A Stitch in Haste

I think I'm getting better at this "video editing" stuff:


Unfortunately the uploading process seems to skew the synchronization a bit. The version on my hard drive flows better with the end of the music. Oh well.

More videos forthcoming at the YouTube page.

(Incidentally, that's the flag of the Inca nation, not the gay pride flag.)

Time to clean out the aggregator —

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ITEM: The situation in Burma has become very troubling, as the military junta has cut off Internet access and apparently has spilled blood. It is for the moment very fashionable to care about Burma and to cheer on their protesting Buddhist monks, just as it is now very fashionable to call the country "Burma." Some of us, meanwhile, were well ahead of the curve.

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ITEM: The Senate is taking up a federal journalist shield law. I am on record as opposing "journalist privilege" for the simple reason that journalists are not privileged people. The Senate version does, on the other hand, extend to bloggers — a point of significant contention among various versions of the proposed privilege.

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ITEM: A proposal to implement the District Method of allocating Electoral College votes in California appears to have imploded. Watching the hysteria by radical liberals, who somehow consider California's 55 E.C. votes an entitlement, was both entertaining and informative. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: The Washington Post ran yet another feature article on the insanity underlying federal farm subsidies. This time we are shown how record high corn prices, proximately caused by Congress' capitulation to the ethanol mania, do not stop corn farmers — who are seeing both record incomes and record real estate prices for their farmland — from getting "annual automatic payments" of taxpayer money. The mind reels. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: The New Jersey government is undertaking a study to see whether that state's insulting "separate but equal" civil union regime for gay couples is indeed "equal." The answer, as we all knew from the outset, is of course, "Of course not."

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ITEM: A new study suggests that "in denial" gay college students (i.e., those who identify as straight but experience same-sex attraction) are significantly more likely than "out" students to ideate about suicide ("off the charts" is how the study's author describes it). "Out" gay youths are, meanwhile, also more likely to ideate about suicide than straight youths if they experience anti-gay harassment, but that is not new news. The study, meanwhile, was based on a relatively small sample size at the University of Washington; one wonders what kind of data a sample of students at Brigham Young or St. John's might produce. (Via InterstateQ.)

The lead blogger of Crime & Federalism is leaving that blawg to launch his own site. We await it eagerly.

In the meantime, I am substituting QuizLaw for C&F in The Elite Eleven. Light-hearted legal commentary with an emphasis on frivolous lawsuits. Good stuff.

What is The Elite Eleven?

Sticking with the dating service meme, let's see whether the lukettylwillie online dating service is any better than last week's:


So far, it seems that Greta is getting the most inquiries from potential suitors. Go figure.

Two dispatches from the Religion of Peace:

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ITEM: The Palestinian Authority has deployed "Ramadan police" --

One recent afternoon, vice squad Lieutenant Murad Qendah got a radio call telling him a suspect was spotted in the street imbibing karoub -- a local soft drink made from carob pods. He ordered his six-man squad to seize the man's papers pending investigation. Police say violators are usually held for 24 hours.

"If anybody violates respect for Ramadan in the street, we take their identity papers and hold them for investigation," said Qendah, 27, whose officers wear red shoulder badges that say "morality police."
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"The duty of the morality police is to preserve public manners in public places and to preserve the feelings of the people who are fasting," he said. "Violating the holiness of Ramadan is a violation of people's freedom."

Read that jaw-dropping illogic again: Exercising one's freedom not to be a Muslim violates the rights of Muslims. Can there be a better example of why the term "democratic theocracy" is simultaneously scary and silly?


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ITEM: What's wrong with this story --

In a recent episode of Saudi Arabia's most popular television show airing during Ramadan this month, a Saudi man of the future is seen sitting in his house as his daughter pulls into the driveway, her kids piled into the back of the car.

"Where have you been?" the father asks.

"The kids were bored, so I took them to the movies," she replies, matter-of-factly, as she gets out of the driver's seat.

A) Women are forbidden to drive in Saudi Arabia.
B) Movie theaters are forbidden in Saudi Arabia.
C) Both.

If this scenario is indeed the Saudi Arabia of the future, then it will be despite, not because of, that backward nation's adherence to Islam, which -- like almost all organized religions -- is anti-modernity, anti-progress, anti-liberation and generally anti-life-on-this-earth.

Two soulless anti-gay throwbacks to an embarrassing and disappearing time are back in the news for their last hurrahs.

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ITEM: Self-loathing gay senator Larry Craig is insolently breaking his pledge to resign on September 30, now that the judge hearing his frivolous petition to withdraw his guilty plea has indicated that no decision will be forthcoming before then. If there was a ever a real-word version of the decrepit, corrupted and corroded character Gollum, then it is Craig: a man so hopelessly at war with himself and so entranced by his ("precious") political office that he simply cannot grasp how meaningless, and how hopeless, his own repulsive existence has become. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: Meanwhile, another hopeless and repulsive man, retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace, was graciously afforded an opportunity to publicly redeem himself before a Senate committee after his bilious remarks about gays (not just gays in the military, but all gays). Instead, he told the senators, and gays across America, to suck it. Even in the Twenty-First Century, a senior military officer -- a man whose entire adult life has been devoted to devising more and better ways to kill and destroy -- can still, somehow, pretend to represent "God's Law." The road is long, very long. Previous post here.

Specifically, the Democrats of 1935:

"But I don't understand why somebody who makes $50 million a year pays Social Security tax on the first $97,000 and somebody -- and not on the rest..."

Edwards is of course referring to the (ever-increasing) Social Security wage cap.

The resolution of the wage cap non-paradox is of course self-apparent to anyone who, unlike Edwards, is not an advocate of class warfare. When Social Security was crafted as a cornerstone of New Deal socialism, its creators -- its liberal Democratic creators -- were adamant that the program be structured, at least nominally, as a compulsory retirement saving plan and not "just another entitlement."

The scheme had and has many more bells and whistles than that, to be sure. But the all-important prime directive behind Social Security's founding was that it would not be presented as "a welfare program." To this day, reminding people of Social Security's progressive-redistributionist (i.e., welfare) structure will bring the scheme's apologists chasing after you like screeching Ringwraiths.

This explains, for example, the (preposterous) description of payroll taxes as "contributions," the naming of the program as "insurance" (as in "Old Age Survivor and Disability Insurance") -- and the wage cap.

In the compulsory saving (or old-age insurance) model of Social Security, wage earners are required to "purchase" (i.e., fund via their payroll taxes) a future minimal annuity stream for their post retirement years. But it only takes so much money to fund such an annuity, just as it only takes so much money to buy a basic, minimal meal. Once a taxpayer has "paid up" for his future Social Security annuity (by hitting the wage cap), then why require her to buy even more annuity?

Remember: Paying more FICA tax means receiving a greater Social Security benefit after retirement. Scrap-the-cap is not "free money" for the government; it is offset by higher benefit obligations for the rich down the road.

So if the purpose of Social Security is not to soak the rich, but to ensure that no elderly be impoverished, then why require the rich to pay into the system beyond the "not impoverished" level? Why force them to buy very high benefits via very payroll taxes if the goal is merely to insure against elderly poverty? (Stated differently: Why force the rich to over-participate in Social Security to the point where they are more than simply "not-impoverished" but actually "very not-impoverished"?)

Meanwhile, scrap-the-cap would delay the Social Security crisis by a few years at best. It "solves" nothing. This demonstrates even more starkly why Edwards (and Obama and almost certainly Clinton) are flat-out lying when they advocate scrap-the-cap as a "solution" to the Social Security crisis rather than a naked class warfare appeal to radical liberal malcontents.

Bottom line: If you believe in Social Security as a "post-retirement safety net," then the cap is perfectly reasonable. It is fact absolutely necessary if the program is to be logically consistent. But if you believe in Social Security as backdoor income redistribution, as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge way to soak the rich (who, recall, also pay almost all the federal income tax), and as an insolent impediment to your dreams of class warfare, then the wage cap is indeed an illogical abomination.

No wonder John Edwards is confused.

(Via Tax Policy Blog.)

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Did I mention that scrap-the-cap would be the largest tax increase in American history?

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Meanwhile: Poor little rich boy. Or poor boy. Or something.

Now emphasizing the cradle:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government to help pay for future costs of college or buying a home.
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The New York senator did not offer any estimate of the total cost of such a program or how she would pay for it. Approximately 4 million babies are born each year in the United States.

As much as I yearn for the expiration of the Bush presidency, I fear, literally fear, the thought of any of the current hopeless gaggle of Democratic moral defectives taking office with a fully Democratic Congress cheering on his, or her, inevitable tax-and-spend fiscal recklessness. Why did the Republicans have to lose the Senate too? (With the odds of them also losing filibuster strength in 2008 increasing with each passing scandal.)

This is the woman who so brazenly lies about how her pervert husband was "fiscally responsible," taking credit for what was wholly attributable to gridlock, the dot.com boom and the (long-ago-squandered) "peace dividend"? This is the woman who lays claim to the legacy of "the era of big government is over"?

Meanwhile, economists might, if they thought it would do any good, point out the pesky fact that when you subsidize something, you get more of it. The solution to "economically disadvantaged children" is not paying people, especially economically disadvantaged people, to have more babies. How is this a difficult concept?

Add in the indoctrination factor: What better way to inculcate a love for, and a dependency on, the state (oops, sorry — the "village") than to point, literally from Day One, to your "baby bond" as proof of just how truly wonderful is Big Government (the era of which is, again, apparently not over). The government has loved you since the day you were born, so you should love it back until the day you die. Huxley would be humbled.

And in case you were wondering: Yes there are politicians even dumber than Senator Clinton:

"I think it's a wonderful idea," said Rep. Stephanie Stubbs Jones, an Ohio Democrat who attended the event and has already endorsed Clinton. "Every child born in the United States today owes $27,000 on the national debt, why not let them come get $5,000 to grow until their 18?"

The best way to offset $27,000 in debt is to go $5,000 deeper in debt? When a subprime mortgage company says that, it's "predatory lending." When a tax-and-spend hyper-liberal Democrat in Congress says it, it's "a wonderful idea."

You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

More thoughts at Catallarchy, no third solution, Greg Mankiw.

"Want a billion dollars? A cool, neat, billion dollars?"
        "Which I'll have to produce, for you to give me?"
--Atlas Shrugged

--Is it a proper function of government to impose dress codes on bank customers in order to deter robbers? (Via CrimProf Blog.)

--Another from CrimProf Blog: "Prison pink as punishment"?

--What is the point of expanding Medicare if doctors can't afford to accept it? (Via Kevin, M.D., who adds, "you can't practice medicine if you go bankrupt.")

--Should an apartment building be permitted to refuse to rent to a prospective tenant solely because he has a tattoo? (Via Fark.)

--A special guest question: "Do we have 5 Great Powers, based on nuclear weapons, or 12, based on GDP?" (To which I'll append another question: Shouldn't GDP per capita count too? Who can seriously suggest that India (relatively high GDP, but relatively low GDP per capita) is now or might soon be an economic "Great Power"?)

(Pun intended.)

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ITEM: A federal transit bureaucracy has cleared a $1.3 billion allocation of federal tax dollars to the New York City transit bureaucracy to help underwrite a new subway line under Second Avenue in Manhattan. Why exactly taxpayers in, e.g., California, Utah or Missouri (or, for that matter, New York) should be expected to pay for a new subway line in Manhattan — that they will likely never use in a neighborhood they will likely never visit — is left unexplained. But such "everybody pays for everything" schemes are, somehow, more "enlightened" than simply having those who use mass transit pay for it (with, if truly necessary, means-tested discounts for the poor). Previous post here.

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ITEM: Speaking of discounts —

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday proposed charging people less if they ride subways or buses during off-peak periods, in hopes of easing overcrowding during the commuting rushes.
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Elliot G. Sander, the chief executive of the authority, said the alternative structure could help address the system’s rush hour congestion as well as generate more money.
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It would be relatively easy to program the turnstiles to charge different rates at different hours, officials said.

One of the reasons that a flat-fare mass transit system actually made more sense than a distance-based fare was precisely because it was cheaper to implement: drop a coin (later a token) into a turnstile and go. No need for "honor systems" backed up by random ticket inspections and the threat of fines, as is done in most of Europe and in some American cities.

As I explained in this post: the cost structure of mass transit also argued in favor of a flat fare, despite the intuitive, almost market-sounding presumption of "ride farther, pay more." But the more accurate heuristic — "cost more, pay more" — actually argues against zone-based fares: the marginal cost of riding the subway a longer distance is essentially zero, hence the additional fare should also be zero (i.e., a flat fare).

But capacity pricing — a higher rush hour fare — was, as I noted, another question altogether. Now that the technology exists (via encodable fare cards and computerized turnstiles) to easily implement peak versus off-peak fares, it is perfectly sensible to do so. Those who cause the required capacity of the subway system to be larger at one time of day rather than at another (i.e., those who impose a significant marginal cost on the system) should be expected to pay for that larger capacity. "Peak versus off-peak fares" is a perfectly sensible system that should definitely be implemented.

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ITEM: A special subway "Question" — Cell phones on subway platforms: Normal technological progress or cacophonous nightmare?

Now available at the YouTube page.

September 21, 2007, episode: Abizaid, Ahmadinejad, HillaryCare 2.0, and a prediction!

Check it out.

It's not paranoia if they're really after you...

Now, for the first time, The Identity Project makes it easy for you to request the unclassified parts of the dossier that the DHS has complied on you.
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No reason need be given for the request. Costs may be charged for photocopying or printing your dossier, but not for the search itself.

Instructions and forms here.

A sample Passenger Name Record ("PNR") here.

(Via Boing Boing and Threat Level.)

This story will no doubt incense the malcontents who are still fuming over Apple's sloppy, but in no way immoral, timing of a significant price cut for the iPhone:

After taking apart the nano, iSuppli estimates that all the parts inside cost Apple $58.85 for the $149 model with 4 gigabytes of storage capacity, and $82.85 for the 8GB version priced at $199. For the lower-priced model, that would represent a drop of more than $13 per unit in costs compared with the 4GB nano that Apple introduced a year ago. That's also more than $31 cheaper per unit than the parts in the original 2GB nano introduced in September, 2005.

Charging $150 for $60 worth of stuff? What could possibly by more oppressive? Surely there's an antitrust violation in there somewhere. Just ask Microsoft.

Of course, the devil-slayer is in the details:

iSuppli's estimates don't account for nonhardware costs, including software development, intellectual property, packaging, final assembly, and distribution.

Stated differently, iSupply's statistics are totally worthless (except to a handful of trade specialists, engineers and investment analysts).

Still, the Big Lie of Marxist-Leninism and its offspring (modern socialism, the New Deal, antitrust law, Michael Moore, etc.) is precisely this notion that a manufactured good is nothing more than the sum of its components — the little pieces and the little people who put them together (after being shown how). The omissions — especially "development" but also marketing, financing, etc. — all the intangibles to which one cannot point as one can point to a button or battery, are somehow not "real components" and are therefore not "real costs."

From there, it is a short step to concluding that what's left over, even after subtracting intangible costs (i.e., "profit"), is even less "legitimate" a component of a good's price than the intangible costs of R&D or marketing. Profits cease to be a return to a factor of production, on an equal footing with wages, rent and interest, but instead are a "residual." Profits, in this model, are not ascribable to a "component" of the good being sold, and are therefore not "earned" in the way that the seller of a component or worker on the assembly line "earns" their share of the price of the final good.

Wholly preposterous. And yet that is precisely what almost every single introductory economics student in every capitalist economy is taught.

Entrepreneurship — innovation and risk-taking — is a factor of production no different in principle, or in ethical underpinning, from labor, capital or land. And the return to entrepreneurship — profit — is no different in principle, or in ethical underpinning, from wages, interest or rent. iPods do not grow on trees, and those who brought them into being are exploiting no one by selling them — at any price to any willing buyer. By definition, not a single supplier, employee or customer of Apple, or of any other entrepreneurial venture, has ever been "exploited" (outside of collusive rent-seeking conspiracies with government — which of course is not "capitalism" but rather the most insolent form of anti-capitalism). "Exploitative capitalism" is simply an oxymoron.

Add that to your intellectual playlist.

(Via Slashdot.)

In a recent "Questions" post I asked:

Should airlines show R-rated movies on flights with children on board?

Now two activist legislators have answered, "No!"

Prompted by parents' complaints about sex and violence in inflight movies, two congressmen introduced legislation Tuesday calling for airlines to create kid-friendly zones on planes.

"The airlines have chosen to put our children in a situation that I don't feel comfortable with," said Rep. Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat.

He and Republican Rep. Walter Jones, also from North Carolina, call their proposal the Family Friendly Flights Act.

"This legislation will be one avenue to help parents take back their right to determine the appropriateness of the content to which their children are exposed," Jones said in a statement.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Even conceding the notion of "airline as common carrier," with all that such a designation implies regarding non-discrimination and such, since when is there:

--A "right" to fly on an airplane at all?

(Note: A "right not to be discriminated against" is not the same as a "right to be accommodated in every way under every circumstance.")

--A "right to fly with small children at all"?

--A "right to fly with small children and not have their 'fragile little eyes' offended by the in-flight entertainment"?

This is the same kind of anti-capitalism, anti-property, anti-rights, warm-fuzzy-feeling nanny-statism underlying such insults to liberty as smoking bans in bars and trans fat bans in restaurants (not to mention the ever-popular, if ever-unconstitutional, bans on violent video game sales to minors). The only "right" implicated here is the right of a private firm to run its private business as it sees fit (i.e., to give customers -- rather than malcontent activists -- what they want and are willing to pay for).

If there is a demand for "family-friendly flights," then airlines will offer them. Compare the presence -- or absence -- of "G-rated flights" to, e.g., Chuck E. Cheese restaurants or Disney Cruise Line. Not to mention, of course, JetBlue's "screen in the headrest" cabin model, which is increasingly being imitated by other airlines and will likely become universal in a few years' time, making all this activist legislator chest-thumping moot anyway.

Demand creates it own supply. And a lack of demand explains -- and vindicates -- a lack of supply. No meddling by self-appointed "I'm smarter than you" politicians, who are merely pandering to a handful of whiner-brat parents, is required or justified.

Whether in the air, in the kitchen or behind the counter: Leave business to businesspeople.

It's entirely plausible:

A man accused of murder as a hate crime in the death of a gay man presented evidence of his own homosexuality in State Supreme Court yesterday. Prosecutors have said the defendant, Anthony Fortunato, 21, used his computer to lure the victim, Michael J. Sandy, 29, to a beach in Sheepshead Bay.

Mr. Sandy was chased into traffic, prosecutors said, and died of his injuries. During the cross-examination of a computer crimes detective, Mr. Fortunato's lawyer put into evidence gay pornographic images recovered from his client's e-mail account. The lawyer, Gerald J. Di Chiara, has said he hopes to show that because Mr. Fortunato is homosexual, he would be unlikely to single out a gay man to commit a crime against.

A few hasty stitches:

--Gay porn on a computer is not proof of gayness. Indicative, perhaps — but it could just as easily be indicative of a premeditated effort to avoid a hate crimes charge (i.e., he's merely posing as gay to avoid the anti-gay presumption). Is the defendant that clever, or that stupid? Who knows?

--In any event, there is no shortage of gays who hate other gays.

--Most importantly, one must remember that the term "hate crime" is sloppy shorthand. "Hate" is not an element of most "hate crime" laws, and definitely not New York's:

A person commits a hate crime when he or she commits a specified offense and either:

(a) intentionally selects the person against whom the offense is committed or intended to be committed in whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct, or

(b) intentionally commits the act or acts constituting the offense in whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct.

So, for instance, a mugger who intentionally selects as his prey an elderly person need not "hate" the elderly to be guilty of violating New York's "hate crime" law. He need only believe, correctly or incorrectly, that the elderly are, e.g., weaker or more frail than others and therefore easier to prey upon. By this standard, an elderly mugger who targets an elderly victim has still violated the hate crime law, even in the absence of any "hatred" of the elderly.

Similarly, a robber who intentionally selects as his prey a Hasidic man near 47th Street in Manhattan need not be anti-Semitic to be guilty of violating New York's "hate crime" law. He need only believe, correctly or incorrectly, that Hasidic men are more likely to be carrying diamonds and therefore represent, probabilistically, a more lucrative target. By this standard, a Jewish robber who targets a Jewish victim has still violated New York's hate crime law, even in the absence of any "hatred" of Jews.

So too with gay-on-gay violence. Despite the unfortunately inaccurate term — "hate crime" — such laws are better labeled as "victim targeting" crimes. To target a gay victim in any way because of his gayness is the punishable aggravator, not "hatred" of gays per se. Just as to target women because of their gender, or the elderly because of their age, or the disabled because of their condition, all trigger the "hate crime" offense escalation, even in the absence of any "hate," commonly defined.

This caveat is an important element underpinning why "hate crime" laws are not nearly as pernicious as some libertarians like to insist. The "punishing thought" meme is indeed chilling, but wholly misplaced. As I have explained previously, we punish the same crime differently under different circumstances all the time. To use victim targeting — which is not synonymous with "hate" or "thought" — as a differentiator is neither subjective, offensive nor totalitarian. It is, generally if not always, an objective and reasonable calculus in criminal law.

A "gay-on-gay hate crime" is not a reductio ad absurdum. It is merely a demonstration of the need for better syntax.

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Meanwhile, tomorrow the Senate takes up the Matthew Shepard Act (S.1105), which adds sexual identity to the pre-existing federal hate crime law. Even if you find hate crime laws problematic, you should still insist that such laws that are already on the books be applied intelligently and consistently — which demands that sexual orientation be included. This is the same argument as with the radical libertarian position on marriage: do not use your general distaste for "government being in the marriage business" as an excuse to oppose fair and equal access to marriage for gays.

No wonder class warriors such as John Edwards and Barack Obama are so incensed. Just look at the absolute squalor now spreading across America:

Lori and Steven Siravo earn $56,000 a year and say they can't afford health insurance.

They consider themselves lucky to live in New Jersey, where the family's income isn't too high to qualify their 16-year-old daughter, Carlie, for U.S. government-subsidized coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
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Steven, 49, drives a Chevrolet Caprice Classic that's almost 20 years old, and she drives a 5-year-old Chevy Monte Carlo. The above-ground pool out back is 17 years old, bought when "we had money" before Carlie was born, Lori said.

The one luxury is a full-size pinball machine Steven bought for his wife on her 40th birthday.

The family's monthly bills consume most of their take-home income. Pulling out her checkbook, Lori said there's the mortgage ($1,500), utilities ($743), phones and Internet service ($200), car insurance and gasoline ($205), property taxes ($230), basic cable television ($48), food ($600) and credit-card payments ($325) on an outstanding $11,000 balance. That's $46,212 a year, not including clothes, school books and extra-curricular activities for Carlie.
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There's also $352 a month on a home-equity loan the Siravos took out to send Carlie to a private Catholic high school.

Read that again: Apparently "poverty in America" now means having "only" two cars, "only" basic cable, "only" an above-ground pool and "only" a private education. Oh, and "only" one pinball machine.

If that's your (deprived) lifestyle, then you are, to SCHIP apologists, "poor" and in need of health insurance welfare underwritten by other people's taxes.

This is what Democrats decry as "poverty in America." These are the people to whom President Bush is being "cruel" by threatening a veto of SCHIP expansion. These are the miserable, contemptible, utterly hopeless forty-something whiner-brats who lay claim to other people's income, insisting that — their words — "life is stressful enough without worrying about your health."

Or, apparently, worrying about being middle-class leeches on other taxpayers.

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UPDATE: Just to be clear, this family is not "uninsurable." They have access to typical, ordinary private health insurance. They choose, however, to opt -- immorally if not irrationally -- to enroll in SCHIP for less than one-third the cost of private, middle-class health insurance. Behold "enlightened" socialized medicine schemes -- corrupting otherwise reasonable people into becoming welfare bums.

Madness. Sheer madness.

(Via Cato@Liberty.)

Weird:

Europeans have little faith that their continent can compete economically with fast-growing Asian countries -- but are even more convinced that it should not become more like the US.

The wary attitude of Europeans towards US-style capitalism and the gloom of many about economic prospects are revealed in an FT/Harris poll. The results suggest even the recent revival in economic growth has not convinced Europeans that the Continent is on the right track.
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It shows that multinational corporations are seen by Europeans as more powerful than governments, while those polled generally believed that regulations protecting workers' rights should be strengthened rather than relaxed.

Put aside the untenable idiocy of thinking that any corporation is more powerful than any government. (How many tanks does Procter & Gamble have? Is Intel stockpiling WMDs?) Now it apparently is fashionable in Europe to dislike, or distrust, multi-national corporations, on the basis that they are -- gasp! -- "too American."

"Multi-national corporations" -- such as, say, Nestlé? Daimler? Philips? Allianz? Nokia? adidas? Diageo? Santander? Bayer?

Sorry, but to hate corporate capitalism is to hate European capitalism as much as American capitalism. For Europeans to blank-out the nature of their own economy (not to mention their own prosperity) simply in order to take a gratuitous swipe at the U.S. is either extreme insolence or extreme schizophrenia -- there's no easy way to tell which.

In any case, such patronizing "of course we're better than America" sanctimony would be damnable hypocrisy if it weren't so laughably silly.

(Via Cato@Liberty.)

Now up at the Flickr page.

Videos at the YouTube page will be forthcoming.

Blogging will still be a bit light this week as I continue to play catch-up.

Carry on...

--Should the American Cancer Society spend its entire advertising budget next year not on urging Americans to stop smoking or to get mammograms, but rather on campaigning for a government takeover of the U.S. health-care system? ("This is perverse: It's hard to imagine anything worse for cancer patients than government-run health care.")

--"Don't commit crime..."?

--Does a "gay-themed airline flight" really require "drag queens, pink cocktails and a cabaret performed by the flight crew" (more: "even the pilot was wearing fairy wings and got into it")? At what point does the flight cross from the friendly skies of inclusiveness into the turbulence of stereotyping? (Via Box Turtle Bulletin.)

--Does having twins when you only wanted one child constitute a "wrongful birth" lawsuit against the fertility clinic? Is the fact that the plaintiffs are a lesbian couple make any difference?

--Is a college bookstore's list of titles and prices, openly and notoriously displayed to all students, somehow "confidential information," such that it can forbid students from taking notes about them in order to comparison shop? (Via Slashdot.)

The phrase, "Time to clean out the aggregator" takes on a new meaning this week, as — despite my best efforts whilst in Peru — my aggregator had several thousand unread items as of Friday morning. Here are my best efforts:

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ITEM: The leading spokestheocrat of the faux libertarian Constitution Party has endorsed faux libertarian Ron Paul for president, in large part because "Rep. Paul believes, correctly, that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant word of God..." If these people are "libertarians," then I'm a Communist. Previous posts here.

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ITEM: Gay marriage litigation failed in Maryland, mainly on the facially absurd and jurisprudentially illegitimate "fostering procreation" quasi-reasoning that judicial abdicationists relied on in New York and Washington states, and that is, for now, apparently the gold standard for rationalizing anti-gay bigotry and unequal protection of law. Any other form of discriminatory access to rights and benefits that were as wildly over- and underinclusive in its application as same-sex marriage bans would almost certainly be unanimously struck down at every level of the judicial process. Most recent gay marriage post (on the Iowa ruling) here.

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ITEM: Meanwhile, California Republican governor Schwarzenegger has indicated that he will veto any and all same-sex marriage bills sent to him by the (democratically elected, will-of-the-people) legislature. Although Schwarzenegger originally had a plausible (though weak and strictly procedural) justification for his earlier veto, he apparently has now defaulted to unreasoning, base-pandering, "hasta la vista, baby" chest-thumping. All this, incidentally, while conveniently ignoring the fact that he is forcing "activist judges" to take up the issue. Go figure.

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ITEM: Venezuelan lunatic leader Hugo Chavez has announced the latest victim of his "glorious socialist revolution" — private schools, which will be seized if they don't agree to adopt an indoctrination curriculum. Can the "Chavez Youth" be far behind? Most recent post here.

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ITEM: Meanwhile, Buddhist monks in Burma are staging unprecedented, and wonderfully inspirational, protests against that nation's regime of lunatics. Hopefully the military junta will not pull a Tiananmen Square massacre on them. Previous posts here.

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ITEM: Fresh on the heels of my recent post on the appropriateness of tasering, a University of Florida student was needlessly tasered by sadistic, or lazy, police officers. My thesis is unchanged: The taser is only legitimate as an alternative to a firearm, and is legitimately used if — and only if — the use of a firearm would also be legitimate, which was indisputably not the case here. (Meanwhile, here is a less widely discussed story about a sadistic, or lazy, Ohio police officer who repeatedly tasered an intoxicated and helpless woman, even after she was handcuffed.)

I was the only solo traveler in the Peru tour group, and while everyone was very nice and friendly to me, it made me wonder whether it was time to hunker down and find that special someone.

Perhaps I should try a dating service, as jonlajoie's "Mr. Desp" did:


I think I could make a better impression with a video dating tape than Mr. Desp did.

Or not...

Well, not really, but I am all alone in the Lima airport, after my 0830 flight became a 2350 flight (and now delayed to 0025 -- stay tuned).

To which my response is: Thank God capitalism for PriorityPass.

So show me how powerful Web 2.0 is: Where are you stuck right now? And where would you rather be?

And so much for the current Sidebar Sidetrack.

Pop Quiz: Who sang the song, "All Alone in the World"?

It's always a bit heart-wrenching to read on Page A1 that a politician or court is using "children do best with a (heterosexual) mother and father" as an excuse to maintain anti-gay bigotry and then turn to Page B1 to see stories such as this or this...

...or this:

No charges will be filed against a middle school administrator whose toddler daughter died when she was left in her mother’s SUV for about eight hours on a day when temperatures reached about 100 degrees, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Leaving the child in the car was "a substantial lapse of due care" but did not meet the definition of reckless conduct necessary for prosecution, said Clermont County Prosecutor Don White.

Prosecutorial discretion is plenary, so that's that.

But as QuizLaw notes with some indignation, how does one reconcile that with this?

A suburban police officer is accused of leaving a police dog in a patrol car for more than 12 hours on a 109-degree day, killing the animal.

Chandler police Sgt. Tom Lovejoy was booked into the Maricopa County jail on a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty after a two-week investigation into the death of a 5-year-old Belgian Malinois named Bandit.
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The sheriff's investigation showed Bandit was in Lovejoy's patrol car from about 9 a.m. to shortly after 10 p.m. Aug. 11. During that time, the investigation found, the officer ran errands, napped and ate out with his wife. Lovejoy later found the dog dead in the car.

There is only one basis I can fathom for rationalizing justifying such a disparity: That the police officer, as a law enforcement professional, is subject to a higher standard of care than an ordinary parent. It's essentially a "malpractice" argument: the standard of care for a police officer is not a reasonable person but a reasonable expert. The cop should know better.

But does that argument withstand scrutiny? I mean honestly, who doesn't know in Twenty-First Century America not to leave a child in a car — under any circumstances, let alone with the windows up in sweltering heat?

As I've said before (e.g., here): Not even the most extreme libertarian can seriously argue that there is a "right to neglect or abuse one's child." The only reasonable debate is over defining the words "neglect" and "abuse."

Discuss.

Economic historian John Steele Gordon:

For the first time in 10,000 years, agriculture is no longer the primary source of global employment. According to the report, in 2006 industry employed 21.9 percent of the world's workers, services 42 percent, and agriculture 36.1 percent. Ten years ago, agriculture was at 42 percent and services at 37 percent. That is a very rapid change indeed.
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Agriculture made civilization possible, but it made prosperity possible for only the few. And for millennia civilized societies were islands surrounded by barbarians. For 200 years industrialized societies were islands of ever-increasing and ever-more-widespread prosperity surrounded by those who still lived at a subsistence level except for the few.

Stated differently, it was back-breaking agricultural drudgery that saved humanity from starvation, but that in no way changes the fact that it was back-breaking drudgery.

It was industrial capitalism, meanwhile, that saved humanity from back-breaking drudgery. The same industrial capitalism that lying malcontents of the past and sanctimonious morons of the present still love to hate. Go figure.

And now we are seeing post-industrial capitalism — "service capitalism" — saving the whole world not only from starvation, not only from back-breaking drudgery, but even from mere comfort and into ubiquitous prosperity. If only the last of the collectivists, megalomaniacs and other assorted madmen would get out of the way.

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A fellow historian postscripts Gordon:

We have a tendency to imagine rural life as virtuous and just, with the city as the zone of corruption and wretchedness. This is perverse sentimentality held with remarkable tenacity, and it affects people who ought to know better.

Indeed. Who didn't at some point want to live in Walnut Grove? (Actually, I didn't. Go figure. And don't get me started on how no Ingalls or Walton child ever turned out to be gay.)

In Kip Clip #2, I mentioned that the Larry Craig scandal got a lot of libertarians thinking about the propriety of public decency laws and "bathroom sting operations." See this post.

Another scandal that led to similar debates was of course the Michael Vick incident. Do only humans have "human rights"? Are different forms of life to be valued differently — and if so, then how is the differential to be determined?

To answer these non-trivial questions, let's jump in the TARDIS and vortex our way down the slippery slope:


I can't get quite comfortable with that last line. There's a similar line in another episode: "If I don't like it, then it will end." As much as I loathe utilitarianism, I loathe the dictator principle even more. Damn activist Time Lord...

"We are pleased to provide you with this 2007 Middle Class STAR [property tax] rebate check."
--New York State Department of Taxation and Finance

To review: If a government imposes a proportional tax (e.g., a flat-rate property tax) and then rebates a fixed amount (complete with "we are pleased" letters signed by "running for re-election at the time" politicians) to each taxpayer, then that makes the "proportional" tax progressive: Pay $300 in tax, get $300 rebated; pay $3,000 in tax, get $300 back; pay $30,000 in tax, get $300 back. Get the idea?

But even that is, apparently, not progressive enough:

Your rebate amount is not only based on your property tax burden, but it is also based on your ability to pay, factoring in your income.

So now not only is the property tax directly progressive, but it has also morphed into a mutant "property-income tax" hybrid, complete with two levels of progressivity.

Meanwhile, the straightforward alternative of having an income tax for income and a property tax for property, with no commingling of the two — is apparently too simplistic for our advanced thinkers in Albany. Just as the idea of not having a clumsy rebate program in the first place (i.e., just lowering the tax rates upfront) is too simplistic.

"Empire State" apparently now means an empire of taxes, micromanaged and warm-fuzzy-feelinged down to the penny. That certainly gives new meaning to the term "progressive taxation."

In Kip Clip #4, Carl Sagan discussed radical social change and recreated the great Library of Alexandria — which was destroyed in the early Fifth Century, on orders from the (Christian) Roman Emperor Theodosius I that all pagan temples be destroyed. The scrolls the library housed were burned as fuel to warm nearby baths.

Fortunately, in the modern era people would never consider doing such a thing as burning knowledge for the sake of feeling warm, right?


Before there were bloggers and blogging, there was John Boy Walton and his journal. "Words on paper must be very important." Or on a computer screen...

All politicians are, by definition, moral defectives.

One ubiquitous way that politicians manifest this defectiveness is by slapping their name on a dizzying variety of stuff. Highways, post offices, bureaucracy buildings — and don't forget rebate checks.

In my opinion, it's all a bunch of garbage:



That's right: The Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer Memorial Trash Can.


Put aside for the moment the fact that New York City borough presidents don't actually perform any legitimate governmental function — they are utterly impotent positions (except for their pork "capital and expense budgets").

And put aside the question of just how egomaniacal (or ego deficient) a person would have to be to actually want to see his name on a trash can.

What about the simple fact that Scott M. Stringer didn't pay one cent for this trash can? I did. I and my neighbors. How about once, just once, having some public good or public building read something like, "Sponsored by the Taxpayers of Manhattan"? More truthful, and more modest.

But less political, so it will of course never happen.

To acknowledge my journey to Machu Picchu today, I thought this would be an appropriate Kip Clip, and one that needs little comment from me. You are free to add your own.

Today I arrive in Aguas Calientes in Peru's "Sacred Valley." Tomorrow we venture out to Machu Picchu.

I have selected two Kip Clips appropriate for the destination. In the first, we get a reminder from the late Carl Sagan that radical social change, such as "the eradication of anti-gay bigotry," can and often does happen more rapidly than anyone envisions at the time. We also get a warning about what can and often does happen to a society when radical social change does not occur.

It did not go unnoticed in the blogosphere that Alberto Gonzales' announced resignation date — today — is also "Constitution Day," one of those innumerable, asinine warm-fuzzy-feeling designations by Congress and the President.

But even before Gonzales and Constitution Day 2007, this particular "holiday" was especially irksome to those who actually take the Constitution seriously.

This is now the third year that I have posted a version of this piece, "It Became Necessary to Shred the Constitution in Order to Teach It."

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"In the summer of 1787, delegates convened in Philadelphia to create 'a more perfect Union' and craft the document that is the foundation of our country. With great diligence, they worked to develop a framework that would balance authority and inherent freedoms, Federal interests and State powers, individual rights and national unity. On September 17th of the same year, the delegates signed the Constitution of the United States."
--President George W. Bush, Proclamation, 21 August 2007

In mockery celebration of Constitution Day, I am reposting this piece, originally published on May 24, 2005 (see also this post).

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This is wrong on so many levels:

The Education Department outlined Tuesday how it plans to enforce a little-known provision that Congress passed in 2004: Every school and college that receives federal money must teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.

Schools can determine what kind of educational program they want, but they must hold one every year on the now-named "Constitution Day and Citizenship Day." And if Sept. 17 falls on a weekend or holiday, schools must schedule a program immediately before or after that date.

Historically, the federal government has avoided dictating what or when anything must be taught because those powers rest with the states under the 10th Amendment. The Education Department's Web site even underlines that point, saying matters such as the development of curricula and the setting of course requirements fall outside federal authority.
...
The federal law championed by [Senator Robert] Byrd also affects all federal agencies. They will have to train new employees about the Constitution during orientation and train all employees about the document every Sept. 17. The Office of Personnel Management is expected to post guidelines in those areas soon.

Some hasty stitches:

--We are talking about an intrusive federal law mandating that states introduce a specific curriculum extolling, among other constitutional provisions, the virtues of Tenth Amendment federalism. Does no politician see the irony in that?

--On the other hand, there's actually nothing in the Tenth Amendment or its jurisprudence declaring education as a "power reserved to the states." That's a convenient overlay that has been repeatedly paid lip service, but little else. No Child Left Behind was merely the last nail in the coffin burying the fiction of "leave the schools to the states."

--As for that "all federal agencies" provision, I'd be just as happy, if not more so, if federal employees actually did their jobs on September 17 rather than watched prepackaged videos about separation of powers or federalism. This is just another paid holiday for them.

--What if, as part of "Constitution Day," classrooms had debates about the Federal Marriage Amendment, or Roe v. Wade, or the constitutionality of capital punishment for crimes committed as minors, or of compulsory drug testing for high school students? I suspect a Bush Department of Education might have second thoughts about that kind of "Constitution Day."

--Two words: activist legislature. Okay, some more words: The Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling.

--What's so important about when the Constitution was adopted? Isn't when it was ratified (March 4, 1789) far more symbolic?

Class dismissed.

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POST SCRIPT: Your homework is to read the Constitution in its entirety, including the Bill of Rights and later Amendments. Every American should read it end-to-end at least once in his lifetime.

Time to clean out the aggregator —

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ITEM: The Senate has rejected the Administration's proposed cuts to Amtrak's obscene and economically nonsensical $1.4 billion subsidy. Because Amtrak enjoys "great support among lawmakers." Too bad it doesn't enjoy such support from travelers, who repeatedly and universally embrace other options. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: A trial court in New York State has upheld the recognition of same-sex marriages with respect to government employee pension benefits. As I pointed out in critiquing the state's highest court's decision denying flat-out marriage equality, New York has no DOMA or bigot amendment — and the court therefore had no basis not to authorize same-sex marriage, even putting aside the constitutional arguments. This recent decision reflects this common sense jurisprudential approach. (The case is Godfrey v. DiNapoli, argued again by the heroes of Lambda Legal.) Related post here.

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ITEM: Not an update, but many readers probably read elsewhere about Stephen Dunn, the anti-gay bigot in Massachusetts who flunked that state's bar exam and then sued the state over its inclusion of a question concerning same-sex marriage. Well, he has withdrawn the suit. His "lawyerly" logic: Since the next administration of the exam had no comparable question, the question is now moot, not only for him but for all similarly situatied bigots. The Massachsuetts bar, meanwhile, has of course stated unambiguously that it "maintains its right to test bar applicants on that same subject matter in future examinations." (Via Religion Clause.)

I've been meaning to designate Chris Leavins of cutewithchris.com as a Sunday Cute YouTuber for some time now, in a sort of Mobius Strip sort of inverse refraction theory (he posts cuties too — just not human ones).

Well, given that I'm traveling he gave me the perfect video to use.