A Stitch in Haste

Sometimes politicians introduce sarcastic bills in their legislatures to make a "slippery slope" or "jump the shark" sort of point -- a publicity stunt.

Please let this be that:

Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

The location is Mississippi, the nanny state activist legislator is state representative W.T. Mayhall, Jr., and he insists it's no joke:

He said that while, regrettably, he doesn't believe his bill will pass, this is serious. He wrote it, he said, because of the "urgency of the obesity crisis and need for government action." He hopes it will "call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system."

As I blogged previously:

The notion that "other people pay for obesity" is totally circular and obnoxious. Keep the true nature of this argument in perspective: The nanny-state central planners decide to provide public health care benefits, of whatever flavor, which are by definition paid for with public money (i.e., taxpayer money). They then turn around and tell those very same taxpayers that, since it's "the public's" money and not theirs, the government can therefore impose controls on the public's behavior to compensate for the resulting mismatch -- that the government itself created! -- between the "public" that pays for the benefits and the "public" that receives them.

The government creates the moral hazard in the first place, then turns around and decries it -- all the while escalating the tax-and-regulate, tax-and-subsidize, tax-and-ban, tax-and-control spiral and all the while defending the practice with Orwellian economic double-talk.

From the Northest liberal ivory tower of Paul Krugman to the brain-dead bumpkin bayous of Mississippi, we are as a people going totally insane.

A law professor weighs in on the concurrent stories of the India kidney scandal and the calls in the U.K. for "opt-out" organ donation at death rather than "opt-in" —

"If poverty and wealth are often unearned, however, it is no less true that good and ill health are often unearned. ... One could, in fact, invoke such desperation as evidence that organ sale ought to be permitted but regulated."

My comment at that blawg:

Of course, a true Rawlsian (or a utilitarian) could even argue that organ donation should be compulsory. And by that I don't just mean after death, as is being proposed in the U.K.

If society is entitled to seize your unearned wealth, then why is it also not entitled to seize your unearned kidney?

And for those who think kidneys are too extreme, how about compulsory blood donations — maybe when you report for jury duty or file your tax return?

See also, "military conscription" — if the state can seize your entire body, then why not just one kidney or pint of blood?

Meanwhile:

Money is clearly the issue in situations involving the human body. Paying young women for eggs to be fertilized and men for sperm is now common practice — even though they are still regularly referred to as "donors." Yet the sale of tissue, cells and eggs for stem-cell research or organs for transplant are still the subject of vehement dispute.

The "vehement dispute" is between those who (correctly) recognize the inherent right to control oneself — an elegant synthesis of freedom of contract and bodily autonomy — and those who (incorrectly) label the revulsion of third parties as "externalities" warranting infringement of the inherent liberty of competent consenting adults.

Strangers to a contract, transaction or other arrangement might be repulsed at the notion of whites and blacks eating at the same lunch counter, or of women working outside the home, or of two gays having sexual intercourse in the privacy of their own bedroom, or of a poor healthy person selling his kidney to an ill rich person. So what? Generally speaking, we (no longer) grant revulsion the dignity of a legal argument or a majoritarian vote.

So too should it be with bodily integrity: what competent consenting adults choose to do with their bodies should not be subject to a "that's just wrong" veto by third parties, no matter how numerous or ardent they may be. Nothing is ever "just wrong." An act either infringes upon the legitimate rights of unwilling others or it does not. But there is simply no "right not to be disgusted."

Finally, I will reprint a "Question" from a while back:

"Is it not repugnant that some people are willing to let others die so that their stomachs won't become queasy at the thought that someone, somewhere is selling a kidney?"

That the answer to this question "but of course" is the most modest proposal of all.

(Via Greg Mankiw by way of East Coast Libertarian. More thoughts at Market Power.)

As with all mobs, the Evangelicals are beginning to turn on themselves:

On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. "And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P."

Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff's officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs.

The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey's real offense, in her pastor's view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he'd charged her with spreading "a spirit of cancer and discord" and expelled her from the congregation. "I've been shunned," she says.

Exactly how much Christian love is required to expel and shun a 71-year old lifelong congregant and donor? May I never be so loving.

Of course, gays are no stranger to this insolent contradiction. "We love you, and because we love you so much, we're going to torment you by reminding you how flawed you are." And the ones — whether gay or straight, whether 17 or 71 — who somehow find the strength and conviction to overcome this twisted soul-shredding, are cast out. In God's name.

Behold the miraculous joy of missionary Christianity.

I of course fully acknowledge a church's right, as an institutional owner of private property, to exclude whom they wish, so long as they don't run afoul of the tax law teats from which they so shamelessly suckle. But I also acknowledge that these people are woefully un-Christian and deserve more than a little shunning themselves.

(Via Republic of T.)

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Meanwhile:

In the latest research report by Sam S. Rainer III, who heads Rainer Research, only 39 percent of people who dropped out of the church perceived their church as "caring." Meanwhile, 51 percent of them called their church "judgmental."

Among other unfavorable views from those who quit their church, 41 percent of them said their church was "insincere." Only 20 percent felt their church was "inspirational;" 30 percent said their church was "authentic;" and 36 percent said their church was "welcoming."

The survey was conducted on 18- to 22-year-olds and is featured in Rainer's upcoming book, Essential Church?.

I've often wondered why apologists for strict-conduct religions are allowed to engage in such flagrant selection bias and survivor bias. "Gee, look at all those happy Mormons. That religion must really be doing something right!" But this ignores, of course, all the ex-Mormons who ran away screaming the moment they turned 18 and could scrounge up bus fare to get the hell out of Utah.

If these ultra-intolerant sects — Mormonism, Catholicism, Evangelism — think they can, or must, risk alienating an entire generation of young, not-blind congregants so as to remain true to their doctrine and dogma, then so be it. But children are not entitlements — not even to their parents, let alone to their parents' faith. The alternatives to, and arguments against, one's hereditary brand of mysticism are becoming difficult to avoid in an increasingly interconnected global community (cf., the increasing obsession among Evangelical parents with homeschooling). It is ever harder, approaching impossible, to hide the truth. And the truth will set them free.

(Via Straight, Not Narrow.)

To review: The only legitimate constraint upon an individual right is ... another individual right. This is not a particularly difficult concept: Most people know and embrace, for example, the uncomplicated notion that "my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins."

The interplay of respective rights only becomes problematic when "rights" are mis-defined. Your right to smoke ends where my bar begins, but so too does your right to breathe smoke-free air. The only way to concoct a "smokers rights versus non-smokers rights" conundrum is by forgetting about property rights of business owners, which ought to be the beginning -- and the end -- of the question.

So too with the absurd "guns in parking lots" debate. The "right to have a gun in your car"? The "right to park in a gun-free zone"? How about the right simply to own a parking lot and set whatever policy you think best?

Armed with that:

Complaints ... about free home-delivery newspapers in Maryland have inspired a proposed law that, if approved, would be the first of its kind in the nation. Delegate Tanya Shewell, R-Carroll, has proposed a "do-not-deliver" registry that would work similarly to a "do-not-call" registry for telemarketers.
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In addition to publishers, Shewell's bill is likely to run into opposition from lawmakers in both parties who worry it could violate constitutional free-speech protections.
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It's not clear whether the bill would violate the Constitution, but it could prove a legal morass, said T. Barton Carter, a media law expert at Boston University. ... If the law banned newspaper deliveries, it would also likely have to set up a do-not-deliver registry for pizza delivery ads and other fliers routinely delivered to homes, Carter said.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Another old saw about rights is that the "right of free press" does not mean the "right to a free press." If you think, as Charles Foster Kane did, that it might be fun to run a newspaper -- then go ahead and run one*, but with your own money and with a voluntary readership.

However, "freedom of the press" not does imply a "freedom to trespass."** Just as a property owner is not required to open up her home to Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons (or smokers or gun owners), neither does she have to subject her private property to litterers -- irrespective of what the content of the litter may happen to be.

I am also unpersuaded by the "newspaper versus pizza delivery ad" argument. Since there is no legitimate First Amendment issue, there is by corollary also no "unfair discrimination" issue. I've never seen a pizza flier that is so bulky that it has to be wrapped in plastic. If the restriction is based on, e.g., the weight or volume of the item being distributed, then there is no unequal treatment and no issue.

There is no relevant difference -- even in the context of the First Amendment -- between tossing an unwanted newspaper on someone's lawn and tossing an unwanted bag of dog poop. And if this community can craft a rational do-not-deliver registry that protects the right to quiet enjoyment of one's property without any true infringements on anyone else's rights, then good for them.

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The one question that could theoretically give me pause is notice. Such a registry would, in my opinion, have to allow for at least one warning before any penalties were actually imposed. This is not necessarily a law that a reasonable business owner would anticipate a priori.

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*Unless you are a broadcast media company, in which case the First Amendment does not fully apply to you.

**Usually (third item).

Can someone explain to me why apologists for religion so easily get stuck on stupid in this manner?

The inevitable, even clichéd, response on the part of theists to this litany of woes is to ask: what about Hitler and Stalin? Yes, the question resorts to the hackneyed rhetorical ploy of et tu quoque (Latin for "So's your old man"). But at least the question's inevitability forces the atheist to show his hand. Thus Dawkins lamely avers that Hitler did believe in God (of sorts) and, hey, Stalin attended an Orthodox seminary in his youth! If that retort seems a tad desperate, England's most pious unbeliever concludes with this wan distinction: "Stalin was an atheist and Hitler probably wasn't, but even if he was, the bottom line of the Stalin/Hitler debating point is very simple. Individual atheists may do evil things but they don't do evil things in the name of atheism." So it's not atheism that's the problem, only atheists!

Leave it to a Jesuit priest — no blood on their hands, right? — to be so good at obfuscation.

Here's the redux, without the snarky Jesuit straw man prestidigitation about Dawkins:

Atheist: It's reasonable to conclude that perhaps 90% of all killing and 99% of all cruelty in human history has been inflicted in the name of, or legitimized by, organized religion.

Theist: But some of the other 10% was done by Hitler and Stalin, who were atheists!

Atheist: So almost 100% of all killing and suffering has been done either in the name of organized religion, legitimized by organized religion, or replicated by those who merely sought to replace organized religion with another form of anti-intellectual, yield-to-authority, reason-denying worship — of the Volk, the State, or some other anti-individualist, anti-mind, power-greater-than-you construct. How exactly does that help the radically incredulous theist claim that blind faith — in whatever — has been a net positive for humanity?

Theist: But, but — Hitler!

Hitler was a male. Hitler was an Austrian. Hitler was a vegetarian. Hitler was a Taurus. Hitler was left-handed. Hitler was an atheist. So what? What does any of that have to do with the millenia of unspeakable misery perpetrated upon humanity by organized religion?

I don't read DailyKos for the same reason I don't read Hardy Boys books: there's no reason to. Neither adds anything to intellectual discourse; neither catalyzes the self-enrichment of the already-literate. DailyKos is the radical leftist blogger equivalent of poi: no taste or consistency whatsoever, but it helps the other, more substantive content last longer.

The latest self-humiliation by Moulitsas (who, recall, is supposedly a leading advocate of the fiction of "left-libertarianism") and his Cult of the Childish Pejorative:

For all the talk of "freedom" that the Paulbots claim to believe in, they sure as heck have been silent on the horrible FISA bill we're fighting to fix in the Senate right now. Same for Ron Paul. Why the silence? And the CATO people and the libertarian publications like Reason, where are they?

Here we are engaged in a huge civil liberties issue, and progressives are being forced to fight this thing alone. It's easy to talk about "liberty". It's much more impressive to actually do something about it.

That was, incidentally, the entire post.

It's true that I haven't blogged about FISA for a long time — by which I mean six days. It's true that "Terror v. Civil Liberties" (which I have also called the "War on Civil Liberties") is only one of my blogpost categories — have I no shame? It's true that my (non-exhaustive) chain of warrantless wiretapping posts "only" contains fifty entries, each of which is more substantive than Moulitsas' post by "only" an order of magnitude — what kind of libertarian am I?

More responses at Reason, Distributed Republic, Publius Endures.

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Moulitsas is of course as popular as he is precisely because he's so intellectually unsophisticated. Nothing appeals more to the Great Unwashed than an unwashed argument.

And nothing demonstrates this better than the kindergarten playground / tantrum factory that is his comments section:

--Why do Libertarians care so much about liberty from taxes, but not from oppression or government interference in one's private affairs? If they genuinely gave a crap about civil liberties ... well, they wouldn't all be Republicans, anyway.

--The truth is that many so-called libertarians just don't really give a damn about civil liberties.

--A libertarian is mostly a Republican who supports gay marriage and wants to smoke pot.

--I'll say it again — "libertarians" are simply wingnut Republicans trying to describe themselves in more fashionable terms. That's all they are.

--There is no such thing as a libertarian. It's simply a fictional concept put together in the abstract for purposes of argument, but there are no actual, real senitent [sic] beings who actually believe in classic "libertarianism", as we academically understand the word.

--The majority of Libertarians I've run across seem to only believe in liberty for themselves. The rest of the world can go to shit so long as nobody tells them what to do, takes their money, or interrupts their masturbatory fantasies of being rich by expecting them to do anything that is not ultimately self-serving.

--Libertarians just hate taxes and minorities and want to live in gated communities.

--Libertarianism is Pre-School for Republicans.

--This goes to the very heart of the libertarian philosophy. Not the one they profess, but the one they actually hold: Not giving a shit about others.

And that's just a sample of the high-brow discourse in the thread. As is always the case with sundry partisanship: when enemies are in short supply, they must be manufactured, like any other scarce good.

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This one's my favorite, incidentally:

George Bush was the libertarian that the Randoids dreamed about, I mean he was the John Galt who cut taxes, got rid of regulations and hell, he is doing a heckavajob with New Orleans and Baghdad so some future Howard Roark can do some work there.

Actually, I've long thought that George W. Bush was eerily reminiscent of "Mr. Thompson," who is clearly the President in the novel, though I believe that word is never used to describe him:

Head of State and a crafty pragmatist who believes everyone is open to compromise. When his goons capture Galt, Mr. Thompson tries futilely to persuade the inventor to take charge of the collapsing economy, tempting him with money and the trappings of power. When that fails, Mr. Thompson finally agrees to use torture.

Remind you of anyone?

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Meanwhile, I blogged previously:

Those political mainstreamers who do not share in this movement-that-Paul-did-not-create, the liberals and conservatives who prior to this presidential campaign had barely heard of an "isolationist / neoconfederate / 95% of all blacks are criminals / bring back the closet / Lincoln started the Civil War / the WHO invented AIDS / conspiracies everywhere" fervor now have — thanks to Ron Paul — a name for it: libertarianism.

Well, you can imagine how many times the words "Ron Paul" and "libertarian" appear together in the contributions to that don't-think-too-hard-it-hurts comment thread.

So now we have two radical anti-libertarians — Paul and Moulitsas — going out of their way to misrepresent libertarianism though a bizarre, self-contradicting hybrid of straw man attacks and guilt by association. They must really be scared of us.

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Turning now to our right flank: If we "sell our souls for a tax cut" libertarians are all in cahoots with the Republicans, then whence this?

The moral vacuity of dogmatic libertarianism is poisonous to public life. By teaching that 'greed is good,' strict free-market ideology holds out the promise that private vices can be public virtues.

The ironic part is that this wood-paneled-den drivel, written by infantile radical conservatives, could just as easily have been written by the infantile radical liberal Moulitsas. There would have been no way to tell without a byline. Go figure.

I repeat: They must really be scared of us.

A chicken in every hovel?

The Zimbabwean government unveiled plans on Tuesday to open a network of state-run "people's shops" that will offer basic goods at rock bottom prices in the run-up to elections in March.

But economists warned that the scheme would do nothing to improve the country's economic crisis and might even make it worse in the long term.

How reassuring that modern Western democracies don't do that sort of thing. Right?

--Is there a right to own a Geiger counter?

--What's the Patriots' record this season? (Hint: Not 18-0.)

--A Special Guest Question from a fellow blawger:

OMG! What am I doing wrong? (LOL).
--Caffeinated candy bars?

--Speaking of caffeine, another Special Guest Question: "Has his old man been hitting the coffee again?"

To review: Some of my fellow libertarians have suggested that I am flat out wrong walking too fine a line on the subject of hate crimes. They think that all hate crime laws are "punishing thought." I think -- in fact I know -- that we punish the same crime differently in different circumstances all the time and that there is nothing intrinsically problematic with escalating the punishment for an underlying crime (which, despite the shortcut term "hate crime," is not crafting a new criminal offense in and of itself) based on a hateful motive.

Having said that, this fact pattern disturbs me in classic libertarian fashion:

A white man accused of driving past a group of black civil rights activists with two nooses dangling from the back of his pickup truck has been indicted on federal hate-crime and conspiracy charges, federal prosecutors said Jan. 24.
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"It is a violation of federal law to intimidate, oppress, injure or threaten people because of their race and because those people are exercising and enjoying rights guaranteed and protected by the laws and Constitution of the United States," said Donald W. Washington, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana.

Not exactly. The federal law is 18 U.S.C. 245. The relevant text is:

Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, by force or threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with ...

followed by a comprehensive list of "federally protected activities."

One of those activities is "participating lawfully in speech or peaceful assembly opposing any denial of the opportunity to so participate" -- i.e., a civil rights rally. Point conceded. But circle back to the required act: "by force or threat of force." Sorry, but I think, as a matter of reasonableness (not to mention the First Amendment), driving past a rally with two nooses on your truck simply does not rise to the level of using "force or threat of force." More is needed.

If there had been a more proximate display (e.g., brandishing weapons or shouting unambiguous threats), then perhaps the incident could rise to prosecutable "force or threat of force." There is no right to shout "String 'em up!" in a crowded theater, and there is no right to hide behind the First Amendment when you criminally assault someone (i.e., instill a fear of immediate harm); neither is there a right not to have such an bona fide assault escalated to a hate crime if the facts support it.

But there must be, as a matter both of law and free speech rights, a showing of an underlying offense that is objectively proscribable before any questions of the propriety of adding a hate crime charge are introduced. That burden does not appear to have been met here.

That's my ruling -- any dissents?

As the eulogies, indeed hagiographies, of the deceased leaders of the Mormon and the Greek Orthodox churches begin to seep their way through the media and blogosphere, let's take a brief moment to acknowledge exactly what these men believed:

The Mormon church, in the first year of Hinckley's reign, on homosexuality:

Because Satan desires that "all men might be miserable like unto himself" (2 Ne. 2:27), his most strenuous efforts are directed at encouraging those choices and actions that will thwart God's plan for his children. He seeks to undermine the principle of individual accountability, to persuade us to misuse our sacred powers of procreation, to discourage marriage and childbearing by worthy men and women, and to confuse what it means to be male or female.

Gay = Satan. Love = Misery. Self-denial = salvation. And these vile sadists call themselves "saints"?

Their dead bigot-in-chief elaborated:

People inquire about our position on those who consider themselves so-called gays and lesbians...

The putrid bastard couldn't even say "gays and lesbians" without adding a spit-in-your-face "so-called" to his diatribe of hate. This is a man who simply deserves no praise in death. Good riddance.

And in case you need reminding: "Under Mr. Hinckley, the church endorsed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman and financed political campaigns to support legislation that would ban same-sex marriage in California and Hawaii."

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The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America on homosexuality:

Thus, the Orthodox Church condemns unreservedly all expressions of personal sexual experience which prove contrary to the definite and unalterable function ascribed to sex by God's ordinance and expressed in man's experience as a law of nature. The Orthodox Church believes that homosexuality should be treated by religion as a sinful failure. In both cases, correction is called for. Homosexuals should be accorded the confidential medical and psychiatric facilities by which they can be helped to restore themselves to a self-respecting sexual identity that belongs to them by God's ordinance.

Their dead bigot-in-chief summed it up succinctly: gays are, in the eyes of Greek Orthodox shamans, "handicapped."

To which the only sane response is: better to live "handicapped" than to die cruel, ignorant and bigoted.

Even during the worst periods of failure in Iraq, at least the neoconservatives, along with the rest of us, could point to Afghanistan — the "legitimate" post 9/11 war — as a success story. The Taliban was deposed, a democratic government with a secular, Western-friendly leader was elected...

...and (almost) no government-imposed Sharia-inspired slaughter of journalists:

An Afghan court in northern Afghanistan sentenced a journalism student to death for blasphemy for distributing an article from the Internet that was considered an insult to the Prophet Muhammad, the judge in charge of the court said Wednesday.

The student, Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh, 23, who also works for a local newspaper, was charged with insulting Muhammad by calling the prophet "a killer and adulterer," the judge, Shamsurahman Muhmand, said in a telephone interview.

The sentence was denounced as unfair by Mr. Kambakhsh's family and journalists' organizations. Mr. Kambakhsh's brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, denied that his sibling had committed blasphemy, and said that his brother was not given enough time to prepare his defense and was denied a lawyer.
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The case is the third time that clerics have called for death for a blasphemer in the six years since the removal of the Taliban leadership and reflects the deep conservatism that prevails even under the more liberal government of President Hamid Karzai.

"Deep conservatism"? Is that what naked bloodlust by barbarian goatherders is called these days?

And remember: This is not just more "insult the prophet" nonsense. Plenty of regimes, including some Western democracies, have no problem censoring expression and criminalizing thought. Nothing new in that.

But here the goatherder-judges are (allegedly) also committing other Islam-as-usual crimes against humanity: trampling property rights, conducting authoritarian searches, denial the inherent right to present a defense and retain advocates. Even Canada doesn't go that far.

If we had kept our focus on Afghanistan as we should have, then perhaps these remote circles of hell could have been brought out of the Dark Ages. In the meantime, just list young Mr. Kambakhsh as "collateral damage" in the War on Terror.

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Speaking of "some Western democracies" —

A story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has been turned down by a government agency's awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims.

Of course, the fact that giving book awards is not a legitimate function of government is a topic for a different blogpost. For our purposes, the lesson is simply that children, in modern Western democracies, are being taught that the state should decide whose primitive beliefs and irrational feelings matter more than theirs as a matter of public policy. Class dismissed.

How's that tax-rebate, needs-to-be-quick, bipartisan fiscal "stimulus" package doing?

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I blogged previously:

This $150 billion disgrace ... still faces review — bloating? — in the Senate ...

We can now lose the question mark:

Shrugging off a personal plea from President Bush, senators from both parties said yesterday that they will push for significant additions to the $150 billion stimulus package hammered out Thursday by House leaders and the administration.

Senators from both parties? Who could have seen that coming?

Nothing obliterates gridlock and replaces it with "bipartisanship" more quickly and more completely than incumbent entrenchment (cf. "campaign finance reform"). And what could possibly endear unsophisticated voters more to their representative in Congress (or to the party of their president) than a check?

Acta es fabula, plaudite!

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Having made sure that people who actually pay high income taxes do not get a check (which would be too fair — go figure), and having made sure that the working poor who pay no income taxes do get a check (which would mean this is not a rebate but welfare — go figure), who could the politicians, drenched in their "bipartisanship," possibly have forgotten?

Retirees living off Social Security are frustrated that they won't get tax rebate checks through a bipartisan economic stimulus package before the House. Senate Democrats Friday began efforts to include them.
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[The House plan] would leave out about 20 million senior citizens living chiefly on Social Security. ... "Less than half of all Americans 65 and older would get it," said AARP spokesman Jim Dau.

Ah yes, the entitlement elderly. Can't let them go without sucking some more taxpayer blood, right? Senators are tripping over themselves to introduce checks for them, among other vote-buying measures, possibly to the point of a conference committee showdown with the House. Stay tuned...

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As I mentioned previously, the "needed fast" rebate checks can't be mailed before May at the earliest. Of course, "needed fast" really only means "needed before the November elections," so the politicians are all set.

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Guess who (besides poke-in-the-eye taxpayers like me) doesn't like the stimulus package? Economists. Go figure.

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Guess who also doesn't like the stimulus package? The New York Times. But of course not for the same reasons that the economists don't like it. Go figure.

Time to clean out the aggregator —

ITEM: The judge at the center of the CIA torture tape destruction scandal has demanded a detailed report from the Justice Department. Recall that the judge had issued an order four months prior to the tapes' destruction to preserve all evidence relevant to cases at Guantanamo Bay; the government insists that since the tapes were not from Guantanamo, the order was not relevant. Most recent post here.

ITEM: A new study suggests that the Army is not only failing to meet its recruitment goals in terms of quantity, but also quality:

The study by the National Priorities Project concluded that slightly more than 70 percent of new recruits joining the active-duty Army last year had a high school diploma, nearly 20 percentage points lower than the Army's goal of at least 90 percent.

Meanwhile, the Army is also facing another new shortage: junior officers. This despite offering hundreds of millions of dollars in bonus and incentive programs. And still the military, the administration — and the Democrat-controlled Congress — refuse to revisit DADT. Most recent post here.

ITEM: The Hershey Company has capitulated to drug warriors and will cease offering "Ice Breakers Pacs," which Philadelphia narcotics officers complained resembled illegal street drugs. I briefly noted the controversy here.

ITEM: Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez, who is already seizing food from agricultural companies, is now threatening to cut out the middleman and seize the farms outright. Most recent post here.

It's the last Sunday in January, which means that it's time to wrap up Canada Month.

One stereotype about Canadians is that they are "like Americans without the attitude." Stated differently, Canadians are, at least relative to Americans, "nice" —



For Discussion -- stotan88 asks: Can someone ever be "too" nice? Where do you draw the line, especially with girls? What do you think? (Replace "girls" with "guys" where appropriate.)

Sunday CuteTuber™ FAQ.

As with all addictions, the first step to combating compulsive gambling is admitting you have a problem:

The Virginia Lottery's "Pick 4" drawing on Thursday night came up 0-0-0-0. Because "quadruple numbers" are common plays, lottery spokesman John Hagerty said Virginia Lottery paid out $3.27 million in winnings on a "Pick 4" drawing that had sold about $280,000 worth of tickets.

An estimated 650 people played 0-0-0-0 in last night's "Pick 4" game.

Hagerty said this marks the first time the 0-0-0-0 numbers have come up since the "Pick 4" game was began in 1991. The last "quadruple numbers" to come up was 1-1-1-1 on Jan. 15, 2007.

The odds of any specific four-digit combination coming up in the drawing are approximately 10,000-to-1.

Angels and mathematicians of grace defend us!

Why say (assuming you know even the first thing about probability and statistics) that the odds are "approximately 10,000-to-1"? Why not say that the odds are "exactly 9,999-to-1"?

And how about observing that, if one number is picked each day, then you would only expect a given four-digit number to come up once every 27.4 years? So, for a particular number such as 0-0-0-0 to have never come up in 16 years is not exactly an anomaly.

And are there really people out there who think that 0-0-0-0 is somehow less likely than, say, 1-2-3-4 or 2-4-6-8 or 7-9-1-4?

More to the point, why would the bureaucrats who run Virginia's lottery allow a single number to be played enough times to cost the lottery so much money if it comes up? I know for a fact that New York State sets a maximum number of entries for a particular number (e.g., they sold out "411" when the Iranian hostages were released in 1980 after 411 days of captivity). The odds are (no pun intended) that people denied 0-0-0-0 would pick another number, so there's no real danger of lost revenues.

This doesn't quite rise to the level of New York's off-track-betting managing to lose money running a parimutuel horse race monopoly. But it comes close enough to be mockworthy.

---

For those unfamiliar with the title of this post:

You may or may not be familiar with the Sean Bell shooting in New York City. Background here.

The relevant facts for our purposes are that two police detectives are charged with manslaughter (a third is charged with reckless endangerment) in connection to a controversial shooting incident in November 2006.

The officers requested a change in venue based on bias in the local jury pool. This is not unusual. The judge denied the motion, as did an appeals court yesterday.

The defendants have as a result waived their Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. The judge will serve as the trier of fact and will be the one to find the defendants guilty or not guilty.

I won't pretend to know, or be in a position to critique, the defense counsel's reasoning. But I do know the old adage: When the law is on your side, argue the law. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When neither the law nor the facts are on your side, play the race card.

Here the "race card" is Al Sharpton:

"I think that it is stunning that these officers want to do everything but be accountable to the people they serve in Queens," Mr. Sharpton said. "Police should be accountable to the people they serve. It is interesting they would be accountable to people in another venue, but in Queens they do not want to face the people."

What exactly is so "stunning" about wanting a fair trial? What is so stunning about worrying that jurors — pulled from a community rife with racial tensions, exacerbated by media whores like Sharpton — might be more interested in vigilantism than in achieving justice?

Go back to the adage: In a trial where the law is on your side, a bench trial can easily be an intelligent strategy — who is more likely to apply the law correctly: a judge or twelve laypersons? It's only when the law is against you, and you have to rely on persuading that the facts happen to vindicate you, that a jury trial likely makes more sense.

A variation of this heuristic, perhaps not relevant here, goes something like this: If you're innocent and you know it, then you're happy with only one bite of the apple. If you're guilty and you know it, then twelve bites at the apple starts to look mighty attractive.

In any case, only a professional race-baiter like Sharpton could possibly pretend that the sacred right to a jury trial belongs not to the defendant, but to the "community" (as represented by him, of course). Only someone utterly contemptuous of justice could imagine a "right to convict" that transcends pesky notions of guilt or innocence.

Regardless of how the Obama campaign pans out, he will at least have provided this public service: catalyzing the banishment of Sharpton and his scurrilous ilk to the dustbin of history.

No, not Scientology ... Scientocracy:

Perhaps the most significant news last week on the climate change front was the announcement that plastic shopping bags will be banned in China in six months' time.
...
The ban in China will save importation and use of five million tons of oil used in plastic bag manufacture, only a drop in the ocean of the world oil well. But the importance in the decision lies in the fact that China can do it by edict and close the factories. They don't have to worry about loss of political donations or temporarily unemployed workers. They have made a judgment that their action favours the needs of Chinese society as a whole.

Of course, these same wizened autocrats also decided that "the needs of Chinese society as a whole" required at least 300,000 people to be forcibly relocated so their "environmentally conscious" dictatorship could host the 2008 Olympics. And how exactly China's suppression of expression and its criminalization of dissent helps to fight global warming remains unaddressed. Maybe in a future op-ed...

Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. The subject is almost sacrosanct and those who indulge in criticism are labeled as Marxists, socialists, fundamentalists and worse. These labels are used because alternatives to democracy cannot be perceived!

"Unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens"? We should be so lucky. Meanwhile, how exactly would these (strictly hypothetical) non-megalomaniacal autocrats decide what constitutes a "need" of the collective or how best to "bridle" individual liberty? Blank-out.

(And is the author suggesting that China is not "Marxist" or "socialist"? I'm sure its rulers would have something to say about that.)

Meanwhile, speaking strictly in terms of oil consumption, why does the U.S., qua consumer of oil, get blamed for its "addiction" to liberal democracy, but Saudi Arabia, qua producer of oil and one of the most illiberal anti-democracies in the world, garner nary a peep from this blame-spewing malcontent? Blank-out.

Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties.

So "collective needs" are unarguably self-evident, while liberties are merely "perceived"? How convenient.

The Chinese decision on shopping bags is authoritarian and contrasts with the voluntary non-effective solutions put forward in most Western democracies. We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions.

So ignore Acton, and ignore every shred of evidence, from around the globe and across the centuries, that authoritarianism conserves nothing but its authoritarians and contributes nothing to the environment but corpses. Instead use one (utterly asinine) data point to propose a whole new theory of global slavery. Condemn the whole planet — which you pretend to love — to bloodshed, poverty and death, and dare to call it "science," because you happen to think banning plastic bags is neat-o.*

Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.

(Via Life, Liberty Pursuit.)

---

(*It isn't.)

It is a rare day indeed when I chastise myself by asking, "How could I have been so naive?"

Yesterday was such a day:

President Bush and House leaders struck a deal on Thursday for a $150 billion fiscal stimulus package, including rebates for most tax filers of up to $600 for individuals, $1,200 for couples and, for families, an additional $300 a child.

The unsupportable notion that children should be subsidized as a matter of policy by redistributing income from the childless to the childed is a topic for a future blogpost. Beyond that, the notion of income tax rebates was as expected.

Or so I thought:

Under the deal, tax filers who earned at least $3,000 last year, but paid less than $300 in income tax, would receive the $300.

It is not my purpose to be mean, but let's be absolutely clear on this: If you receive more from the government than you remit to it, that is not a "tax rebate." It's a welfare check, and you are a welfare recipient.

Meanwhile, the welfare-check nature of this plan will make the federal income tax, which is already obscenely progressive, even more progressive than it would have been under a true rebate program (i.e., income tax = progressive, rebate = more progressive, welfare program = super-duper progressive).

How could it possibly get any worse?

Full rebates of up to $600 or $1,200 would be paid to individuals earning up to $75,000 adjusted gross income or couples filing jointly and earning up to $150,000. Above that, rebates would be reduced by 5 percent for each $1,000 in income.

So not only is this package not a rebate at the low end, it's also not a rebate on the high end. The very people who most deserve relief -- the ones who actually pay the overwhelming bulk of federal income taxes -- don't get a rebate but instead receive, as Lewis Black would say, a poke in the eye. To our fiscally liberal Congressional leaders (and our even more fiscally liberal president) this is, somehow, "fair."

This is also, somehow, "gridlock." Usually, when the Congress and the White House are controlled by different parties, fiscal insanity is at least partially curbed. This explains the fraud of the "Clinton surpluses" after the 1994 elections: they were in reality "gridlock surpluses" (with help from the dot.com boom and the peace dividend).

Why isn't gridlock working this time? What could possibly explain such counterintuitive politicking?

Two words: election year.

Nothing obliterates gridlock and replaces it with "bipartisanship" more quickly and more completely than incumbent entrenchment (cf. "campaign finance reform"). And what could possibly endear unsophisticated voters more to their representative in Congress (or to the party of their president) than a check?

This $150 billion disgrace (which still faces review -- bloating? -- in the Senate) has nothing to do with "economic stimulus" -- everyone even remotely familiar with Keynesian economics knows fiscal policy takes months, quarters or even years to work, if it works at all (hilarious footnote here). It's brazen, naked, disgusting, immoral vote buying, pure and simple.

And they will get away with it. They always do.

---

Meanwhile, who of course is the one person on the planet who is enough of a liar-idiot hybrid to insist that the package -- his words -- "consists of nothing but tax cuts and gives most of those tax cuts to people in fairly good financial shape"?

---

More thoughts at Cato@Liberty, Rolling Doughnut, Tax Policy Blog.

--Who owns your brain after you die? (Via Hit & Run.)

--Paying students $8 per hour to attend school?

--How old is the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy?

--How's that Venezuelan "socialist paradise" doing?

--Some Special Guest Questions from Sir Kenneth Clark:


(Clark's suggested answer, which I find unpersuasive, here.)

This may be either one of the most frivolous or one of the the least frivolous lawsuits of all time:

Audience participation is a staple of the Blue Man Group. But apparently, one audience member attending the Chicago show believes cast members took their surreal antics too far by forcing a video camera down his throat during a performance in October 2006.

James Srodon of California filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the group. In the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court, Srodon says the Blue Man actors used the "esophagus cam" to project an image of Srodon's mouth and throat onto a large screen for the audience's amusement.

The lawsuit alleges the Blue Man actors circled him, held his neck and arms and "forced his head back" to insert the camera. It claims he was restrained from removing the camera from his mouth.

I've never attended a BMG show, but I was once the victim of tortious "audience participation" at a similar show, De La Guarda. Long story short: I had gone straight from work and was wearing a suit, and was targeted for a "hug" by a performer dripping with wet toilet paper. I was not amused. The theater offered to pay my dry cleaning bill. Fin.

So I'm not quick to reject allegations of audience abuse at such an event. But forcible restraint and insertion of camera down into a non-volunteer's mouth? Do they really do that at BMG shows? Those who have attended performances please leave a comment.

If it happened exactly as Srodon describes (big "if"), then BMG doesn't have a leg to stand on. No waiver or consent defense would ever get past a judge, no matter what's printed on a ticket or in a Playbill or what announcements are made beforehand. Maybe if they show a video when the show starts: "If you remain in the theater, then this may happen to you..." Again, anyone familiar with what if any warnings are provided at the shows?

The only question would be one of punitive damages, which under common law (I can't speak to Illinois state law) would clearly be warranted for such a battery (again, taking the plaintiff's version as true). I'd probably be eager as a juror to shove some punitives down BMG's throat. How about you?

---

Via Fark, where several commenters insist that the "esophagus cam" video is prerecorded. I'm not sure how that's dispositive or even probative to a claim of tortious battery. Contrary to the media report, it's not entirely clear that the plaintiff is alleging that the camera was forced down his throat -- only into his mouth.

As for the "what's the big deal" defense: That's easy to say when it's not your mouth. You take the plaintiff as you find him; if he happens to be thin-skinned with no sense of humor, then so be it. Finally, one Fark commenter suggests the the lawsuit might simply be a publicity stunt by the group itself — "guerrilla marketing," etc.)

---

By way of comparison, here's another "artist" (defined very loosely) who is careful to obtain consent for her "art" (defined very loosely).

...you might get it:

IBM's response to a lawsuit in which the company was accused of illegally withholding overtime pay from some technical employees[:] IBM settled the case for $65 million in 2006 and has now decided that it needs to reclassify 7,600 technical-support workers as eligible for overtime.

But their underlying salary -- the base pay they earn for their first 40 hours of work each week -- will be cut 15 percent to compensate.

IBM spokesman Fred McNeese said the move would not save the company any money, because the affected employees generally should find that overtime pay makes up for the salary cut. However, internal documents obtained by The Associated Press indicate that many workers will lose money.

"If you don't like it, then quit..." is of course the beginning, but not necessarily the end, of the analysis. If IBM breached employment contracts or committed fraud upon its job applicants to induce them to work for the company in the first place, then shame on IBM.

Nevertheless, the underlying premise of the disgruntled workers -- that one compensation arrangement is intrinsically "more fair" than another -- is unsustainable. An employee does the work she does and gets paid what she gets paid. That and that alone is where questions of fairness must lie. Why should it matter whether compensation is called "base salary" or "overtime" or "zoop"? What does an employee provide IBM, and what does IBM provide the employee? That is where the question should begin and end.

(Questions of equal pay for equal work, compulsory union dues, glass ceilings, ENDA, etc., are separate topics altogether and best left for future blogposts.)

This sturm und drang is reminiscent of my previous post on paid holidays, which are a fiction. There is no such thing as paying (or being paid) for non-work; there is only paying for work itself. Changing one's paycheck terminology -- just like changing one's work schedule -- is, bottom line, merely rearranging deck chairs: just hope that your ship isn't sinking while you're doing it.

Senator Chris Dodd is pulling double-duty in the headlines these days. First, as I already noted, he is proposing a flagrantly socialist intervention in the distressed mortgage market. Shame on him.

But then he turns around and does this:

Few things are more detrimental to this country than the erosion of and attack on the civil liberties we enjoy. This isn't a Democratic issue or a Republican issue; this is an American issue. If after debate, the Senate appears ready to pass legislation granting telecom providers retroactive immunity I will use any and all legislative tools at my disposal, including a filibuster, to prevent this deeply flawed bill from becoming law. More and more, Americans are rejecting the false choice that has come to define this administration: security or liberty, but never, ever both. For all those who have stood with me throughout this fight, I pledge, once more, to stand up for you.

Okay fine, I get it: There is a breed of politician who embraces -- even obsesses over -- privacy rights, but who also totally shuns any commitment to economic liberty.

My question remains this: What core philosophy allows such a hopelessly schizophrenic politics masquerading as "left-libertarianism"? You cannot have privacy rights without property rights. You cannot have property rights without freedom of contract. You cannot have freedom of contract without broad-based economic liberty. How, exactly, do the "left-libertarians" (with whom Dodd may or may not identify; I don't know) escape this flowchart?

The only answer I can come up with is: "It's the correct policy because I happen to like it." But that unimpressive variation of Kip's Law is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for "Left-Libertarians" to earn praise or support from "Not-Antilibertarian-Libertarians."

If mortgage lenders are all so "greedy," then why should the federal government try to emulate them?

Sen. Christopher Dodd said he envisioned an entity with an initial capitalization of $10 billion to $20 billion that would buy distressed mortgages and pass on the "discounts ... to homeowners in the form of new, lower-balance mortgages."
...
"The difference between the old mortgage and the new mortgage would be sufficient, after initial capitalization, to fund the program and cover possible losses," the Connecticut Democrat said in the letter.
...
Dodd's proposal is aimed at helping millions of Americans facing the risk of foreclosure.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Buying, selling, repackaging and servicing mortgages is precisely what all those "reckless" financial companies (i.e., the ones that Democrats love to damn nowadays) have been doing all this time. The notion that the federal government needs to get in on the action, to the tune of $20 billion, has no rational basis -- especially from a Democratic worldview.

If there is a way to buy up distressed mortgages and restructure them to avoid foreclosure, then the private sector can and will do so. (Remember, contrary to the "Silas Barnaby" stereotype, banks do not enjoy foreclosing on properties -- they enjoy getting mortgage payments, even restructured ones, in full and on time. Banks will in fact bend over backwards to avoid foreclosure -- assuming that the debtor isn't a predatory borrower or other deadbeat and is actually interested in "working something out.") If there is no way to do this profitably, meanwhile, then Dodd is lying and his scheme becomes just a more complicated form of bailout for defaulters.

It's Amtrak all over again: Politicians using the fact that not enough people want a service as grounds for going right ahead and providing it anyway. The mind reels.

---

On the other hand, there are worse ideas than Dodd's.

I was saving this recent Dilbert strip for a future Sidebar Sidetrack, but I'm going to post it now instead:


(Click to enlarge.)
Armed with that:

Just why investment bankers and traders out-earn, say, doctors or computer engineers is a question I've never heard convincingly answered. Are they smarter? Unlikely. Do they contribute more to the economy? Questionable. True, Wall Street often performs a vital function. It channels savings into productive investments. It helps provide access to capital and credit. In 2006, U.S. companies raised nearly $4 trillion through new stocks and bonds. Many financial innovations, including mortgage-backed securities, have benefited individuals and companies.

But Wall Street also frequently misallocates capital and credit. The "tech bubble" of the late 1990s was one episode. Now we have subprime mortgages. Why? Well, the herd mentality of financial crazes has a long history. But compensation practices skewed so heavily toward bonuses based on annual profits make matters worse.

Apparently Robert Samuelson, like Paul Krugman, isn't really an economist but just plays one on TV. Nevertheless, he knows full well what drives Wall Street salaries: supply and demand, just like any other market. He can barely go two sentences without explaining his own concocted paradox: In a sector that creates $4 trillion of new financial products (let alone the secondary markets) every year, is an annual bonus that reflects a fraction of a fraction of a percent of that enormity really such an outrage?

Typically we see this sophomoric, flunk-the-final screeching in the context of celebrity salaries: Does Alex Rodriguez "deserve" $275 million? Did Bon Jovi really "contribute" $67 million of value to society in 2006? Should Johnny Depp ($92 million in 2006) out-earn a computer engineer?

The answer to all those questions is: Yes, if that's what the free market concludes. Rodriguez' compensation package, for example, is not a single financially "obscene" transaction, but the aggregation of perhaps a million de minimis transactions or more: ticket sales, endorsements, broadcasting rights, media stories, etc. All of which, bit by bit, aggregate into a voluntary* arrangement that — by definition — is correct, justified and entirely moral. (*Ignoring side issues such as baseball's antitrust exemption, FCC licenses to television and radio stations, taxpayer subsidies to stadiums, and other ancillary considerations.)

And remember that, despite being the most heavily regulated industry in the universe, finance is an entirely voluntary domain. No one is forced to buy a stock or bond (or, it bears repeating, a subprime mortgage via a fraudulent application). Can the "noble" politicians who refuse, for example, to consider even the most modest Social Security reform say the same about their "vital function"? And the fact that we don't let supply and demand work its wonders in medical salaries the way we do on Wall Street is precisely why we are running out of doctors. Go figure.

If Samuelson thinks that Rodriguez is overpaid (or, more proximately, that a Yankees ticket is overpriced), then he is free not to enter into that transaction. If he thinks that Johnny Depp is "exploiting" moviegoers, then he is free to protest by staying home. And if he doesn't like the subprime market, then he can opt not to borrow through it. Beyond that, he has no standing to complain — and neither does any politician, bureaucrat or other malcontent. Move along folks, no externalities to see here...

Meanwhile, Samuelson claims that "Wall Street also frequently misallocates capital and credit." Misallocates — by what standard? If I go to a movie that I end up disliking, did I "misallocate my capital"? Would I be "crazed" to ever go to a movie again after seeing a bad one? Of course not. Bad outcomes do not automatically prove bad decisions. "It made sense at the time" is not always a rationalization.

Finally, remember my parable in this post: Wall Street specifically, and the free market generally, are not required to prove that they are perfect. They merely need to prove that they are better than the only available alternative: command-and-control statism by people who think exactly like Samuelson (or worse).

That would be an investment guaranteed to prove worthless.

More thoughts at EconLog, Rolling Doughnut.

A few days ago, in another context, I wrote the following:

Note also the lack of any outer bound for this faux-externality theory of tax-to-control policymaking. If every private transaction, by its impact (however minuscule) on supply and demand constitutes an "externality," then what isn't deserving of punitive taxes?

Here's a magnificently sublime example:

An alliance of more than a dozen New Mexico environmental groups will lobby again for legislative approval of a 1 percent sales tax -- or "sin tax" -- on new televisions and video games to fund outdoor education programs.

Such a tax could raise an estimated $4 million a year, according to a legislative study last year. The money would fund programs aimed at teaching students outdoors.
...
Some studies in the last five years have linked the increasing amount of time children spend watching television or playing video games to lower academic scores, obesity and increased attention-deficit disorder.

Of course, unless children are actually eating their television sets, there is no proximate relation between television and obesity (or ADHD) -- and certainly not a sufficient connection to warrant a warm-fuzzy-feeling tax on those who neither create nor suffer from the faux externality: an individual with no children, or with underweight children, would pay the tax and receive no benefit.

But tax their TVs anyway. Pretend there is an externality where there isn't one so as to legitimize your (self-serving) proposal. (Remember, the activists proposing this insolent tax are precisely the groups that would benefit from the boondoggles the tax would fund. Environmentalists can have conflicts of interest too, after all.)

Bottom line: This proposal is not a "Pigou tax" -- it is rent seeking, pure and simple. And it's bad policy.

Note also that New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the nation and has a far worse "childhood food insecurity problem" than "childhood obesity problem." Just saying.

Via Junkfood Science, who reminds us that

there is no credible evidence for a new "nature deficit disorder" children are claimed to suffer from, or that getting them outside and teaching them about the environment will eradicate childhood obesity or attention deficit disorder.

As if that mattered to those nanny-staters who would save us from ourselves.