Marine Survives Two Tours in Iraq, SWAT Kills Him
...The sheriff’s department maintains that Guerena was holding an AR-15 when the paramilitary force fired 71 bullets in his home, but other key parts of the government story have collapsed. While PCSD initially claimed Guerena fired the weapon he was alleged to have been holding, the department now says it was a misfire by one of the deputies that caused this deadly group panic inside a home containing a woman and a toddler...
Sheriffs: Slain Jose Guerena Linked to "Home-Invasion Crew"
...Storie also speculates that police officers casing Guerena’s house a few days before the shooting were spied on by parties unknown, and he says a portrait of Jesus Malverde, “believed to be a ‘narco saint’” was found under Guerena’s bed.
It was either Patrick Henry or Rooster Cogburn who observed that states and railroads will lie to you quicker than a man will. While the sheriff has been quiet about the case’s details (including the dispatcher’s apparent confusion over the raid during Vanessa Guerena’s 911 call), Storie’s claims are almost perfect examples of lawyerly pettifogging. Having a picture of a “narco saint” is evidence of nothing; in 1975, my wife’s grandmother was killed by one Lebanese militia because while raiding her home they found a magazine published by a rival militia. Finding a uniform in a private residence was one of the KGB’s favorite pieces of flimflammery when they wanted to arrest somebody. Possession of firearms is, for the time being, legal in the United States, and the fact that Guerena had an AR-15 has been part of this narrative since the beginning. ...
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Nearly 20 percent of new Obamacare waivers are gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, fancy hotels in Nancy Pelosi’s district
Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.
That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.
Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers....
Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.
That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.
Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers....
Political pressure tainted error-ridden GAO report
...GAO issued a slew of corrections in November to an undercover investigation into for-profit colleges requested by Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, who had unveiled the report at a hearing highly critical of the schools Aug. 4.
A internal GAO email obtained by The Daily Caller, a self-evaluation on what went wrong from a member of the team that wrote the report, suggests GAO was under the gun.
The email says GAO was put under “extreme short time frames” by Harkin to issue the report and “congressional staffers” demanded the inclusion of numerous details as it was being finalized.
“It certainly discredits the report, doesn’t it?” said Rep. Rob Andrews, New Jersey Democrat and long-time advocate for the for-profit schools, “The fact that they felt pressure to finish this on time is disquieting.”...
...GAO issued a slew of corrections in November to an undercover investigation into for-profit colleges requested by Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, who had unveiled the report at a hearing highly critical of the schools Aug. 4.
A internal GAO email obtained by The Daily Caller, a self-evaluation on what went wrong from a member of the team that wrote the report, suggests GAO was under the gun.
The email says GAO was put under “extreme short time frames” by Harkin to issue the report and “congressional staffers” demanded the inclusion of numerous details as it was being finalized.
“It certainly discredits the report, doesn’t it?” said Rep. Rob Andrews, New Jersey Democrat and long-time advocate for the for-profit schools, “The fact that they felt pressure to finish this on time is disquieting.”...
NHS budget squeeze to blame for longer waiting times, say doctors
Latest performance data reveal number of English patients waiting more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in last year
Doctors are blaming financial pressures on the NHS for an increase in the number of patients who are not being treated within the 18 weeks that the government recommends.
New NHS performance data reveal that the number of people in England who are being forced to wait more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in the last year, while the number who had to wait longer than six months has shot up by 43%.
In March this year, 34,639 people, or 11% of the total, waited more than that time to receive inpatient treatment, compared with 27,534, or 8.3%, in March 2010 – an increase of 26% – Department of Health statistics show.
Similarly, in March this year some 11,243 patients who underwent treatment had waited for more than six months, compared with 7,841 in the same month in 2010 – a 43% rise....
Economic study: Stimulus 'destroyed/forestalled' 1 million private sector jobs
Economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor have issued a study about the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, also known as the “Stimulus” – approximately a trillion dollars borrowed and spent ostensibly to create and save millions of jobs and keep the unemployment rate below 8%.
We’ve known for months, each and every time the unemployment numbers come out, that it failed miserably to keep unemployment below 8%.
Conley and Dupor give the short “bottom line” version of their study’s result:
Our benchmark point estimates suggest the Act created/saved 450 thousand government-sector jobs and destroyed/forestalled one million private sector jobs....
Economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor have issued a study about the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, also known as the “Stimulus” – approximately a trillion dollars borrowed and spent ostensibly to create and save millions of jobs and keep the unemployment rate below 8%.
We’ve known for months, each and every time the unemployment numbers come out, that it failed miserably to keep unemployment below 8%.
Conley and Dupor give the short “bottom line” version of their study’s result:
Our benchmark point estimates suggest the Act created/saved 450 thousand government-sector jobs and destroyed/forestalled one million private sector jobs....
Warrants Let Agents Enter Homes Without Owner Knowing
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A special type of government search warrant that allows authorities to search homes without informing the owner for months is becoming more common, Target 7 has learned.
Imagine someone walking through your neighborhood, coming into your home and rifling through your intimate belongings.
“(They) search through your home, your dresser drawers, your computer files,” Peter Simonson, with ACLU New Mexico, said.
These search warrants don’t involve knocking on doors or any type of warning at all. Delayed-notice search warrants, or "sneak-and-peek" warrants, allow federal agents to enter your home without telling you they’ve been there until months later.
The warrants have always been around, but their use has spiked since the War on Terror and revamped Patriot Act was signed in 2005. The number of delayed-notice search warrants spiked nationally from nearly 700 in fiscal year 2007 to approaching close to 2,000 in 2009....
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A special type of government search warrant that allows authorities to search homes without informing the owner for months is becoming more common, Target 7 has learned.
Imagine someone walking through your neighborhood, coming into your home and rifling through your intimate belongings.
“(They) search through your home, your dresser drawers, your computer files,” Peter Simonson, with ACLU New Mexico, said.
These search warrants don’t involve knocking on doors or any type of warning at all. Delayed-notice search warrants, or "sneak-and-peek" warrants, allow federal agents to enter your home without telling you they’ve been there until months later.
The warrants have always been around, but their use has spiked since the War on Terror and revamped Patriot Act was signed in 2005. The number of delayed-notice search warrants spiked nationally from nearly 700 in fiscal year 2007 to approaching close to 2,000 in 2009....
The IRS Gets Political
The taxman goes after campaign donors.
...But even if the Obama Administration doesn't deserve primary credit for this idea to chill political activity, it will still serve the Democrats' purpose in time for 2012 fundraising. A tax probe of donations given by a specific class of political donors is a boldfaced attempt to punish and discourage political speech.
The IRS also says the investigations into a few deep-pocketed donors isn't the prelude to a broader offensive against the groups. Nah, that would mean they were taking their cues from liberal campaign finance groups like Democracy 21, which has been flogging this idea as a way to impose greater disclosure requirements. Last September, Montana Democrat Max Baucus wrote a letter to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman to suggest he start investigating the political groups.
We wish we were shocked, but the plan is merely the latest play by Democrats to crack down on donors who support their opponents. In 2010 they tried and failed to pass the Disclose Act, which would have forced disclosure on business donations but left unions alone.
This year they've turned to harassment by regulation, first asking the Federal Communications Commission to require groups that run political ads to disclose their high-dollar donors. The Obama Administration is also working up an executive order to require anyone bidding for a federal contract to disclose if the company or its executives donated more then $5,000 to independent groups.
Now comes the 501(c)(4) net, which may catch the likes of liberal uber-donor George Soros, though we'd bet he's happy to lend his name to the project to create an appearance of nonpartisanship. The real targets of the disclosure project are conservative groups like Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, which have seen their fundraising and influence grow in recent years....
The taxman goes after campaign donors.
...But even if the Obama Administration doesn't deserve primary credit for this idea to chill political activity, it will still serve the Democrats' purpose in time for 2012 fundraising. A tax probe of donations given by a specific class of political donors is a boldfaced attempt to punish and discourage political speech.
The IRS also says the investigations into a few deep-pocketed donors isn't the prelude to a broader offensive against the groups. Nah, that would mean they were taking their cues from liberal campaign finance groups like Democracy 21, which has been flogging this idea as a way to impose greater disclosure requirements. Last September, Montana Democrat Max Baucus wrote a letter to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman to suggest he start investigating the political groups.
We wish we were shocked, but the plan is merely the latest play by Democrats to crack down on donors who support their opponents. In 2010 they tried and failed to pass the Disclose Act, which would have forced disclosure on business donations but left unions alone.
This year they've turned to harassment by regulation, first asking the Federal Communications Commission to require groups that run political ads to disclose their high-dollar donors. The Obama Administration is also working up an executive order to require anyone bidding for a federal contract to disclose if the company or its executives donated more then $5,000 to independent groups.
Now comes the 501(c)(4) net, which may catch the likes of liberal uber-donor George Soros, though we'd bet he's happy to lend his name to the project to create an appearance of nonpartisanship. The real targets of the disclosure project are conservative groups like Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, which have seen their fundraising and influence grow in recent years....
Prison for you, but not for me
...Our rulers make laws to control and punish you and your family for doing the very acts they flaunted in their youth.
Smoking pot is not a big deal. If the politicians have enough common sense to know that their lives shouldn’t be ruined over a little drug use, they should also have enough common decency to recognize that neither should anyone else’s....
...Our rulers make laws to control and punish you and your family for doing the very acts they flaunted in their youth.
Smoking pot is not a big deal. If the politicians have enough common sense to know that their lives shouldn’t be ruined over a little drug use, they should also have enough common decency to recognize that neither should anyone else’s....
Climate cleansing: Google to censor skeptics?
... Meanwhile, can search engines do a better job of pointing the public toward credible sites?
A Google spokeswoman, who insisted on anonymity because she is not a Google executive, said the company is always looking for ways to improve results. “Last year, we made 500 changes to the algorithm to improve search quality,” she said....
... Meanwhile, can search engines do a better job of pointing the public toward credible sites?
A Google spokeswoman, who insisted on anonymity because she is not a Google executive, said the company is always looking for ways to improve results. “Last year, we made 500 changes to the algorithm to improve search quality,” she said....
Government Role in Causing Financial Crisis Much Bigger than Thought
(PDF)
...“US Agencies played a larger role in the housing crisis than we first reported. In January 2009, I wrote that the housing crisis was mostly a consequence of the private sector… However, over the last 2 years, analysts have dissected the housing crisis in greater detail. What emerges from new research is something quite different: government agencies now look to have guaranteed, originated or underwritten 60% of all “non-traditional” mortgages, which totaled $4.6 trillion in June 2008. What’s more, this research asserts that housing policies instituted in the early 1990s were explicitly designed to require US Agencies to make much riskier loans, with the ultimate goal of pushing private sector banks to adopt the same standards.”...
The True Story of the Financial Crisis
Peter Wallison Reasserts His View of What Caused the Financial Crisis
...In March 2010, Edward Pinto, a resident fellow (and my colleague) at the American Enterprise Institute who had served as chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, sent the Commission a 70-page, fully sourced memorandum on the number of subprime and other high-risk mortgages in the financial system in 2008. Pinto's research showed that he had found more than 25 million such mortgages (his later work showed that there were approximately 27 million). Since there are about 55 million mortgages in the U.S., Pinto's research indicated that, as the financial crisis began, half of all U.S. mortgages were of inferior quality and liable to default when housing prices were no longer rising. In August, Pinto supplemented his initial research with a paper documenting the efforts of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), over two decades and through two administrations, to increase home ownership by reducing mortgage-underwriting standards.
This information, which highlighted the role of government policy in fostering the creation of these low-quality mortgages, raised important questions about whether the mortgage meltdown would have been so destructive if those government policies had not existed. Any objective investigation of the causes of the financial crisis would have looked carefully at Pinto's research, exposed it to the members of the Commission, taken Pinto's testimony, and tested the accuracy of his research. But the Commission took none of these steps. Pinto's memos were never made available to the other members of the FCIC, or even to the commissioners who were members of the subcommittee charged with considering the role of housing policy in the financial crisis....
...From the beginning, Fannie and Freddie's congressional charters required them to buy only mortgages that would be acceptable to institutional investors -- in other words, prime mortgages. At the time, a prime mortgage was a loan with a 10-20 percent down payment, made to a borrower with a good credit record who had sufficient income to meet his or her debt obligations after the loan was made. Fannie and Freddie operated under these standards until 1992.
The 1992 affordable housing goals required that, of all mortgages Fannie and Freddie bought in any year, at least 30 percent had to be loans made to borrowers who were at or below the median income in the places where they lived. Over succeeding years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) increased this requirement, first to 42 percent in 1995, to 50 percent in 2000, and finally to 55 percent in 2007. It is important to note, accordingly, that this occurred during both Democratic and Republican administrations....
...This is the claim that Fannie and Freddie became insolvent because, seeking profits or market share, they "followed Wall Street" into subprime lending. This idea neatly avoids the question of why Fannie and Freddie became insolvent in the first place, and focuses the blame again on the private sector. The statement, however, as the following quote from Fannie's 2006 10-K report makes clear, is untrue:
[W]e have made, and continue to make, significant adjustments to our mortgage loan sourcing and purchase strategies in an effort to meet HUD's increased housing goals and new subgoals. These strategies include entering into some purchase and securitization transactions with lower expected economic returns than our typical transactions. We have also relaxed some of our underwriting criteria to obtain goals-qualifying mortgage loans and increased our investments in higher-risk mortgage loan products that are more likely to serve the borrowers targeted by HUD's goals and subgoals, which could increase our credit losses....
(PDF)
...“US Agencies played a larger role in the housing crisis than we first reported. In January 2009, I wrote that the housing crisis was mostly a consequence of the private sector… However, over the last 2 years, analysts have dissected the housing crisis in greater detail. What emerges from new research is something quite different: government agencies now look to have guaranteed, originated or underwritten 60% of all “non-traditional” mortgages, which totaled $4.6 trillion in June 2008. What’s more, this research asserts that housing policies instituted in the early 1990s were explicitly designed to require US Agencies to make much riskier loans, with the ultimate goal of pushing private sector banks to adopt the same standards.”...
The True Story of the Financial Crisis
Peter Wallison Reasserts His View of What Caused the Financial Crisis
...In March 2010, Edward Pinto, a resident fellow (and my colleague) at the American Enterprise Institute who had served as chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, sent the Commission a 70-page, fully sourced memorandum on the number of subprime and other high-risk mortgages in the financial system in 2008. Pinto's research showed that he had found more than 25 million such mortgages (his later work showed that there were approximately 27 million). Since there are about 55 million mortgages in the U.S., Pinto's research indicated that, as the financial crisis began, half of all U.S. mortgages were of inferior quality and liable to default when housing prices were no longer rising. In August, Pinto supplemented his initial research with a paper documenting the efforts of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), over two decades and through two administrations, to increase home ownership by reducing mortgage-underwriting standards.
This information, which highlighted the role of government policy in fostering the creation of these low-quality mortgages, raised important questions about whether the mortgage meltdown would have been so destructive if those government policies had not existed. Any objective investigation of the causes of the financial crisis would have looked carefully at Pinto's research, exposed it to the members of the Commission, taken Pinto's testimony, and tested the accuracy of his research. But the Commission took none of these steps. Pinto's memos were never made available to the other members of the FCIC, or even to the commissioners who were members of the subcommittee charged with considering the role of housing policy in the financial crisis....
...From the beginning, Fannie and Freddie's congressional charters required them to buy only mortgages that would be acceptable to institutional investors -- in other words, prime mortgages. At the time, a prime mortgage was a loan with a 10-20 percent down payment, made to a borrower with a good credit record who had sufficient income to meet his or her debt obligations after the loan was made. Fannie and Freddie operated under these standards until 1992.
The 1992 affordable housing goals required that, of all mortgages Fannie and Freddie bought in any year, at least 30 percent had to be loans made to borrowers who were at or below the median income in the places where they lived. Over succeeding years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) increased this requirement, first to 42 percent in 1995, to 50 percent in 2000, and finally to 55 percent in 2007. It is important to note, accordingly, that this occurred during both Democratic and Republican administrations....
...This is the claim that Fannie and Freddie became insolvent because, seeking profits or market share, they "followed Wall Street" into subprime lending. This idea neatly avoids the question of why Fannie and Freddie became insolvent in the first place, and focuses the blame again on the private sector. The statement, however, as the following quote from Fannie's 2006 10-K report makes clear, is untrue:
[W]e have made, and continue to make, significant adjustments to our mortgage loan sourcing and purchase strategies in an effort to meet HUD's increased housing goals and new subgoals. These strategies include entering into some purchase and securitization transactions with lower expected economic returns than our typical transactions. We have also relaxed some of our underwriting criteria to obtain goals-qualifying mortgage loans and increased our investments in higher-risk mortgage loan products that are more likely to serve the borrowers targeted by HUD's goals and subgoals, which could increase our credit losses....
Establishment Blues
...Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed. ...
...Some of the problem is intellectual. For almost a century now, American intellectual culture has been dominated by the values and legacy of the progressive movement. Science and technology would guide impartial experts and civil servants to create a better and better society. For most of the American elite today, progress means ‘progressive’; the way to make the world better is through more nanny state government programs administered by more, and more highly qualified, lifetime civil servants. Anybody who doubts this is a reactionary and an ignoramus. This isn’t just a rational conviction with much of our elite; it is a bone deep instinct. Unfortunately, the progressive tradition no longer has the answers we need, but our leadership class by and large cannot think in any other terms....
...The increasingly meritocratic elite of today has no such qualms. The average Harvard Business School and Yale Law School graduate today feels that privilege has been earned. Didn’t he or she score higher on the LSATs than anyone else? Didn’t he or she previously pass the rigorous scrutiny of the undergraduate admissions process in a free and fair process to get into a top college? Haven’t they been certified as the best of the best by impartial experts?...
...Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed. ...
...Some of the problem is intellectual. For almost a century now, American intellectual culture has been dominated by the values and legacy of the progressive movement. Science and technology would guide impartial experts and civil servants to create a better and better society. For most of the American elite today, progress means ‘progressive’; the way to make the world better is through more nanny state government programs administered by more, and more highly qualified, lifetime civil servants. Anybody who doubts this is a reactionary and an ignoramus. This isn’t just a rational conviction with much of our elite; it is a bone deep instinct. Unfortunately, the progressive tradition no longer has the answers we need, but our leadership class by and large cannot think in any other terms....
...The increasingly meritocratic elite of today has no such qualms. The average Harvard Business School and Yale Law School graduate today feels that privilege has been earned. Didn’t he or she score higher on the LSATs than anyone else? Didn’t he or she previously pass the rigorous scrutiny of the undergraduate admissions process in a free and fair process to get into a top college? Haven’t they been certified as the best of the best by impartial experts?...
Sen. Rand Paul: Right To Health Care Is Like Believing In "Slavery"
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): "With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It's not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery."
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): "With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It's not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery."
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Compassion or Cover-Up? Teen Victim Claims Rape; Forced Confession in Church
...Anderson was only 16 when she said she was forced to stand terrified before her entire church congregation to confess her "sin" -- she had become pregnant. She says she wasn't allowed to tell the group that the pregnancy was the result of being allegedly raped by a fellow congregant, a man twice her age.
She says her New Hampshire pastor, Chuck Phelps, told her she was lucky not to have been born during Old Testament times when she would have been stoned to death. ...
...Her mother sought help from the pastor and they agreed to send her thousands of miles away to Colorado to live with another IFB family.
There, she said she was homeschooled and restricted from seeing others her age until she gave her child up for adoption. ...
...Anderson was only 16 when she said she was forced to stand terrified before her entire church congregation to confess her "sin" -- she had become pregnant. She says she wasn't allowed to tell the group that the pregnancy was the result of being allegedly raped by a fellow congregant, a man twice her age.
She says her New Hampshire pastor, Chuck Phelps, told her she was lucky not to have been born during Old Testament times when she would have been stoned to death. ...
...Her mother sought help from the pastor and they agreed to send her thousands of miles away to Colorado to live with another IFB family.
There, she said she was homeschooled and restricted from seeing others her age until she gave her child up for adoption. ...
Top Green Admits: “We Are Lost!”
...Greens like to have it both ways. They warn darkly about “peak oil” and global resource shortages that will destroy our industrial economy in its tracks — but also warn that runaway economic growth will destroy the planet through the uncontrolled effects of mass industrial productions. Both doomsday scenarios cannot be true; one cannot simultaneously die of both starvation and gluttony....
...Greens like to have it both ways. They warn darkly about “peak oil” and global resource shortages that will destroy our industrial economy in its tracks — but also warn that runaway economic growth will destroy the planet through the uncontrolled effects of mass industrial productions. Both doomsday scenarios cannot be true; one cannot simultaneously die of both starvation and gluttony....
Why the Left Needs Racism--II
...Barack Obama is at least the third consecutive president to be the subject of paranoid conspiracy theories, and it strikes us as odd that anyone who lived through the Clinton and Bush years would automatically assume it must be because he's black. The false claim that Obama was born outside the U.S. does not reflect any common racial stereotype. Nor, for that matter, do the rumors that he is Muslim. The vast majority of American blacks are natural born and Christian....
...Baselessly accusing their political foes of racism is a way in which today's liberals attempt to incite fear and loathing of "the other." As we argued last year, this serves a political purpose in that it helps persuade blacks not to consider voting Republican. But it serves a psychological purpose as well. It reinforces white liberals' sense of their own superiority.
Yet that sense of superiority is not as secure as it once was. Here is Remnick's most telling quote from that interview: "Really, I'm not in the habit of screaming racist at every turn. I don't think you [interviewer Michele Norris] are and I don't think most people are."
It used to be that people expressing politically incorrect views about race felt compelled to preface their statements with a defensive denial: "I'm not a racist, but . . ." The editor of The New Yorker, speaking to an NPR audience, now has a similar compulsion to deny that he is "in the habit of screaming racist."
The tables have turned. Now it is the left that is on the defensive over "racism." Their outdated attitudes about race put them in the absurd position of arguing that the most powerful man in the world is a victim of oppression because of the color of his skin. Men like David Remnick turn out to be the ones who aren't ready for a black president....
...Barack Obama is at least the third consecutive president to be the subject of paranoid conspiracy theories, and it strikes us as odd that anyone who lived through the Clinton and Bush years would automatically assume it must be because he's black. The false claim that Obama was born outside the U.S. does not reflect any common racial stereotype. Nor, for that matter, do the rumors that he is Muslim. The vast majority of American blacks are natural born and Christian....
...Baselessly accusing their political foes of racism is a way in which today's liberals attempt to incite fear and loathing of "the other." As we argued last year, this serves a political purpose in that it helps persuade blacks not to consider voting Republican. But it serves a psychological purpose as well. It reinforces white liberals' sense of their own superiority.
Yet that sense of superiority is not as secure as it once was. Here is Remnick's most telling quote from that interview: "Really, I'm not in the habit of screaming racist at every turn. I don't think you [interviewer Michele Norris] are and I don't think most people are."
It used to be that people expressing politically incorrect views about race felt compelled to preface their statements with a defensive denial: "I'm not a racist, but . . ." The editor of The New Yorker, speaking to an NPR audience, now has a similar compulsion to deny that he is "in the habit of screaming racist."
The tables have turned. Now it is the left that is on the defensive over "racism." Their outdated attitudes about race put them in the absurd position of arguing that the most powerful man in the world is a victim of oppression because of the color of his skin. Men like David Remnick turn out to be the ones who aren't ready for a black president....
Osama bin Laden dead: Blackout during raid on bin Laden compound
The head of the CIA admitted yesterday that there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events.
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.
A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.
In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: "Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.
"We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound."
Mr Panetta also told the network that the US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the president. ...
The head of the CIA admitted yesterday that there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events.
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.
A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.
In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: "Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.
"We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound."
Mr Panetta also told the network that the US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the president. ...
7 Minutes Vs. 16 Hours: How The Media Reports Delay
...On the other hand, after Obama was told (most likely for the fifteenth time) that the CIA was really, really, really quite confident that Osama bin Ladin was at that compound in Abbottabad, he decided he needed to sleep on it.
Sixteen hours later (hours during which Osama might have fled-- bear in mind, his courier's name had just been outed by WikiLeaks), he made up his mind....
...On the other hand, after Obama was told (most likely for the fifteenth time) that the CIA was really, really, really quite confident that Osama bin Ladin was at that compound in Abbottabad, he decided he needed to sleep on it.
Sixteen hours later (hours during which Osama might have fled-- bear in mind, his courier's name had just been outed by WikiLeaks), he made up his mind....
If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools
What if groceries were paid for by taxes, and you were assigned a store based on where you live?
Teachers unions and their political allies argue that market forces can't supply quality education. According to them, only our existing system—politicized and monopolistic—will do the trick. Yet Americans would find that approach ludicrous if applied to other vital goods or services.
Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.
No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes....
What if groceries were paid for by taxes, and you were assigned a store based on where you live?
Teachers unions and their political allies argue that market forces can't supply quality education. According to them, only our existing system—politicized and monopolistic—will do the trick. Yet Americans would find that approach ludicrous if applied to other vital goods or services.
Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.
No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes....
Holder on gun smuggling scandal: ‘I frankly don’t know’ what really happened
Time for Daylight: U.S. Weapons Reaching Cartel Hands a Huge Scandal
The U.S. government has effectively allowed weaponry to reach cartels, and now uses the violence they helped cause as a gun control argument.
...The plan for a long gun registry is still one of the president’s goals, even as he creates the problem for which he proposes the solution. A virulent anti-gun radical since his days with the Joyce Foundation, Obama has previously stooped to despicable levels in order to pursue his gun control agenda. He now wants to use the bully pulpit of his office to play both arsonist and firefighter, and is willing to watch northern Mexico and the American southwest burn in order to restrict a constitutional right he has always abhorred.
Time for Daylight: U.S. Weapons Reaching Cartel Hands a Huge Scandal
The U.S. government has effectively allowed weaponry to reach cartels, and now uses the violence they helped cause as a gun control argument.
...The plan for a long gun registry is still one of the president’s goals, even as he creates the problem for which he proposes the solution. A virulent anti-gun radical since his days with the Joyce Foundation, Obama has previously stooped to despicable levels in order to pursue his gun control agenda. He now wants to use the bully pulpit of his office to play both arsonist and firefighter, and is willing to watch northern Mexico and the American southwest burn in order to restrict a constitutional right he has always abhorred.
The State
...War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. ...
...War, or at least modern war waged by a democratic republic against a powerful enemy, seems to achieve for a nation almost all that the most inflamed political idealist could desire. Citizens are no longer indifferent to their Government, but each cell of the body politic is brimming with life and activity. We are at last on the way to full realization of that collective community in which each individual somehow contains the virtue of the whole. In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole and feels immensely strengthened in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective community live in each person who throws himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out. At war, the indvidual becomes almost identical with his society. He achieves a superb self-assurance, an intuition of the rightness of all his ideas and emotions, so that in the suppression of opponents or heretics he is invincibly strong; he feels behind him all the power of the collective community. The individual as social being in war seems to have achieved almost his apotheosis. Not for any religious impulse could the American nation have been expected to show such devotion en masse, such sacrifice and labor. Certainly not for any secular good, such as universal education or the subjugation of nature, would it have poured forth its treasure and its life, or would it have permitted such stern coercive measures to be taken against it, such as conscripting its money and its men. But for the sake of a war of offensive self-defense, undertaken to support a difficult cause to the slogan of "democracy," it would reach the highest level ever known of collective effort....
...War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. ...
...War, or at least modern war waged by a democratic republic against a powerful enemy, seems to achieve for a nation almost all that the most inflamed political idealist could desire. Citizens are no longer indifferent to their Government, but each cell of the body politic is brimming with life and activity. We are at last on the way to full realization of that collective community in which each individual somehow contains the virtue of the whole. In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole and feels immensely strengthened in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective community live in each person who throws himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out. At war, the indvidual becomes almost identical with his society. He achieves a superb self-assurance, an intuition of the rightness of all his ideas and emotions, so that in the suppression of opponents or heretics he is invincibly strong; he feels behind him all the power of the collective community. The individual as social being in war seems to have achieved almost his apotheosis. Not for any religious impulse could the American nation have been expected to show such devotion en masse, such sacrifice and labor. Certainly not for any secular good, such as universal education or the subjugation of nature, would it have poured forth its treasure and its life, or would it have permitted such stern coercive measures to be taken against it, such as conscripting its money and its men. But for the sake of a war of offensive self-defense, undertaken to support a difficult cause to the slogan of "democracy," it would reach the highest level ever known of collective effort....
SEIU drops mask, goes full commie
A May Day rally in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by the SEIU and various communist groups, as well as other unions, reflected yet another step in the normalization of self-identified communist and socialist ideologies in the Obama era. Not only did the SEIU help to organize the rally in conjunction with communists, they marched side-by-side with communists, while union members carried communist flags, communists carried union signs, and altogether there was no real way to tell the two apart....
A May Day rally in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by the SEIU and various communist groups, as well as other unions, reflected yet another step in the normalization of self-identified communist and socialist ideologies in the Obama era. Not only did the SEIU help to organize the rally in conjunction with communists, they marched side-by-side with communists, while union members carried communist flags, communists carried union signs, and altogether there was no real way to tell the two apart....
Dept of Education orders universities to lower burden of proof in sex crime cases
...Will Creeley, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, added that the concerns are not theoretical, that students are already having to prepare defenses to the lower standards.
“OCR has moved past the kind of normal responses we would expect to see, i.e. more training, clearer policies, and has decided instead to ‘level the playing field’ by tilting the scales quite clearly in favor of the accuser at the expense of justice on campus,” Creeley told TheDC. “This is a very real dangerous change that will affect student’s lives. More students will erroneously be found guilty of sexual assault due to these lower standards.”
FIRE also wrote of concerns about the stifling of free speech, namely OCR’s failure to address distinctions between “politically incorrect” expression and sexual harassment...
...Will Creeley, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, added that the concerns are not theoretical, that students are already having to prepare defenses to the lower standards.
“OCR has moved past the kind of normal responses we would expect to see, i.e. more training, clearer policies, and has decided instead to ‘level the playing field’ by tilting the scales quite clearly in favor of the accuser at the expense of justice on campus,” Creeley told TheDC. “This is a very real dangerous change that will affect student’s lives. More students will erroneously be found guilty of sexual assault due to these lower standards.”
FIRE also wrote of concerns about the stifling of free speech, namely OCR’s failure to address distinctions between “politically incorrect” expression and sexual harassment...
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Behind the coming physician shortage
...Existing government programs already reimburse physicians at rates that are often less than the actual cost of treating a patient. Estimates suggest that on average physicians are reimbursed at roughly 78% of costs under Medicare, and just 70% of costs under Medicaid. Physicians must either make up for this shortfall by shifting costs to those patients with insurance — meaning those of us with insurance pay more — or treat patients at a loss.
As a result, more and more physicians are choosing to opt-out of the system altogether. Roughly 13% of physicians will not accept Medicare patients today. Another 17% limit the number of Medicare patients they will see, a figure that rises to 31% among primary care physicians. The story is even worse in Medicaid, where as many as a third of doctors will not participate in the program....
...Existing government programs already reimburse physicians at rates that are often less than the actual cost of treating a patient. Estimates suggest that on average physicians are reimbursed at roughly 78% of costs under Medicare, and just 70% of costs under Medicaid. Physicians must either make up for this shortfall by shifting costs to those patients with insurance — meaning those of us with insurance pay more — or treat patients at a loss.
As a result, more and more physicians are choosing to opt-out of the system altogether. Roughly 13% of physicians will not accept Medicare patients today. Another 17% limit the number of Medicare patients they will see, a figure that rises to 31% among primary care physicians. The story is even worse in Medicaid, where as many as a third of doctors will not participate in the program....
The left decides who gets lawyers
...And who will determine what is “important”? Why Socarides, of course. The entire notion is at odds with the left’s usual defense of attorneys who represent all manner of heinous defendants. When conservatives merely wanted to know which Obama Justice Department attorneys had represented al-Qaeda terrorists the hollering was deafening. (McCarthyism! The right of legal representation!) When former White House counsel Greg Craig’s record of representing a long list of unsavory characters came to light liberals didn’t bat an eye.
The only ethical problems that would have excused King and Spalding’s withdrawal from the case would have been a conflict of interest (as the Gitmo attorneys encountered in switching sides to represent the U.S. government against detainees) or the absence of a viable set of facts or legal theory on which to base the case (which is not remotely in evidence here).
Frankly, the left’s unprincipled stance may come as a shock to the criminal defense bar. After all, don’t those people “defend murder,” under the left’s reasoning? ...
...And who will determine what is “important”? Why Socarides, of course. The entire notion is at odds with the left’s usual defense of attorneys who represent all manner of heinous defendants. When conservatives merely wanted to know which Obama Justice Department attorneys had represented al-Qaeda terrorists the hollering was deafening. (McCarthyism! The right of legal representation!) When former White House counsel Greg Craig’s record of representing a long list of unsavory characters came to light liberals didn’t bat an eye.
The only ethical problems that would have excused King and Spalding’s withdrawal from the case would have been a conflict of interest (as the Gitmo attorneys encountered in switching sides to represent the U.S. government against detainees) or the absence of a viable set of facts or legal theory on which to base the case (which is not remotely in evidence here).
Frankly, the left’s unprincipled stance may come as a shock to the criminal defense bar. After all, don’t those people “defend murder,” under the left’s reasoning? ...
UM union violence lectures grab attention
...The videos — posted online yesterday on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website — show snippets of Judy Ancel, director of UM-Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies, team-teaching with Don Giljum of Operating Engineers 148. The Labor in Society & Politics class is a joint effort between UMKC and UM-St. Louis.
In one clip, Ancel tells students, “Violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.” ...
...The videos — posted online yesterday on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website — show snippets of Judy Ancel, director of UM-Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies, team-teaching with Don Giljum of Operating Engineers 148. The Labor in Society & Politics class is a joint effort between UMKC and UM-St. Louis.
In one clip, Ancel tells students, “Violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.” ...
Lawrence O'Donnell: Jesus Specifically Endorsed A 100% Taxation Rates for The Top 5% of Earners In Society
...Also, the "give" part of the command seems rather more important than O'Donnell is letting on: Virtue is demonstrated by voluntary undertaking of it. Not state-compelled compliance with it....
...Also, the "give" part of the command seems rather more important than O'Donnell is letting on: Virtue is demonstrated by voluntary undertaking of it. Not state-compelled compliance with it....
Another Drilling Halt: Your Taxpayer-Funded Regulators at Work for You
...So all significant seafaring activity off the Alaskan coast in this area requires icebreaking services virtually all year. Shell isn’t the only economic actor contracting for icebreaking services. Most commercial maritime traffic operates within 70 miles of the coast – meaning that’s where the icebreakers will be cutting swaths through the ice and emitting their emissions – because that’s where the ice tends to be youngest and thinnest....
...So all significant seafaring activity off the Alaskan coast in this area requires icebreaking services virtually all year. Shell isn’t the only economic actor contracting for icebreaking services. Most commercial maritime traffic operates within 70 miles of the coast – meaning that’s where the icebreakers will be cutting swaths through the ice and emitting their emissions – because that’s where the ice tends to be youngest and thinnest....
RomneyCare's Unhappy Anniversary
Earlier this month, the landmark Massachusetts health care reform law turned five years old. Democrats were quick to applaud the anniversary, as the Bay State law is the model for the federal health care reform package that passed last year.
The anniversary has proved especially inconvenient for former Massachusetts Governor and probable Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who argued forcefully for his state's reforms. In 2006 he boldly stated, "Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the cost of health care will be reduced."
Five years later, that prediction has proved false. Worse, the Massachusetts experiment offers an ominous preview of what lies ahead for the rest of the nation under ObamaCare.
When signing the bill into law, Romney claimed that it would "take about three years to get all of our citizens insured." In 2006 the number of uninsured in Massachusetts ranged from 372,000 to 618,000. Five years later, over 100,000 remain uninsured.
So more Bay Staters do have insurance. But that doesn't mean they've been able to get care.
The Massachusetts Medical Society found that 56% of physicians are not taking on new patients. Wait times for appointments are climbing. Just two years after reform took root, one clinic in Western Massachusetts had amassed a waiting list of 1,600 patients.
RomneyCare expanded coverage simply by putting more people on the dole. Since 2006, 440,000 people have been added to state-funded insurance rolls. Medicaid enrollment alone is up nearly 25%, and Massachusetts is struggling to cover the cost.
Of the previously uninsured individuals who have signed up, 68% are receiving free or subsidized coverage.
Many of these people aren't even citizens of Massachusetts. A recent report from the Massachusetts Inspector General found that state agencies have failed to implement controls to prevent ineligible people from making claims. In 2010 millions of dollars were spent on medical services for individuals from 48 other states and several foreign countries....
Earlier this month, the landmark Massachusetts health care reform law turned five years old. Democrats were quick to applaud the anniversary, as the Bay State law is the model for the federal health care reform package that passed last year.
The anniversary has proved especially inconvenient for former Massachusetts Governor and probable Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who argued forcefully for his state's reforms. In 2006 he boldly stated, "Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the cost of health care will be reduced."
Five years later, that prediction has proved false. Worse, the Massachusetts experiment offers an ominous preview of what lies ahead for the rest of the nation under ObamaCare.
When signing the bill into law, Romney claimed that it would "take about three years to get all of our citizens insured." In 2006 the number of uninsured in Massachusetts ranged from 372,000 to 618,000. Five years later, over 100,000 remain uninsured.
So more Bay Staters do have insurance. But that doesn't mean they've been able to get care.
The Massachusetts Medical Society found that 56% of physicians are not taking on new patients. Wait times for appointments are climbing. Just two years after reform took root, one clinic in Western Massachusetts had amassed a waiting list of 1,600 patients.
RomneyCare expanded coverage simply by putting more people on the dole. Since 2006, 440,000 people have been added to state-funded insurance rolls. Medicaid enrollment alone is up nearly 25%, and Massachusetts is struggling to cover the cost.
Of the previously uninsured individuals who have signed up, 68% are receiving free or subsidized coverage.
Many of these people aren't even citizens of Massachusetts. A recent report from the Massachusetts Inspector General found that state agencies have failed to implement controls to prevent ineligible people from making claims. In 2010 millions of dollars were spent on medical services for individuals from 48 other states and several foreign countries....
Political Privacy Should Be a Civil Right
Suppose that during the civil rights movement segregationist governors ordered all state contractors to disclose their political donations in an attempt to expose civil rights supporters to harassment and retaliation. The Supreme Court would have had none of it.
In NAACP v. Alabama (1958), the court barred Alabama from forcing the NAACP to disclose its members. Those justices would have struck down a similar effort to force the release of the NAACP's financial supporters. They would have rightly viewed it as an infringement of the constitutional right to free association and free speech.
Today President Obama is ignoring the lessons of the civil rights era he claims to revere. According to a draft executive order leaked last week, Mr. Obama plans to require any company seeking a federal contract to disclose its executives' political contributions over $5,000—not just to candidates, but to any group that might make "independent expenditure" or "electioneering communication" advertisements.
If a small businesswoman wants to sell paper clips to the Defense Department, Mr. Obama would force her to reveal contributions to groups such as Planned Parenthood or the National Rifle Association. These donations are obviously irrelevant to whether she made the most reliable bid at the lowest price. The only purpose of the executive order is to dangle the specter of retaliation (by losing her contracts) and harassment (from political opponents)....
Suppose that during the civil rights movement segregationist governors ordered all state contractors to disclose their political donations in an attempt to expose civil rights supporters to harassment and retaliation. The Supreme Court would have had none of it.
In NAACP v. Alabama (1958), the court barred Alabama from forcing the NAACP to disclose its members. Those justices would have struck down a similar effort to force the release of the NAACP's financial supporters. They would have rightly viewed it as an infringement of the constitutional right to free association and free speech.
Today President Obama is ignoring the lessons of the civil rights era he claims to revere. According to a draft executive order leaked last week, Mr. Obama plans to require any company seeking a federal contract to disclose its executives' political contributions over $5,000—not just to candidates, but to any group that might make "independent expenditure" or "electioneering communication" advertisements.
If a small businesswoman wants to sell paper clips to the Defense Department, Mr. Obama would force her to reveal contributions to groups such as Planned Parenthood or the National Rifle Association. These donations are obviously irrelevant to whether she made the most reliable bid at the lowest price. The only purpose of the executive order is to dangle the specter of retaliation (by losing her contracts) and harassment (from political opponents)....
Inside Every Leftist Is a Little Authoritarian Dying to Get Out
...Making this connection got a lot easier the other day when the University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack, a leading advocate of a “public option,” vented his frustrations over at The American Prospect blog about how Congress is likely to defang the Independent Payment Advisory Board. And he ends up just where Hayek predicted:
Despite many reasons for caution — the words George W. Bush foremost among them — I’m becoming more of a believer in an imperial presidency in domestic policy. Congress seems too screwed up and fragmented to address our most pressing problems....
...Making this connection got a lot easier the other day when the University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack, a leading advocate of a “public option,” vented his frustrations over at The American Prospect blog about how Congress is likely to defang the Independent Payment Advisory Board. And he ends up just where Hayek predicted:
Despite many reasons for caution — the words George W. Bush foremost among them — I’m becoming more of a believer in an imperial presidency in domestic policy. Congress seems too screwed up and fragmented to address our most pressing problems....
Education Dept. inspector general investigating influence of Wall Street short sellers on regulations
The Education Department’s inspector general is investigating Wall Street short sellers’ role in strict new regulations of the for-profit college sector, sources confirm to The Daily Caller.
The investigation could reveal the extent to which the investors, who are hoping to profit when the for-profit firms’ stock goes down, influenced the process or received advance knowledge about regulatory actions by the department....
The Education Department’s inspector general is investigating Wall Street short sellers’ role in strict new regulations of the for-profit college sector, sources confirm to The Daily Caller.
The investigation could reveal the extent to which the investors, who are hoping to profit when the for-profit firms’ stock goes down, influenced the process or received advance knowledge about regulatory actions by the department....
Ocean Phytoplankton Apocalypse - Perhaps Not
...So good news: No massive decline in ocean phytoplankton after all. Over at his excellent New York Times blog, Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin takes readers through the whole saga (really folks, please go read it). Revkin points out that this is how science is supposed work - claims are made, challenged, defended, rechallenged, with the process leading us ever closer to actually describing reality.
However, how the study was reported in the mainstream press illustrates a big problem with journalism. Alarming studies get reported prominently and at length, but when they are later called into question, the mainstream press reports the refutations with a buried paragraph, if that much. Googling around, this seems to be happening in this case. Of course, the problem is that, for reasons of evolutionary psychology, only bad news is actually news to most editors and consumers....
...Setting aside the thorough-going politicization of climate science (assuming that's possible), I believe that a more general problem with peer-review is that studies that tend to confirm the dominant narrative in a science have a much easier time getting through the peer-review seive than those that challenge it. And this is especially so, if the claimed results are strikingly novel, e.g., phytoplankton declining massively....
...So good news: No massive decline in ocean phytoplankton after all. Over at his excellent New York Times blog, Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin takes readers through the whole saga (really folks, please go read it). Revkin points out that this is how science is supposed work - claims are made, challenged, defended, rechallenged, with the process leading us ever closer to actually describing reality.
However, how the study was reported in the mainstream press illustrates a big problem with journalism. Alarming studies get reported prominently and at length, but when they are later called into question, the mainstream press reports the refutations with a buried paragraph, if that much. Googling around, this seems to be happening in this case. Of course, the problem is that, for reasons of evolutionary psychology, only bad news is actually news to most editors and consumers....
...Setting aside the thorough-going politicization of climate science (assuming that's possible), I believe that a more general problem with peer-review is that studies that tend to confirm the dominant narrative in a science have a much easier time getting through the peer-review seive than those that challenge it. And this is especially so, if the claimed results are strikingly novel, e.g., phytoplankton declining massively....
Wal-Mart brings guns back
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Wal-Mart said Thursday that it is bringing guns back to many of its U.S. stores in an effort to lift slumping sales.
In 2006, Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world's largest retailer stopped selling guns in the majority of its stores, blaming slow demand for those types of firearms.
Wal-Mart currently sells rifles, shotguns and ammunition in about 1,300 stores in the United States.
Those firearms will now be available at about half of Wal-Mart's 4,000 stores.
The retailer doesn't sell handguns in any of its stores, other than in Alaska....
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Wal-Mart said Thursday that it is bringing guns back to many of its U.S. stores in an effort to lift slumping sales.
In 2006, Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world's largest retailer stopped selling guns in the majority of its stores, blaming slow demand for those types of firearms.
Wal-Mart currently sells rifles, shotguns and ammunition in about 1,300 stores in the United States.
Those firearms will now be available at about half of Wal-Mart's 4,000 stores.
The retailer doesn't sell handguns in any of its stores, other than in Alaska....
Obama's Silence on Boeing Is Unacceptable
...South Carolina is a right-to-work state, and we're proud that within our borders workers cannot be required to join a labor union as a condition of employment. We don't need unions playing middlemen between our companies and our employees. We don't want them forcefully inserted into our promising business climate. And we will not stand for them intimidating South Carolinians.
That is apparently too much for President Obama and his union-beholden appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, who have asked the courts to intervene and force Boeing to stop production in South Carolina. The NLRB wants Boeing to produce the planes only in Washington state, where its workers must belong to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers....
...The actions by the NLRB are nothing less than a direct assault on the 22 right-to-work states across America. They are also an unprecedented attack on an iconic American company that is being told by the federal government—which seems to regard its authority as endless—where and how to build airplanes.
The president has been silent since his hand-selected NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon, who has not yet been confirmed by the United States Senate as required by law, chose to engage in economic warfare on behalf of the unions last week.
While silence in this case can be assumed to mean consent, President Obama's silence is not acceptable—not to me, and certainly not to the millions of South Carolinians who are rightly aghast at the thought of the greatest economic development success our state has seen in decades being ripped away by federal bureaucrats who appear to be little more than union puppets. ...
Ron Paul: More Progressive Than Obama?
Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I'll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn't protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn't overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government's criminal behavior.
Can the same be said for Barack Obama?
Yet, ask a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and you'll quickly be informed that yeah, Ron Paul's good on the war stuff -- yawn -- but otherwise he's a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy who'd kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. He's more cosmopolitan, after all; less Texas-y. He's a Democrat. And gosh, even if he's made a few mistakes, he means well.
Sure he's a murderer, in other words, but at least he's not a Republican!
Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans – liberals – are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldn't be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, saying they'd prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist....
Saturday, April 23, 2011
5 Scientific Reasons Powerful People Will Always Suck
A study of personality types once found that as a group, serial killers scored highest in "superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others." The other highest-scoring group for these undesirable traits? Politicians.
Again and again science has found that being in charge not only attracts terrifying douchebags, but creates them as well. And with that, here's the scariest article you'll read this month...
A study of personality types once found that as a group, serial killers scored highest in "superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others." The other highest-scoring group for these undesirable traits? Politicians.
Again and again science has found that being in charge not only attracts terrifying douchebags, but creates them as well. And with that, here's the scariest article you'll read this month...
Coming Soon From the Air Force: Mind-Reading Drones
Scientifically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before drones become self-aware and kill us all. Now the Air Force is hastening that day of reckoning.
Buried within a seemingly innocuous list of recent Air Force contract awards to small businesses are details of plans for robot planes that not only think, but anticipate the moves of human pilots. And you thought it was just the Navy that was bringing us to the brink of the drone apocalypse.
It all starts with a solution for a legitimate problem. It’s dangerous to fly and land drones at busy terminals. Manned airplanes can collide with drones, which may not be able to make quick course adjustments based on information from air traffic control as swiftly as a human pilot can. And getting air traffic control involved in the drones cuts against the desire for truly autonomous aircraft. What to do?
The answer: Design an algorithm that reads people’s minds. Or the next best thing — anticipates a pilot’s reaction to a drone flying too close.
Enter Soar Technology, a Michigan company that proposes to create something it calls “Explanation, Schemas, and Prediction for Recognition of Intent in the Terminal Area of Operations,” or ESPRIT. It’ll create a “Schema Engine” that uses “memory management, pattern matching, and goal-based reasoning” to infer the intentions of nearby aircraft.
Not presuming that every flight will go according to plan, the Schema Engine’s “cognitive explanation mechanism” will help the drone figure out if a pilot is flying erratically or out of control. The Air Force signed a contract Dec. 23 with Soar, whose representatives were not reachable for comment....
Scientifically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before drones become self-aware and kill us all. Now the Air Force is hastening that day of reckoning.
Buried within a seemingly innocuous list of recent Air Force contract awards to small businesses are details of plans for robot planes that not only think, but anticipate the moves of human pilots. And you thought it was just the Navy that was bringing us to the brink of the drone apocalypse.
It all starts with a solution for a legitimate problem. It’s dangerous to fly and land drones at busy terminals. Manned airplanes can collide with drones, which may not be able to make quick course adjustments based on information from air traffic control as swiftly as a human pilot can. And getting air traffic control involved in the drones cuts against the desire for truly autonomous aircraft. What to do?
The answer: Design an algorithm that reads people’s minds. Or the next best thing — anticipates a pilot’s reaction to a drone flying too close.
Enter Soar Technology, a Michigan company that proposes to create something it calls “Explanation, Schemas, and Prediction for Recognition of Intent in the Terminal Area of Operations,” or ESPRIT. It’ll create a “Schema Engine” that uses “memory management, pattern matching, and goal-based reasoning” to infer the intentions of nearby aircraft.
Not presuming that every flight will go according to plan, the Schema Engine’s “cognitive explanation mechanism” will help the drone figure out if a pilot is flying erratically or out of control. The Air Force signed a contract Dec. 23 with Soar, whose representatives were not reachable for comment....
The Government Internet ID Proposal’s Pros and Cons
...“In that [government employee] capacity there really wasn’t a huge privacy concern,” Stepanovich said. “And then it started growing, this need to authenticate everybody.”
In 2009, the government released a Cyberspace Policy Review first proposing the objective of a national plan for online identification — what sounded like a national ID card for the Internet — and concerns grew.
“That’s what a lot of people feared — that the government was going to take REAL ID and put it on the Internet and be able to track everybody’s Internet activity,” Stepanovich said....
...The first problem with this idea is obvious: If you consolidate all of your passwords in one place, that actually makes your identity even easier to steal. And if you’re carrying that identity around on a pocket-sized device, you’re about as likely to lose it as you are your wallet — now with added disastrous consequences...
...“In that [government employee] capacity there really wasn’t a huge privacy concern,” Stepanovich said. “And then it started growing, this need to authenticate everybody.”
In 2009, the government released a Cyberspace Policy Review first proposing the objective of a national plan for online identification — what sounded like a national ID card for the Internet — and concerns grew.
“That’s what a lot of people feared — that the government was going to take REAL ID and put it on the Internet and be able to track everybody’s Internet activity,” Stepanovich said....
...The first problem with this idea is obvious: If you consolidate all of your passwords in one place, that actually makes your identity even easier to steal. And if you’re carrying that identity around on a pocket-sized device, you’re about as likely to lose it as you are your wallet — now with added disastrous consequences...
The UN ‘disappears’ 50 million climate refugees, then botches the cover-up
...And there you have it, folks, another bogus climate claim rubbished by reality, followed by an inept cover-up attempt.
Thanks to the reality of census numbers, followed by the UN’s handling of this, we can now safely say that the claim of “climate refugees” is total fantasy. Be sure to leave comments on any website that makes this claim, and link to this and the Asian Correspondent website...
...And there you have it, folks, another bogus climate claim rubbished by reality, followed by an inept cover-up attempt.
Thanks to the reality of census numbers, followed by the UN’s handling of this, we can now safely say that the claim of “climate refugees” is total fantasy. Be sure to leave comments on any website that makes this claim, and link to this and the Asian Correspondent website...
C.S. Lewis: "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State"
...On the old view public opinion might protest against a punishment (it protested against our old penal code) as excessive, more than the man 'deserved'; an ethical question on which anyone might have an opinion. But a remedial treatment can be judged only by the probability of its success; a technical question on which only experts can speak.
Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners. Observe how the 'humane' attitude to crime could operate. If crimes are diseases, why should diseases be treated differently from crimes? And who but the experts can define disease? One school of psychology regards my religion as a neurosis. If this neurosis ever becomes inconvenient to Government, what is to prevent my being subjected to a compulsory 'cure'? It may be painful; treatments sometimes are. But it will be no use asking, 'What have I done to deserve this?' The Straightener will reply: 'But, my dear fellow, no one's blaming you. We no longer believe in retributive justice. We're healing you.'
This would be no more than an extreme application of the political philosophy implicit in most modern communities. It has stolen on us unawares. Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance. Our intellectuals have surrendered first to the slave-philosophy of Hegel, then to Marx, finally to the linguistic analysts.
As a result, classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good -- anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business. ...
...I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has 'the freeborn mind'. But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that's the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone's schoolmaster and employer? Admittedly, when man was untamed, such liberty belonged only to the few. I know. Hence the horrible suspicion that our only choice is between societies with few freemen and societies with none.
Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists' puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man's opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.
Thirdly, I do not like the pretensions of Government --the grounds on which it demands my obedience-- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique.[4- Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Politique tiree des propres paroles de L'Ecriture-Sainte (Paris, 1709).] I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously. ...
...On the old view public opinion might protest against a punishment (it protested against our old penal code) as excessive, more than the man 'deserved'; an ethical question on which anyone might have an opinion. But a remedial treatment can be judged only by the probability of its success; a technical question on which only experts can speak.
Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners. Observe how the 'humane' attitude to crime could operate. If crimes are diseases, why should diseases be treated differently from crimes? And who but the experts can define disease? One school of psychology regards my religion as a neurosis. If this neurosis ever becomes inconvenient to Government, what is to prevent my being subjected to a compulsory 'cure'? It may be painful; treatments sometimes are. But it will be no use asking, 'What have I done to deserve this?' The Straightener will reply: 'But, my dear fellow, no one's blaming you. We no longer believe in retributive justice. We're healing you.'
This would be no more than an extreme application of the political philosophy implicit in most modern communities. It has stolen on us unawares. Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance. Our intellectuals have surrendered first to the slave-philosophy of Hegel, then to Marx, finally to the linguistic analysts.
As a result, classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good -- anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business. ...
...I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has 'the freeborn mind'. But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that's the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone's schoolmaster and employer? Admittedly, when man was untamed, such liberty belonged only to the few. I know. Hence the horrible suspicion that our only choice is between societies with few freemen and societies with none.
Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists' puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man's opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.
Thirdly, I do not like the pretensions of Government --the grounds on which it demands my obedience-- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique.[4- Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Politique tiree des propres paroles de L'Ecriture-Sainte (Paris, 1709).] I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously. ...
Rousseau’s ‘General Will,’ Redux
A pull quote that really jumped out at me, in the new issue of The Nation:
We must develop an argument that the market is a source of constraint and government an instrument of freedom.
A pull quote that really jumped out at me, in the new issue of The Nation:
We must develop an argument that the market is a source of constraint and government an instrument of freedom.
NLRB to Boeing – build all your 737s in union state or we’ll sue
...No, they haven’t sent such a message. What they’ve said is they have a backlog of orders and can’t afford (business interest) work stoppages every 3 years while unions negotiate a new contract. That is a legitimate concern. And they want some sort of continuity built into the productions system that accounts for that probability. No one is denying union workers their “rights” in Washington nor have any union employees been fired because of them – again, since the decision to locate in SC was made, 2,000 additional union employees have been hired there.
What’s is happening here is government has chosen to take sides and is attempting to intimidate Boeing. The side it has picked – surprise – is the union side. And it plans to use its power to attempt to force a company into doing something which is not in its best business interests, despite the lip service Solomon gives that “right”. But there’s no “hostile business climate” here, is there?...
Friday, April 22, 2011
Your history lesson for the day:
On This Day: Iron Workers Bomb Los Angeles Times Building
On Oct. 1, 1910, dynamite set by union member J.B. McNamara exploded and set the Los Angeles Times building ablaze, killing 21 and injuring more than 100....
...The International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, a national union headquartered in Indianapolis, was determined to unionize the workers in Los Angeles. They often resorted to violent measures, bombing upward of 70 factories, bridges and railroad tracks between 1907 and 1911....
McNamara Brothers Trial: 1911
...Two brothers, James B. McNamara and John J. McNamara, were active in the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Both men were in their late 20s. The union represented workers in the construction industry, and was particularly active on the West Coast. Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was the Union's arch enemy. Otis used his newspaper as a public platform for his tirades against the unions and to promote the interests of the pro-management Merchants and Manufacturers Association. On the morning of October 1, 1910, a bomb exploded in the Los Angeles Times building, killing 20 people and causing considerable damage to the building. Shortly thereafter, there was another bombing at the Llewellyn Iron Works in Los Angeles....
...[Clarence] Darrow had suffered a humiliating defeat by being unable to rescue his clients in the face of the evidence against them. Worse was yet to come, however.
One of the people on Darrow's payroll was Bert Franklin, a former investigator for the U.S. Marshal's office. District Attorney Fredericks had learned that Franklin was trying to bribe jurors to acquit the McNamaras and had approached at least two jurors, namely Robert Bain and George Lockwood. Fredericks arranged a "sting" operation, and on November 28, 1911, three days before the McNamara trial, arrested Franklin in the act of handing money to Lockwood. In January 1912, Franklin pleaded guilty to charges of jury tampering, and on January 29, he testified that Darrow had known and approved of the bribery efforts....
On This Day: Iron Workers Bomb Los Angeles Times Building
On Oct. 1, 1910, dynamite set by union member J.B. McNamara exploded and set the Los Angeles Times building ablaze, killing 21 and injuring more than 100....
...The International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, a national union headquartered in Indianapolis, was determined to unionize the workers in Los Angeles. They often resorted to violent measures, bombing upward of 70 factories, bridges and railroad tracks between 1907 and 1911....
McNamara Brothers Trial: 1911
...Two brothers, James B. McNamara and John J. McNamara, were active in the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Both men were in their late 20s. The union represented workers in the construction industry, and was particularly active on the West Coast. Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was the Union's arch enemy. Otis used his newspaper as a public platform for his tirades against the unions and to promote the interests of the pro-management Merchants and Manufacturers Association. On the morning of October 1, 1910, a bomb exploded in the Los Angeles Times building, killing 20 people and causing considerable damage to the building. Shortly thereafter, there was another bombing at the Llewellyn Iron Works in Los Angeles....
...[Clarence] Darrow had suffered a humiliating defeat by being unable to rescue his clients in the face of the evidence against them. Worse was yet to come, however.
One of the people on Darrow's payroll was Bert Franklin, a former investigator for the U.S. Marshal's office. District Attorney Fredericks had learned that Franklin was trying to bribe jurors to acquit the McNamaras and had approached at least two jurors, namely Robert Bain and George Lockwood. Fredericks arranged a "sting" operation, and on November 28, 1911, three days before the McNamara trial, arrested Franklin in the act of handing money to Lockwood. In January 1912, Franklin pleaded guilty to charges of jury tampering, and on January 29, he testified that Darrow had known and approved of the bribery efforts....
Children sing the praises of environmental activism for Earth Day
...Song lyrics:
The sky is high and the ocean is deep,
But we can’t treat the planet like a garbage heap.
Don’t wreck it, protect it, keep part of it wild,
And think about the future of your great-grandchild.
Recycle, bicycle, don’t you drive by yourself,
Don’t buy those plastic products on the supermarket shelf.
Boycott, petition, let the big business know,
That if we mess it up here, there’s nowhere else we can go.
Don’t shrug your shoulders, say, “What can I do?”
Only one person can do that and that person is you!
...Song lyrics:
The sky is high and the ocean is deep,
But we can’t treat the planet like a garbage heap.
Don’t wreck it, protect it, keep part of it wild,
And think about the future of your great-grandchild.
Recycle, bicycle, don’t you drive by yourself,
Don’t buy those plastic products on the supermarket shelf.
Boycott, petition, let the big business know,
That if we mess it up here, there’s nowhere else we can go.
Don’t shrug your shoulders, say, “What can I do?”
Only one person can do that and that person is you!
‘We will sacrifice quality if necessary’
The newly elected president of the National Union of Students (NUS), Liam Burns, spelt this out very clearly. Speaking to the Scottish Herald before his election, he said we should put aside the archaic idea that universities should encourage the advancement of knowledge and the pursuit of truth, and welcome the fact that unis are now training grounds for youngsters who want to have brighter career prospects.
‘I think we should be honest about our priorities’, he said. ‘At the end of the day, the point of the university has changed. If you look at when only five per cent of the population went, that was about knowledge, discovery, pushing boundaries, people talked about the crème de la crème. [Now], it is about social mobility and people changing their lives. The reality is you need that bit of paper [a degree] to get into better jobs with greater earning potential and influence. So we want as many people to get one as possible, at the expense of quality if necessary.’...
Why I Detest the State
...You should know it is because I love my country that I loathe its government, in all its forms, for a host of reasons. How I don't just despise government because it is wasteful, arrogant and immoral. I don't hate it solely because it is coercive and legally steals for its livelihood. It is true that I abhor government because it cloaks its crimes with euphemisms: It robs, but calls it taxation; it defrauds, but calls it "social security; it kidnaps, but calls it "busing"; it enslaves, but calls it "conscription; and it counterfeits, but calls it inflation. It does the very things I cannot do without committing crimes, but do you know why I really detest government? (I thought you would never ask.)
It is because of what government has done to my friends, and has much to do with what Karl Hess has termed the most pernicious institution in the United States today: the public school system, how he didn't just say that because so many high school seniors read at a fourth grade level, have difficulty filling out a job application, or trouble making simple change in the market place. He said that because there is where government transforms fine, young, mental timber into petrified, apologetic tools of the state: so that they will stand mindlessly and pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth, with 50 stars for 50 percent taxation, and think they are free; so that they will lend their lives as cannon fodder around the globe whenever El Presidente goes on the warpath, all in the name of peace, you understand; so that they will lock step behind officials of state in a myriad of assaults on human liberty, and cry out with the multitude, Crucify! Crucify! That's why I loathe government because of what it has done to my friends!...
The newly elected president of the National Union of Students (NUS), Liam Burns, spelt this out very clearly. Speaking to the Scottish Herald before his election, he said we should put aside the archaic idea that universities should encourage the advancement of knowledge and the pursuit of truth, and welcome the fact that unis are now training grounds for youngsters who want to have brighter career prospects.
‘I think we should be honest about our priorities’, he said. ‘At the end of the day, the point of the university has changed. If you look at when only five per cent of the population went, that was about knowledge, discovery, pushing boundaries, people talked about the crème de la crème. [Now], it is about social mobility and people changing their lives. The reality is you need that bit of paper [a degree] to get into better jobs with greater earning potential and influence. So we want as many people to get one as possible, at the expense of quality if necessary.’...
Why I Detest the State
...You should know it is because I love my country that I loathe its government, in all its forms, for a host of reasons. How I don't just despise government because it is wasteful, arrogant and immoral. I don't hate it solely because it is coercive and legally steals for its livelihood. It is true that I abhor government because it cloaks its crimes with euphemisms: It robs, but calls it taxation; it defrauds, but calls it "social security; it kidnaps, but calls it "busing"; it enslaves, but calls it "conscription; and it counterfeits, but calls it inflation. It does the very things I cannot do without committing crimes, but do you know why I really detest government? (I thought you would never ask.)
It is because of what government has done to my friends, and has much to do with what Karl Hess has termed the most pernicious institution in the United States today: the public school system, how he didn't just say that because so many high school seniors read at a fourth grade level, have difficulty filling out a job application, or trouble making simple change in the market place. He said that because there is where government transforms fine, young, mental timber into petrified, apologetic tools of the state: so that they will stand mindlessly and pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth, with 50 stars for 50 percent taxation, and think they are free; so that they will lend their lives as cannon fodder around the globe whenever El Presidente goes on the warpath, all in the name of peace, you understand; so that they will lock step behind officials of state in a myriad of assaults on human liberty, and cry out with the multitude, Crucify! Crucify! That's why I loathe government because of what it has done to my friends!...
Saturday, April 16, 2011
An Observer of the public’s ‘speech crimes’
Something very odd happened at the weekend. A 40-year-old member of the far-right British National Party (BNP) was arrested for burning a copy of the Koran in his own back garden. Yes, it is apparently now a crime to express your disdain for a certain religious faith in the privacy of your own home. But that’s not the end of it. What makes this case especially odd is that the man in question - Sion Owens - was reported to the police by a broadsheet newspaper that claims to be liberal: the Observer. Since when has it been the job of the respectable, left-leaning press to grass people up to the cops for alleged speech crimes?...
Something very odd happened at the weekend. A 40-year-old member of the far-right British National Party (BNP) was arrested for burning a copy of the Koran in his own back garden. Yes, it is apparently now a crime to express your disdain for a certain religious faith in the privacy of your own home. But that’s not the end of it. What makes this case especially odd is that the man in question - Sion Owens - was reported to the police by a broadsheet newspaper that claims to be liberal: the Observer. Since when has it been the job of the respectable, left-leaning press to grass people up to the cops for alleged speech crimes?...
Big government on the brink
We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government’s very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.
Few Americans realize the extent of their dependency. The Census Bureau reports that in 2009 almost half (46.2 percent) of the 300 million Americans received at least one federal benefit: 46.5 million, Social Security; 42.6 million, Medicare; 42.4 million, Medicaid; 36.1 million, food stamps; 3.2 million, veterans’ benefits; 12.4 million, housing subsidies. The census list doesn’t include tax breaks. Counting those, perhaps three-quarters or more of Americans receive some sizable government benefit. For example, about 22 percent of taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction and 43 percent from the preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance, says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
“Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything,” writes the eminent political scientist James Q. Wilson in a recent collection of essays (“American Politics, Then and Now”). The concept of “vital national interest” is stretched. We deploy government casually to satisfy any mass desire, correct any perceived social shortcoming or remedy any market deficiency. What has abetted this political sprawl, notes Wilson, is the rising influence of “action intellectuals” — professors, pundits, “experts” — who provide respectable rationales for various political agendas.
The consequence is political overload: The system can no longer make choices, especially unpleasant choices, for the good of the nation as a whole....
We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government’s very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.
Few Americans realize the extent of their dependency. The Census Bureau reports that in 2009 almost half (46.2 percent) of the 300 million Americans received at least one federal benefit: 46.5 million, Social Security; 42.6 million, Medicare; 42.4 million, Medicaid; 36.1 million, food stamps; 3.2 million, veterans’ benefits; 12.4 million, housing subsidies. The census list doesn’t include tax breaks. Counting those, perhaps three-quarters or more of Americans receive some sizable government benefit. For example, about 22 percent of taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction and 43 percent from the preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance, says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
“Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything,” writes the eminent political scientist James Q. Wilson in a recent collection of essays (“American Politics, Then and Now”). The concept of “vital national interest” is stretched. We deploy government casually to satisfy any mass desire, correct any perceived social shortcoming or remedy any market deficiency. What has abetted this political sprawl, notes Wilson, is the rising influence of “action intellectuals” — professors, pundits, “experts” — who provide respectable rationales for various political agendas.
The consequence is political overload: The system can no longer make choices, especially unpleasant choices, for the good of the nation as a whole....
It’s Official: Environmentalism Is the New Religion
Robert Nelson, in the Independent Institute’s recent book, The New Holy Wars, points out that environmental religion owes its moral activism, ascetic discipline, reverence for nature, and fallen view of man to the Protestant theology of John Calvin.
Manhattan’s new Church of Earthalujah is perhaps the most striking—though hardly rare—expression of this new religion. Its leader, the Rev. Billy, outlined the church’s purpose and practices in this recent interview. ...
Robert Nelson, in the Independent Institute’s recent book, The New Holy Wars, points out that environmental religion owes its moral activism, ascetic discipline, reverence for nature, and fallen view of man to the Protestant theology of John Calvin.
Manhattan’s new Church of Earthalujah is perhaps the most striking—though hardly rare—expression of this new religion. Its leader, the Rev. Billy, outlined the church’s purpose and practices in this recent interview. ...
How Safe Is Your Roth IRA?
...When I look at the budget problems we face, I'm skeptical that Congress is going to live up to its promise to keep its hands off that money....
...Ultimately, Congress is going to be faced with penalizing people who didn't save adequately for retirement by cutting their benefits, or penalizing people who did save, by raising taxes on their savings. For a lot of reasons, I expect them to err on the side of penalizing savings. This may have some very ill effects on capital formation in the US--but by the time they're making this decision, everything they do is going to have some very ill effects on something....
...Corse figures it's all kinds of fun to tell people they can have Roth IRAs, and then change the deal later on and take all their money. What does he want to do with the money when he takes it? I will bet you a dollar to a donut he wants to give a big chunk of it to public union members who retired at age 50 with six-figure pensions, because they were told they'd be able to do that, and the government's word is sacred. Sometimes. ...
...When I look at the budget problems we face, I'm skeptical that Congress is going to live up to its promise to keep its hands off that money....
...Ultimately, Congress is going to be faced with penalizing people who didn't save adequately for retirement by cutting their benefits, or penalizing people who did save, by raising taxes on their savings. For a lot of reasons, I expect them to err on the side of penalizing savings. This may have some very ill effects on capital formation in the US--but by the time they're making this decision, everything they do is going to have some very ill effects on something....
...Corse figures it's all kinds of fun to tell people they can have Roth IRAs, and then change the deal later on and take all their money. What does he want to do with the money when he takes it? I will bet you a dollar to a donut he wants to give a big chunk of it to public union members who retired at age 50 with six-figure pensions, because they were told they'd be able to do that, and the government's word is sacred. Sometimes. ...
Stripping Congress of its Power of the Purse?
...This raises an extremely serious constitutional question: if Congress has refused to fund the “czars,” where exactly does President Obama get the authority and funding to pay them?
Remember Iran-Contra? The problem for the Reagan Administration there was that Congress banned the president from allocating money to the Contras. The Administration, quite illegally in my view, tried to get around that ban by using funds from arm sales to Iran to subvert the Congressional ban.
At least the Reagan Administration had the decency to do this secretly, knowing that it was acting unconstitutionally. Moreover, the Reagan folks at least were able to claim that they technically weren’t violating the Congressional ban, because they weren’t using Congressionally allocated funds, but the proceeds from arms sales.
The Obama Administration, by contrast, seems to be brazenly violating the Constitution. As I tell my constitutional law students, Congress’s ultimate power is the power of the purse. ...
Did Florida Video Website Pay Homeless Men to Get Beat Up by Women?
A series of videos that allegedly feature scantily clad women beating up homeless men in Florida has led to an investigation by local law enforcement and a lawsuit filed by the Southern Legal Counsel on behalf of the transient men....
Scientists and Journalists Still Obsessed With Duck Sex
Repeated Ethanol Exposure Enhances Synaptic Plasticity in Key Brain Area, Study Finds
Man catches fire while watching porn at San Francisco sex shop; vic ran out 'engulfed in flames'
A series of videos that allegedly feature scantily clad women beating up homeless men in Florida has led to an investigation by local law enforcement and a lawsuit filed by the Southern Legal Counsel on behalf of the transient men....
Scientists and Journalists Still Obsessed With Duck Sex
Repeated Ethanol Exposure Enhances Synaptic Plasticity in Key Brain Area, Study Finds
Man catches fire while watching porn at San Francisco sex shop; vic ran out 'engulfed in flames'
Teachers support cop-killer
Between negotiating for more benefits and teaching their students, the California Federation of Teachers has adopted a resolution of support for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal....
Between negotiating for more benefits and teaching their students, the California Federation of Teachers has adopted a resolution of support for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal....
Telecom gurus discuss competition, reform at Free Press conference
Former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) official Colin Crowell, former White House technology adviser Susan Crawford, and Kenneth DeGraff, adviser to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, discussed telecom issues at the Free Press conference in Boston on Sunday.
...CRAWFORD ON THE COMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES:
"Unfortunately the world where regulating these guys into to an inch of their life is exactly what needs to happen."...
Former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) official Colin Crowell, former White House technology adviser Susan Crawford, and Kenneth DeGraff, adviser to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, discussed telecom issues at the Free Press conference in Boston on Sunday.
...CRAWFORD ON THE COMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES:
"Unfortunately the world where regulating these guys into to an inch of their life is exactly what needs to happen."...
Forfeiture Follies
...Despite having some of the highest taxes in the nation, Nassau County has such a massive structural deficit that it's under the thumb of a finance authority to compel the executive and legislature to avoid renaming the courthouse after Wal-Mart. This had nothing to do with the fact that its crime lab has been shuttered for lying and cheating, while under the watchful eye of Rice and cops perpetually by her side. Now they have to do it all over again, paying a competent lab for the effort, and this only goes back as far as 2005, while no one knows how far back the lying and cheating goes.
What if the cost of this incompetence meant that schools were closed, teachers fired? What if it meant taxes went up for the nice family in the split level on the corner? What if it meant your taxes went up. You would be angry. You would be very upset that massive incompetence, the sort you could put your finger on, was taking money out of your pocket. You would make the angry sound, grrrr, and go out to the garage to look for the pitchfork.
Fortunately, you won't have to. As Rice announced, it won't cost taxpayers a dime. The cost will be paid from the "police department's forfeiture funds." They way she said it, she sounds like the taxpayer's hero. Heroine? That just sounds wrong, though.
This carefully crafted announcement, however, hides a few ugly things behind the great news. First, that the police have a slush fund that nobody knows about, all while they are sucking at the public teet for money to keep cops on the street to protect the womenfolk from rapists. Second, that this slush fund came from asset forfeitures, that shady process of civil seizures with negligible basis and even lower burden of proof, while owners are tied up with defending against criminal prosecution.
But the third bit of ugliness is that one that raised the cackles of the Newsday editorial writer, that the amount of the slush fund is itself a big secret...
...Despite having some of the highest taxes in the nation, Nassau County has such a massive structural deficit that it's under the thumb of a finance authority to compel the executive and legislature to avoid renaming the courthouse after Wal-Mart. This had nothing to do with the fact that its crime lab has been shuttered for lying and cheating, while under the watchful eye of Rice and cops perpetually by her side. Now they have to do it all over again, paying a competent lab for the effort, and this only goes back as far as 2005, while no one knows how far back the lying and cheating goes.
What if the cost of this incompetence meant that schools were closed, teachers fired? What if it meant taxes went up for the nice family in the split level on the corner? What if it meant your taxes went up. You would be angry. You would be very upset that massive incompetence, the sort you could put your finger on, was taking money out of your pocket. You would make the angry sound, grrrr, and go out to the garage to look for the pitchfork.
Fortunately, you won't have to. As Rice announced, it won't cost taxpayers a dime. The cost will be paid from the "police department's forfeiture funds." They way she said it, she sounds like the taxpayer's hero. Heroine? That just sounds wrong, though.
This carefully crafted announcement, however, hides a few ugly things behind the great news. First, that the police have a slush fund that nobody knows about, all while they are sucking at the public teet for money to keep cops on the street to protect the womenfolk from rapists. Second, that this slush fund came from asset forfeitures, that shady process of civil seizures with negligible basis and even lower burden of proof, while owners are tied up with defending against criminal prosecution.
But the third bit of ugliness is that one that raised the cackles of the Newsday editorial writer, that the amount of the slush fund is itself a big secret...
US police increasingly peeping at e-mail, instant messages
Law enforcement organizations are making tens of thousands of requests for private electronic information from companies such as Sprint, Facebook and AOL, but few detailed statistics are available, according to a privacy researcher.
Police and other agencies have "enthusiastically embraced" asking for e-mail, instant messages and mobile-phone location data, but there's no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data, wrote Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, in a newly published paper.
"Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies," Soghoian wrote. "As such, this surveillance largely occurs off the books, with no way for Congress or the general public to know the true scale of such activities."...
Law enforcement organizations are making tens of thousands of requests for private electronic information from companies such as Sprint, Facebook and AOL, but few detailed statistics are available, according to a privacy researcher.
Police and other agencies have "enthusiastically embraced" asking for e-mail, instant messages and mobile-phone location data, but there's no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data, wrote Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, in a newly published paper.
"Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies," Soghoian wrote. "As such, this surveillance largely occurs off the books, with no way for Congress or the general public to know the true scale of such activities."...
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Eat the Rich
...Now, compare this to deficits of $1,413 billion in 2009 and $1,293 billion in 2010, and using optimistic White House estimates, $1,645 billion in 2011 $1,101 billion in 2012, $768 billion in 2013, and continuing at over $600 billion after.
Alternatively, you might also notice that while taxable income in 2008 was $5,488 billion, adjusted gross income on all returns was $7,583 billion on taxable returns only (with an additional $680 billion on untaxable returns), which means that $2,095 billion isn't even in the tax base. $592 billion of that difference is exemptions, which are not tax expenditures, and $1,512 billion is deductions, which are mostly tax expenditures.
My point is just that I don't see how deficits this large can be closed with income taxes on the rich, even at marginal rates far higher than anything we've seen in the post-1986 era. Paying for spending at near-term levels, not even considering entitlement and interest payments that will accelerate a decade out, would have to include meaningful base broadening by eliminating tax expenditures like the mortgage interest deduction or the employer health case deduction, or would have to rely on new taxes like a VAT.
Not-So-Safe-Deposit Boxes: States Seize Citizens' Property to Balance Their Budgets
...San Francisco resident Carla Ruff's safe-deposit box was drilled, seized, and turned over to the state of California, marked "owner unknown."
"I was appalled," Ruff said. "I felt violated."
Unknown? Carla's name was right on documents in the box at the Noe Valley Bank of America location. So was her address -- a house about six blocks from the bank. Carla had a checking account at the bank, too -- still does -- and receives regular statements. Plus, she has receipts showing she's the kind of person who paid her box rental fee. And yet, she says nobody ever notified her.
"They are zealously uncovering accounts that are not unclaimed," Ruff said.
To make matters worse, Ruff discovered the loss when she went to her box to retrieve important paperwork she needed because her husband was dying. Those papers had been shredded.
And that's not all. Her great-grandmother's precious natural pearls and other jewelry had been auctioned off. They were sold for just $1,800, even though they were appraised for $82,500.
"These things were things that she gave to me," Ruff said. "I valued them because I loved her."
Bank of America told ABC News it deeply regrets the situation and appreciates the difficulty of what Mrs. Ruff was going through. The bank has reached a settlement with Ruff and continues to update its unclaimed property procedures as laws change. ...
...It's not just safe-deposit boxes. A British man went to retire and discovered the $4 million in U.S. stock he had been counting on had been seized and sold for $200,000 years earlier -- even though he was in touch with the company about other matters.
A Sacramento family lost out on railroad land rights their ancestors had owned for generations -- also sold off as unclaimed property.
"If I had hung onto it, I would be a millionaire, multimillionaire," said John Whitley. "But that didn't happen because we didn't get to hold it." ...
Secrecy hides taxpayer dollars used in Big Green lawsuits
For thousands of farming and ranching families with leases and grazing rights on public lands in the West, having a good lawyer on call is more than a routine cost of doing business. It's an absolute necessity to protect a way of life that has often been handed down for generations. But that's far from the worst of it because not only do these hard-working, taxpaying men and women have to pay their own attorneys, they also frequently end up having to help pay the attorneys' fees and other legal costs for Big Green environmental groups that file lawsuits seeking to force the federal government to do their bidding. Usually, the individual ranchers and farmers aren't even defendants, they're just innocent bystanders who need attorneys to protect their interests because their livelihoods depend on the outcome of such litigation.
This unjust situation is a result of the Big Green environmental movement's discovery several decades ago that there was indeed "gold in them thar hills," thanks to an obscure federal law known as the Equal Access to Justice Act. Sunday's Examiner editorial detailed how a law intended to help small businesses get their day in court has been perverted into an unaccountable, tax-paid, cash cow worth hundreds of millions of dollars to groups like the Sierra Club, Center for Biodiversity, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council.
Payments under EAJA are made by the U.S. Treasury to its Judgment Fund, which is funded by a permanent congressional appropriation. The fund is not audited, agencies aren't required to account in their budgets for payments mandated by court decisions in their areas of jurisdiction, and courts often seal settlements to prevent public examination. It's an open invitation for Big Green groups to file suits, knowing that win or lose, most if not all of their legal expenses will be paid by the government. Best of all for them, it's all but impossible to track who gets how much from the taxpayers from these suits....
For thousands of farming and ranching families with leases and grazing rights on public lands in the West, having a good lawyer on call is more than a routine cost of doing business. It's an absolute necessity to protect a way of life that has often been handed down for generations. But that's far from the worst of it because not only do these hard-working, taxpaying men and women have to pay their own attorneys, they also frequently end up having to help pay the attorneys' fees and other legal costs for Big Green environmental groups that file lawsuits seeking to force the federal government to do their bidding. Usually, the individual ranchers and farmers aren't even defendants, they're just innocent bystanders who need attorneys to protect their interests because their livelihoods depend on the outcome of such litigation.
This unjust situation is a result of the Big Green environmental movement's discovery several decades ago that there was indeed "gold in them thar hills," thanks to an obscure federal law known as the Equal Access to Justice Act. Sunday's Examiner editorial detailed how a law intended to help small businesses get their day in court has been perverted into an unaccountable, tax-paid, cash cow worth hundreds of millions of dollars to groups like the Sierra Club, Center for Biodiversity, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council.
Payments under EAJA are made by the U.S. Treasury to its Judgment Fund, which is funded by a permanent congressional appropriation. The fund is not audited, agencies aren't required to account in their budgets for payments mandated by court decisions in their areas of jurisdiction, and courts often seal settlements to prevent public examination. It's an open invitation for Big Green groups to file suits, knowing that win or lose, most if not all of their legal expenses will be paid by the government. Best of all for them, it's all but impossible to track who gets how much from the taxpayers from these suits....
Obama, Libya, and Me
...But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust his judgment, and I still do....
Obama, Libya, and Me: A Followup
...But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust his judgment, and I still do....
Obama, Libya, and Me: A Followup
EPA's days as 'rogue agency' are numbered
Lost in the kabuki-dance drama of last week's budget showdown were immensely important votes in the Senate and House on the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to govern through regulation. In the House, 19 Democrats joined the Republican majority in a decisive 255-172 vote to defund the EPA's attempt to circumvent Congress and begin its own cap-and-trade program.
The measure was introduced by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan. A companion measure introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, fell just short of the votes needed for passage, despite support from three Democrats.
Supporters of the EPA effort should think twice before cheering the outcome of the Senate vote because, while the regulatory initiative is safe for now, the prospects for its long-term survival are dim, prompting Politico to headline a recent story, "EPA holds on for dear life." The reason the outlook is so grim for the EPA on this issue is the fact that a growing number of congressional Democrats have had enough of being threatened by executive branch political appointees....
In St. Louis, a protest sign meets government arrogance
...Roos responded by painting on the side of one of his buildings a large mural — a slash through a red circle containing the words “End Eminent Domain Abuse.” The government that had provoked him declared his sign “illegal” and demanded that he seek a permit for it. He did. Then the government denied the permit.
The St. Louis sign code puts the burden on the citizen to justify his or her speech rather than on the government to justify limiting speech. And the code exempts certain kinds of signs from requiring permits. These include works of art, flags of nations, states or cities, and symbols or crests of religious, fraternal or professional organizations. And, of course, the government exempted political signs. So the exempted categories are defined by the signs’ content. ...
...Roos responded by painting on the side of one of his buildings a large mural — a slash through a red circle containing the words “End Eminent Domain Abuse.” The government that had provoked him declared his sign “illegal” and demanded that he seek a permit for it. He did. Then the government denied the permit.
The St. Louis sign code puts the burden on the citizen to justify his or her speech rather than on the government to justify limiting speech. And the code exempts certain kinds of signs from requiring permits. These include works of art, flags of nations, states or cities, and symbols or crests of religious, fraternal or professional organizations. And, of course, the government exempted political signs. So the exempted categories are defined by the signs’ content. ...
Save our National Health Service? Why, exactly?
I recall being involved in a campaign against the closure of a local hospital – St Leonards in Shoreditch – under the Labour government of the late 1970s. When I approached a young man in the local street market on a Saturday morning asking him to support the campaign, in a dramatic gesture he pulled up his shirt to reveal a spectacular midline scar up his abdomen. ‘That’s what they did to me in that hospital, just to get my appendix out.’ As far as he was concerned, the sooner it was closed down the better. He refused to sign our petition. (Though the hospital was closed, St Leonards, the site of a nineteenth-century workhouse, remains the base of local community-health services.)
This encounter reminded me that while, as both professionals and as patients, the middle classes have generally benefited from the NHS, the less prosperous have often experienced poor-quality care and inferior standards of service. In more recent years, as the focus on health has widened to the concept of wellbeing and the concerns of doctors have expanded to cover wide areas of personal lifestyle and behaviour, a substantial section of the population (amounting to at least a quarter) has become the particular object of medical condescension and authoritarian public-health intervention. It is not surprising to find a marked lack of enthusiasm for campaigns to ‘save the NHS’ among a public that is regarded – and treated – with such contempt by the modern NHS....
I recall being involved in a campaign against the closure of a local hospital – St Leonards in Shoreditch – under the Labour government of the late 1970s. When I approached a young man in the local street market on a Saturday morning asking him to support the campaign, in a dramatic gesture he pulled up his shirt to reveal a spectacular midline scar up his abdomen. ‘That’s what they did to me in that hospital, just to get my appendix out.’ As far as he was concerned, the sooner it was closed down the better. He refused to sign our petition. (Though the hospital was closed, St Leonards, the site of a nineteenth-century workhouse, remains the base of local community-health services.)
This encounter reminded me that while, as both professionals and as patients, the middle classes have generally benefited from the NHS, the less prosperous have often experienced poor-quality care and inferior standards of service. In more recent years, as the focus on health has widened to the concept of wellbeing and the concerns of doctors have expanded to cover wide areas of personal lifestyle and behaviour, a substantial section of the population (amounting to at least a quarter) has become the particular object of medical condescension and authoritarian public-health intervention. It is not surprising to find a marked lack of enthusiasm for campaigns to ‘save the NHS’ among a public that is regarded – and treated – with such contempt by the modern NHS....
Life Beyond Blue: Faith and the Inner City
...The failure of the blue social model to solve the problems of the underclass in America’s inner cities was one of the great tragedies of the last thirty years. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent; tens of millions of lives remained blighted, and a culture of violence, degradation and despair has taken hold among some of our society’s most vulnerable and needy people. Generations of children are growing up in gangs; our scarce financial resources are being consumed by a grotesquely overbuilt prison system; whole segments of our population are unable to cope with even the simplest demands of modern life....
...The failure of the blue social model to solve the problems of the underclass in America’s inner cities was one of the great tragedies of the last thirty years. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent; tens of millions of lives remained blighted, and a culture of violence, degradation and despair has taken hold among some of our society’s most vulnerable and needy people. Generations of children are growing up in gangs; our scarce financial resources are being consumed by a grotesquely overbuilt prison system; whole segments of our population are unable to cope with even the simplest demands of modern life....
Justice Dept. to Congress: Don’t Saddle 4th Amendment on Us
...The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.
As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.
A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.
The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.
But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way....
...The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.
As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.
A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.
The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.
But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way....
Landslide!
...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.
"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:
It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.
Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled....
...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.
"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:
It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.
Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled....
Washington vs. America: D.C. doesn’t doesn’t act like there’s a deficit problem
...In effect, the respectable "pivot to entitlements" position says,"we’re going to cut Social Security checks and Medicare for mid-income old people to save the jobs of $180K equal opportunity officers at the DOT."... Why not wring the fat out of government first?
...In effect, the respectable "pivot to entitlements" position says,"we’re going to cut Social Security checks and Medicare for mid-income old people to save the jobs of $180K equal opportunity officers at the DOT."... Why not wring the fat out of government first?
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Landslide!
...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.
"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:
It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.
Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled....
...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.
"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:
It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.
Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled....
Part of the problem is that the American distrust of intellectualism is itself not the irrational thing that those sympathetic to intellectuals would like to think. Intellectuals killed by the millions in the 20th century, and it actually takes the sophisticated training of "education" to work yourself up into a state where you refuse to count that in the books. Intellectuals routinely declared things that aren't true; catastrophically wrong predictions about the economy, catastrophically wrong pronouncements about foreign policy, and just generally numerous times where they've been wrong. Again, it takes a lot of training to ignore this fact. "Scientists" collectively were witnessed by the public flipflopping at a relatively high frequency on numerous topics; how many times did eggs go back and forth between being deadly and beneficial? Sure the media gets some blame here but the scientists played into it, each time confidently pronouncing that this time they had it for sure and it is imperative that everyone live the way they are saying (until tomorrow). Scientists have failed to resist politicization across the board, and the standards of what constitutes science continues to shift from a living, vibrant, thoughtful understanding of the purposes and ways of science to a scelerotic hide-bound form-over-substance version of science where papers are too often written to either explicitly attract grants or to confirm someone's political beliefs... and regardless of whether this is 2% or 80% of the papers written today it's nearly 100% of the papers that people hear about....
Washington Post and CBS receiving money from Obamacare ’slush fund’
Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) — a $5 billion grant program that’s doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money.
“It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. CBS and Washington Post just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.”...
Republicans question Obamacare’s $5 billion early retiree ‘slush fund’
House Republicans are challenging a slush fund they recently discovered in Obamacare — a $5 billion bailout for states, corporations and unions, dubbed the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP).
At a Friday hearing in Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Republicans alleged the Obama administration is passing out that $5 billion in taxpayer money to labor unions and companies it favors, like General Electric and General Motors — instead of using it to help early retirees obtain health insurance.
Also, the administration is racing through the $5 billion much faster than it previously projected — it was supposed to last until 2014, when no person will be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. New statistics and projections, however, suggest it may run out before the end of 2012, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on Thursday they will no longer be accepting applications for subsidies after April 30. ...
Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) — a $5 billion grant program that’s doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money.
“It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. CBS and Washington Post just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.”...
Republicans question Obamacare’s $5 billion early retiree ‘slush fund’
House Republicans are challenging a slush fund they recently discovered in Obamacare — a $5 billion bailout for states, corporations and unions, dubbed the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP).
At a Friday hearing in Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Republicans alleged the Obama administration is passing out that $5 billion in taxpayer money to labor unions and companies it favors, like General Electric and General Motors — instead of using it to help early retirees obtain health insurance.
Also, the administration is racing through the $5 billion much faster than it previously projected — it was supposed to last until 2014, when no person will be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. New statistics and projections, however, suggest it may run out before the end of 2012, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on Thursday they will no longer be accepting applications for subsidies after April 30. ...
MORE ON Obama’s scoffing at high gas prices’ impact on Americans.
Can’t Afford Gas For Your Car? Trade It in, Rubes Says Obama
...Surprising that the AP actually reported that, isn’t it? But wait ! They of course swiftly realized the error of their ways; it does not suit to report, you know, the truth. It might make The One look bad. So, they changed the headline of the article and removed the offending section above. Forgetting, as always, that nothing actually disappears once on the internet.Instapundit grabbed a screen shot. It’s funny that people who constantly claim to be oh-so-smart and worldly are actually such simpletons....
Can’t Afford Gas For Your Car? Trade It in, Rubes Says Obama
...Surprising that the AP actually reported that, isn’t it? But wait ! They of course swiftly realized the error of their ways; it does not suit to report, you know, the truth. It might make The One look bad. So, they changed the headline of the article and removed the offending section above. Forgetting, as always, that nothing actually disappears once on the internet.Instapundit grabbed a screen shot. It’s funny that people who constantly claim to be oh-so-smart and worldly are actually such simpletons....
QOTD
"since voting can result in laws that require men with guns to enforce them, the minimum ID requirement should be the same required to buy a gun."
"since voting can result in laws that require men with guns to enforce them, the minimum ID requirement should be the same required to buy a gun."
Obama’s Down on the Farm
...Again, the crowd applauded and laughed. One line that landed a little flat, though, was when Mr. Obama sympathetically noted that farmers have not seen an increase in prices for their crops, despite a rise in prices at the supermarket.
"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" the senator said. "I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff."...
...Again, the crowd applauded and laughed. One line that landed a little flat, though, was when Mr. Obama sympathetically noted that farmers have not seen an increase in prices for their crops, despite a rise in prices at the supermarket.
"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" the senator said. "I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff."...
Open Secret: Planned Parenthood turns tax dollars into donations to Democrats
In 2010, Planned Parenthood and a California affiliate together spent more than $700,000 on federal lobbying efforts, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of federal lobbying records finds. By comparison, all other organizations that primarily advocate for abortion rights collectively spent $247,280 on federal lobbying efforts during the same period, according to the Center’s research. …
The organization’s political action committee, for example, donated more than $148,000 to federal candidates — almost all Democrats — during the 2010 election cycle. The PAC spent more than $443,000 overall.
Planned Parenthood also recorded $905,796 in independent expenditures during the 2010 cycle — money spent in support of, or in opposition to, federal political candidates, largely through advertisements. The top beneficiaries of this money were Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.)....
Sunday, April 03, 2011
List of health reform waivers keeps growing
The number of waivers the Obama administration has awarded for a provision of the year-old healthcare reform law grew by 128 in March.
With the new waivers, that means 1,168 businesses, insurers, unions and other organizations have received one-year exemptions from a healthcare reform provision requiring at least $750,000 in annual benefits.
The administration says the temporary waivers are granted to help stabilize the insurance market until a fuller package of reforms takes effect in 2014, but the growing number of waivers have exposed the White House to heavy criticism from Republican opponents of the law.
“The fact that over 1,000 waivers have been granted is a tacit admission that the healthcare law is fundamentally flawed,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) last month. Upton is one of three House committee chairmen who has used new oversight powers to investigate the annual limit waivers.
Meanwhile, a group back by Karl Rove is suing the administration for detailed documentation of waiver requests, and conservatives have accused the administration of awarding waivers to allies who supported the healthcare overhaul. ...
The number of waivers the Obama administration has awarded for a provision of the year-old healthcare reform law grew by 128 in March.
With the new waivers, that means 1,168 businesses, insurers, unions and other organizations have received one-year exemptions from a healthcare reform provision requiring at least $750,000 in annual benefits.
The administration says the temporary waivers are granted to help stabilize the insurance market until a fuller package of reforms takes effect in 2014, but the growing number of waivers have exposed the White House to heavy criticism from Republican opponents of the law.
“The fact that over 1,000 waivers have been granted is a tacit admission that the healthcare law is fundamentally flawed,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) last month. Upton is one of three House committee chairmen who has used new oversight powers to investigate the annual limit waivers.
Meanwhile, a group back by Karl Rove is suing the administration for detailed documentation of waiver requests, and conservatives have accused the administration of awarding waivers to allies who supported the healthcare overhaul. ...
Part of the problem is that the American distrust of intellectualism is itself not the irrational thing that those sympathetic to intellectuals would like to think. Intellectuals killed by the millions in the 20th century, and it actually takes the sophisticated training of "education" to work yourself up into a state where you refuse to count that in the books. Intellectuals routinely declared things that aren't true; catastrophically wrong predictions about the economy, catastrophically wrong pronouncements about foreign policy, and just generally numerous times where they've been wrong. Again, it takes a lot of training to ignore this fact. "Scientists" collectively were witnessed by the public flipflopping at a relatively high frequency on numerous topics; how many times did eggs go back and forth between being deadly and beneficial? Sure the media gets some blame here but the scientists played into it, each time confidently pronouncing that this time they had it for sure and it is imperative that everyone live the way they are saying (until tomorrow). Scientists have failed to resist politicization across the board, and the standards of what constitutes science continues to shift from a living, vibrant, thoughtful understanding of the purposes and ways of science to a scelerotic hide-bound form-over-substance version of science where papers are too often written to either explicitly attract grants or to confirm someone's political beliefs... and regardless of whether this is 2% or 80% of the papers written today it's nearly 100% of the papers that people hear about....
'Climate Change': the new Eugenics
...In the latest episode, he explored how the roots of the Holocaust lay in a dry run genocide carried out by the Germans (who else?) in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) in the 1900s against the Herero and Namaqua natives. Around 80 per cent of the former tribe and 50 per cent of the latter were brutally massacred with many of the survivors sent to concentration camps where their racial characteristics were studied by proto-Dr-Mengeles as part of the fashionable new scientific field popularised by Francis Galton – eugenics.
Ferguson said:
“The important point to note is that 100 years ago, work like Galton’s was at the cutting edge of scientific research. Racism wasn’t some backward-looking reactionary ideology: it was the state of the art and people then believed in it as readily as people today BUY the theory of man-made climate change.”...
...In the latest episode, he explored how the roots of the Holocaust lay in a dry run genocide carried out by the Germans (who else?) in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) in the 1900s against the Herero and Namaqua natives. Around 80 per cent of the former tribe and 50 per cent of the latter were brutally massacred with many of the survivors sent to concentration camps where their racial characteristics were studied by proto-Dr-Mengeles as part of the fashionable new scientific field popularised by Francis Galton – eugenics.
Ferguson said:
“The important point to note is that 100 years ago, work like Galton’s was at the cutting edge of scientific research. Racism wasn’t some backward-looking reactionary ideology: it was the state of the art and people then believed in it as readily as people today BUY the theory of man-made climate change.”...
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