out of the labor force at 62 or 65 or 67 via Social Security?

When Social Security was enacted in 1935, life expectancy was 61.7 years and the retirement age was 65. Today life expectancy is 77.6 years and the retirement age is still 65. It's a pretty good bet that by the time the retirement age fully rises, from 65 to 67 in 2027, life expectancy will have increased by two years, if not more. This is a "smart," "successful" program?

So the question becomes: If Social Security is truly meant to serve as "old age insurance" rather than as a redistributionist tool of the socialists (more on that later today), shouldn't the definition of "old age" keep up with the times? Does Social Security as it exists today "make sense" as old-age insurance?

I wouldn't bet on it, especially not 12.4% of my paycheck.

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