View From My Day
Sunday evening, 7:15 p.m., Sixth Avenue and 50th Street:
TV show taping Monday morning! I'll be talking about I See Rude People and rudeness in general on Anderson Cooper's nationally syndicated talk show. (It'll air Tuesday -- check your local listings! Or click on the Anderson Cooper link just above and enter your zip code at the "Show Info" link.)
Pssst! If you haven't bought your copy of I See Rude People, now's your time to get one!
Like There's No Other Standing Water Anywhere In New York City
Sam Roberts writes in The New York Times that there's a crackdown on birdbaths in New York City in hopes of fighting West Nile Virus:
Imagine Joseph Pomares's surprise when he went to his local post office in Long Island City, Queens, one Saturday last summer to collect a certified letter. He had no idea what awaited him, but the last thing he expected to find was a summons from the city's health department.The summons referred to a two-story brick house in Astoria that Mr. Pomares, a 53-year-old home renovation contractor, had recently refurbished and rented to tenants. Titled "vector control inspection work order," the citation accused him of violating what appeared to be a paradoxical imperative: "standing water" in a birdbath. The violation of Article 151 of the city's health code could subject him to a $2,000 fine.
"I bought the birdbath brand new. I thought I was doing something good, and I changed the water every other day," Mr. Pomares recalled. "I had beautiful birds."
...In a city where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has all but banned smoking and waged war on soda and trans fats, some New Yorkers may complain that the crackdown on birdbaths is yet another intrusion by the nanny state or a ruse to raise more money for municipal coffers.
Actually, a regulation against stagnant water has been on the books for more than a decade, but in the battle against West Nile virus, the health code was amended last year. It explicitly made landlords liable and applied the rule, apparently more broadly, to "standing water" rather than "stagnant water" and further empowered the department not only to prevent "the breeding or harborage" of mosquitoes, but also to prevent "conditions conducive" to their breeding or harborage.
Like leaving a glass of water on your terrace while you go inside for a phone call? That's standing water. If the birdbath people are going to get summonsed, the careless water drinkers should, too!
Look Before You Leap To Take Out Vast Student Loans
Woman getting her Ph.D. in religious studies is $185,000 in debt.
Via Kate Coe
TSA: Don't Mess With Texans, Not In The Airport, Not On A Bus
I love the guy who said they'd have to have a warrant to search his bag. Right on.
And no, you shouldn't have to forfeit your constitutional rights because you want to travel on public transportation.
"Bus Safe"? What they're trying to do is acclimate Americans to quietly and politely give up their constitutional rights. I'm all for good manners when it comes to being considerate to our fellow citizens, but let's all get a little more Texan before we find ourselves living in a police state.
via @laRosalind
Video Captures Hit-And-Run
Jay J. Hector sent me the link to Berkeley cyclists getting hit by a car that just drives off, but Jay rightfully pointed out that the cyclists should also be cited for utterly ignoring two stop signs. (Any cyclists here who want to argue that?)
Here's the video, with the hit-and-run happening around the 2:40 mark (just scroll ahead unless you want to see them run the stop signs, too -- one at the very beginning and one later):
Here's the cyclist's description from YouTube:
Me and my friend were hit by a car in California - Berkeley The guy did not stop! He ran away!Thank guys for your support! Yesterday I went to the police department and I reported the crime. I also gave the video to the police officer. It was possible to identify the number of the car on the video. The police have located the car and the owner. Now I'm waiting for the return of the police on the case.
And here's a description of the hit-and-run from CBSnews.com:
According to CBS Station KPIX, Police Capt. Andrew Greenwood said the driver of the black vehicle did not stop afterward, as is required by law, so police treated it as a hit-and-run.The riders, both of whom were wearing helmets, had abrasions from hitting the road but did not require hospitalization, according to Greenwood.
After the incident Wednesday, the suspect, Michael Medaglia, reported to the Oakland Police Department that his car had been stolen. A police alert was placed on the car.
KPIX reports that Oakland police found the vehicle Friday morning and alerted the Berkeley Police Department. After an examination of the vehicle, Berkeley police were led to Jack London Inn in Oakland, where officers contacted Medaglia late Friday afternoon.
He was arrested on suspicion of possession of heroin, felon in possession of ammunition, violation of probation and felony hit-and-run.
Here's the KPIX report:
Advice Goddess Radio: An Hour Earlier Tonight, 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern -- Dr. Ofer Zur With Smart And Politically Incorrect Views On Victims And Victimization
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in psychology and research -- all with really compelling things to say about how to be smarter in being human.
My guest tonight, Dr. Ofer Zur has some of the most eye-opening and breakthrough views on who becomes a victim or a victimizer, and why, and what can be done to change it.
Listen live at this link or download after the show (click "Play in your default player"). And do call in with questions when the show is live -- 347-326-9761
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/30/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's Advice Goddess Radio, with therapist Dossie Easton on ethical open relationships and ways of thinking to make your conventional relationship better.
Listen at this link or download (click "Play in your default player"):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Easton is the co-author of a terrific book, "The Ethical Slut," that I've been recommending for years to people who ask me about sexually open relationships -- whether they can handle one, how to handle them, all the questions they have.
This was a fascinating and eye-opening show, and one not to be missed even if you aren't personally interested in having more than one sex partner. Dossie got into myths about love and sex, and smarter, healthier ways of thinking that are illuminating for all.
A NOTE ABOUT THE EARLIER SHOWTIME THIS WEEK: I'm in New York to be on a national TV show on Monday to talk about my book, I See Rude People, so I need to get to bed a little earlier. More about that on Monday!
Upside-Down Land: Kid Gets Caught Cheating; His Father Sues
Karin Klein writes for the LA Times about a story in the San Mateo County Times about a father going to court to keep his son from facing the school's punishment for cheating:
No one is denying that the boy broke the rules, copying essay homework from another student, but the father's argument is that the punishment -- throwing the sophomore out of the English honors course -- is too harsh because a regular English course doesn't impress colleges as much as the more rigorous class. The teen will still be allowed to enter the schools advanced International Baccalaureate program in the fall, and the cheating will not show up on any records sent to colleges, according to the newspaper.The school points out that the students sign an honesty pledge at the beginning of the school year that includes wording that cheating will result in expulsion from the honors class. A parent has to sign too. But the father says that the school has a conflicting rule on cheating that calls for no punishment until the second time a student is caught. He suggests that his son should atone through some other measure, perhaps by helping as a teacher's assistant after school.
But his arguments aren't finding a sympathetic audience among other parents -- including me. The family should feel lucky that this was unearthed so early, before the kid was kicked out of the International Baccalaureate program and really wrecked his record. Now he knows better, and that's not something that would likely happen by having him help a teacher grade papers during detention. Yes, dishonesty can have real consequences, ones that count.
My parents would have had them throw the book at me. Perhaps twice. And then maybe write a college essay about what I learned from my little episode of cheating.
Does this fixer-daddy think he's actually helping his kid? And I have to wonder, per my chapter on The Underparented Child in I SEE RUDE PEOPLE, whether this guy's "Oh, let him get by...don't be too hard on him" attitude contributed to his notion that he could do whatever he damn well pleased.
Check out the entitled brat's thinking on this, reported by Sharon Noguchi and Bonnie Eslinger at the SM County Times link above:
Afterward, Berghouse's son posted a Facebook entry protesting the "tyranny" and injustice of the punishment. As a result, he was called into the school office.
If he thinks getting kicked out of a class is an example of "tyranny," he's a little short on history as well as personal ethics.
All four students involved in the incident were transferred to regular English classes. Berghouse believes the punishment is disproportionate to the offense and will jeopardize the academic future of his son, who he said has a chance at attending an Ivy League school.
What jeopardizes his future more than anything, it seems to me, is having a slew of articles written about this after his asshole dad decides to sue, and then being exposed for whining about the "tyranny" of being held to account for cheating. Boo. Hoo.
If you want your kid to have a clean shot to Ivyville, teach him ethics, not that you'll dig him out of any hole he digs himself into.
The best is the end of the SM County Times piece, a quote from the cheater's dad:
"I'm doing this for the other kids at Sequoia," he said.
Apple. Tree.
Laughter Is Good For The Soles
Feet me.
Does Appearing In Porn Erase Your Ability To Teach Frog Dissection?
A teacher did nothing illegal -- she apparently appeared in a porn film -- and yet the Oxnard school district has voted to fire her for it. From L.A. Now at latimes.com:
Stacie Halas, 31, a science teacher at Richard B. Haydock Intermediate School, had been placed on leave last month while the Oxnard Unified School District investigated the allegations.The school board met Wednesday to discuss the case and voted unanimously to fire Halas.
"If she were to return to the school district, it would be a disruption," Superintendent Jeff Chancer told KTLA-TV. Halas has 30 days to appeal her termination. She did not respond to requests for comment.
The investigation began when students approached administrators at the school and told them they had seen a female teacher in a pornographic video. Halas allegedly participated in the movie under the name Tiffany. Administrators tried to verify the students' claims but couldn't because filters on the school's computers prevent access to pornographic websites, Chancer said.
So administrators distributed a memo to school staff, acknowledging the students' claims but only as unverified rumor. Other teachers then came forward and showed administrators the video at the center of the rumor on a cellphone, allowing them to tentatively confirm that Halas appeared in the X-rated production.
Shouldn't the real worry be that underparented seventh and eighth graders not only have access to porn but enough access to ferret out teach's appearance. (It is, of course, possible, that some 18-year-old came upon it and spread the clip and the word.)
And I love that the administrators couldn't verify the students' claims because of their nanny filters.
via the delightfully cranky @MrsAbbotKinney
The TSA And Your Mother-In-Law's Crotch
Jeffery Goldberg blogs in The Atlantic that he can definitively say al Qaeda has won. His tiny 79-year-old mother-in-law had a run-in with the TSA recently:
She entered the machine and struck the humiliating pose one is forced to strike -- hands up, as in an armed robbery -- and then walked out, when she was asked by a TSA agent, in a voice loud enough for several people to hear, "Are you wearing a sanitary napkin?"Remember, she's 79.
My mother-in-law answered, "No. Why do you ask?"
The TSA agent responded: "Well, are you wearing anything else down there?"Yes, "down there."
She said no, at which point, the friend with whom she was traveling, also a not-young volunteer library advocate, came over and asked if there was a problem.
The TSA agent said, again, in full voice, "There's an anomaly in the crotch area."
This is, of course, a painful post for me to write. Like most normal American men, I don't want to see the words "my mother-in-law" and "crotch area" in the same paragraph. But let me go on anyway.
My mother-in-law said, "As far as I know I don't have any anomalies in the crotch area."
The TSA agent told her she would have to go through the scanner again. She demurred, saying she didn't like the machine very much. The agent told her she could opt for a pat-down. My mother-in-law refused to be frisked, figuring, correctly, that "they were going to pat-down my crotch area. I mean, there wasn't an anomaly in the chest area."
So she went through the scanner again. Of course, this time -- one minute later -- the TSA found no "anomalies," and she was free to go.
...I asked her if she felt embarrassed by the manner in which the TSA treated her.
"I'm not embarrassed," she said. "I just think they're stupid and their machinery is defective and they should learn to whisper when they're talking about my crotch, or anyone's crotch."
The question is, How did it come to pass that the federal government takes official and invasive interest in the "crotch areas" of 79-year-old grandmothers? Have we just gone crazy?
In more idiocy, Newark Airport was evacuated over a baby that went ungroped.
UPDATE ON MY VAGINA: I am happy to report that it remained unfingered by government workers this morning while I had my Fourth Amendment rights violated in the name of "security."
On a happier note, I'm boarding a plane because I'm being flown to New York this weekend to appear on a national TV show on Monday to talk about I SEE RUDE PEOPLE and rudeness in general. This is a dream show, with a host I love, so I'm pretty thrilled! More about this Monday morning!
Does Your Broccoli Taste Like Chocolate?
The dim ones used to get picked off back in the Stone Age. Now they live on to sue.
A mother, Athena Hohenberg, who apparently thought chocolate hazelnut in a jar was the next best thing to spreadable broccoli has come out a winner in the class action suit she filed against Ferrero, the company that makes Nutella. Rebecca Stropoli blogs at The Exchange that Ferrero has settled:
Hohenberg, it seems, believed that Nutella was a great dietary choice for her four-year-old daughter. She claimed the company's advertising -- particularly giving TV-ad viewers the idea that Nutella was part of a nutritious breakfast (see ad below) -- led to her erroneous perception.But when she realized the spread is about as healthy as your average Snickers bar, she decided it was time to get even -- and get cash.
I hear a lot of commercials on TV for stuff I know to be unhealthy crap -- statins, carb-filled granola bars, breakfast cereal. It's buyer beware -- for me, at least. And frankly, because Nutella has fat in it, I'm guessing it probably sustains you longer than a bowl of Cheerios.
@walterolson
It's Only A Racist Stereotype If It Comes From A White Person
Hans Bader blogs about "diversity training" at OpenMarket.org -- how it can backfire on the employer and lead to lawsuits, and how those doing the training can throw out racial stereotypes:
For example, Glenn Singleton, a wealthy "diversity" trainer, has claimed that "white talk" is "impersonal, intellectual, verbal" and "task-oriented," while "color commentary" is "emotional." If a white person said this, it would rightly be regarded as a ridiculous, racist stereotype that relegates black people to inferior status. (California Superintendent Jack O'Connell, a white liberal, was publicly embarrassed, and called racist, after he repeated a belief that Singleton shared with him that black people are loud. Singleton also embarrassed the Seattle Schools in a landmark Supreme Court case.)Major employers have paid out millions of dollars in discrimination claims because of diversity-training programs. One Fortune 500 company paid out tens of millions of dollars in response to a class-action racial discrimination suit by minority employees, which was fueled by remarks managers made after undergoing mandatory diversity training (they joked about jelly beans used in the training to represent minority employees. That, coupled with a poor quality recording in which a manager's reference to "Saint Nicholas" was misinterpreted as the N-word, created a furor).
Diversity training triggers workplace conflict and lawsuits, by compelling employees to talk about contentious racial or sexual issues, with resulting acrimony, and remarks that are misinterpreted or perceived as racist or sexist. For example, in Stender v. Lucky Stores (1992), statements made by managers during sensitivity training were held by a court to be evidence of discrimination. Some judges take a dim view of diversity training. In Fitzgerald v. Mountain States Tel & Tel. Co. (1995), where employee reactions to diversity training gave rise to a lawsuit, a federal appeals court noted that "diversity training sessions generate conflict and emotion" and that "diversity training is perhaps a tyranny of virtue."
Laffies
Deposit here, please.
I'll getcha started with a visual. Posted by J. Devoy over at Marc Randazza's Legal Satyricon. (Click on "Boom.")
Mean Girl (Updated, See Below)
Perhaps I should write a picture-book sequel to I See Rude People -- "I See Rude Canines."
My friend Debbie's dog Mingus is visiting for a week while she's in New Orleans, and we're doing our best to make him feel happy and welcomed -- well, most of us.
Lucy, who has a lovely green velvet pillow to sleep on, decided to colonize Mingus' pillow, leaving Mingus, who is about 10 times Lucy's size, to go take up residence under a chair. 
(All three pounds of Lucy have since been relocated to her own pillow.)
UPDATE, 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time:
Criminal Libel Has No Place In A Free Society
Gene Policinski writes in Editor & Publisher that libeling somebody -- writing something untrue about a person -- may not only cost you in court, but in about two dozen states, it can land you in jail, and that's wrong:
An AP report cited two criminal libel prosecutions in Colorado in the past two years. In one, a man faced 18 months in prison for sexually charged comments he posted about an ex-girlfriend. The charge was later reduced to harassment. In the second case, a university student faced the threat of criminal charges for creating a satirical blog about a professor. At one point, police searched the student's home and seized his computer. Ultimately, no charges were filed, and the student obtained a $425,000 settlement against the prosecutor who had signed off on the search warrant.The law surrounding defamation -- as with issues such as cyberbullying and copyright protection for music -- has not fully caught up with the challenges and promises of the Internet Age. Some argue that given the relative ease of widely spreading a falsehood online about someone, a criminal charge offers an effective means of punishing those with few assets to pay a civil court judgment.
But the legal point of a defamation lawsuit is lawful compensation for damages, not punishment. Jailing a writer or imposing a criminal conviction on a speaker as a means of holding him or her accountable to the truth has no place in a society based on the vigorous exchange of strongly held views and committed to the marketplace of ideas.
P.S. Policinski seems not to understand that saying something untrue about a person is "slander."
Dangerous Playgrounds Are Good For Kids
Darrell Hammond writes on the HuffPo:
It's National Playground Safety Week, but I'm not celebrating. In fact, I'd like to propose a National Playground Danger Week instead.Don't get me wrong: I appreciate playground safety. As the CEO of a national nonprofit that has built over 2,000 playgrounds in 15 years, there are certain precautions I'm glad we take. For instance, I'm glad we surface our playgrounds with engineered wood fiber instead of, say, cement. I'm glad that we follow guidelines for swing set placement so that a kid doesn't jump off a swing and sail smack into the side of a building.
That said, we as a country have taken playground safety too far. We have crossed the line from common sense (don't place a swing set next to a building) to that murky "What if?" territory in which we imagine every conceivable accident that could ever take place on a playground (what if a finger gets caught in a see-saw?) and try to guard against it.
The result? Boring, uninspired playgrounds that lack whimsy, risk, and -- yes -- see-saws.
We all have a natural instinct to protect children from harm. It's never fun to see a child hurt, even if it's just a scraped knee. But on the other hand, children need to take on physical challenges to learn and grow, and scraped knees and other bumps and bruises teach them valuable lessons about their own limits.
Now, here's a playground -- the Berkeley Adventure Playground pictured at the link. Here's their site. Scroll down for "history and background" here:
The Adventure Playground at the Berkeley Marina was opened 32 years ago in 1979. It is a wonderfully unique outdoor facility where staff encourage children to play and build creatively. Come climb on the many unusual kid designed and built forts, boats, and towers. Ride the zip line or hammer, saw, and paint.How can I as a parent or adult help when I am there?
When you are here, please, watch your child, respect our staff and our rules. Do not let your children under the age of 6 ride the zip line, even though you know think they could. Use good judgment and if what they are doing is destructive and dangerous- please stop them and cleanup. Remember children build these forts. Staff are making sure the playground is safe, you need to be sure your child is safe. Pick up the wood on the ground ( which is a trip hazard) and put it in the wood racks. If it is naily wood put it in the red zones. If you see things that might be dangerous, or if your child gets hurt, please tell the staff- so they can fix it and help you.
The place looks like fun:
via @freerangekids
The Dietary Spectrum
Peter Attia at The War On Insulin -- asking the big question:
If insulin is so important in regulating fat metabolism, why do some people eat whatever they want and not get fat? Conversely, why do some people following the strictest carbohydrate-reduced diet remain fat?
He later explains:
Insulin is the most important hormone in our body when it comes to fat mobilization (breakdown) and fat storage. This is a fact. There is not one person who studies the endocrine system who will not acknowledge the following quote from Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry (the "bible" of biochemistry)."High blood glucose elicits the release of insulin, which speeds the uptake of glucose by tissues and favors the storage of fuels as glycogen and triglycerides, while inhibiting fatty acid mobilization in adipose tissue."
In other words, eating glucose (carbohydrates) increases insulin levels in our body. Insulin drives glucose into liver and muscle cells as glycogen (in small, finite amounts) and into fat cells as triglycerides (in unlimited amounts). Insulin also inhibits the breakdown and utilization of fat, as shown here.
Insulin does not act alone, and the story of fat storage and breakdown is complex if you want to understand every single detail, but the "first order term" is insulin. I will spend time in the future writing about insulin's "dance partner," leptin. But insulin is probably the General when it comes to determining how the body partitions fat.
So, insulin is sort of like gravity. It's in your body whether you know about it or not. It's acting on your cells whether you like it or not. It's playing a major role in determining your ability to mobilize versus store fat if you believe me or not.
Does this mean insulin has the same effect on everyone? Does this mean insulin has the same effect on any given person over time? Of course not. Contrast me and my wife. I look at carbohydrates and start to store fat. If you want a reminder of what I looked like on an "athlete's diet" of complex carbs and little saturated fat, coupled with 3 to 4 hours of exercise a day, look here, here, and here. On the other hand, my wife can eat a bag of Oreo cookies for dinner every night, coupled with all the pasta, bread, and rice the world has to offer and not put on one pound (she has weighed about 110 pounds her entire adult life). How is this possible? Does this mean insulin doesn't control fat metabolism? No, it means we have an entirely different genetic make-up. Her grandmother is 86 years old, eats bread all day long, is healthy as a horse, and weighs 100 pounds. Conversely, I come from a family where every single man has died of heart disease and looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy prior to doing so. I'm genetically programmed to lean towards metabolic syndrome, but I've been able to reverse it through strict attention to my eating habits.
This isn't unique to me and my wife. There is an entire spectrum - a distribution across the population - of people with varying degrees of susceptibilities to the effects of carbohydrate on insulin levels and the commensurate effects of insulin levels on fat storage and breakdown.
And like gravity, the effect of insulin on our metabolism of fat changes over time at the individual level, usually for the worse.
via @DrEades
The War On Terror Is Over, But Bend Over -- And Like It
Michael A. Walsh asks the right questions in the New York Post:
If a few dead-enders are all that's left of al Qaeda, why not end the farce that is "airport security" under the widely loathed Transportation Security Administration and return to the days before 9/11, when you didn't have to be strip-searched to board a plane?Instead, of course, the TSA is expanding its reach to bus and train stations -- and adding ever-more intrusive technology to its airport empire.
And why is the Fourth Amendment (which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures) still being violated if the threat has passed?
Because these two very different branches of our government have such very different dreams.
...Both branches prefer to ignore their duty to the public.
...The main issue in the upcoming election will be the economy. But personal freedom and economic freedom are linked; you can't have growth without mobility.
Friday Lightning Deals: Electronics, Big And Small
At Amazon
Come On Baby, Ride My Cactus
Blue Woman Group meets Los Angeles flora: 
TSA: Foxes Guarding The Henhouse
As I wrote in my op-ed about the TSA, all you have to do to get a buttload of explosives on a plane (and not in your butt but in a big suitcase) is to bribe one of those TSA workers who got their job off a pizza box ad.
And lo and behold, here we have a few of those people who've fingered our vaginas and groped our balls accused to taking bribes to let suitcases of drugs sail through (while making travelers dump their three and a half ounces of liquid for being an itsy bitsy bit over the ridiculous limit).
At the LA Times, Victoria Kim blogs:
Four current and former Transportation Security Administration screeners have been arrested and face charges of taking bribes and looking the other way while suitcases filled with cocaine, methamphetamine or marijuana passed through X-ray machines at Los Angeles International Airport, federal authorities announced Wednesday.The TSA screeners, who were arrested Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, allegedly received up to $2,400 in cash bribes in exchange for allowing large drug shipments to pass through checkpoints in what the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles called a "significant breakdown" of security.
In addition to the two current and two former screeners, prosecutors also indicted two alleged drug couriers and a third who allegedly tried to smuggle 11 pounds of cocaine but was nabbed when he went through the wrong security checkpoint.
The TSA employees "placed greed above the nation's security needs," Andre Birotte Jr., U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement.
The 40-page indictment outlines five alleged smuggling incidents over a six-month period last year. In one incident, screeners schemed to allow for about eight pounds of methamphetamine to pass through security, then went to an airport restroom where he was handed $600, the second half of the payment for that delivery, according to prosecutors.
Briane Grey, acting special agent in charge of the DEA in Los Angeles, said the scheme was particularly reprehensible because it took place at LAX.
Where my vagina was fingered by a TSA worker, entirely sans probable cause, as the condition for allowing me to board a plane and complete normal, ordinary business travel.
Comedic Lice...
...nse.
Rethinking Ink
Simon Doonan writes Slate that he wakes up on his vacation in Florida to find that he is "the last heroic holdout" -- the only person on the beach unadorned with tattoos:
The trend for tattoos is not exactly breaking news. But in the last few months, it seems to me that tats have gone from fad to raging unstoppable pandemic. David Beckham, for example, used to have a bit here and a bit there, but now the majority of his upper body is inked. Those of us who follow the annual March Madness NCAA basketball tournament--my husband is a devotee--will have noted this year's staggering proliferation of tats.But the new extreme inking is by no means confined to the sporting set. Everywhere I look in Florida, I clock old geezers with hammocks and the word "Margaritaville" emblazoned across their burly sun-blasted torsos.
...In the past there was one reason, and one reason only, to ink up: A tattoo confirmed your status as a scary outsider rebel carny outlaw sociopath. "Don't mess with me because I am insane," was the intended message. And it worked. Remember Robert Mitchum in Night of The Hunter? When he cuts Shelley Winters' throat we are hardly surprised: We knew trouble was on the horizon as soon as we saw the words LOVE and HATE inked across his knuckles. Tattoos meant mayhem.
Cut to today: Having a tattoo has lost its original meaning. Having a tattoo now has no meaning. Having a tattoo means that you have a tattoo.
Thoreau-ly Disgusted
Want to get to know Thoreau's work? Read the free eBook of Walden! (Downloadable at this link.)
We are beyond broke, but never mind that -- GalleyCat reports that the NEA just gave USC 40,000 taxpayer dollars to...create a Henry David Thoreau video game!
Jason Boog writes:
Here's more about the project: "To support production costs for a video game based on the writings of Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond. The player will inhabit an open, three-dimensional game world which will simulate the geography and environment of Walden Woods. Once developed, the game will be available online."...A number of literary projects received grants this year.
Living Archives in New York City received a $20,000 grant "to support production and post-production costs for Dad Strangelove, a personal documentary by Nile Southern about his father, the author and screenwriter Terry Southern."
The Odysseus Group in New York City received a $100,000 grant "to support Power Poetry, a project geared towards youth writing and sharing their poems with each other."
Appalshop, Inc. in Whitesburg, Kentucky got a $75,000 grant "to support the Thousand Kites radio series and web platform for The Prison Poetry Workshop."
I'm all for charitable work -- I do some of it myself. If you want to do charitable work, fabulous! Raise money from private sources. Government needs to get back to the business of governing, which it has been doing a pretty crappy job of, and not spend our money on certain people's pet projects.
Another from the piece:
Triple Canopy in Brooklyn got a $10,000 grant "To support development and promotion costs of an online magazine."
Why theirs and not yours or mine?
There Is One Place I Don't Want To "Receive Bacon"
Your hand dryer caption below:
TSA: Texas Congressman Conseco Says TSA Assaulted HIM
Lisa Simeone blogs at TSANewsBlog:
Francisco Canseco of Texas says he was assaulted by the TSA during a "pat-down."Canseco said:
"The agent was very aggressive in his pat-down, and he was patting me down where no one is supposed to go," said Canseco. "It got very uncomfortable so I moved his hand away. That stopped everything and brought in supervisors and everyone else."It gets better. Because reflexively brushing away the hand of someone who is groping your genitals -- in other words, a normal reflex anywhere else -- is considered by the TSA to be -- wait for it -- assault.
That's right. In an about-turn that out-Orwells Orwell, you, the victim, are now being accused of doing to someone else the very thing that was done to you.
In psychology, this is called projection. Normally it refers to emotions, not actions. When you project onto others the emotions, motivations, characteristics you yourself harbor, in an attempt to distance yourself from them.
So the TSA called the cops. They wanted Canseco charged. He wasn't.
Love this bit from the KENS5 link:
Canseco told the KENS 5 I-Team the agent said he too was assaulted when Canseco pushed his hand away.
The assault is on our civil liberties -- daily, at airports across America.
Unfortunately, it seems that if a Congressman's balls aren't fondled, he isn't outraged enough to do anything about this.
Rape Charges For 14-Year-Old For Consensual Sex
Brandie Piper writes for KSDK:
A 14-year-old boy faces rape charges after being accused of having sex with a 12-year-old girl at school.The incident allegedly happened during school hours.
Both say it was consensual, but that doesn't matter under Ohio law.
...Now the boy is charged with rape because the girl is under the age of 13.
"I think it's a shame and if he's going to be charged she should be charged too because they both knew what they were doing," said Moore.
As Wendy McElroy writes at iFeminists, where I found the link, how about NEITHER be charged? Which is how things would be in a sane world.
Say Bye-Bye To Your Social Security
Government officials are finally admitting the obvious, that Medicare and Social Security are on a fast track to deep fiscal problems, reports Sam Baker at The Hill:
The Medicare trust fund will be "exhausted" -- meaning it won't have enough money on hand to cover the benefits it's supposed to provide -- by 2024, the trustees said, the same time frame anticipated in a report last year. Social Security will reach that tipping point in 2033, three years earlier than predicted last year."Under current law, both of these vitally important programs are on unsustainable paths," Trustee Robert Reischauer said Monday.
...The trustees don't expect the Medicare and Social Security trust funds to be empty in 2024 and 2033. Rather, at those dates, the funds wouldn't have enough money on hand to cover the benefits they're supposed to provide, so some reductions would be inevitable.
The Social Security trust fund would be able to pay about 75 percent of its benefits after 2033, the trustees said. The Medicare trust fund will be able to pay roughly 87 percent of its costs in 2024.
via @mpetrie98
"Senate to First Amendment: Drop Dead"
Those are the words of one of Volokh's commenters, Joseph Schmoseph, perfectly stating the upshot of this blog item by Eugene Volokh, "Senate Considering Outlawing Anonymous Online Speech That's Supposedly "Intended to Harass" the Person Being Criticized."
via @WalterOlson
On A Bad Day, You're Still In California
Morning view in Palm Desert a few weeks ago, where Gregg had a meeting. I went along, poor me: 
View from the outside of Magda Gabor's house -- or as Palm Springs Life refers to her, one of Jolie Gabor's "three Hungarian pastries," who turned getting married into an industry:
And a windy goodbye!
Cashing In On The Drug War
Mike Riggs writes in reason on four industries getting rich on the War on Drugs:
4.) The Drug Testing IndustryOne of the highlights of President Barack Obama's 2012 Drug Control Policy report is a section encouraging drug-free workplace programs, which the report touts as "beneficial for our labor force, employers, families, and communities in general." The report also alludes to the administration's commitment to funding research for an oral drug test that can be conducted alongside a urine analysis.
An entire testing industry helped make those policies a reality, and is pushing for their expansion. One industry group, the Drugs of Abuse Testing Coalition, has spent $90,000 already in 2011-2012 lobbying for "Medicare reimbursement codes and payment rates for qualitative drug screen testing."
The "alcohol industry," "the private prison industry," and "the addiction recovery industry" are others.
Abandon All Constitutional Protections, Ye Who Live Here: Kids Questioned And DNA-Swabbed, Sans Parental Consent
America is seeing a near constant and pretty terrible erosion of our civil liberties. In just one of today's, in Sacramento, officers investigating an eighth grader's murder not only question kids but take DNA swabs without parental consent.
The police department's stance was that as long as the kids gave consent they didn't need parental consent. As the commenter, S., who sent this to me wrote, "On what planet can a 12 or 13 year old give consent?!?!"
The story from gma.yahoo.com:
The Sacramento Sheriff's Department, which has been spearheading the investigation into the murder of Jessica Funk-Haslam, 13, said parental consent was not required in the DNA collection and interview of minors, several of whom were taken out of class during the day last week at Albert Einstein Middle School."These are interviews, not interrogations," Sheriff's Deputy Jason Ramos told ABCNews.com. "They are all consensual. Once it's done, there is a mechanism in place for school administrators to notify parents."
Ramos said the DNA collection was done at the time of the interview so efforts didn't have to be "duplicated." Ramos cautioned that the collection did not necessarily mean authorities had a DNA profile of the suspect.
Over the past few weeks, police have sifted through a number of leads and alibis but have been unable to name a suspect in Jessica's murder.
The teen's body was found at Rosemont Community Park on the morning of March 6. Jessica was reportedly arguing with her mother the night before and voluntarily left her home and boarded local transportation to a local park.
There is nothing under California law that prohibits DNA collection of consenting minors, said John Myers, a professor at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.
"I think the answer is, kids can consent, and if they consented and it was knowing and intelligent, [law enforcement] can do the search," he told the Sacramento Bee.
...But one parent who said her son was interviewed wasn't happy with the process.
"My child's in a room with two detectives being questioned and grilled and I'm sure he was quite frightened, which is very upsetting," Michaela Brown told the Los Angeles Times.
A kid isn't going to know that he or she can refuse to answer questions, refuse to give a DNA swab.
Here's the essential video, "Don't Talk to the Police" by law prof James Duane, explaining why innocent people should never talk to the police:
TSA: 4-Year-Old Gives Grandma A Hug, Becomes A "Suspect"
Chris Morran on Consumerist excerpts a Facebook post from a Montana mom, Michelle Brademeyer, who was flying home from Kansas with her two young children and their grandmother. Grandma apparently triggered some alarm at the checkpoint, and was forced to have a seat and wait to be groped by an agent. That's when the 4-year-old ran over to give Granny a hug. Sweet -- until the TSA went all police state on them. The mother writes:
They made very brief contact, no longer than a few seconds. The Transportation Security Officers(TSO) who were present responded to this very simple action in the worst way imaginable.First, a TSO began yelling at my child, and demanded she too must sit down and await a full body pat-down. I was prevented from coming any closer, explaining the situation to her, or consoling her in any way. My daughter, who was dressed in tight leggings, a short sleeve shirt and mary jane shoes, had no pockets, no jacket and nothing in her hands. The TSO refused to let my daughter pass through the scanners once more, to see if she too would set off the alarm. It was implied, several times, that my Mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter.
My child, who was obviously terrified, had no idea what was going on, and the TSOs involved still made no attempt to explain it to her. When they spoke to her, it was devoid of any sort of compassion, kindness or respect. They told her she had to come to them, alone, and spread her arms and legs. She screamed, "No! I don't want to!" then did what any frightened young child might, she ran the opposite direction.
That is when a TSO told me they would shut down the entire airport, cancel all flights, if my daughter was not restrained. It was then they declared my daughter a "high-security-threat".
Two TSOs were following her and again I was told to have no contact with my child. At this point, I was beyond upset, I disregarded what the TSO had said to me, and I ran to my daughter. I picked her up. I hugged her. I tried to comfort her...
I was forced to set my child down, they brought her into a side room to administer a pat-down, I followed. My sweet four-year-old child was shaking and crying uncontrollably, she did not want to stand still and let strangers touch her... A TSO began repeating that in the past she had "seen a gun in a teddy bear." The TSO seemed utterly convinced my child was concealing a weapon, as if there was no question about it. Worse still, she was treating my daughter like she understood how dangerous this was, as if my daughter was not only a tool in a terrorist plot, but actually in on it. The TSO loomed over my daughter, with an angry grimace on her face, and ordered her to stop crying. When my scared child could not do so, two TSOs called for backup saying "The suspect is not cooperating." The suspect, of course, being a frightened child. They treated my daughter no better than if she had been a terrorist...
A third TSO arrived to the scene, and showed no more respect than the first two had given. All three were barking orders at my daughter, telling her to stand still and cease crying. When she did not stop crying on command, they demanded we leave the airport. They claimed they could not safely check my daughter for dangerous items if she was in tears. I will admit, I lost my temper.
Finally, a manager intervened. He determined that my child could, in fact, be cleared through security while crying. I was permitted to hold her while the TSO checked her body. When they found nothing hidden on my daughter, they were forced to let us go, but not until after they had examined my ID and boarding passes for a lengthy amount of time. When we arrived at our gate, I noticed that the TSOs had followed us through the airport. I was told something was wrong with my boarding pass and I would have to show it to them again. Upon seeing the TSO, my daughter was thrown into hysterics. Eventually, we were able to board our flight.
Photo of the little suspect here: 
UPDATE: Lisa Simeone posted this at TSANewsBlog:
Another commenter, on November 21, 2011, posted this at a public travel forum:Travelled Denver to San Francisco in November 2011 on government business. Had to go thru x-ray scanner. There was a girl about 5 or 6 years old in the scanner before me. Big woman TSA Agent barking at her "put your hands over your head!! Hands over your head NOW!" Just like the police on a cops episode. Little girl was sobbing. Finally let through. I got through alright, but was seriously disturbed by this. Is this what America is now? I drive whenever possible. Very sad.This isn't about security. This is about power. Power and control. The TSA's absolute power and control, and passengers' lack of same.
As I asked yesterday, I ask again today: how are parents dealing with this? And why are they putting up with it?
via @DebWilker
Why Temporary Tax Cuts Are A Bad Idea
Economist Veronique de Rugy in USNews on why Eric Cantor's temporary tax cuts and temporary tax cuts in general are bad economics:
A temporary tax cut is precisely the sort of half-baked intervention that accomplishes little more than injecting even more uncertainty into an already murky economic situation. Reducing tax rates can help spur investment and job creation, but "temporary" tax cuts never have that effect precisely because producers and consumers know a change is coming soon.Do Republicans really believe that companies that benefit from the reform will invest and hire new employees based on a reduction in rate that may go away a year later? Shouldn't they have learned by now that temporary tax rebates, tax credits, and tax cuts don't work?
Take the Bush administration Tax Relief Act of 2001 and the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, two similar packages with similar effects on the economy. Which is to say, not much. In 2008 the major component was sending $100 billion in cash to Americans so they would have more to spend and thus jumpstart the economy. It failed. People spent little if anything of the temporary rebate, and consumption did not recover. In fact, formal statistical work by Joel Slemrod, a professor of tax policy at the University of Michigan, has shown that rebates generally produce no statistically significant increase in consumption because of their temporary nature. The same is true with temporary tax cuts, and temporary anything for that matter.
In fact, it is their tendency to pass temporary tax cuts--shared by Democrats--that explains the uncertainty taxpayers face today.
De Rugy also makes a good point: What's with the kiss blown to small businesses? (Cantor's legislation backs lowering taxes for them 20 percent and the GOP also has a plan to reduce taxes for firms with fewer than 500 employees). How come a special interest group alone gets their taxes cut?
Humerus
Isn't that the funny bone?
California Legislate-whores And AT&T (It's The Taxpayers Who Are Really Getting Bent Over)
Wonkette has a neat little summary of the LA Times story on how AT&T has its way with the California legislature:
$8,875,539.91 AT&T political contributions in California$791,868.40
AT&T expenditures on tickets and meals for state lawmakers and staffs$225,001.43
Total AT&T spent on 2011 Speaker's Cup at Pebble Beach$89,749.37
What AT&T spent on iPads at Apple store last year for Speaker's Cup attendees$14,406.76
AT&T's average daily lobbying expenditure120
Number of current California legislators who have received political donations from AT&T120
Number of current California legislators
Here's the full LAT story by Shane Goldmacher and Anthony York, with the disturbing headline/subhead:
AT&T wields enormous power in Sacramento
No other single corporation has spent more trying to influence legislators in recent years. It dispenses millions in political donations and has an army of lobbyists. Bills it opposes are usually defeated.
But, whoops, who are these sleazebags in the legislature -- and who keeps reelecting them?
NC Dietetics/Nutrition Board Wants To Shut Down Low-Carber's Blog
Unbelievable story at carolinajournal.com by Sara Burrows about a blogger the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is trying to shut down over his blog posts about his battle with diabetes which encourage others to follow what he's been doing:
Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to "practice dietetics or nutrition" without a license. According to the law, "practicing" nutrition includes "assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups" and "providing nutrition counseling."Steve Cooksey has learned that the definition, at least in the eyes of the state board, is expansive.
When he was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the "caveman" or "hunter-gatherer" diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.
But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey's blog -- Diabetes-Warrior.net -- violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to "practicing nutrition," the board's director says, and in North Carolina that's something you need a license to do.
Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.
The board's director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can't encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist.
Hilariously, nutritionists give some of the WORST, non-evidence based advice on what to eat -- which is why people like Cooksey get fat and diabetic.
Per Gary Taubes' massive vetting of what is dietary science and what is "science" in "Why We Get Fat" and "Good Calories, Bad Calories," it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Of course, the problem in North Carolina is not about who's putting out good science; it's really one of competition -- those with licenses to dispense dietary information wanting to keep Cooksey down:
Jan. 12, Cooksey attended a nutrition seminar at a church in Charlotte. The speaker was the director of diabetes services for a local hospital."She was giving all the wrong information, just like everyone always does -- carbs are OK to eat, we must eat carbs to live, promoting low-fat, etc.," Cooksey said. "So I spoke up."
After the meeting he handed out a couple of business cards pointing people to his website.
Three days later, he got a call from the director of the nutrition board.
"Basically, she told me I could not give out nutritional advice without a license," Cooksey said.
He said she also told him that his website was being investigated and gave him some suggestions about how to bring it into compliance.
Feebie, who sent me this link, added below it:
Lost seven pounds so far on Taubes' diet plan, with ten or so more to go - because of your relentless hauranging (smile). Came to find out I am insulin resistent and gluten intolerant. Wish I'd listened to you sooner... But no time like the present to correct actions and move forward.
I love reading your posts on the subject - THANK YOU.
Advice Goddess Radio: Get The Podcast -- Therapist Dossie Easton On Ethical Open Relationships
Last night on Advice Goddess Radio, Dossie Easton on ethical open relationships and ways of thinking to make your conventional relationship better.
Listen at this link or download (click "Play in your default player"):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Easton is the co-author of a terrific book, "The Ethical Slut," that I've been recommending for years to people who ask me about sexually open relationships -- whether they can handle one, how to handle them, all the questions they have.
This was a fascinating and eye-opening show, and one not to be missed even if you aren't personally interested in having more than one sex partner. Dossie got into myths about love and sex, and smarter, healthier ways of thinking that are illuminating for all.
Join me and all my fascinating guests live every Sunday from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern and listen to past shows at this link, including last week's replay -- Dr. Sonja Lybomirsky on how to be happier:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research -- all with really compelling things to say about how to be smarter in being human.
How To Feed Your Children, By The French
As I wrote in I See Rude People, French parents give their children a choice at dinner time. No, not children's meal or what the adults are eating. There's only one meal, the one everyone gets, and the kids' choice? Eat or starve.
Judith Woods writes for The Telegraph/UK of a chef with the right idea:
Children, stop throwing bread rolls, fold your napkins and prepare for the shock of your cosseted little lives. Parents, put down that second carafe of house red (yes, you can have it back later), and hark: can you detect something terrifying yet exhilarating in the air?As of today, chef will be unveiling a new Kids' Menu, comprising Tough Love Linguine, I Don't Care if you Sulk Saltimbocca and Take It or Leave It Tiramisu, all served up with a tantalising whiff of cordite.
Esteemed Italian chef Antonio Carluccio, better known for his risotto con porcini than his revolutionary fervour, is fomenting rebellion among the nation's restaurateurs. He is urging them to ditch children's menus, chuck the chips and thus force Britain's offspring to eat baked mussels and Tuscan wild boar stew, just like Suri Cruise on a night out with Tom and Katie. Probably.
It seems Daddy is too downtrodden and Mummy too mellow on vino rosso (mea culpa) to resist our infants' imperious and shrieky demands for fries and reconstituted chicken dippers as, actually, we came out to have a nice time.
The only solution, according to Carluccio, is to go cold turkey, and cut off their supply of junk food. Faced with an empty tummy or calf's liver with onions, kids will have no choice but to order - their own body weight in garlic bread, I predict.
Still, it's a fine opening salvo in the battle to wrest back power to parents.
Economist Veronique de Rugy explains at The Corner how it works here in America, where she lives, and how it worked in France, where she grew up:
Excessive catering of American parents to their kids' food preferences also explains how American food got bad. Argentinian parents feed their kids kidney, Mexicans feed theirs spices, and Germans feed their kids strong-tasting breads. But American parents feed their kids chicken nuggets and other bland foods. Also, while in other countries, parents often impose their tastes on their children, somehow the reverse happens in the U.S.Growing up, my parents would mostly ignore my wishes when it came to food -- or anything else for that matter. I wasn't forced to eat blue cheese at every meal, but I had to try it once in a while, like I had to try every new food they put on the table. My mom fixed one meal for the whole family and if you didn't like it, well, tough luck because that's what was on the menu that night. As a result, my sister and I ate very diverse meals (most of them without particular enjoyment). This practice may not guarantee that children will grow into adults who can eat anything but it certainly makes it easier for parents (Having tried both ways with my children, I can confirm that point too!).
Other People's Money: "Public Servants" Go Through It Like It's Melted Butter
Forgot to post this a few days ago. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta takes planes back to California on the weekends as if he's taking a crosstown shuttle bus -- at a cost to taxpayers at about $30,000 per trip.
Julian E. Barnes writes for the WSJ that Panetta is "looking" for money-saving alternatives. Well, if it were his money, I'm guessing the alternative would be yanking the wife to Washington or sucking it up and getting on Skype:
Since becoming defense secretary on July 1, Mr. Panetta has made 29 trips home to Carmel, Calif., where his wife lives on their walnut farm. Mr. Panetta has three grown sons and six grandchildren, most of whom also live in California.Mr. Panetta has reimbursed the government about $630 per round trip, or about 2% of the $30,000 cost to taxpayers per trip.
The question of Mr. Panetta's travel costs was raised by a CNN reporter at a news conference Monday. The details of those costs were first reported by the Associated Press on April 5.
George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, said Mr. Panetta has asked department officials to see if there are lower-cost options that would enable him to travel with secure communications equipment. "No one wants the secretary of defense making decisions on classified military operations from the middle seat on a crowded commercial jet," Mr. Little said.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Mr. Panetta has stopped to visit service members around the country on the way to and from California and said it is vital for him to remain in constant communications. "He doesn't get much rest in California, based on the number of times I am in contact with him," Gen. Dempsey said.
It would be difficult for Mr. Panetta to find a cheaper military plane than the C-37 he uses. At $2,967 a flight hour, the aircraft is one of the least expensive options that still have the communications equipment required.
Mr. Panetta's predecessor, Robert M. Gates, had a home in Washington State, where his wife remained after he moved to Washington, D.C. But he made only infrequent visits home.
Here's how the rest of us live -- from a WSJ letter to the editor from Jeff Filice:
I am an airline pilot based in Boston, but I choose to live in Atlanta. I am responsible for getting myself to and from work at my own expense and on my own time. I am prohibited by the Internal Revenue Service from deducting the expense of commuting. All the while Mr. Panetta spends $870,000 in taxpayer money to commute to work. I am outraged.Mr. Panetta, the article says that you are "looking at alternatives that could save money." I have a suggestion: Either move to where your work is in Washington, D.C., or pay for your own commute like every other citizen of this country. "Sorry" just doesn't cut it.
May The Farce Be With You
Funny it up here.
Tonight, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Advice Goddess Radio: Therapist Dossie Easton On Open Relationships And Improving All Relationships
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in psychology and research -- all with really compelling things to say about how to be smarter in being human.
Last week, my intended guest, Dossie Easton, had the flu, but she's better now...so tonight on Advice Goddess Radio...
Dossie Easton, co-author of The Ethical Slut
This promises to be a fascinating and eye-opening show, and one not to be missed even if you aren't personally interested in having more than one sex partner. Dossie will get into myths about ways we view love and sex, and smarter, healthier ways of thinking that are illuminating for all.
Listen live at this link or download after the show (click "Play in your default player"). And do call in with questions when the show is live -- 347-326-9761
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Don't forget to listen to last week's show with Dr. Carl Alasko, author of Emotional Bullshit, on how to cut the delusion, drama and denial out of your relationships and be accountable...and happier personally and together:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/02/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and all my fascinating guests live every Sunday from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, and listen to all my previous shows and listen live at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
Europeans On The Mean Chinese
Via the WSJ, economist Andy Xie writes at english.caixin.com about "The Panda Syndrome":
Limiting what other people can do seems to be central to the current European thinking on fairness. When someone opens a shop longer than others, it forces others to open longer too. Since human rights should dictate working hours, there ought to be a collective action on how long every shop can open. That line of thinking is leading to all sorts of restrictions in Europe on how long a shop or any other business can stay open. Restricting work has become a significant part of the European concept on human rights.Because Europeans cannot restrict working hours elsewhere this has caused them frustration. Complaining about working conditions in China, for example, has become a favorite explanation for European economic difficulties.
The President Is High?
What other explanation could there be for his position on the ridiculous "War on Drugs"? Mike Riggs blogs in reason:
At last week's Summit of the Americas, President Barack Obama reiterated his belief that the war on drugs is winnable, and that the alternative--legalization or decriminalization--isn't one the U.S. is willing to consider. This despite the fact that an increasing number of Central and South American governments are considering those very alternatives.Despite campaign promises to scale back the war on drugs, Obama has been a hardliner since the first day of his administration. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the talking points the Obama administration has used to justify its proxy war with Mexico's drug traffickers, which has wreaked havoc on our southern neighbor. Unlike in the U.S., where Obama is careful to sound open-minded and compassionate about the effects of the drug war, when it comes to Mexico, the American position is defined by vulgarity, condescension, dishonesty, and nonchalance.
Riggs quotes the five worst statements by the Obama admin about Mexico's drug war. Here's one:
2.) "Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that this process of collaboration under the Merida Initiative will eventually succeed because of a very simple reason for Mexico as well as for the United States: We cannot lose, because if we lose we will say to the generations that come after us 'you are condemned to live in a disgusting and repulsive world,' and that's a conversation I do not want to have with my children or grandchildren in years to come."Who said it: William Brownsfield, assistant secretary, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, U.S. State Department
Why he's wrong: A world in which human beings can freely recreate in ways that do not harm their neighbors is not objectively disgusting or repulsive. Drug use dates back to antiquity and will likely accompany us to the end of time. It's arguably not worth shedding blood over.
Hugh More
This is the spot.
You Break Your Face, You Pay For It. Fine By Me.
Michigan got smart and stopped making motorcycle helmets mandatory. (I would no more ride a motorcycle without one than I'd parachute without a parachute, but we all had mommies and daddies and I'm not for the state taking over that duty.) Paul Egan and Kathleen Gray write in the Freep:
LANSING -- Motorcycle helmets are no longer mandatory for all riders and passengers in Michigan, though there was confusion Friday about who could legally ride without one and how a more permissive law would be enforced.Many hailed the change in state law -- which advocates had sought for decades -- as a victory for freedom and personal responsibility.
"I'll still wear my helmet most of the time, but if I'm just going to go up to the 7-Eleven, I'll be able to just put on my sunglasses and go," said Kurt Wilhelm of Canton. "There's nothing better on a nice summer day."
Others predicted more highway carnage and higher insurance costs.
"It's a terrible law," said Steven Gursten, a Farmington Hills attorney who specializes in auto accident cases. "More people are going to die, more people are going to be catastrophically injured, it's going to cost taxpayers a lot more, and there's absolutely no reason for it."
...The law has immediate effect but sets conditions to legally ride without a helmet.
Motorcyclists must be at least 21 and carry $20,000 in medical insurance. Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair, who sponsored the legislation, said the insurance is optional on motorcycle policies and sold in $5,000 increments.
As long as we don't have to pay for you (per the article, is $20K really enough?), hey, it's really none of my business whether you leave your brains by the roadside or not.
via Walter Moore
The Police State Goes To School
At Lew Rockwell, a blog post cross-posted from End of the American Dream, about very young school children increasingly being arrested, handcuffed and brutalized for the police for ordinary kid misbehavior. A few examples:
#2 In New Haven, Connecticut a 10-year-old boy was actually arrested by police for giving another student "a wedgie" on a school bus.#5 In San Mateo, California a few months ago a 7-year-old special education student was blasted in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture. Police were then able to subdue the boy and he was "committed for a psychiatric evaluation".
#6 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested by police, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.
#7 In Texas, a 12-year-old girl was recently arrested by police for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck. She was formally charged with a misdemeanor.
#8 A 13-year-old boy at a public school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class. The police marched him out of school and hauled him over to a juvenile detention center.
#9 Back in 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York wrote "I love my friends Abby and Faith" on her desk. The police were called out and she was marched out of her school in handcuffs in front of all her friends.
#10 A teenage couple down in Houston, Texas poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up a while back. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested by police and sent to court.
...In our public schools today, even the most minor incident could end up being put on the "permanent record" of your child.
This is especially true for anything having to do with sex. School officials have become hypersensitive when it comes to this area. The following are just a couple of examples....
-When a very young girl recently kissed a very young boy at one Florida elementary school, it was considered to be a "possible sex crime" and the police were called out.
-A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some "inappropriate touching" during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.
Do you want your child to be charged with a "sex crime" if he inadvertently touches another kid the wrong way?
Do you want your child to be thrown to the floor, handcuffed and hauled off to a mental institution for burping in class or doodling on a desk?
If not, you might want to pull you child out of the government schools while you still can.
Why My Dog Lucy Gets ZERO People Food
(Unless Gregg happens to drop something while cooking.) Anahad O'Connor blogs in the NYT about how fat pets suffer:
In the year before she died, Lacey, a white German shepherd, was crippled by a weight problem and hip dysplasia, barely able to walk.Her owner, Myrle Horn, had paid little attention to her diet, feeding Lacey plenty of food because "she always wanted more." It was only toward the end, when Lacey's extra weight seemed to worsen her hip condition, that Ms. Horn began to cut back on her food.
"It was a horrible tragedy," said Ms. Horn, 79, a food writer who lives in Florida. "I had to have a vet come to the house to put Lacey down because I couldn't get her up and I couldn't get her out."
...Many people find their chubby cats and dogs amusing. But where pet owners see humor in a hefty ball of fur, veterinarians like Dr. Murray of the A.S.P.C.A. see problems that can cause suffering and a shortened life span.
Make Laughs, Not War
Ho it up here.
I Annoy Yet Another Person Into Eating Low-Carb
If I write about the science behind eating low-carb (and sufficient fat) often enough, eventually regulars here say, "All right already! I'll try it!" Like this woman did (see photos at the link).
Commenter Sosij emailed me yesterday about her experience:
Dear Amy,I am writing to thank you. I'll try to be concise. At the end of February, I went to the doctor for a few tests. While I was waiting in the exam room, I picked up a pamphlet about diabetes. I had gestational diabetes in 2009, so I'm understandably worried about developing diabetes later in life (I'm 30). I was shocked to learn that being only 20 pounds overweight dramatically increases the chances of developing diabetes for people of my race. Sure, I could stand to lose that much, but I was a busy mom, etc.
Around this time my husband and I also decided we want another child. I've also been reading your blog and columns for about a year, and heard you praise low carb/high protein many times. Since this was essentially the diet I was placed on by a licensed nutritionist when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and since I don't want a repeat diagnosis, I thought, what the heck. I like meat. Might as well start changing my diet habits now.
I started restricting myself to a certain number of carbs per day. 2 weeks later, reaching this goal proved to be so effortless that I lowered my limit. 2 weeks later I lowered it again. I'm not going to lie; when I first started eating this way I was hungry and tired. But that quickly went away. I don't even get that hungry anymore. I also have a history of blood sugar problems. I already had to make sure I ate some protein at breakfast, or my blood sugar would plummet just before lunch, causing me to respond by stuffing myself with whatever was handy (usually chips or cookies). I never have problems with my blood sugar anymore. It's so liberating.
Six weeks after I started limiting carbs, I went back to the doctor. I hadn't weighed myself since my last doctor visit, as we don't have a scale. I learned I had lost 7 pounds in 6 weeks! I had been exercising seriously prior to that time, but never lost a serious amount of weight. During those 6 weeks, I actually became too busy to exercise.
My husband, who is 30 pounds overweight, continues to have cereal and orange juice for breakfast. But I know that he is listening when I talk about my new diet, and he is starting to ask me questions about how he should be eating differently.
Lastly, I just got my copy of Good Calories, Bad Calories in the mail. I am barely into the book and I am already stunned at how many "indisputable" truths about dietary science Gary Taubes has already refuted.
Anyway, thanks very much, Amy, for doing so much to push me toward a healthy lifestyle! I read your blog every day. Keep fighting the good fight!
Thank Anti-Vaxxers For The Measles
Cancer surgeon Orac blogs at Respectful Insolence about the uptick in measles cases, with last year being the worst year for measles in the last 15 years, with 222 cases cropping up:
Antivaccinationists will frequently ask why they should vaccinate their children with the MMR vaccine when measles is currently uncommon in the U.S. Of course, the primary reason that measles is so uncommon in the U.S. is because over the last few decades we have been able to maintain a generally high level of vaccine coverage. I would remind them that the U.K. had also achieved measles elimination back in the 1990s. Then Andrew Wakefield came along. With the willing help of sensationalistic British tabloids, he spread the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Within less than a decade, measles came roaring back in the U.K.. It's now endemic again in the U.K., thanks to plummeting MMR uptake rates. They'll also ask why it matters to those whose children are vaccinated if they don't vaccinate their kids. It's true that vaccination against measles is very good, but it's not 100% effective. That means that, because measles is such a contagious disease, even a certain percentage of the vaccinated are put at risk by the unvaccinated. Then there are children too young to be vaccinated or who have a medical condition that precludes vaccination. They rely on herd immunity for protection.Another thing that antivaccine zealots frequently forget is that, like it or not, we live in a global society with a highly mobile population. A highly infectious disease like measles is only a plane ride away, and, in fact, that's a common way that outbreaks in the U.S. get started. The oceans that we used to look to to isolate us from the rest of the world are no longer any protection against infectious diseases, and, unfortunately, Europe and other areas where antivaccinationists have succeeded in frightening parents to refuse vaccination for their children are now helping to spread the disease globally, including to the U.S. Is Europe a warning for the U.S. regarding measles? It could be. I worry that the U.S. is on the same path as the U.K. and Europe, just five to ten years behind them. If we allow vaccination rates to fall too much, in 2020 it's not too far-fetched to imagine 30,000 cases a year in North America.
So, once again in light of this sort of news, I have to repeat a sentiment I've repeated a few times in the past: Rejoice, Jenny McCarthy, J.B. Handley, Jake Crosby, Kim Stagliano, Dan Olmsted, Barbara Loe Fisher, Dr. Jay Gordon, Dr. Bob Sears, and all the other antivaccine activists (or their willing dupes who oh-so-piously claim they are really and truly "not antivaccine") spreading misinformation, pseudoscience, and fear about vaccines! You appear to be winning. You're succeeding in casting doubt on the safety of vaccines to the point that it's causing real problems for our public health system every time an unvaccinated person travels.
Laws Are For Little People To Obey: Even If They Have No Idea They're Breaking Them
I've been a fan of Walter Olson's Overlawyered blog for years. He chronicles absurdities and abuses in the law and prosecution -- like these on "structuring."
Walter explains structuring:
...The federal criminal offense of splitting up bank deposits so as to keep them under a threshold such as $10,000 above which banks have to report transactions to the government. Structuring is unlawful whether or not it occurs in conjunction with any other legal offense, as opposed to being motivated by, say, a desire to keep a low profile in general or a sentiment that the government already keeps tabs on too many innocent activities.Nor is there any requirement that the person be aware that there is a law banning structuring; someone who gets wind that transactions over $10,000 are reportable, and decides "What's up with that? I'll just make $9,000 deposits"), has broken the Bank Secrecy Act. Indeed, the federal government instructs banks to report suspicious patterns of sub-threshold deposits, and not to warn customers that it is doing so.
It turns out some get away with structuring -- some like Elliot Spitzer -- while others don't. Others like two Maryland dairy farmers who had their hard-earned money taken from them when the Feds seized their bank account. An excerpt from Walter's post:
On February 29 Treasury officials showed up at their farm to question them about bank deposits; 45 minutes into that interview, according to the Sowerses, they learned that the federal government had just seized their bank account and the $70,000 in it. The family does a lot of business at farmer's markets and its cash receipts over a ten-month period exceeded $320,000, the feds say. The News-Post account includes no mention of the family being under suspicion of any offenses other than what U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein describes as follows: "The holding back of cash receipts in excess of $10,000 indicates a knowledge of the Currency Transaction Reporting requirement and an attempt to evade it."
Put The FCC Honchos To Good Use: Send Them Out To Clean Sewers
Your hard-earned taxpayer dollars are being used to urge the Supreme Court justices to take another look at Janet Jackson's nipple. From MSNBC:
The Federal Communications Commission filed an appeal to the Supreme Court yesterday requesting a review of a decision to throw out the agency's $550,000 fine against CBS over Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" incident at the Super Bowl in 2004, Politico reports....The FCC is arguing that the Second Circuit court was wrong to deem their fleeting images' indecency policy to be "arbitrary and capricious," and that by misinterpreting their policy, the court "contravened settled principles governing the deference due to an administrative agency's reasonable understanding of its own decisions."
Oh, yawn.
If there's a single person in the USA who really cares, raise your hand. (In comments form.) And give us three good reasons why this is of great importance to you, and should be something our tax dollars are funding.
Apparently, The Food Desert Is In Brentwood
That's a largely wealthy neighborhood on LA's West Side. Gina Kolata writes in The New York Times that the poor urban "food desert" appears to be a myth according to a two new studies:
It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables.But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.
Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, "you can get basically any type of food," said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, lead author of one of the studies. "Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert," he said.
Some experts say these new findings raise questions about the effectiveness of efforts to combat the obesity epidemic simply by improving access to healthy foods. Despite campaigns to get Americans to exercise more and eat healthier foods, obesity rates have not budged over the past decade, according to recently released federal data.
"It is always easy to advocate for more grocery stores," said Kelly D. Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, who was not involved in the studies. "But if you are looking for what you hope will change obesity, healthy food access is probably just wishful thinking."
What we need is for the government and Kelly D. Brownell (no Jack Sprat himself) to stop advising people on what to eat according to "science" (low-fat, high-carb diets) instead of science: that carbohydrates including sugar, flour, potatoes, juice, soda cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Eat bacon. Buttered green beans. Asparagus. Steak. Salmon. Chicken with the skin on (but not breaded). Cheese. Butter. Eggs. And see that you eat plenty of fat.
By the way, this NYT piece and the studies reported within echo Caitlin Flanagan's piece in The Atlantic a couple years back about illiterate kids growing vegetables as a school activity:
As it happens, I live fewer than 20 miles from the most famous American hood, Compton, and on a recent Wednesday morning I drove over there to do a little grocery shopping. The Ralphs was vast, well-lit, bountifully stocked, and possessed of a huge and well-tended produce section. Using my Ralphs card, I bought four ears of corn for a dollar, green grapes and nectarines (both grown in the state, both 49 cents a pound), a pound of fresh tortillas for $1.69, and a half gallon of low-fat milk for $2.19. The staff, California friendly, outnumbered the customers, and the place had the dreamy, lost-in-time feeling that empty American supermarkets often have.But across Compton Boulevard, it was a different story. Anyone who says that Americans have lost the desire and ability to cook fresh produce has never been to the Superior Super Warehouse in Compton. The produce section--packed with large families, most of them Hispanic--was like a dreamscape of strange and wonderful offerings: tomatillos, giant mangoes, cactus leaves, bunches of beets with their leaves on, chayote squash, red yams, yucca root. An entire string section of chiles: serrano, Anaheim, green, red, yellow. All of it was dirt cheap, as were the bulk beans and rice. Small children stood beside shopping carts with the complacent, slightly dazed look of kids whose mothers are taking care of business.
What we see at Superior Super Warehouse is an example of capitalism doing what it does best: locating a market need (in this case, poor people living in an American inner city who desire a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and who are willing to devote their time and money to acquiring them) and filling it.
A 10-Year-Old Gets Touched In His Special Places; His Mom Looks On
A letter about a TSA experience from a diabetic 10-year-old, Jacob Wisnik, is on Lisa Belkin's HuffPo blog:
There's Got to Be a Better Way
Today we traveled home from Chicago's O'Hare airport. It seemed normal until we got to the security desk. In an instant, I felt dread enter my body. Every time I go through airport security, I get screened because of my insulin pump. I am 10 years old and have been diabetic since I was 4. It's hard enough managing my diabetes each day; the way I am treated by TSA makes me feel not only upset about my disability, but worse of all they make me feel uncomfortable with myself. They make me feel this way because when my insulin pump beeps they have to pat me down or make me touch my pump and then they swab my hand to make sure I am not carrying explosives. For those few seconds they won't let anyone touch me including my mother. I feel alone and worse I feel as though I have done something wrong.Although I have traveled many times through many airports, today was a nightmare! I walked up and told the screener that I am diabetic and wearing a pump. I told her it beeps when I walk through the machine and asked if I should go through the x-ray machine as opposed to the fancy new machine that scans your whole body. She said "go ahead" with a look of cluelessness in her eyes. I did, and it beeped, and then they saw that my pump was clipped over my groin area so they would have to take me to a special screening room.
My mom kept asking whether I could move the pump or go back through the screener, but they said no. My mom had to come with me to be screened, and my 12-year-old sister said 'what do I do?' because all of our stuff was on the conveyer belt. She looked scared. I felt more humiliated than scared. When a thousand eyes are watching you because they think you may be a deadly threat it is so uncomfortable and humiliating. I marched to the screening room barefoot. I suppose they were trying to follow regulations, but I was on the verge crying.
O'Hare airport's TSA officers need sensitivity training. When I was getting my "pat down" I thought of all the times I have been told to not let anyone go near my private parts. How was this ok today? How do we make sure no other child has to go through this humiliating experience?
-- Jacob Wisnik, 10
via @DebWilker
Hee Haw
Hah, hah, hah, hah...
The 10 Rules Of Secret Agent-cy
1. Always pay the hooker.
You fill in the rest...
What "TSA" Stands For
Butler Schaffer writes on Lew Rockwell that it's "Total Submission Authority":
Its function has absolutely nothing to do with combating "terrorism." There are no more "terrorists" running loose in this country than there were "bogeymen" with which I used to scare my little sisters when we were children. One need only read Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning to discover that, like Frankl's Nazi concentration camp experiences, the TSA's role is to degrade and dehumanize people; to remind us that the state can humiliate us to any degree it chooses whenever it chooses, and that those who resist will be punished and put on secret lists for some undefined future use.
As I write in my op-ed on the TSA, this is obedience training for the American public, a show pony of "security." Shaffer writes about being a private function recently, where there was a bag check of all entrants. Shaffer asked the inspector, "How many weapons, explosives, etc., has this company discovered this way?"
His answer:
"Not a one."
via Lisa Simeone
Why Evil HR Lady Hates Salary.com's "What's A Mom Worth?" Survey
Suzanne Lucas gags, uh, writes at CBSnews.com about what's wrong with this survey. A few of her excellent points below (but read her whole piece):
Household decisions are not equal to CEO decisions. I know, I've broken some code of womanhood by saying that, but honestly, it's not. Salary.com defines a CEO as someone who "plans and directs all aspects of an organization's policies, objectives, and initiatives" and says that's worth $171,824, or $55.07 an hour. (No, that math doesn't work, I don't know what they were thinking). Yes, moms and dads and single people and double-income-no-kids people do that too. But the average American woman has about two children. Add in a spouse and even a dog (I'm stretching here) and you've got a CEO over five people -- and that assumes that this wonder woman married one of those dolts that only exist in television commercials (incapable of making a single decision). A CEO over "company" that small isn't likely to make $171,000. And deciding where to go on vacation, whether Junior should take cello or piano lessons, and how to balance that 401k account is nothing like running a company.Being a chauffeur is a choice. There is a certain martyrdom in the "I spend all my time in the mini van! Soccer, dance class, cello lessons, oh my!" Caroline Ingalls never drove Laura to a single lesson and she turned out to be a responsible adult. You don't have to do it. And things you don't have to do are considered "volunteer" work and guess what? You don't get paid for volunteer work.
I could go on, but my blood pressure is rising and this year's survey didn't turn up cardiologist as one of the skills one magically gains by giving birth or adopting, so I should stop.
I chose to have children. I chose who I married and we discussed these issues prior to tying the knot. It's rather insulting to suggest that the only value in motherhood is a monetary one. And that moms (or dads) can be replaced by a paycheck. If you focus on the lack of a paycheck as an indication that your tasks are not important to a well-functioning family, then you'll make yourself miserable.
So ignore the Salary.com survey. Don't tie your worth up into an imaginary dollar figure. Make your choices and either be happy with them or make different choices.
The Case For Discrimination
Terrific blog item by Walter E. Block at Psychology Today, who shoves the truth onto the page, balls-out:
In the days of yore, to say that a man was discriminating was to pay him a compliment. It meant that he had taste; he could distinguish between the poor, the mediocre, the good and the excellent. His ability to make fine distinctions enabled him to live a better life than otherwise.Nowadays, in our politically correct times, discrimination implies racial and/or sexual hatred. It evokes lynching the innocent, hanging black people who had committed no crime, and, yes, perhaps, even, in the extreme, a return to slavery. This at least was virtually the reaction that greeted candidate for U.S. Senate Rand Paul, when he averred that there were parts of the so-called "Civil Rights" Act of 1964 that were objectionable. But all Senator Paul was saying is that while it would be illicit for government to discriminate on the basis of race or sex or any other such criterion, it is a basic element of private property rights that individuals be free to engage in exactly such preferences. If they were not, an important element of liberty would be lost.
The howls of outrage that greeted this reasonable distinction were so great that Dr. Rand Paul felt compelled to backtrack on his statement. However, we are now discussing a book, not an election. Here, the truth and justice is our only guide, not the hurt feelings of journalists working for the mainstream media and other sob sisters. As such, it is clear that discrimination on the part of individuals, but of course not the state, is part of our birthright of liberty.
If not, coercive bisexuality would be the logical implication of the anti-discrimination movement. Why? Well, male heterosexuals despicably discriminate against half the human race as bed/sex/marriage partners: all other men. Nor can female heterosexuals plead innocence against this dread charge; they, too, abjure half of their fellow creatures in this regard. Can male homosexuals deflect this deadly indictment? No, they, too, refuse to have anything to do with all females in such a context. Similarly, female homosexuals, lesbians, rotten creatures that they are, also avoid entangling alliances of this sort with all men, again, half the human race. No, it is the bisexuals, and only the bisexuals, who are entirely innocent of discrimination of this sort. They are the only decent people in the entire sexual spectrum to refrain from this evil practice. (We now disregard the fact that bisexuals also make invidious comparisons based on beauty, age, sense of humor, etc.) Therefore, if we really opposed discrimination in matters of the heart, we would all embrace bisexuality. Since we do not, the logical implication is that we should be forced to do so. For, to hang back from this conclusion is to give not only tacit but active approval to discriminatory practices, surely one of the worst things in the politically correct panoply.
It might well be objected that the laws against private parties discriminating should apply only to business, not personal interactions. But why just in commerce and not, also, in human relations? Surely, if there is any such thing as the right not to be discriminated against, it applies in all realms of human existence, not merely in the marketplace. If we have a right not to be murdered, or stolen from, and we do, we do, then this right pervades all realms of human existence. It is equally improper to be killed or robbed in the bedroom as it is in the store.
Where Big Government Leads
Its costs are not benign; in fact, they strike at our civil liberties. While I am strongly for convicted criminals who are inmates paying their entire keep while in jail, Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution blogs that the meter is running and charges are accruing even for those who aren't convicted:
Debtor's prisons are supposed to be illegal in the United States but today poor people who fail to pay even small criminal justice fees are routinely being imprisoned. The problem has gotten worse recently because strapped states have dramatically increased the number of criminal justice fees. In Pennsylvania, for example, the criminal court charges for police transport, sheriff costs, state court costs, postage, and "judgment." Many of these charges are not for any direct costs imposed by the criminal but have been added as revenue enhancers. A $5 fee, for example, supports the County Probation Officers' Firearms Training Fund, an $8 fee supports the Judicial Computer Project, a $250 fee goes to the DNA Detection Fund....Many states are now even charging the accused to apply for and use a public defender! As a result, some defendants are discouraged from exercising their rights to an attorney.
Most outrageously, in some states public defender, pre-trial jail and other court fees can be assessed on individuals even when they are not convicted of any crime. Failure to pay criminal justice fees can result in revocation of an individual's drivers license, arrest and imprisonment. Individuals with revoked licenses who drive (say to work to earn money to pay their fees) and are apprehended can be further fined and imprisoned. Unpaid criminal justice debt also results in damaged credit reports and reduced housing and employment prospects.
...It's difficult to argue against criminal justice fees for those who can pay, but for those who cannot- and most criminal defendants are poor-such fees can be a personal and public policy disaster. Criminal justice debt drags people further away from reintegration with civil society. A person's life can spiral out of their control when interest, late fees, revocation of a driver's license and ineligibility for public assistance, mean that unpaid criminal justice debt snowballs. You can't get blood from a stone but if you try, you can break the stone.
Hee Hee...
She, She. It just has to be funny.
Save Money On Your Mother!
Okay, that didn't come out so well: Shop Amazon's Mother's Day deals and save
Ooh, and here's bamboo cotton...which is really soft...I have some towels I bought years ago that are bamboo cotton and they're still soft. Here's one from Amazon: Bamboo Terry Cloth Robe for Women
How To Go Through The TSA Ungroped (The Arrest Is The Downside)
Note how the ball-grabbing, government-employed rights-yankers in the photo don't seem to care. They just want their tasty government check for violating our Fourth Amendment rights daily. Neetzan Zimmerman writes at Gawker:
John E. Brennan, 50, was arrested yesterday evening and charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure after stripping all the way down at a security checkpoint inside Portland International Airport.Asked to explain his actions, Brennan, who was on his way to San Jose, California, said he "had disrobed as a form of protest against TSA Screeners who he felt were harassing him." Police noted that he was not under the influence of an intoxicating agent at the time.
According to a police report, "Mr. Brennan's actions caused two screening lanes to be closed and while some passengers covered their eyes and their children's eyes and moved away from the screening area, others stepped out of the screening lanes to look, laugh and take photos of Mr. Brennan."
He was arrested after refusing to heed repeated requests to put his clothes back on, and is currently being held on $4,000 bond.
His behavior is heroic. If a lot of people did this, maybe some panderer in government would do something to stop the $60-plus billion dollars of rights-violating uselessness that is the TSA.
The Drug War Is A War On Civil Liberties
Bob Sullivan writes at Red Tape about what local cops learn and carriers earn from cellphone records:
Msnbc.com built a database of thousands of invoices issued by cellphone network providers to cities after cops asked for caller location and other personal information between 2009-2011. The invoices were first obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released to the public earlier this month.The database offers perhaps the first blow-by-blow accounting of several cities' use of cellphone tracking as a crime-fighting tool and the potential blow to civil liberties that the requests represent.
...In Tacoma, while many of the 139 requests for cellphone data from Jan. 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011 involved serious crimes - including 37 murder investigations - the most frequent charge listed as the reason for the request is "UDCS," or unlawful distribution of a controlled substance. No additional details about those 51 requests, or the crimes behind them, were available. Police officials from Tacoma did not respond to requests for comment.
The bills run up by local detectives requesting cellphone data aren't small. Tacoma spent $17,496 checking cellphone records during that time span or nearly $1 for every 10 residents. Police in Oklahoma City spent $9,033 on cellphone records checks during one three-month stretch last year, according to the data compiled by msnbc.com. In Raleigh, officials made an average of one location "ping" request from just one carrier -- Sprint -- every three days during the second half of 2011.
"Location data for cops is like a kid in a candy store," said Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime Unit. "It's a wonderful investigative tool which is highly intrusive of personal liberty and our rules on privacy, and rules governing access to this are not only antiquated but confusing and conflicting. Add to that a profit motive by carriers, and lack of sufficient oversight on law enforcement access to the records, and you have a prescription for, at a minimum, violations of civil liberties."
Here, from a recent blog item, Kate Ager of LadiesinKeene.com writes about how we're too used to the drug war to see it correctly:
The officers who arrived at the home on Post Road were there to enter the man's home without his consent, search through all of his belongings, take anything deemed 'illegal' if they were to find it, then try to put the man in a cage for possessing it.
TSA: Goon Squads At The Bus Station...Police State, Here We Come
Paul Joseph Watson writes for Prison Planet that Big Sis has started a program with the TSA and police officers to search and interrogate passengers on Houston buses. Democratic Congresswoman and national embarrassment Sheila Jackson Lee unveiled the program, labeled Bus Safe, at a Friday press conference:
According to a Metropolitan Transit Authority of Houston (METRO) press release, agencies involved in the scheme will, "ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior.""While local law enforcement agencies focus on overall safety measures noted above, representatives with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will also be on hand, lending their counter-terrorism expertise and support during the exercise," states the press release.
"If you think you're going to be a bad actor on buses, get ready. You are going to have a short-lived time frame," Jackson Lee said during the press conference. The Congresswoman is a staunch advocate of the TSA, having recently chastised the passage of a new law that allows airports to evict TSA agents and replace them with private screeners by claiming it would lead to a new 9/11-style attack.
From the press release, let's emphasize this:
While local law enforcement agencies focus on overall safety measures noted above, representatives with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will also be on hand, lending their counter-terrorism expertise and support during the exercise.
And this:
The move to monitor and curtail crime on buses and trains is just one component of a much larger initiative called BusSafe - a national pilot program created by a peer advisory group of mass transit police chiefs and security directors, and one which METRO's Police Department is adopting to enhance safety on the system.
"Safety"?
What about safety for our Constitutional rights?
Random bag checks? Turn the clock back to 1999. Think about how you'd react if you heard your bag would be checked simply because you needed to take a bus to work. Your need to travel is not evidence you've committed a crime; it merely suggests you're employed.
All of you who are keeping quiet about the TSA and now this, who think it's no big deal...note that the police state searches have crept out of the airport. And note that they'll continue their creep as long as people taking for granted their constitutional rights say and do nothing.
More from the InfoWars piece:
According to Phillip Levine of the Houston Free Thinkers blog, shortly after Lee gave her press conference the operation went straight into effect, with DHS and Metro Police officers questioning passengers who were exiting buses about their destinations and their reasons for riding the bus."When I arrived at Wheeler I got off the stage and instantly noticed the massive police presence. The police presence consisted of DHS, metro police, HPD, TSA, and Harris county police officers. They were going on to buses searching and stopping people for questions. Apparently Sheila Jackson Lee was there pushing for more security like what I was viewing. I asked the TSA agent if there was gonna be a bigger presence of metro or TSA. He said both," Levine said in an email.
This is a wake-up call for Americans who had hoped to avoid being harassed by TSA agents by not using airports.
TSA agents are now being used to literally occupy America with an expansion of the 9,000 plus checkpoints that were already operational last year. 12 more TSA VIPR teams (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) will be added to the 25 who are already present at transportation hubs throughout the country.
Derrick Broze posted at the Houston Free Thinkers link above:
Now more than ever we must educate our brothers and sisters on their own importance in the current Awakening. Protest, make videos, write letters, prepare, vote for freedom candidates. We must push for the ideas of freedom, voluntary association, and mutual benefit in every avenue we have available. Continue to push for freedom everywhere you go and do not submit.
Veganism: How To Raise An Unhealthy Baby
Nina Planck blogs at the NYT that a plants-only diet is inadequate for babies and children, laying out why:
Nature created humans as omnivores. We have the physical equipment for omnivory, from teeth to guts. We have extraordinary needs for nutrients not found in plants. They include fully-formed vitamins A and D, vitamin B12, and the long-chain fatty acids found in fish.The quantity, quality and bio-availability of other nutrients, such as calcium and protein, are superior when consumed from animal rather than plant sources. It's quite possible to thrive on a diet including high-quality dairy and eggs -- many populations do -- but a diet of plants alone is fit only for herbivores.
For babies and children, whose nutritional needs are extraordinary, the risks are definite and scary. The breast milk of vegetarian and vegan mothers is dramatically lower in a critical brain fat, DHA, than the milk of an omnivorous mother and contains less usable vitamin B6. Carnitine, a vital amino acid found in meat and breast milk, is nicknamed "vitamin Bb" because babies need so much of it. Vegans, vegetarians and people with poor thyroid function are often deficient in carnitine and its precursors.
The most risky period for vegan children is weaning. Growing babies who are leaving the breast need complete protein, omega-3 fats, iron, calcium and zinc. Compared with meat, fish, eggs and dairy, plants are inferior sources of every one.
...Vegans may believe it's possible to get B12 from plant sources like seaweed, fermented soy, spirulina and brewer's yeast. Alas, these foods contain mostly B12 analogs, which, according to the health writer Chris Kresser, "block intake of and increase the need for true B12," a vital nutrient for mental health.
Mr. Kresser argues that this is one reason studies consistently show that up to 50 percent of long-term vegetarians and 80 perent of vegans are deficient in B12.
When You're Broke, What's Another $68 Billion Added To Your Tab?
That's the new projected cost of the "high speed" train up broke-ass California's coast. From the Wash Times:
The state's High-Speed Rail Authority on Tuesday released details of a revised business plan that claims laying down tracks from Los Angeles to San Francisco will now cost a mere $68 billion instead of $98 billion - as if that were a bargain.President Obama's infatuation with the effort to create another government-subsidized rail entitlement means the rest of the country is on the hook for at least half of this still considerable sum. Retirees in Florida and schoolteachers in Mississippi, who will never ride California's train, will be forced to pay for it anyway.
Politicians asked Golden State voters in 2008 whether they wanted this shiny new train set. Fifty-three percent said "sure," without devoting much thought to the cost of their choice. To put $68 billion in perspective, five major airlines offer flights from Los Angeles to San Francisco for $200 or less - an amount that includes $39.60 in various taxes. Volume discounts aside, for the cost of the rail infrastructure, California could purchase 340 million round-trip tickets - enough to provide nine round-trip flights for each of the state's documented residents.
Based on market capitalization, the state could even buy a few airlines - American, Delta, Jet Blue, Southwest and United - and have $40 billion left over. Taking to the skies quite simply is more efficient. It only takes an hour and 20 minutes to journey by air between Los Angeles to San Francisco. At best, a nonstop "high-speed" train would take an estimated two hours and 38 minutes, charging a pricey $326 fare. Based on the experience of Amtrak in the Northeast corridor, the trains will make so many stops that actual trip time would be closer to four hours.
via @mpetrie
Get A Different Dress, Dimwad!
Judgment is an important quality in a spouse, and this girl lacks it in big scoops of Haagen-Dazs -- this girl who's on a diet with a tube up her nose to fit into a wedding dress. Orginally in the NYT, Linda Lee writes:
In March, Jessica Schnaider, 41, of Surfside, Fla., was preparing to shop for a wedding gown by spending eight days on a feeding tube. The diet, under a doctor's supervision, offered 800 calories a day while she went about her business, with a tube in her nose.A 2007 Cornell University study by Lori Neighbors and Jeffery Sobal found that 70 percent of 272 engaged women said they wanted to lose weight, typically 20 pounds. So brides are increasingly going on crash diets, inspired by seeing celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker or Gwyneth Paltrow, cowed by the prospect of wearing a revealing and expensive gown and knowing that wedding photos (if not the marriage) are forever.
Within the piece, a pal of mine from blogland, Dave Gorski (Orac at Respectful Insolence), debunks all those asinine "cleanses":
But the many "detoxing" cleanses make misleading claims, says Dr. David Gorski, an associate professor of surgery at Wayne State University in Detroit and a blogger at Science-Based Medicine. "Do you notice they never tell you what the toxins actually are?" he said. "There's no science to back them up."
More from Orac on cleanses.
Of course, if women just cut carbs -- and not just for the wedding -- most will drop pounds like pounds are going out of style. (Bacon -- and full-fat milk and big fatty steaks -- they do a body good!)
And regarding women who go overboard for their wedding -- Psssst! The marriage is supposed to be the point.
California Spends $205,075 To Move A $15 Bush
Via Tim Cavanaugh at reason, Thomas Cloud writes at CNSNews:
The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to "translocate" a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009."In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana," the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. "The plant's location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge.
...The bush--a Franciscan manzanita--was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the "wild."
Prior to the discovery of this "wild" Franciscan manzanita, the plant had been considered extinct for as long as 62 years--extinct, that is, outside of people's yards and botanical gardens.
Much of this piece reads like something from The Onion:
While the MOA did not detail all the costs for moving the bush, it did state that in addition to funding removal and transportation of the Franciscan manzanita, Caltrans agreed to transfer $79,470 to the Presidio Trust "to fund the establishment, nurturing, and monitoring of the Mother Plant in its new location for a period not to exceed ten (10) years following relocation and two (2) years for salvaged rooted layers and cuttings according to the activities outlined in the Conservation Plan."
Oh. Bite. Me.
Funny Boner
Joke the chicken here.
The IRS Turns Being An American Expat Into A Nightmare
It's so awful that a good many expats are renouncing their American citizenship to escape the burdens of the IRS. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian writes at Reuters:
The United States is one of the few countries to tax their citizens on income earned while they're living abroad. And just as Americans stateside must file tax returns each April -- this year, the deadline is Tuesday -- an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad brace for what they describe as an even tougher process of reporting their income and foreign accounts to the IRS. For them, the deadline is June.The National Taxpayer Advocate's Office, part of the IRS, released a report in December that details the difficulties of filing taxes from overseas. It cites heavy paperwork, a lack of online filing options and a dearth of local and foreign-language resources.
For those wishing to legally escape the filing requirements, the only way is to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship. Last year, IRS records show that at least 1,788 people did, and that's likely an underestimate.
..In Europe, American women say they feel pressure to renounce even from their husbands.
"American women married to non-Americans are only just now finding out that they have to disclose years and years of income and accounts," says Lucy Stensland Laederich, a leader of the women's club who lives in Bordeaux, France.
Laederich has been acting as the group's liaison with politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and plans to attend a meeting to discuss expatriate tax issues with Maloney and Treasury Department officials on Tuesday.
"When they decide to come clean and report everything," she says, "they have to go ask their husbands for all of their bank information, retirement funds, and investment accounts, everything."
Some of their husbands, Laederich says, refuse to hand over information to the IRS. That leaves the women in difficult predicaments.
"Your options are to ignore the IRS and stick your head in the sand; take your name off of all the accounts and live in a completely cash economy; divorce; or renounce U.S. citizenship," Laederich says. "We've seen all of these things happen."
Here's how my friends Matt Welch and his wife Emmanuelle Richard get their asses bitten by this. In reason, Matt writes:
Preposterous Foreign-Income Disclosure RulesThe IRS wants everyone with more than $10,000 in foreign-based financial institutions to cough up every last detail of every last account. Let's say (just for the sake of argument) that in 1997 you married a French woman who had previously written a few articles for a soon-to-be-defunct UK newspaper, and had opted to park her checks in a London bank for walking around money on future visits. Let's say further that she has earned enough European-based income over the ensuing 15 years to exceed that five-figure savings threshold.
Result? As of 2012, that London savings account, and every single other foreign based account you and your wife may have, must now be divulged in full--complete with your estimation of its highest value during the previous year--to the Internal Revenue Service.
Good luck figuring out form TD 90-22.1, by the way. My tax professional (who charged me more than $1,000 for her services, though it was worth every penny), shrugged, and gave me a yellow highlighter so that maybe I could shed light on the relevant verbiage of TD 90-22.1 and its rich cousin, form 8938. Even the Government Accountability Office has trouble; "Extent of Duplication Not Currently Known, but Requirements Can Be Clarified" was the subtitle on its recent paper on the dueling FBARs (foreign bank account requirements).
The important thing to realize is that by failing to cough up each and every detail of accounts that are filled with your legitimately earned and (in my case) already taxed money, you are subjecting yourself to a $100,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
If you happen to have some money overseas, and are nervous about the U.S. government's ability to harass or imprison you, you're probably better off burying the cash in a can. Or depositing it in a country that doesn't care about playing by Uncle Sam's rules.
The fun continues for those Americans living -- or trying to -- overseas:
Scaring Away Foreign BanksThis isn't a new IRS rule, it's a new consequence of a lousy new law, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliant Act (FATCA ... get it??).
This 2010 law, which was passed in an effort to increase tax collections on Americans using shelters abroad, is estimated by its supporters to maybe bring in an extra $8 billion in receipts over the next 10 years, or less than $1 billion per year. This for a federal government that spends $1 billion every two and a half hours.
Uniquely in the world, the United States government is demanding that all foreign financial institutions disclose the details of all U.S.-based accounts and withhold 30 percent in potential taxes from accounts held by other institutions that don't disclose. Let's see, what do you suppose might happen when Washington makes life a living hell for every foreign bank that dares do business with Americans?
Shocker: "Banks no longer want American clients." So if you are one of the estimated 6.6 million Americans living abroad, you can forget about opening or even maintaining that bank account. Sorry! Those 150 minutes of federal spending won't pay for themselves!
Welfare For All! $10 Million Loans For All Americans
A chicken in every pot and a boatload of money funneled into every bank account! Sheila Bair writes in the WaPo about how to fix income inequality for everyone:
I've got the perfect solution, a modest proposal that involves just a small adjustment in the Federal Reserve's easy monetary policy. Best of all, it will mean that none of us have to work for a living anymore.For several years now, the Fed has been making money available to the financial sector at near-zero interest rates. Big banks and hedge funds, among others, have taken this cheap money and invested it in securities with high yields. This type of profit-making, called the "carry trade," has been enormously profitable for them.
Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. The more adventuresome can buy 10-year Greek debt at 21 percent, for an annual income of $2.1 million. Or if Greece is a little too risky for you, go with Portugal, at about 12 percent, or $1.2 million dollars a year. (No sense in getting greedy.)
Of course, we will have to persuade Congress to pass a law authorizing all this Fed lending, but that shouldn't be hard. Congress is really good at spending money, so long as lawmakers don't have to come up with a way to pay for it.
Pay The Lady, Dumbass!
Cartegena Secret Service Hookergate came to light over probably around $47. Geoff Earle and Don Kaplan write for the NY Post:
A hotel employee told The Associated Press that agents arrived at the beachfront hotel a week ago and drank heavily during their stay.Prostitution is legal in much of Colombia inside "tolerance zones" controlled by police. The going rate for hookers in Cartagena is around $47, according to Colombian TV.
The trouble began for the Secret Service after the agents' night of carousing, when a hotel employee noticed a hooker's ID was still at the front desk at 7 a.m., in violation of hotel policy on overnight guests, King said.
The manager went to the agent's room where the woman had spent the night and saw the two inside arguing, King said.
"She said the agent owed her money," King said. "He said he didn't have to pay her."
He eventually forked over the money and the situation was resolved. But the cops were called and they filed a report, which was sent to the US Embassy.The probe widened yesterday to include five members of the US military who were allegedly involved in the same incident, officials said.
Pennywise, pussy-foolish!
via Glenn Reynolds
Criminal "Being A Teenager"-hood
What are the teen girl years for but to pierce your friends' ears with your mom's sewing needle and a wine cork? Now, this has expanded to other parts of the body, and this, like everything else, is now a crime. Alexis Stevens writes at the AJC:
The student was charged with reckless conduct and piercing the body of a person under 18, and she was released to her mother, sheriff's deputies said.
via Karen De Coster
Suspected Al Qaeda Terrorist Brought To Tears
Weep for the ripped up Constitution next time you're at the airport:
Hell No, We Won't Glow
Dr. Emily Deans, @evolutionarypsy and Psych Today blogger tweets:
Dentist: "The x-rays are perfectly safe." Me: "Then why do you leave the room?"
Tsetse?
No...tee hee.
Mainstream Muslim Organization Says Muslims Can't Work In Legal System That Doesn't Come From Allah
There's this edict from a mainstream Muslim organization cautioning American Muslims against working in law enforcement in countries which do not rule by Allah's dictates -- lest they gain love and respect for secular laws.
Via Jihadwatch, quoting Translating Jihad:
The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) writes:...there are many evils which result from working in law enforcement, the greatest of which is compelling people to obey rulings which do not come from Allah. It could also cause reverence and love for these rulings to enter the heart of the police officer, and perhaps spread to the hearts of his family members and other Muslims who see him at the mosque or even Muslims in general. They could lose conviction of governance by Allah, and become pleased with a legal system that does not come from Allah.AMJA provided some allowances for Muslims to work in certain law enforcement professions, fearing that a lack of Muslim representation in this sector could bring negative effects for the Muslim community. They also reasoned that Muslims working as police officers might be able to use their positions to help the Muslim community, such as helping out with traffic near their mosques and protecting their mosques. Still, there was concern that some of these might be required to enforce laws contrary to the shari'a, such as "arrest[ing] a Muslim man whose wife said he 'raped' her."
Appalling.
Tonight, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Advice Goddess Radio: Dossie Easton On Open Relationships And Improving All Relationships
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in psychology and research -- all with really compelling things to say about how to be smarter in being human.
Tonight on Advice Goddess Radio, Dossie Easton, co-author of The Ethical Slut
This promises to be a fascinating and eye-opening show, and one not to be missed even if you aren't personally interested in having more than one sex partner. Dossie will get into myths about ways we view love and sex, and smarter, healthier ways of thinking that are illuminating for all.
Listen live at this link or download after the show (click "Play in your default player"). And do call in with questions when the show is live -- 347-326-9761
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Don't forget to listen to last week's show with Dr. Carl Alasko, author of Emotional Bullshit, on how to cut the delusion, drama and denial out of your relationships and be accountable...and happier personally and together:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/02/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and all my fascinating guests live every Sunday from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, and listen to all my previous shows and listen live at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
Gone Viral: My Kinda Obit
Michael "Flathead" Blanchard, 1944-2012:
Weary of reading obituaries noting someone's courageous battle with death, Mike wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors' orders and raising hell for more than six decades. He enjoyed booze, guns, cars and younger women until the day he died....Baba Yaga can kiss his butt. So many of his childhood friends that weren't killed in Vietnam went on to become criminals, prostitutes and/or Democrats. He asks that you stop by and re-tell the stories he can no longer tell. As the Celebration will contain Adult material we respectfully ask that no children under 18 attend.
Secret Service Prostitution Scandal
First, I think prostitution should be legal. Second, I can understand if there are Secret Service job rules they need to abide by, but at least one of these situations doesn't sound like it quite fits the bill of seeking out a prostitute -- or agreeing to the services of one. Sounds like our boy got himself scammed.
From the WaPo/AP story, this sounds like the guy thought he was having consensual sex:
King said he was told that anyone visiting the hotel overnight was required to leave identification at the front desk and leave the hotel by 7 a.m. When a woman failed to do so, it raised questions among hotel staff and police, who investigated. They found the woman with the agent in the hotel room and a dispute arose over whether the agent should have paid her.King said he was told that the agent did eventually pay the woman.
On the downside, do we want Secret Service agents who are this naive about what (or who) goes down in Cartagena?
via @TedFrank
Help Me With The Math Here
I'm no friend to Bank of America, as anybody who's read my chapter in I See Rude People on how their "security" practices put their customers at risk for identity theft knows.
I discovered that they had cheaped out on creating a single computer network to link all their banks, and that at teller windows at a branch where your account is not based, they may not be able to see much more than how much money you have in your account. Meaning that they can't read your pin or see identifying information -- that their security measures entail just "hoping it's you."
Asides aside, Bank of America is just one of the players in this story (and I do have to say that, as with GM, it is just disgusting that they've gotten ANY money from taxpayers).
My question from the headline, however, relates to loans and how they work. I don't really know because, naive little me, I didn't buy a house back when everybody was getting those ARMs, because...because I couldn't afford one! (I got a snotty message on facebook from author Francesca Lia Block. "I See Clever People," she wrote me -- about my post about how she bought a house she couldn't afford, "Gamble Big: If You Win, You Keep The Money; If You Lose, The Rest Of Us Bail You Out.")
Getting -- finally -- to the main meat of this blog item, Gale Holland writes in the LA Times of a foreclosure story. A woman, Dirma Rodriguez, with a severely disabled daughter, Ingrid Ortiz, and a house modified for her could lose it:
After she fell behind on her payments, the Bank of America lowered her monthly obligation, but then sold the house at a foreclosure auction last September. The new owner, a house flipper from El Segundo called West Ridge Rentals, moved to evict the family....Bank of America said last week it is considering a loan modification that would return the home to Rodriguez and her family.
...Ortiz, now 27, has cerebral palsy and does not speak. Her vision is poor, and she can walk with leg braces, but she generally finds it easier to slide around the house on her knees. She often cries and wails loudly.
The stucco house on South Rimpau Boulevard, which Rodriguez keeps immaculate, is custom-conditioned for Ortiz, with gleaming floor tiles to ease her movements and a wheelchair ramp. In the summer, Rodriguez spreads a blanket on the lawn so Ingrid can enjoy the sun and gaze at the dozens of unblemished rose bushes her mother planted in honor of her quinceañera.
...How and why this came to pass is in dispute. Rodriguez says the bank began returning her payments, then put her into foreclosure without notice. Bank of America spokesman Rick Simon said she received ample notification, and the foreclosure was aboveboard.
...Rodriguez owed $457,000 on the house; West Ridge picked it up for $300,100. You might wonder why Bank of America found it smarter to sell at a loss than to work out reasonable terms with Rodriguez, who made mortgage payments for more than 20 years without incident.
If, per Holland, she's owned this house for 20 years, that means she bought it in around 1992. I found the house with ease with methods I detail in I See Rude People (just call me Nancy Drool!), but price estimates for it on Zillow only go back to 2003. Back then, in 2003, it was estimated by Zillow to be worth about $275K.
I looked up what the LA real estate market was doing in the early 90s when Rodriguez bought the house. Here:
1990: Prices take a serious plunge. One article claims that housing booms are a bad thing and we should hope prices stay low. Increasing mortgage rates are blamed for the bust. The word "recession" is mentioned. Gloom and doom.
1991: A "dead cat bounce"? Some folks wondering if the bust has bottomed out or not. Sales are abysmal (e.g., -42%). Other parts of the country showing some signs of recovery.
1992: No one is buying; housing is an investment that no one will touch. Desperate political efforts being made to encourage house buying. Rock bottom prices and lower mortgage rates encourage some purchasing. The year ends with some buying. Another "dead cat bounce"? It's not clear.
1993: It's definitely a buyer's market. Some people are saddened by the fact that current prices are 50% of what they were in the 1980's. The housing bust in Southern California is clearly negatively impacting the California economy and the national economy at large. Sellers are desperate to sell (and some people taking extreme measures like putting huge "for sale" signs on their lawns for passing planes to see). Folks who waited out the boom to buy at the bottom are being handsomely rewarded for their patience. Proof-positive of the contrarian investing style -- be greedy when everyone is fearful and fearful when everyone is greedy. The "slump" may be ending.
Did she pay maybe $100,000 or $120,000, at most, for this house back then? It's not in a great neighborhood. And it was a really not great neighborhood back then.
This woman now owes $457,000 on the house. How? How? Even with what's there -- shiny floors and a wheelchair ramp and all -- how much can that stuff cost? Is there something I'm not factoring in? How much of a loan do you think she got?
Also, the woman apparently can't speak English well enough (or at all) to function without an interpreter. It can be hard to make it as somebody who's pretty good in the native language. How does somebody, as a non-English-speaker, buy a five-bedroom, four bath, 3,864 square-foot house on a 7,797 square-foot lot?
Some photos of the house here: 
Tax assessor information: 
An Argument Against Zimmerman As A Racist
If it's true that he distributed this flyer, it would seem he actively fights racism, and has a history of getting off his ass to advocate for justice. About the letter (text at the link), according to a Zimmerman family member:
Zimmerman Letter to Sanford Churches
In late 2010 / early 2011, Sanford, Fla. resident George Zimmerman distributed this photocopied flyer on bright, fluorescent-colored paper, his family members told The Daily Caller. The flyer was intended to draw the public's attention to the plight of Sherman Ware, who was depicted on video being assaulted by the son of a Sanford police officer. Black community activists -- and Zimmerman -- complained bitterly that the police mishandled the investigation. Zimmerman reportedly distributed the flyer on Sundays in the parking lots of African-American churches, and handed them out personally at the conclusion of church services.
More at The Daily Caller, by Matthew Boyle:
"Do you know the individual that stepped up when no one else in the black community would?" the Zimmerman family member asked in the letter to the NAACP's Clayton."Do you know who spent tireless hours putting fliers on the cars of persons parked in the churches of the black community? Do you know who waited for the church‐goers to get out of church so that he could hand them fliers in an attempt to organize the black community against this horrible miscarriage of justice? Do you know who helped organize the City Hall meeting on January 8th, 2011 at Sanford City Hall??"
"That person was GEORGE ZIMMERMAN," the letter insisted. "Ironic isn't it?"
Every Sunday, according to his family, Zimmerman would stroll through Sanford's black neighborhoods handing out the fliers demanding justice for Sherman Ware, and calling for the police to hold their own officials accountable. Zimmerman would also place the fliers on people's cars outside churches.
"I challenge you to stand together and to have our voices heard, and to hold accountable all of those officers, and officials whom let this atrocious attack pass unpunished until the media revealed it," one of the fliers reads in part. "This animal could have attacked anyone of us, our children or loved ones in his alcohol fueled rage."
The officers whom Zimmerman targeted for accountability in the Sherman Ware incident were all cleared by the Seminole County Sheriff's investigation, despite Zimmerman's repeated accusations that police gave kid-glove treatment to a white officer's son who beat a defenseless, homeless black man.
But 14 months later, at least two of the same officers investigated the shooting death of Trayvon Martin -- and cleared Zimmerman -- even though his voice was the loudest calling for their punishment in the Ware case.
...On March 19, NewsOne argued that the Sherman Ware incident illustrates a pattern of mistreatment of black victims by the Sanford Police Department.
"They [Sanford police] have a history of NOT arresting offenders who assault black men," the article's author declared.
Laughing Gas
Without dentistry.
Corporate Socialism
David Cay Johnston blogs at Reuters that more than 2,700 US companies are collecting state income taxes from hundreds of thousands of workers - and are keeping the money with the states' approval, according to a report from Good Jobs First, a nonprofit taxpayer watchdog organization:
General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and AMC Theatres enjoy deals to keep state taxes deducted from their workers' paychecks, the report shows. Foreign companies also enjoy such arrangements, including Electrolux, Nissan, Toyota and a host of Canadian, Japanese and European banks, Good Jobs First says.Why do state governments do this? Public records show that large companies often pay little or no state income tax in states where they have large operations, as this column has documented. Some companies get discounts on property, sales and other taxes. So how to provide even more subsidies without writing a check? Simple. Let corporations keep the state income taxes deducted from their workers' paychecks for up to 25 years.
It was not always this way. Letting companies keep their workers' state taxes apparently began in Kentucky two decades ago as a way to retain jobs.
...These deals typify corporate socialism, in which business gains are privatized and costs socialized. They also mean government picks winners and losers, interfering with competitive markets. Leaders in both parties embrace these giveaways because they draw campaign donations from corporate interests and votes from people who do not understand that they are subsidizing huge companies.
via @againstcronycap
Was That How The Allies Won World War II?
My response to a quote excerpt:
"When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."― John F. Kennedy
Whole thing is here.
Former TSA Head Kip Hawley Admits How Broken Airport Security Is
Hawley writes in the WSJ, echoing what so many of us have been saying for so long -- to no avail:
More than a decade after 9/11, it is a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect. Preventing terrorist attacks on air travel demands flexibility and the constant reassessment of threats. It also demands strong public support, which the current system has plainly failed to achieve.The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach to risk. In attempting to eliminate all risk from flying, we have made air travel an unending nightmare for U.S. passengers and visitors from overseas, while at the same time creating a security system that is brittle where it needs to be supple.
Any effort to rebuild TSA and get airport security right in the U.S. has to start with two basic principles:
First, the TSA's mission is to prevent a catastrophic attack on the transportation system, not to ensure that every single passenger can avoid harm while traveling. Much of the friction in the system today results from rules that are direct responses to how we were attacked on 9/11. But it's simply no longer the case that killing a few people on board a plane could lead to a hijacking. Never again will a terrorist be able to breach the cockpit simply with a box cutter or a knife. The cockpit doors have been reinforced, and passengers, flight crews and air marshals would intervene.
Second, the TSA's job is to manage risk, not to enforce regulations. Terrorists are adaptive, and we need to be adaptive, too. Regulations are always playing catch-up, because terrorists design their plots around the loopholes.
Disgustingly, Kip is suddenly open about all the TSA's massive flaws -- just as he's selling a book.
TSA, Search Thyself
Yet another criminal in the TSA's ranks, an iPad-stealing baggage handler. From NBC/DFW:
Eight iPads have been stolen from travelers' checked bags in an eight-month period at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.Clayton Keith Dovel, a 36-year-old TSA baggage inspector, has been charged with theft by a public servant. The TSA has suspended Dovel.
"The unacceptable behavior of this individual in no way reflects the dedication of our nearly 50,000 transportation security officers who work tirelessly to keep our skies safe," TSA said in a statement.
Police said technology on the iPads led investigators to Dovel.
Once again: Private business proves much smarter than government.
It's The Funny, Not The Principle
Or something like that.
"Are You Contractin' Or Just Doin' Some Work Around The House?"
Great scene from The Wire
La Philosophie Du Chat
Henri on life:
@walterolson
Best "Missed Connections" Ever
Via @TedFrank posted by The Cajun Boy on Uproxx:
Woman Seeking Man Who Knocked Her Up In The Bathroom At Megadeth/Motorhead Show On Craigslist
The Titanic's Loss Of Life: A Regulatory Failure
There's too often the notion -- held by many people -- that government knows best. This goes hand in hand with the notion that government -- a bureaucracy bent on maintaining itself -- "cares" about the people, which stems from the assumption that those in it are motivated by a higher goal than self-interest.
Depending on government to do our thinking and protecting can have tragic consequences. For example, there's a very interesting piece in the WSJ by Chris Berg, a fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne, Australia, on how "the Titanic's lifeboat capacity is probably the most iconic regulatory failure of the 20th century":
The ship had carried 2,224 people on its maiden voyage but could only squeeze 1,178 people into its lifeboats. There were a host of other failures, accidents, and mishaps which led to the enormous loss of life, but this was the most crucial one: From the moment the Titanic scraped the iceberg, the casualties were going to be unprecedented.Yet the Titanic was fully compliant with all marine laws. The British Board of Trade required all vessels above 10,000 metric tonnes (11,023 U.S. tons) to carry 16 lifeboats. The White Star Line ensured that the Titanic exceeded the requirements by four boats. But the ship was 46,328 tonnes. The Board of Trade hadn't updated its regulations for nearly 20 years.
The lifeboat regulations were written for a different era and enforced unthinkingly. So why didn't the regulators, shipbuilders or operators make the obvious connection between lifeboat capacity and the total complement of passengers and crew?
There was, simply, very little reason to question the Board of Trade's wisdom about lifeboat requirements. Shipbuilders and operators thought the government was on top of it; that experts in the public service had rationally assessed the dangers of sea travel and regulated accordingly. Otherwise why have the regulations at all?...This is a distressingly common problem. Governments find it easy to implement regulations but tedious to maintain existing ones--politicians gain little political benefit from updating old laws, only from introducing new laws.
And regulated entities tend to comply with the specifics of the regulations, not with the goal of the regulations themselves. All too often, once government takes over, what was private risk management becomes regulatory compliance.
It's easy to weave the Titanic disaster into a seductive tale of hubris, social stratification and capitalist excess. But the Titanic's chroniclers tend to put their moral narrative ahead of their historical one.
At the accident's core is this reality: British regulators assumed responsibility for lifeboat numbers and then botched that responsibility. With a close reading of the evidence, it is hard not to see the Titanic disaster as a tragic example of government failure.
This is not the way the story is usually told.
We're Too Used To The Drug War To See It Correctly
Via @radleybalko, a blog item on a drug raid that ended in a life lost and four police officers shot that puts such raids and the "War on Drugs" in the proper perspective. Kate Ager of LadiesinKeene.com posts:
The officers who arrived at the home on Post Road were there to enter the man's home without his consent, search through all of his belongings, take anything deemed 'illegal' if they were to find it, then try to put the man in a cage for possessing it. Although the men approaching the door of the Greenland home wore uniforms with "police" written on them and had a man in a robe also deemed to be a "government official" sign a fancy-sounding permission slip [search warrant] supposedly granting them access into another man's home, they were there with the intent to break in to the home, steal his property, and force him into a cage.I'm sure some will deny that police with a warrant entering a home constitutes breaking in; entering a person's home against their wishes is breaking in. Some will say that taking items deemed to be 'illegal' isn't theft, but taking somebody's property without their permission is theft. Clearly a cell fits the definition of a cage.
...As I just mentioned, many lives have been severely affected in a negative manner due to this interaction. Why? What did the man inside the home possess that would warrant people to come into his home and put him in a situation where he feels the need to defend himself and his property - a plant, a powder, a liquid? What drug voluntarily ingested by a person could possibly be more harmful than all the damage and despair caused by the War On Drugs?
Should A Victim Be Jailed And Forced To Testify Against Her Rapist?
Alyssa Newcomb writes on ABCnews.com that a 17-year-old alleged rape victim is being held in juvenile detention to ensure that she'll testify at her alleged rapist's trial on April 23 -- previously rescheduled after she failed to appear at his February 28 trial:
"The last thing we ever want to do is put a victim or a witness in custody, but when you have serious crimes of violence and a multiple offenses, you have to balance the protection of the community here," Sacramento County Assistant District Attorney Albert Locher told ABCNews.com.
A judge signed off on the teen, who is reportedly in the state's foster system and has a history of running away, being held on a material witness warrant on March 14. She appeared before a judge on March 27 and has been in custody ever since, the Sacramento Bee reported....Locher said the girl's testimony was imperative and cited the potential public safety issue if Rackley is let go on the charges.
Where do you draw the line? Where should we?
via ifeminists
Orderlies Don't Stand Over You With An Uzi, Order You To Eat The Bun
From The Week, a watchdog group is calling for the removal of McDonald's franchises from clinics and hospitals nationwide.
They should be calling for the removal of the buns -- and the bread portion from sandwiches sold in the hospital cafeteria. The bun's the unhealthy part (along with the shake, coke, fries and other carbs). As I've quoted here many times before, per Gary Taubes' "Why We Get Fat," it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Gregg and I both love In-N-Out burgers, which we get "protein-style" (no bun) with grilled onions, but I eat McDonalds (bacon Angus burgers, no bun) when there's no other food around. No, it's not the greatest meat in the world, but I can eat McDonald's for every meal, hold the the bread, and stay slim.
Deposit Laughs Here
The meter maid will be around to collect shortly.
Coroner Office Available, Cheap
Another fine Phil Miller photo (used with permission):
Phil's caption: "Death doesn't have to be expensive!"
What Can't Government Regulate?
South Greenburg, PA (South Greenburg? Was the town named after somebody I went to temple with?)...anyway, they're hoping to limit the number of yard sales residents can conduct.
Sorry, first of all, is this really epidemic? Are people causing huge neighborhood traffic jams? Are neighbors' weeping into their barbeques at the sale next door every weekend? I love garage sales (not that I have time to go to them on Saturdays, because I write all day), and I see very few of them as I'm driving to my writing cafe.
At reason, Ed Krayeswski quotes KTKA TV:
We decided, with the warmer weather coming up, we would sort of define what a garage sale was," Borough Council President Clentin Martin said.He has proposed an ordinance, which he says would prevent "people going to flea markets, buying junk that they collect in these flea markets bringing it home, then putting it into their garage, and then calling it a 'garage sale.'"
Ed continues:
Residents would be limited to two two-day garage sales a year, permits for which would cost $5.
A permit for an activity that takes place on your own property?
Lower Or Elminate The Drinking Age, Says Gary Johnson
Steven Nelson writes at The Daily Caller that former New Mexico governor (and invisible presidential candidate) Gary Johnson is for reducing -- or even eliminating -- the national drinking age:
In 1984 federal legislation mandated that states adopt laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol to individuals under 21 years old. If states did not comply, they risked losing federal transportation funding."I'm always the guy to advocate for lower ages. I just believe that the lower the age the better you come to grips with what these substances are," the Libertarian Party presidential candidate said.
"If you can go to Iraq and die, or Afghanistan and die as a service man or women at 18, and you can't drink -- I'm sorry I don't buy into that."
There was effectively no drinking age for me -- my dad would always us some of what he was drinking. Bleh. Never wanted any.
Then, as I've blogged here before, when I turned 15, I wanted to find out what it was like to get drunk. Because drinking wasn't a big deal in my family -- not that my father drinks more than a glass of something or other about once or twice a week -- I didn't have anything to rebel against. And I realized I'd be safest if I got drunk when my parents were there. So, I went to my cousin's wedding, drank a bunch of vodka and TAB (I know, I know!) and got all tipsy and then felt like crap and got sick on the side of the road going home. My dad laughed at me, said something like "Bet you won't overdo it again," and the thought of throwing up kept me from drinking again until I was in my late 20s. Now I drink dry white wine and nothing stronger.
And no, I probably don't have some physiological predisposition to be sipping schnapps at 10 am, but I also feel very strongly about being as productive as possible. It's not a disease; it's a choice.
And I think that when that choice isn't a big deal, as it isn't in France, for example, you're less likely to have binge drinking and other sick behavior.
So...for or against reducing or eliminating the drinking age?
Big Government As Usual
Pete Kasperowicz reports on The Hill that Republican Rep John Mica of Florida said that the investigation into the spending habits of the General Services Admin has found that several GSA officials were flown to Hawaii for a week for a one-hour ribbon-cutting ceremony:
Information about the Hawaii trip comes from the same source that most of the other information has come from -- GSA's Inspector General office. Mica released a partial transcript of an interview with a GSA employee who said several employees went to Hawaii on a Saturday and returned the following Friday for a one-hour ribbon cutting ceremony."That was the official reason?" the IG office asked.
"That was the official reason, yeah," the employee replied, adding that these trips are "fairly frequent."
When the IG office suggested that the employees were working hard the whole time, the GSA employee replied, "I doubt it."
The shock is that anyone is surprised by this stuff. This is just how Big Government is done. It's taxpayer dollars they're spending, so who cares? Just like in the House, Senate and The White House.
Hugh More
Laugh me up.
Obamacare's Cost-Shifting
It's well laid-out in this blog post by Randy Barnett at Volokh, with the uber-long title, "The Myth That the Individual Mandate Addresses Cost Shifting by the Uninsured, Part 2: 'Bronze Plans' Are Not the Same As Catastrophic Coverage":
One of the myths of the Affordable Care Act is that it designed to address the costs imposed on the health care system by uninsured healthy younger people who may incur unexpectedly high medical costs from, say, being hit by a bus, and who then shift these costs to those who have insurance. As I have discussed previously, several commentators have suggested that Justice Kennedy could uphold the mandate on the limited theory that the mandate uniquely requires individuals to pay to cover their own "actuarial risk"--i.e., the chance that they will suffer an unexpected, catastrophic healthcare cost that they could not pay for out of pocket.Among the flaws that I identified with this purportedly narrow defense of the mandate is that it is factually inaccurate: Obamacare does not simply make people buy catastrophic coverage that would cover their own unaffordable risks at a price that reflects their actuarial risk; instead, as several of the Justices recognized, it makes them buy comprehensive policies for a wide range of services they don't need in order to subsidize the law's other costly requirements, at a price in excess of the actuarial risk that they pose to the system. Rather than being a scheme to insure against the risk posed by younger persons, the Affordable Care Act creates a system of a government-mandated privately-administered redistribution of wealth from the young and healthy to older baby boomers.
...As Chief Justice Roberts and Mike Carvin both correctly pointed out during oral argument, even a "bronze" plan must cover a wide array of costly "essential health benefits"--including contraceptives, maternity and newborn care, counseling, physical therapy, preventive services and pediatric oral and vision care--that drastically exceed the types of unpredictable and unaffordable costs covered by normal catastrophic plans (and which might potentially result in cost-shifting).
...That is precisely why premiums for bronze plans would cost between $4,500 and $5,000 per year under the Act (as estimated by the CBO), whereas true catastrophic plans are currently available for around $420 per year (as quoted online for a policy that covers a thirty-year-old nonsmoker, doesn't cover preventative and other non-essential services, and carries a $10,000 deductible).
Corbett Strikes Again: TSA Screener Admits Scanners Are A Boondoggle
I had drinks with the wonderful, adorably green-haired Jon Corbett last night. He's learned the law -- been studying it since age 19, when he got an unfair ticket and challenged it -- and is now using it to challenge those who chomp up our civil liberties. Love the guy.
In his latest video, TSA employee "Jennifer" tells Corbett about all the things that don't show up in the scanner: Wallets, guns, knives, simulated bombs!
She also reveals that untrained workers, uncertified on the machines, are manning these scanners:
Corbett's last video demonstrated how easy it is to take a metal object through TSA nude body scanners undetected.
Corbett's lawsuit against the TSA stems from this incident where he refused to let a government employee violate his balls in the name of "security." The latest on the lawsuit here.
TSA, Investigate Thyself
Who's very possibly been groping kiddie genitals at Logan International Airport? Jose E. Salgado, who's being charged with possessing kiddie porn. Christine McConville writes at BostonHerald.com:
TSA agent Jose E. Salgado, 59, of Chelsea was suspended from his job after his employers learned that local law enforcement agencies are pursuing criminal charges against him for the possession and sharing of pornographic images of children."TSA has been cooperating fully with our law enforcement partners during the investigation into this matter," TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said. "Upon learning of these charges, TSA took immediate action and the individual is not working at the airport."
Periodic arrests of TSA agents on sex charges across the nation have fueled criticism of the agency's screening of its own employees, tasked with patting down the traveling public and keeping the airways safe. At least two other TSA officers assigned to Logan have faced sex charges in the past two years. Sex charges against others have been reported in Virginia, New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia and other states.
@DebWilker
Disgusting Seizure Of Cash By DHS Jerks At Airport
A family flying from the U.S. to Ethiopia, where life is transacted in cash, had their $35K confiscated through agents' apparent trickery in order to notch another "got one!" statistic to their agency's belt. Via Overlawyered and Powerline, the story is at Volokh:
1. Introduction.At the airport, federal officers confiscated $35,131 from a family flying to Ethiopia. They said that the couple intentionally attempted to evade the reporting requirements for taking money outside of the United States. The citizens clearly had no intention to violate the rules, and the government must return their money and pay for their attorney's fees and costs of court.
2. Background.
On June 2, 2011, Kyle Jones and his wife Berekti Jones were at George Bush Intercontinental Airport with their daughter Soliyana. They were flying to Ethiopia through Dubai and planned to stay in Addis Ababa for two, months while visiting family and celebrating Soliyana's second birthday.
The law requires that an international traveler declare on a form(a) that he has no more than $10,000 or (b) report the amount. When the couple reached the first check, officer Agustin Hernandez from the Customs and Border Protection of the Department of Homeland Security asked Kyle how much currency and monetary instruments he had on him. Kyle responded that he did not know. Hernandez then asked how many dollars he was carrying; Kyle replied that he would guess around $20,200. Hernandez wrote $20,200 on the form. He told Kyle to sign it, and Kyle did.
Hernandez then took the family to another table where officer Charlesworth Clarke told them to put all of their currency on it. At that point, Kyle asked what counted as currency because he had traveler's checks. From his six carry-on bags and jacket he retrieved everything -- $20,000 in traveler's checks and $11,131 in cash. Berekti, who had been tending to their daughter during the conversations, handed the officer her wallet. It had $4,ooo in cash. The officers then frisked the Joneses and searched their bags, and found no additional money -- however described.
The officers seized the entire $31,131 that the Joneses had voluntarily given them and released them from custody. Having missed their flight, the Joneses spent $1,500 to replace the tickets plus having had to rent a hotel room.
3. Intent.
Six officers appeared at the trial, four of whom testified. A "case agent" sat with the government's counsel. He knew nothing. His sole contribution had been to enter data into a computer; he could not have assisted the United States attorney. In addition to overreaching the people whom they are to serve, three officers wasted oneehalf day watching four others embarrass themselves.
The government presented no evidence -- none -- that the Joneses intended to evade the reporting requirements. Kyle told Hernandez that he did not know the amount of money he was carrying. Saying "I do not know" is not a deliberate failure to report. After Hernandez insisted on an answer, Kyle said that he would have to guess. [Footnote: Reports on Exporting and Importing Monetary Instruments, 31 U.S.C. §§ 5316 (1986).] Guessing is not a material omission or a misstatement of fact -- certainly not one the government can use to steal the money. [Id. §§ 5317(c)(2), 5324(c).]
The agency's official publications say that its officers can help travelers complete the form if they require assistance. Instead of ensuring that the Joneses understood the scope of "monetary instruments" and other reporting requirements, the officers took advantage of their guess. Hernandez instructed Kyle to complete the form before allowing him to count his money, and the others never let them correct it once their guess was shown to have been low.
These public servants sought to earn credit with their agency by collecting money. Some of it is returned to the agency -- like justices of the peace whose pay is derived directly from the fines they impose. They focused on bureaucratic imperatives -- not their duties to the public and law. [Footnote: Leonard W. Levy, A License to Steal: The Forfeiture of Property (1996).]
Big Snorting Horse Laughs
Do your best...
Welcome To Over-Regulated America
In The Economist:
Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of Dodd-Frank that you can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the shrewd can abuse with impunity.The other force that makes American laws complex is lobbying. The government's drive to micromanage so many activities creates a huge incentive for interest groups to push for special favours. When a bill is hundreds of pages long, it is not hard for congressmen to slip in clauses that benefit their chums and campaign donors. The health-care bill included tons of favours for the pushy. Congress's last, failed attempt to regulate greenhouse gases was even worse.
Complexity costs money. Sarbanes-Oxley, a law aimed at preventing Enron-style frauds, has made it so difficult to list shares on an American stockmarket that firms increasingly look elsewhere or stay private. America's share of initial public offerings fell from 67% in 2002 (when Sarbox passed) to 16% last year, despite some benign tweaks to the law. A study for the Small Business Administration, a government body, found that regulations in general add $10,585 in costs per employee. It's a wonder the jobless rate isn't even higher than it is.
A plea for simplicity
...America needs a smarter approach to regulation. First, all important rules should be subjected to cost-benefit analysis by an independent watchdog. The results should be made public before the rule is enacted. All big regulations should also come with sunset clauses, so that they expire after, say, ten years unless Congress explicitly re-authorises them.
More important, rules need to be much simpler. When regulators try to write an all-purpose instruction manual, the truly important dos and don'ts are lost in an ocean of verbiage. Far better to lay down broad goals and prescribe only what is strictly necessary to achieve them. Legislators should pass simple rules, and leave regulators to enforce them.
Would this hand too much power to unelected bureaucrats? Not if they are made more accountable. Unreasonable judgments should be subject to swift appeal. Regulators who make bad decisions should be easily sackable. None of this will resolve the inevitable difficulties of regulating a complex modern society. But it would mitigate a real danger: that regulation may crush the life out of America's economy.
Via OfTwoMinds/AgainstCronyCapitalism
What's A Fair Tax Rate For A Lottery Winner?
Brian J. Gaines and Douglas Rivers write in the WSJ about a poll asking 3,500 adults what they thought would be a "fair amount of tax" to pay on lottery winnings, ranging from $1 million to $100 million:
Less than a quarter of respondents chose a tax rate of 30% or higher on any level of lottery winnings. The vast majority thought that a reasonable amount to pay was much lower, with the average being only 15%. Democrats and Republicans differed only a little: The average rate preferred by Republicans was 14%, compared with 17% for Democrats.There was no evidence that respondents thought rates should be any higher on a $100 million prize than on a $1 million prize. Differences across prize amounts were mainly too small to be regarded as statistically significant. For all of our hypothetical lottery prizes, over half the respondents chose a tax that amounted to 10% or less of the lottery winnings.
These results may seem to contradict popular support, especially among Democrats, for raising taxes on the rich. In the same poll, we also asked about raising taxes on high earners. Sixty-one percent of respondents favored raising taxes on families that earn more than $250,000 per year and also 62% supported the "Buffett rule" proposed by President Obama (a minimum tax rate of 30% on millionaires).
How do we reconcile these findings? Is it because lottery jackpots are the stuff of dreams? Critics scoff that lotteries are a (voluntary) tax on innumeracy, and probably many ticket buyers do fail to understand just how minuscule are the odds of winning the eye-popping prizes. Yet people who don't expect ever to become rich by hard work or careful investment might still daydream about being showered with cash by a megafluke. The wild improbability of lottery wealth might even be why our respondents like such low tax rates.
On the other hand, if Americans consider taxes under 20% to be fair even for an income of $100 million, their apparent agreement with Messrs. Obama and Buffett--when the question comes up in another context--could be misleading. Any elected official who thinks the public is squarely on board with higher rates against upper-income earners should consider these results, then, and think twice.
Speculate
Another fine Phil Miller photo (used with permission):
His caption: "No, i wasn't talking on the cell phone!"
Meet The Legally Allowed Mob: Your Government
John R. Emshwiller and Gary Fields write for the WSJ about a woman's story I've blogged about before -- marine biologist and whale-watching boat operator Nancy Black, who was charged with lying to the feds about..."whale harassment."
When federal prosecutors can't muster enough evidence to bring charges against a person suspected of a crime, they can still use a controversial law to get a conviction anyway: They charge the person with lying.The law against lying--known in legal circles simply as "1001"--makes it a crime to knowingly make a material false statement in matters of federal jurisdiction. Critics across the political spectrum argue that 1001, a widely used statute in the federal criminal code, is open to abuse. It is charged hundreds of times a year, according to court records and interviews with lawyers and legal scholars.
...The trouble began in October 2005. During a whale-watching trip, a humpback whale approached one of her boats. The captain began whistling, hoping the noise might keep the creature from leaving, according to Ms. Black. A crewman on her other boat, which Ms. Black was captaining nearby, also urged passengers to make noise, she says. (Neither the captain nor the crewman faces charges.)
The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 outlaws "harassment" of whales that could disrupt their behavioral patterns or injure them. Ms. Black says she doesn't believe the whistling, or the ships' closeness to the whales, violated the rules, particularly since the creature had approached on its own.
Ms. Black says she considered the whistling "unprofessional" and told her employees not to do it again. She says the then-wife of her boat captain then went to the government to find out if there was anything wrong with whistling on the boat. The now former captain declined to comment. His ex-wife couldn't be reached for comment.
Several days later, Ms. Black says, a federal official from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--a Commerce Department agency with duties ranging from weather forecasting to fisheries management--made an informal request (as opposed to a subpoena) for her to provide video of the whistling incident. She provided a video edited to show the captain's whistling, she says, because that is what she thought the investigator wanted to see. She didn't include video of the other crew member allegedly egging on passengers to make noise.
The indictment alleges Ms. Black altered the video "with the intent to impede" investigation of the whale incident and then falsely told authorities the video was "the original recording, when that recording had in fact been altered." She acknowledges editing the video and denies that it was altered to impede the probe. In interviews, she denied lying about the video and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
She says she gave the edited video to two officials, including a NOAA investigator, and went through the video with them. A NOAA spokesman declined to comment on Ms. Black's case.
About a year later, on a morning in November 2006, more than a dozen federal agents, led by a NOAA inspector, entered her house with a search warrant and took away her files, photos and computers, she says. "It was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me."
Laughing Hyena
Beats a Pontificating Hyena.
The Upside Of Autism
I have a little friend -- Sergeant Heather's son -- who's a brilliant, sweet little cherub of a boy who happens to have autism, but he's one of those who'd be considered on the savant side. About six months ago, Sargeant Heather told me he loved maps. I told Gregg and he brought over a huge laminated one and we gave it to The Cherub. We laid it out on the table and I asked, "Where's Belarus?" It took him maybe four seconds to put his chubby little finger on it.
A couple of weeks ago, Sergeant Heather told me he was tested at reading at the 11th-12th grade level. At age 7.
There are a lot of challenges for him that other kids don't have, but he's an amazing little boy with an amazing brain, and I think, with some help with the stuff that's hard for him, he can do some amazing things in his lifetime.
I was inspired to mention him after reading a Jonah Lehrer piece in the WSJ on "The Upside of Autism":
Most people regard autism as a disease, a straightforward example of an impaired mind. But there's compelling evidence that autism is not merely a list of deficits. Rather, it represents an alternate way of making sense of the world, a cognitive difference that, in many instances, comes with unexpected benefits.That's the lesson, at least, of a new study from the lab of Nilli Lavie at University College London. A few dozen adults, both with and without autism, were given a difficult perceptual task, in which they had to keep track of letters quickly flashed on a computer screen. At the same time, they also had to watch out for a small gray shape that occasionally appeared on the edge of the monitor.
When only a few letters appeared on the screen, both autistic and normal subjects could handle the task. However, when the number of letters was increased, subjects without autism--so-called neurotypicals--could no longer keep up. They were overwhelmed by the surplus of information.
Those adults with autism didn't have this problem. Even when the task became maddeningly difficult, their performance never flagged.
What explains this result? According to the scientists, autism confers a perceptual edge, allowing people with the disorder to process more information in a short amount of time. While scientists have long assumed that autistics are more vulnerable to distraction--an errant sound or conversation can steal their attention--that's not the case. As Prof. Lavie notes, "Our research suggests autism does not involve a distractibility deficit but rather an information-processing advantage."
These perceptual perks have real-world benefits. The scientists argue, for instance, that the ability to process vast amounts of data helps to explain the prevalence of savant-like talents among autistic subjects. Some savants perform difficult mathematical calculations in their head, others draw exquisitely detailed pictures at a young age. These skills have long remained a mystery, but they appear to be rooted in a distinct cognitive style shared by all autistics. Because they can process details that elude the rest of us, they can perform tasks that seem impossible, at least for the normal mind.
The Cherub gave his mother a book about the dinosaurs he'd made for her for Mother's Day. It was made of folded paper, colored with crayons, but from there the similarities between his kid drawings and other kids' stopped. It was comprehensive and correct on the dinosaurs, and it was like he'd sucked up everything about a book and put it in this book. It had an acknowledgment letter, an ISBN number, a copyright page, a price on the back; even blurbs on the back cover!...everything a real book would have.
Amazing.
By the way, I do know that some autistic kids are not functioning in the basic tasks of life, nor do they show the savantism The Cherub does. Via @SBKaufman, Pensive Pediatrician blogs:
What we call autism is likely many different disorders: Asperger's, Autism with a known genetic syndrome, Autism in a syndromic looking child whose genetic testing is normal, autism with normal IQ, autism with high IQ, autism with low IQ, autism with many medical problems, autism with no medical problems, autism with other psychiatric co-morbidities, autism with aggression. Any reasonable outsider can see that this is not the same disorder, so why do we keep talking about it like it is?
Tyler Cowen wrote a fantastic book about the information economy and how suited autism spectrum people are for it (with ADD, I'm one of them). I highly recommend it, even if you don't know anyone deemed autistic: The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy
Obamacare Sticks Your Grandchildren With The Bill
Lori Montgomery writes for the WaPo:
President Obama's landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation's budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a Republican member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.The study is set to be released Tuesday by Charles Blahous, a conservative policy analyst whom Obama approved in 2010 as the GOP trustee for Medicare and Social Security. His analysis challenges the conventional wisdom that the health-care law, which calls for an expensive expansion of coverage for the uninsured beginning in 2014, will nonetheless reduce deficits by raising taxes and cutting payments to Medicare providers.
The 2010 law does generate both savings and revenue. But much of that money will flow into the Medicare hospitalization trust fund -- and, under law, the money must be used to pay years of additional benefits to those who are already insured. That means those savings would not be available to pay for expanding coverage for the uninsured.
via @ScottGottliebMD
Beauty Miffed: Ashley Judd's Face
On The Daily Beast, Ashley Judd lashes back at all the speculation about her appearance (most recently, that her face looks "puffy"):
A brief analysis demonstrates that the following "conclusions" were all made on the exact same day, March 20, about the exact same woman (me), looking the exact same way, based on the exact same television appearance. The following examples are real, and come from a variety of (so-called!) legitimate news outlets (such as HuffPo, MSNBC, etc.), tabloid press, and social media:One: When I am sick for more than a month and on medication (multiple rounds of steroids), the accusation is that because my face looks puffy, I have "clearly had work done," with otherwise credible reporters with great bravo "identifying" precisely the procedures I allegedly have had done.
Two: When my skin is nearly flawless, and at age 43, I do not yet have visible wrinkles that can be seen on television, I have had "work done," with media outlets bolstered by consulting with plastic surgeons I have never met who "conclude" what procedures I have "clearly" had. (Notice that this is a "back-handed compliment," too--I look so good! It simply cannot possibly be real!)
Three: When my 2012 face looks different than it did when I filmed Double Jeopardy in 1998, I am accused of having "messed up" my face (polite language here, the F word is being used more often), with a passionate lament that "Ashley has lost her familiar beauty audiences loved her for."
Four: When I have gained weight, going from my usual size two/four to a six/eight after a lazy six months of not exercising, and that weight gain shows in my face and arms, I am a "cow" and a "pig" and I "better watch out" because my husband "is looking for his second wife." (Did you catch how this one engenders competition and fear between women? How it also suggests that my husband values me based only on my physical appearance? Classic sexism. We won't even address how extraordinary it is that a size eight would be heckled as "fat.")
Five: In perhaps the coup de grace, when I am acting in a dramatic scene in Missing--the plot stating I am emotionally distressed and have been awake and on the run for days--viewers remarks ranged from "What the f--k did she do to her face?" to cautionary gloating, "Ladies, look at the work!" Footage from "Missing" obviously dates prior to March, and the remarks about how I look while playing a character powerfully illustrate the contagious and vicious nature of the conversation. The accusations and lies, introduced to the public, now apply to me as a woman across space and time; to me as any woman and to me as every woman.
On the one hand, good for her for getting up on her hind legs. On the other hand, in response to the notion that she is "every woman," to borrow from "The Godfather," and as Gregg reminds me when I get whiny about some facet of what I do for a living: "This is the business you have chosen."
Waste As Usual
As Cato's @NeilMcCluskey pointed out in a tweet, the GSA blowing through more than $820,000 for a Vegas conference with the mind reader is just federal business as usual. Yes, yes, of course there will be a hearing. (Yawn-o-rama!) From FoxNews:
A top Senate Democrat on Sunday joined the chorus of lawmakers vowing to get to the bottom of what happened in Vegas -- after a federal agency blew through more than $820,000 for a 2010 conference.Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, said the subcommittee he leads on the Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on the controversy when Congress returns from break.
"It's an absolutely outrageous expenditure of taxpayers' money," Durbin said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "That kind of misuse of taxpayers' funds is totally unacceptable."
And day to day business as usual in government, you pandering jerkwad. Like you don't vote in ridiculous spending of money we don't have like it's your job description.
HAL 9000 With Wheels: A Car That Senses Drunk Drivers
"You're stinko, Dave..."
From the LA Times' editorial page, a new electronic device may be able to "smell" a driver's breath and block the ignition if it determines she is drunk.
Naturally, there's unquestioned government spending behind this -- and talk that we all may be forced to pay for this in our cars.
I don't drive drunk. Why should my car be more expensive because some people do?
And then, I believe there are already ignition locks for drunks. Do we really need to increase the Federal deficit by $24 million dollars to replicate (and maybe even improve) something that already works?
An excerpt from the piece:
The Senate version of the federal transportation bill calls for $24 million in additional funding over two years -- on top of the $10 million over five years already devoted to the program -- for research on alcohol-sensing technology in vehicles. The idea is to find out whether it would be feasible to demand that automakers include this technology as standard equipment in future cars. That's a big departure from the way so-called interlock devices currently work.Some states require people convicted of drunk driving to have interlocks installed in their vehicles; they have to breathe into a tube, and if the device senses that their blood-alcohol level is over the legal limit (0.08% nationwide), their cars won't start. California's four largest counties, including Los Angeles, currently impose this penalty. But that applies only to known drunk drivers: The federal program might someday apply to everybody.
This does not please the restaurant industry. The American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association, objects that the devices will be set to detect alcohol at well below the legal limit, meaning a motorist who downs a glass or two of wine at a local eatery might have to call a cab to get home. Moreover, it says the devices will sometimes fail, blocking ignition even for sober people. Those are legitimate points, and if the predictions are borne out, they might be reason enough to urge future leaders not to approve universal interlocks. But that shouldn't stop the government from researching the idea.
One point of the federal program is to find a technology that is unobtrusive. The two most promising technologies under study are tissue spectrometry, which would use a touchpad and lasers to detect alcohol in human tissue, and distant spectrometry, in which sensors installed throughout the cabin could sniff a driver's breath automatically (apparently, the sensors can be placed in such as way as to ensure it's the driver's breath they're sniffing, not passengers').
...There are other reasons to object. The devices would detect only alcohol use, meaning one could still smoke pot, drop acid or snort cocaine and get behind the wheel. That one's pretty easy to dismiss: Drunk drivers kill roughly five times more people than drivers impaired by other drugs. Meanwhile, statistics show that the incidence of drunk driving is declining, so why take this step now? Also easy to dismiss: Because drunk drivers are implicated in nearly one-third of traffic deaths in the United States, killing roughly 11,000 people a year.
George Bush, Friend To...Potheads?
Well, he's much more of a friend than Barack Obama has been during his term in office. Debra J. Saunders writes at SFgate:
Why is the federal government under President Obama arguably tougher on medical marijuana operations than it was under George W. Bush? That's the question that antidrug-war groups have been asking themselves for months.In 2008, antiprohibitionists thought an Obama administration would not tread on medical-marijuana dispensaries in states where they are legal. Obama 2008 campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told me Obama "believes that states and local governments are best positioned to strike the balance between making sure that these policies are not abused for recreational drug use and making sure that doctors and their patients can safely access pain relief."
Now that Obama's in office, however, his Department of Justice is not allowing the 16 states that have legalized medical marijuana to self-regulate. Exactly the opposite: Last fall, U.S. attorneys in California warned landlords that they must evict medical-marijuana clubs or risk having their assets seized. In October, the Internal Revenue Service informed dispensaries that they cannot declare standard tax deductions because they are criminal enterprises.
"Drug kingpins and cartels don't file taxes. We do," Steve DeAngelo, director of medical-marijuana giant Harborside Health Center, told MSNBC. "But no business, including ours, can survive if it is taxed on its gross revenue. The IRS is trying to tax us out of existence."
Tee Hee (And Tweet Hee)
Just make it funny.
The Celebration Of Murderers In Islamic Countries
If you kill Jews, as the Quran commands, maybe you can get your own television talk show. The remorseless (and even gleeful) Muslim woman who orchestrated a deadly Jerusalem pizza restaurant bombing was one of the prisoners freed by Israel in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. The father of then 15-year-old Malki Roth, killed in the bombing, still mourns his daughter -- even now, as Ahlam Tamimi, that woman who orchestrated the attack, is living freely in Jordan, exalted as a hero, and has a TV show. Patrick Carlyon writes for Australia's Herald Sun:
Tamimi was 20 when she orchestrated the massacre, then, in her role as a television journalist, returned to her studio to announce, with evident glee, that there had been a bombing.Ten years in jail did not soften her fanaticism. She preaches death with a wide smile. Her cackling pitch is at odds with her soft features.
Yes, she beamed in a jailhouse interview, she helped kill children that day. Was it eight children, she was asked? She thought it was only three. No, why would she regret her actions?
A few years later, on her release, she said: "I would do it again today, and in the same manner."
..."She really is a monster," Roth (the father) says. "There is such a thing as monsters. She's a human monster. She regales in the deaths of the children.
"She is genuinely animated by happiness in knowing that she killed the children. There is something cold and monstrous and manipulative and charismatic about this woman."
In recent weeks, Tamimi has claimed that Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, had planned to assassinate her. Roth thinks it is nonsense: listening to her extreme rhetoric, he says, he has detected an increasingly delusional tone.
Adulated since her release, she now seems to believe the adulation herself, he says. She is casting herself, somehow, as a lead victim to an audience of victims.
Naturally, Roth, a former Swanston St lawyer, is upset by the charade. He has heard talk of plans to capture Tamimi: Roth understands the sentiment, of course, but he places little stead in the chatter.
"She's not only a convicted perpetrator of a mass murder, she's also encouraging other people to do the same," he says.
"And there are laws, including international laws, which make incitement a crime. We are anxious to help the authorities in various countries find a way to prevent her from spreading this poisonous incitement."
...He likens terrorism to the Nazis. It's not about winning. It's about the urge to destroy. The challenge is to try to understand its motives.
Easy answers, such as dispossession and poverty, are not always present: Malki's suicide bomber, for example, left behind a prosperous family.
"We" are losing. Terrorists are winning. They are driven by a diseased religious viewpoint.
"They will blow up their own children as long as they can exact a price from the hated enemy," Roth says.
"They will send pregnant women into hospitals in order to blow them up without any regard for what this means on a moral level of human decency.
Tonight, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Advice Goddess Radio: Dr. Carl Alasko On "Emotional Bullsh*t"
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in psychology and research -- all with really compelling things to say about how to be smarter in being human.
Tonight on Advice Goddess Radio, Dr. Carl Alasko, author of Emotional Bullshit, on how to cut the delusion, drama and denial out of your relationships and be accountable...and happier personally and together.
Listen live at this link or download after the show (click "Play in your default player"). And do call in with questions when the show is live -- 347-326-9761:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/09/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Don't forget to listen to last week's show with Dr. David J. Ley, author of The Myth of Sex Addiction
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/02/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and all my fascinating guests live every Sunday from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, and listen to all my previous shows and listen live at this link:
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"More Speech Is The Best Cure For Bad Speech"-Randazza On Cox
Marc J. Randazza is my legal knight in shining armor for how he came to my defense (and how eloquently and how comprehensively) when the TSA worker tried to supplement her violation of my vagina by violating my right to free speech.
He inspires me again and again -- in what he writes our email exchanges about civil liberties and with this line from his blog that I used to title this blog item.
He penned the line above in blogging about a vile attack on him by a blogger named Crystal Cox. But, not just on him -- when he wouldn't bend over, she went after his 3-year-old daughter. Randazza explains her absolutely disgusting extortionist tactics:
Crystal cox "need[ed] to make money" so she asked me if I needed a "very good search engine reputation manager." Apparently she offered these same dubious services to David Aman - counsel for Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance - and he accused her of extortion. I can't imagine why.Apparently I was not sufficiently threatened by this tactic, so Cox went on to register:
fuckmarcrandazza.com
marcrandazzasucks.com
marcjrandazza.com
marcjohnrandazza.comShe also registered a great many Blogger accounts bearing my name, including markrandazza.blogger.com.
...Fortunately for me, the work I do is not particularly sensitive to public perception - I am roundly criticized by both the political right and the left; copyright maximalists and minimalists, and every stripe of individual in-between.
...Then, she pursued my family.
Crystal Cox registered JenniferRandazza.com.
She then registered jenniferrandazza.blogspot.com
You see a pattern here?
Jennifer is my wife.
...When this didn't get the desired response, Cox turned to a place where even the lowest of the low would not stoop -- she focused her stalkerish attention on my three-year-old daughter and registered NataliaRandazza.com.
...Being three years old, Natalia naturally has no accomplishments to speak of. To date, she has drawn her father a bunch of "happys" (which is what she calls smiley faces), and this week, she started being able to read short words. "DORA" was the first word she read where the concept of letters, sounds, and words all came together. She can also tackle me when I'm on the floor, and she's progressing well in her little girls' dance class. While I find these accomplishments mind-blowing, she has attained no notoriety of which I am aware.
Yet Crystal Cox, "investigative blogger" has turned her attention to this innocent three year old.
This is the kind of person Crystal Cox is, and these are the depths she will sink to when one of her victims spurns her offers to do "search engine reputation management" for them.
I'm sure I'm next. And you know what? If hate sites go up about me because I blogged about what this vile greedbag did to Randazza, I'll consider them a badge of honor.
Popehat addresses the supposed "journalism" angle:
You've probably heard of Crystal Cox before, even if you don't remember the name. Last December, the media and the blogosphere were full of stories about how a federal judge in Oregon had ruled that "bloggers are not journalists" and declined to extend to her various statutory defenses available to the press, leading to a $2.5 million defamation judgment against her. She was hailed as a champion of free speech and a victim of a backwards and technophobic judiciary.The truth, as is often the case, was a little more complicated. Remember: the first thing you need to know is that blogger and "investigative journalist" Crystal Cox is the sort of person who registers domains in the name of the three-year-old daughters of her enemies.
A few journalists probed further. Kashmir Hill and Forbes and David Carr at the New York Times looked beyond the narrative. They turned over a rock, and what they found was unpleasant.
Carr explains how Cox rolls:
When she gets in a fight with someone, she frequently responds by creating a domain with the person's name, some allegation of corruption, or both. Many of the negative posts about Mr. Padrick appeared on obsidianfinancesucks.com and there are many more like it. In order to optimize visibility to Web crawlers, she often uses the full name and title of her target, and her Web sites are filled with links to her other sites to improve their search ranking. She has some 500 URLs at her disposal and she's not afraid to use them.
Not surprisingly, this site -- davidcarrsucks.com -- now turns up on the web:
Philly Law Blog reinforces the bottom line here -- the extortion aspect:
Cox calls herself an investigative blogger / journalist. She posts a bunch of negative stuff about you on the internet. Then she buys a bunch of domain names about you, your family, and your business to make sure all her posts are at the top of a Google search. But lucky for you, Cox also happens to be a "reputation management specialist." Cox then offers to sell you "reputation management services" to clean it all up to the tune of $2500 a month.As Carlos Miller aptly put it, Crystal Cox "is the cyber equivalent of the mob goons who firebomb your business, before demanding protection money."
And that's how she tried to work Randazza -- a guy you only need to have the slightest amount of contact with to know he can't be worked.
More here on the bloggers are not journalists aspect from Scott Greenfield. More from Popehat:
Crystal Cox is not a sincere supporter of free speech. Crystal Cox is not a defender of the First Amendment. Crystal Cox supports free speech for Crystal Cox, but for her own critics, Crystal Cox is a vigorous (if mostly incoherent) advocate for broad and unprincipled censorship.This should not surprise us. As I mentioned before, free speech cases often involve defending vile speech by repugnant people. Nearly as often, those repugnant people are no respecters of the rights of anyone else. Do you think the Nazis who marched at Skokie, if they had their way, would uphold the free speech rights of the religious and ethnic minorities who protested them? Do you imagine that Fred Phelps' church, given its choice, would permit the blasphemous and idolatrous freedoms it rails against?
No. We extend constitutional rights to people who, given the opportunity, would not extend the same rights to us. That's how we roll.
Crystal Cox is no different. Eugene Volokh and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are appealing the judgment against her to vindicate (through however flawed a vessel) important free speech issues. But just because Crystal Cox wants free speech for herself, that doesn't mean she supports it for others. In fact, she consistently takes the stance that criticism of her is unlawful and will be met with lawsuits and complaints to state and federal authorities.
Mark J. Bennett has thinks this is ripe for investigation:
One could encourage the FBI to investigate her extortion racket, and the right person making a complaint to the right agent might put her in an AUSA's sights.
And here's my hero, Randazza, for free speech even when the speech goes after his 3-year-old:
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.The cure for bad speech is more speech.
I believe, and I hope, that this story ends with those maxims being conclusively proven.
Please link to, blog, Facebook and spread this story around and prove Randazza right.
End Welfare For Oil Companies (And Let's Have That Just Be A Start)
As I've blogged before, there's a Fifth Avenue-dwelling Rockefeller getting farm subsidies.
Regarding the oil subsidies, the President, while campaigning to end them (good!) isn't exactly against handouts across the board -- far from it. The same goes for the crony "capitalist" Congress and Senate:
Bill McKibben writes in the LA Times:
The Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act was a curiously skimpy bill that targeted only oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left out were coal and natural gas. Even so, the proposal didn't pass.But that hasn't stopped President Obama from calling for an end to oil subsidies at every stop on his early presidential-campaign-plus-fundraising blitz. And this month Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce a much tougher bill that tackles all fossil fuels and their purveyors.
Even if Congress can't pass a bill to end them, those subsidies are worth focusing on. After all, we're talking about somewhere between $10 billion and $40 billion annually (depending on what you count) in freebie cash for an energy industry already making historic profits.
No one would propose a government program of low-interest loans to send the richest kids in the country to college. We assume that the wealthy will pay full freight. Similarly, we should assume that the fossil-fuel business, the most profitable industry on Earth, should pay its way. What possible reason is there for giving, say, Exxon a tax break? Year after year the company sets records for money-making. Last year it managed to rake in a mere $41 billion in profit, just failing to break its own 2008 all-time mark of $45 billion.
Mute Point
Jonathan Turley remarks on the ridiculousness of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' reason for not asking questions during oral arguments. (He has not asked a question from the bench in six years, Turley reports.) Turley blogs:
In an AP interview, he defended his silence. Thomas said the habit of frequent interruptions is unproductive and "I think that when somebody's talking, somebody ought to listen."Thomas claims that most of the information is already in the briefs and amicus curiae, "and there are a few questions around the edges."
They don't call it an oral monologue. It's called an oral argument. This is the opportunity for the Justices to test the validity and soundness of the attorney's arguments. It would be a waste of time for attorneys to get up before the Court and simply recite their briefs.
Hah Hahs Here
Make me laugh.
Sad Mac
Prevent it with this apparently very good free anti-virus software from Sophos.com (downloaded, installed and used it the other night). Here's the free Mac version. News about the phony Adobe Flash update that's actually a virus here.
Beloved Idiot Dies Of Possibly Curable Cancer Thanks To Homeopathy
Transcript from Australian TV here.
Related links (to other quackery-as-"cure" and its deadly results) here. Here. Here. (Via @xeni)
Parents Being Made To Sign Waivers For Kids To Play At Another Family's House
Jacoba Urist writes at MSNBC:
Most of us aren't shocked when we're asked to sign a waiver before a school trip or the start of little league season. Normal stuff kids participate in every day can result in some minor (and now and again, major) injuries, and some adults get litigious when something goes awry.Most of these organizations are just doing what their insurance companies require: getting every parent to legally agree that they know the risks involved and won't hold the school or the sports league responsible if their child is hurt.
But more and more parents are encountering legal forms from other parents before our kids do the most basic things, like attend a birthday party or even a good, old-fashioned play date.
And here, from a commenter at MSNBC, is why:
A few years ago I would have thought this was insane. That is until it happened to us - a lawsuit!!Our kids were playing baseball in the backyard with a couple of neighborhood kids. One of the kids decided to slide into home base and ended up cutting his thigh on what we think may have been a sharp rock in the ground. Although we could not find what he got hurt on after a lot of time searching through the grass.
My husband & I helped him home and his parents took him to the ER where he did receive 2 stitches. We felt awful and checked on him the next day. The parents said he was fine.
2 weeks later we discovered we were being sued by these parents. Our homeowners defended us in the case, but these parent's were asking for over $15,000 due to distress & mental anguish over the injury. Our homeowners ended up settling the case for $5,000. And our homeowners insurance doubled in price the next year.
Now I think twice before letting any kids into our yard....such a shame
@FreeRangeKids
The Fiscal Shape Of Things To Come
How long before 20-somethings in the USA are working extra hours to fund Granny's upkeep? From the Sydney Morning Herald:
GERMANY is proposing to levy extra taxes on the young to pay for the costs of the country's growing numbers of old people, under government plans for a ''demographic reserve'' levy.Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats have drafted proposals that, if law, would require all those over 25 to pay a proportion of their income to cushion Germany against a looming population crisis.
The German Chancellor's ruling party is seeking extra sources of revenue to pay for soaring pensions and bills for social care costs as Germany's ''baby boomer'' generation ages amid a decline in the birth rate.
via @PaulHsieh
Apparently Invisible Woman In Terrifying Train Incident
On the DC Metro, a woman had a bunch of teenaged thugs try to light her hair and clothes on fire and nobody else in the (crowded) train said or did a thing.
via Lisa Simeone
Today's Tee Hee
All funnies in this space.
How To Kill The Student Loan Market
Just allow discharge of student loan debt in bankruptcy.
Todd Zywicki writes at Volokh on what the effect would be -- "you wouldn't be able to borrow money to go to college any more":
When most people graduate from college they are massively insolvent. They have huge debts and very few assets (a used car perhaps). But they have a huge future potential income stream. Bankruptcy would allow them to shed the debts, keep their meager assets, and then protect all of that future revenue stream. In the face of those incentives it is hard to imagine that the student loan market could exist at all, really, or would do so only at such high cost and other terms (collateral, co-signers, etc.) that it would defeat the purpose, which is to allow people to borrow now to make an investment in their human capital (just like any other capital investment).Higher ed is too expensive and there is too much student debt (I've actually been concerned about student loan debt for years, back when I would tell everyone who was concerned about student credit cards that they were looking in the wrong place). But the indirect approach of allowing discharge of student loans, and thereby unraveling the student loan market, isn't a very productive way of thinking of it.
Your Business, Your Decision
My joke is that I'm so pro gay rights I should have a girlfriend, but what I'm not for is businesspeople being forced to provide goods or services to anyone they don't want to provide services to -- for whatever reason.
That's why I'm against the position of the gay rights group that's filed suit against a T-shirt business that refused to print shirts for Lexington, Kentucky's Gay and Lesbian Services Organization. The owner said printing them would conflict with his Christian convictions.
I'm also an atheist, by the way, and still am for people's right -- which they should have, for whatever reason -- to refuse to do business with anyone...including me.
Todd Starnes writes at Fox News Radio:
The store offered to find another company that would honor its price - but that wasn't good enough for the GLSO."Our feeling on that is, separate but equal wasn't okay during the civil rights movement and it's not okay now," Aaron Baker told the television station. Baker is board president of GLSO.
Blaine Adamson is the managing owner of "Hands on Originals." He defended his company in an op-ed that appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader and unequivocally denied that he is guilty of discrimination.
"I decided to pass on the opportunity because, as a Christian owner, I cannot in good conscience endorse groups or events that run counter to my convictions," Adamson wrote in the op-ed.
Adamson, who has been in business for more than 20 years, wrote that he "does not expect, or even ask, people to agree with my view."
"All I ask for people is to respect my right as an owner to not produce a product that is contrary to my principles," he wrote.
Adamson called on people to stand up for the rights of small business owners not "to be forced into producing a product with a message that conflicts with their beliefs and consciences."
"Over the past 20 years, we have declined to produce several other products with different messages than the one at issue here because we disapproved of whatever message it was, and it never had anything to do with discrimination," he wrote. "People reading this may disagree with my view on the current issue, but I hope they will join us in supporting our right to decline an order that promotes a view so contrary to our personal beliefs."
Bruce McQuain writes at Quando.net:
This isn't about T-shirts at all. It's about forcing their one-way version of tolerance on someone. The irony is that GLSO appears to have absolutely no tolerance for the principles of the owners of the T-shirt company.Which set me to wondering. Here's a hypothetical for you. What if the owner of the T-shirt company was gay? And what if Westboro Baptist Church placed an order for 10 dozen T-shirts which said "God hates faggots" on them? What if the T-shirt shop owner refused the order because of his principles?
Same reaction?
I'd guess no. In fact, I'd guess precisely the opposite reaction.
via @WalterOlson
Taxpaying Is For The Little People
Government jobs, especially those in the White House, pay pretty well. So, why are there so many Obama aides who owe back taxes? Andrew Malcolm blogs at IBD:
The Internal Revenue Service reported earlier this year that 36 Obama aides in the White House owe a total of $833,000 in back taxes. They are among thousands of federal employees across the country who as of last year still owed an astounding $3.4 billion in back taxes, the IRS said.
They're running up our deficit, yet they don't have to make good on their own personal bill to Uncle Sam? I guess these things don't matter when you're so busy drumming up hope for change -- uh, well, that's what I have anyway...not that I want to vote for anyone who's running.
The Supposed El Cajon "Hate Crime" Is Looking A Little Hinky
There are very few incidents of discrimination against Muslims in this country -- it's Jews and Jewish organizations' buildings that are discriminated against and vandalized. (There are reportedly 10 times more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims.)
Also, El Cajon isn't reported to be a source of discrimination (can't find where I read that now). I thought the reported "hate crime" against a Muslim woman sounded a bit suspicious. Now, it's sounding even more suspicious. Colleen Curry writes on abcnews.go.com:
Police investigating the murder of an Iraqi mother in southern California, initially thought to be a hate crime, have filed papers with a court that suggest the mother had a difficult relationship with her daughter and her husband.The beating death last month of Shaima Alawadi, 32, of El Cajon, shook the Iraqi-American community when her family reported that a note was found next to Alawadi's body, reportedly saying "go back to your own country, you terrorist."
Alawadi's 17-year-old daughter, Fatima, told police that a similar note had been found a week prior to the murder, but the mother thought of it as a joke and threw it away. Court documents now show that the note was a copy of an original, and the earlier note has never been seen.
The family, including Fatima and Alawadi's husband, are now in Iraq, where they went for Alawadi's burial.
According to court documents obtained by ABC News affiliate KGTV, the daughter received a text message while she was being interviewed by investigators that read "The detective will find out tell them cnt (can't) talk."
Fatima, who was reportedly the only one home with her mother when the attack happened, had a troubled relationship with her mother, the documents show. In November, police had contacted Alawadi after finding Fatima having sex with a 21-year-old man in a parked car. Alawadi had picked her daughter up from the scene, but Fatima then jumped out of her mother's car going 35 mph, the documents state.
Fatima was also distraught over her pending arranged marriage to a cousin, according to the documents.
Rape A Student At Knifepoint? Maybe What It Takes To Lose Your Teaching Job In NY
David W. Chen and Patrick McGeehan write about teacher misconduct -- that of teachers still teaching:
A high school science teacher in the Bronx who had already been warned about touching female students brushed his lower body against one student's leg during a lab exercise, coming so close that she told investigators she could feel his genitals through his pants.And a math teacher at a high school in the Bronx, investigators said, sent text messages to and called one of his female students nearly 50 times in a four-week period and, over the winter holidays, parked himself at the McDonald's where she worked.
The New York City Education Department wanted to fire these teachers. But in these and 13 other cases in recent years in which teachers were accused of inappropriate behavior with students, the city was overruled by an arbitrator who, despite finding wrongdoing, opted for a milder penalty like a fine, a suspension or a formal reprimand.
As a result, 14 of those 16 teachers are still teaching and in contact with students, on either a daily or occasional basis. The other two were removed from their positions within the last month when new allegations of misbehavior surfaced against them, according to the Education Department. The department released records of the 16 cases, including reports compiled by the department's special commissioner of investigation and the arbitrators' rulings, under a Freedom of Information request.
...As in many states, New York law grants tenured teachers the right to a hearing in front of an arbitrator before they can be fired. Teachers can also appeal an arbitrator's ruling to a civil court.
"As I was reviewing these cases, I said, 'Huh? How could this person go back to the classroom?' " Mr. Walcott said in an interview Thursday. "It's very frustrating. Definitely my hands are tied because the arbitrator made a ruling, because I would not have put these people back in the classroom."
...A few admitted to much or all of what was alleged, but argued that ending their teaching careers was too harsh a punishment. Others denied all, saying the charges were fabricated or trumped up. The science teacher in the Bronx, for example, denied rubbing up against the student, and although the arbitrator's decision said that he most likely touched the girl, there was no proof that his genitals had made contact. The teacher, Norman Siegel, was suspended without pay for 45 days and ordered to take sensitivity training.
"News Headlines From My Apartment."
Stef Willen writes at McSweeney's LISTS:
KETTLE ON BACK BURNER FOR NOW30 MAYFLIES FOUND DEAD IN GLASS LIGHT FIXTURE; NO PLANS TO REMOVE BODIES ANYTIME SOON
WOMAN, 32, GOES BACK TO BED JUST HOURS AFTER WAKING UP
POLL: HOW STURDY IS THIS STOOL I'M STANDING ON TO PEER INTO MY NEIGHBOR'S PARTY?
Full list at the link.
Laffs
Here.
Jools For Less
All sorts of jewelry
Create Your Own Private School?
Perhaps think of it as collective home-schooling. From the BBC:
In New York City, school is compulsory for students aged six and older. For younger students, the city provides some educational options, but every year thousands of children are turned away due to lack of space. The other alternative, private education, can be prohibitively expensive.In response, some families in Brooklyn, New York, have begun creating their own schools. These co-operative pre-kindergarten programmes are run entirely by the participating parents, who must hire a teacher, find a location, provide supplies, and make group decisions about everything from curriculum to cleaning.
For parents, these schools provide more control over a child's education at a minimal expense.
There's this amazing woman I've become friends with over the years from the coffee shop I write at. She's in education -- works at a public school part-time, doing counseling sort of stuff (and she's by no means the stereotype of a school counselor...she seems pretty extraordinary in her understanding of kids' psychology and motivation). She's also highly intelligent and curious and excited about thinking and learning in a way that always inspires me when we talk.
This woman freelances as a home-schooling teacher for a child of very wealthy parents. Sure, parents can get books and teach their kids, and I wish I could remember some of her insights so I can convey how amazing she is...if a group of parents could hire a woman like this, it seems like a way to have real quality control over kids' education while not paying boatloads of money.
via ifeminists
Religious Republicans Are Alienating A Not-So-Religious Electorate
Steve Chapman writes at reason:
The change has a lot to do with the fact that "millenials" tend to be liberal or libertarian on social issues. When they hear Republicans invoking the Bible to justify banning same-sex marriage, many deduce that Republicans are too intolerant to bear--and so is the Bible.The people with no religious affiliation lean strongly Democratic. In 2008, 75 percent voted for Obama, compared to 45 percent of Protestants and 54 percent of Catholics. Even in 2010, a Republican year, 68 percent of them voted Democratic for Congress.
The Republican practice of spurning "none/other" voters (basically, all who don't identify themselves as Christians) could turn out to be a fatal error. The Georgetown University blog Nineteen Sixty-four says they are now so numerous that "Obama could lose both the Catholic and Protestant vote to the Republican nominee--even lose badly--and still win re-election."
Let Your Left Kidney Pay For Your College Education?
A Reason-Rupe poll has 55 percent of Americans favoring allowing healthy people under medical supervision to sell their organs to people who need transplants, as Emily Ekins writes at reason.com:
The intensity of support is on the side of those who favor with 34 percent who "strongly favor" compared to 25 percent who "strongly oppose."Younger Americans are far more likely to support financial compensation of organ donors: 73 percent favor among 18 to 29 year olds and 64 percent among those 30 to 44 years old. However, support drops twenty percent points for those 45 years and older.
Where do you stand -- and why?
Start With Sharia Lite: No Chopping Off Hands For First Five Years
An Egyptian Sunni Muslim cleric talks about how it needs to be when Muslims take over in Egypt:
He says you have to teach people (about the brutality that is Islam) for a few years before you can start getting all brutal on them.
Aww, how humane!
From a commenter on Youtube, lemmieatit:
The funny thing about Islam is The Q'uran documents Mohammad's raids, mass murders, rapes, conquests and enslavement. Yet, Muslims are still in denial. Where do they think these terrorist get their ideas from?
Laughingstock
Hah hahs here.
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Santorum's U.S. History Claim: Shoulda Used Google
Colbert sweeps clean:
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via LAObserved
I Know You Are But What Am I?
At an LA Occupy rally this weekend, the President's mouth-breathing former Green Jobs czar Van Jones painted libertarians as the next best thing to the KKK:
"They say they're Patriots but they hate everybody in America who looks like us. They say they love America but they hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings, ya know ya'll.""They love going to New York City! [sarcastically] I just had to take my child to see America's beauty." Jones then referenced the Statue of Liberty and fumed "You can't be an anti-immigrant bigot and a Patriot at the same time."
In reason, Mike Rigg factchecks his ass:
You're not talking about so-called libertarians, but your former boss and current president. See, it's Barack Obama who supports "traditional marriage"; Barack Obama who supports a drug war that sends an alarming number of black men to prison and destroys their employment prospects; Barack Obama who supports a foreign policy that kills children; Barack Obama who supports regulatory barriers that require the poorest of the poor to borrow their way into the workforce; Barack Obama who supports an immigration strategy that rips apart families and sees the children of undocumented workers put up for adoption.Whether Obama's support for those policies means he hates gays or brown folk is not for me to say. As the scriptures tell us, "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?"
Libertarians, on the other hand, love brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings, and immigrants. Many of us, after all, fit rather neatly into those categories, and we show our affection for ourselves and our neighbors by supporting the right of all peoples to live free of state-sponsored violence, discrimination, undue imprisonment, and theft; as well as the entirely predictable consequences of both left-wing and right-wing social engineering.
Be sure to read the great end line about Ed Norton on Riggs' reason blog item at the link.
Interesting thoughts on libertarianism here at Cato, from John Tomasi and Matt Zwolinksi.
Unhappy Hipsters
Hilarious site. One of my favorite shots. Laughed at this one, too. And this one. (You have to read the captions.)
Yet Another Example: The State Scoffs At Parental Rights
Via Karen De Coster, a shocking tale reported by HSLDA, a home-schooling advocacy organization, of a mother who had her newborn baby seized in the hospital by a social worker -- for no apparent valid reason. (It seems the mother, just hours after giving birth, simply wasn't compliant in the face of unwarranted state demands...like in that she wanted her attorney husband to read a document before she signed it.) Michael P. Farris writes at HSLDA.org:
...Then the hospital demanded that they give Annie shot for Hepatitis B. Jodi said that she would agree only if they tested her or Annie to see if either of them were positive. If so, then she was quite willing to have the shot for Annie. The hospital claimed that they had forgotten about this earlier when it was still possible to test that day, and that they needed to give the shot anyway without any testing.When the social worker pressed her to make an immediate decision about this shot, Jodi asked her if they could simply wait until Scott got back before they decided.
Put yourself in Jodi's shoes at this moment. You gave birth that morning in an ambulance. The hospital has made wild and conflicting claims about your baby's health all day long. You are exhausted. You are in pain. Your husband has gone to check on your children. And a social worker who has threatened to take your baby into police custody is standing in your hospital room demanding that you make an immediate decision.
Jodi simply said, "Please can't this wait until my husband gets back."
The social worker renewed her threat. If Jodi would not answer her question right then, she would call the police. And then the social worker started adding conditions. She and Scott would have to agree to sign a safety plan before she could conclude her investigation.
Jodi said that she wanted her husband and an attorney to look at the plan. She felt she was in no position to read such a document and really understand what she was being pressured to sign.
Thrown Out
And then the story turns ugly.
The social worker left the room and called the police. Without a court order they took custody of Annie, immediately claiming that she was suffering from illness or injury--a patently false claim.
The social worker consented to the administration of the Hepatitis B shot even though no blood test had been done.
The police made Jodi Ferris get up out of her hospital bed and escorted her to the entrance--they were expelling her from the hospital because she had not signed the "safety plan."
Scott met her at the entrance to the hospital. The police escorted them both off of the grounds of the hospital.
Jodi was told that she would be allowed to return every three hours to nurse the baby through the night.
Jodi and Scott were forced to spend the night that she had given birth in their car in a nearby parking lot. You read that right. They kicked this mother out of the hospital, and in order to be close enough to feed her child, she had to sleep in the car.
To add insult to injury, Jodi was given access to Annie only sporadically and not every three hours.
Awful, awful story -- both in and of itself -- and as yet another example how we seem to be rushing down a big sluice into becoming a police state. There are more and more erosions of our civil liberties these days, and few people seem to get excised about it in the least.
E-vite Is Privacy-Grope-vite
I hate e-vite -- an annoying, privacy-groping application...among many other privacy groping applications...some of which I get some value out of. I just wanted to reply to somebody's reminder to their invitation (which I had yet to respond to) and it makes you register to do that.
I found the original invite and I was able to RSVP, but evite now has my FB registration and I resent that (I wasn't going to register for their site in order to RSVP, which it wanted me to do, and my other option was to be rude and not RSVP at all -- have the person's email address on a business card...somewhere.)
Reason-Rupe Poll: Health Care Reforms Americans Want
Shikha Dalmia reports at reason on the Reason-Rupe poll released last week:
The Obama administration completely misread the public mood when it based its decision to craft a 2,700-page, Rube Goldberg-style makeover of literally one-sixth of our economy on polls suggesting that Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes for universal coverage. Worse, a joint Reason-Rupe poll released last week found that the misnamed Affordable Care Act--a.k.a. ObamaCare--imposed trade-offs that Americans were simply unwilling to accept. The act's supporters insist that even though a majority of Americans view the overall law unfavorably, many of its specific provisions are quite popular. But the problem is that most polls pose questions in a vacuum, without actually confronting Americans with the consequences of their choices. The Reason-Rupe poll was among the few to do so systematically, and it found that although Americans do want equity and coverage for all, they want control, choice and quality for themselves even more.Like other polls, it found that Americans don't want the government forcing them to buy coverage, although they were more amenable to employers being forced to provide coverage to employees, even if that means job losses and pay cuts. Indeed, 56 percent of respondents said they were fine with an employer mandate, compared to the 39 percent who said they were not.
Dumb -- as I keep saying -- because this is largely a freelancer economy, or at least one in which people do not stay in jobs for a lifetime. Lose your job, leave your job? Lose your healthcare and start anew.
Again, health care must be untied from the workplace.
Americans like the idea of giving everyone the same access to health care, regardless of medical status--except if it means sacrificing affordability or quality. Fifty-two percent approved of the community rating provision in the law, which would ban insurance companies from charging higher premiums based on medical history, compared to 39 percent who opposed it. But this support drops precipitously if the provision's side effects include longer wait times for doctors (41 percent) or higher premiums (38 percent) or higher taxes (37 percent) or lower-quality care (15 percent).But what was truly revealing was how eager Americans are to control their own health care dollars. Forty-eight percent said they'd prefer it if their employers gave them the money to purchase their own coverage, compared to 41 percent who would not. Even more remarkably, 65 percent of Americans want Medicare payouts in the form of a credit for use toward a private health plan, compared to 24 percent who don't. This is good news for Rep. Paul Ryan's "premium support" proposal for Medicare reform.
"Gave them the money"? This used to be called "salary."
What's more, Americans want to make their own coverage decisions. Almost 70 percent said they want the same ability to shop around for "a less expensive or better [health] insurance policy" as they have for their auto insurance.
Then allow health insurance companies to compete across state lines.
So what are the implications of all this for health care reform? Americans are not dogmatically opposed to government intervention in health care markets. But their intuitions are more in line with advocates of consumer-based medicine who believe that the best way to control spiraling costs--the key to improving access--is to give patients more control over their medical dollars and inject a modicum of price sensitivity into our health care system.
Put Your Laffies Here
Today's funnies in this space. Thank you. Please don't stick your gum under the desk.
Couples Without A Country
Binational gay couples sue over the Defense Of Marriage Act, which blocks same-sex couples from federal benefits -- including the right to sponsor a foreign spouse for a green card. Miranda Leitsinger reports on MSNBC:
The lawsuit claims that DOMA violates their constitutional right to equal protection....DOMA, enacted by Congress in 1996, blocks federal recognition of same-sex marriage, thereby denying various benefits given to heterosexual couples, such as the right to immigrate. Thirty-nine states have defense of marriage acts, while six states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. There are an estimated 36,000 binational gay couples in the U.S.
One of the couples in the lawsuit is American Edwin Blesch, 71, and his husband Tim Smulian, a 65-year-old British-South African. The couple married in South Africa in August 2007, where gay marriage is legal. Their union is also recognized in New York state, which approved same-sex marriage last year.
For some gay couples, fight goes on to marry -- and stay in the US
"The last years have been probably the most exhilarating in our lives in that we're together and we both now have the ... soulmate that we've been searching for all of our lives," he said.
But the legal restrictions have made life more stressful for the couple, who live in Orient, NY. Smulian's visa has expired, and though federal authorities have given him an additional year to stay in the country in what is known as "deferred action," that time will be up Feb. 7, 2013.
"We're now in our retirement years ... there's not a whole lot of time for us to dawdle around waiting for things like this to be settled," added Blesch, who says he has HIV/AIDS and needs to stay in the country for his medical care.
The lawsuit notes that if the couples were heterosexual, the federal government would recognize the foreign spouse as an immediate relative of their American partner, who could apply for an immigrant visa for them.
I don't understand why DOMA doesn't violate the constitutional right to equal protection -- and it seems others agree with me. More here.
First World Problems
Love these -- they're the things that we complain about in developed nations that Third Worlders would give anything to be fretting about.
I threw a few in today's column, and in the process of thinking them up, came upon this list at Reddit. An example:
My Duvet is too short to do "The Tuck" --EdoggyDawg
Liked this one, too:
This tropical resort has spotty Wifi.
Your First World Problems?
You Can't Go Home Again: Islamic Extremists In Britain
British girl goes back to her hometown and finds it's been taken over by Islamic extremists:
Contrary to what she says, I'm all for judging people -- it's the practice of a person with values.
There's no freedom of speech in Islam.
Here's Anjem Choudary, the man who spoke to her at the end of the video, answering "What Is Islam?" about how he wants to "share" Sharia Law with us. Yes, we've been living in the "darkness" of civil liberties in the West.
More Choudary on how "democracy and freedom is no good for the British."
When Life Is No Longer Worth Living
A man and his Alzheimer's-stricken wife apparently made a death pact due to her disease, report Dana Hedgpeth and Lori Aratani in the WaPo:
Three years ago, Adrienne Snelling wrote letters to her children and grandchildren explaining how she and her husband, Charles D. Snelling, decided to cope with her Alzheimer's disease.Adrienne was 79 then and had been battling the illness for about four years. Charles, her husband of nearly 60 years, was her primary caretaker at their home in Fogelsville, Pa. She was an accomplished fine arts photographer; he was prominent in Republican circles and had recently stepped down as chairman of the authority overseeing Reagan and Dulles airports and the construction of Metro's new $6 billion Silver Line.
"As you know I have Alzheimer's. It is not a nice disease. So far I have held up pretty well. Dad and I are still having a pretty good life. There is no doubt where my sickness will end up for me," Adrienne wrote in the Nov. 22, 2009, letter.
She went on: "All of our lives, Dad and I have talked over our end of life beliefs. We are both in agreement that neither one of us wants to live after all reasonable hope for a good life is over. . . . We have had such a great life together and with all of you."
On Thursday, just over a week after their 61st wedding anniversary, Charles took his own life and his wife's in their home, police and airport authority officials said. He shot himself, authorities said. They have not said how she died.
One of the couple's children, Marjorie Snelling, 56, of Philadelphia, said Friday that she knew her parents had talked about a plan to end their lives but that she and her siblings were stunned that it actually happened. There had not been "any specific signs."
Still, she said, her family believes the pair "were deliberate and thoughtful."
"They had a plan, and they were going to execute that plan without people knowing," Marjorie said. "They've seen their peers and friends languish. . . . They had really been thinking about this for some time and keeping it a secret."
More here, reported by Dana Hedgpeth:
"Together they struggled greatly to manage the effects of this devastating disease," said a statement provided on behalf of the family by the airports authority. "After apparently reaching the point where he could no longer bear to see the love of his life deteriorate further, our father ended our mother's life and then took his own life as well.
I think the way Adrienne Snelling did: I've had a wonderful life so far and I have no desire to live as some human turnip. The sad thing is, there are no legal measures in place to help a sick person end their life when if they so desire -- without the helper going to prison.
If you have Alzheimer's, and you don't want to live with it, you're either forced to kill yourself before your brain is entirely gone or chance living as a large, delusional adult infant.
$36 Billion In Student Loans: That's What People Over 60 Owe
Ylan Q. Mui writes in the WaPo:
New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that Americans 60 and older still owe about $36 billion in student loans, providing a rare window into the dynamics of student debt. More than 10 percent of those loans are delinquent. As a result, consumer advocates say, it is not uncommon for Social Security checks to be garnished or for debt collectors to harass borrowers in their 80s over student loans that are decades old....Some of these older Americans are still grappling with their first wave of student loans, while others took on new debt when they returned to school later in life in hopes of becoming more competitive in the labor force. Many have co-signed for loans with their children or grandchildren to help them afford ballooning tuition.
The recent recession exacerbated this problem, making it harder for older Americans -- or the youths they are supporting in school -- to get good-paying jobs. And unlike other debts, student loans cannot be shed in bankruptcy. As a result, some older Americans have found that a college degree led not to a prosperous career but instead to a lifetime under the shadow of debt.
..."Many parents who thought they were headed to retirement with a college-educated child end up continuing to work because of student debt that can't be paid," Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said at last week's hearing.
Durbin has introduced legislation that would allow private student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy, though borrowers would still have to pay off any federal loans. Sallie Mae, one of the nation's largest private student lenders, as well as consumer groups support all types of student loans being forgiven during bankruptcy. Last year, President Obama addressed the issue by easing the repayment requirements for federal student loans. The new rules allow borrowers to pay 10 percent of their income for 20 years before the loan is forgiven.
It's not "forgiven." The rest of us end up picking up the tab.
Too many people in this country seem to be living under the impression that money is Monopoly money with Treasury markings on it.
Laffa Minute
Keep 'em coming! (Laffa Minute is also a tribal queen -- the one with wearing the chicken feet beads around her neck.)
Unfortunately, They're Just Kidding
A pretty good idea for children on planes:
Unfortunately, it was an April Fools bit from WestJet
via @jonlustig
Yoohoo, Off-Leash Dog Walkers: See That You Don't Have Any Baggies Of Pot Up Your Poop Shoot
In yet another erosion of our civil liberties, the Supreme Court has approved strip searches for any offense, even the most minor ones, before admitting them to jails -- even if there's no reason to suspect they possess any contraband.
Adam Liptak writes in The New York Times:
Monday's decision endorsed a recent trend, from appeals courts in Atlanta, San Francisco and Philadelphia, allowing strip-searches of everyone admitted to a jail's general population. At least seven other appeals courts, on the other hand, had ruled that such searches were proper only if there was a reasonable suspicion that the arrested person had contraband.According to opinions in the lower courts, people may be strip-searched after arrests for violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support. Citing examples from briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to "the humiliation of a visual strip-search" after being arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.
A nun was strip-searched, he wrote, after an arrest for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration. So were victims of sexual assaults and women who were menstruating.
Justice Kennedy responded that "people detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals." He noted that Timothy McVeigh, later put to death for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was first arrested for driving without a license plate. "One of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93," Justice Kennedy added.
The case decided Monday, Florence v. County of Burlington, No. 10-945, arose from the arrest of Albert W. Florence in New Jersey in 2005. Mr. Florence was in the passenger seat of his BMW when a state trooper pulled his wife, April, over for speeding. A records search revealed an outstanding warrant for Mr. Florence's arrest based on an unpaid fine. (The information was wrong; the fine had been paid.)
Mr. Florence was held for a week in jails in Burlington and Essex Counties, and he was strip-searched in each.
From a commenter at the NYT:
Peter L Ruden, Savannah, GAThe citizens of the United States should realize what this means: If you, your son, your wife, your daughter, or your mother, fail to pay a parking ticket, or if a bureaucrat makes a mistake and your payment of a parking fine is not recorded properly, or if you are arrested because your dog got free of your backyard, police officers can strip search them, make them bend, squat, and spread their most intimate places, even if they are going to be put in a cell in the local county jail. This is how the supposed defenders of liberty, who might be inclined to strike down the supposedly horrific idea of paying for health insurance, have ruled regarding your personal privacy and the sanctity of one's own body.
The willingness of the Court's conservatives to heap humiliation upon the masses for the sake of supposed security and the maintenance of order by the state is disturbing. It is not a matter of happenstance that the three women on the Court all disagreed with the majority. What a horrible decision.
Another commenter at the NYT writes:
Paul, Birmingham, MISupreme Court within last 10 years ruled that citizens can be arrested, booked and placed in the general population of a jail for any and all violations, misdemeanor or felony, and bail can be set for substantially more than the maximum fine of the alleged violation. Police have always said that they can find a traffic violation within 5 minutes of following any car/truck on the road. E.g., changing lanes without signaling. This ruling, along with the prior rulings means that there is no limitation imposed by the 4th amendment regarding what the police want to do to citizens.
This has potentially far-reaching effects on civil liberties -- including freedom of speech. From another commenter at the NYT:
juliegoldberg, Rockland County, NYThis is horrifying. People will think twice about participating in lawful protests where there is some possibility of getting arrested, for fear of what to me looks more like sexual assault than law enforcement.
The Beach In Santa Monica: Where Fun Is Illegal
Photo by Robert Werner (used with permission):
Smart Ideas On Healthcare From The Libertarians
From a press release I got from lp.org:
"While President Obama and the Republicans in Congress spend time debating whether religious groups must provide their employees free contraceptives, a far more fundamental issue is being ignored: if we want better health insurance for all, why are we making it illegal?"ObamaCare, known in Massachusetts as RomneyCare, effectively outlaws true health insurance. Insurance, if you think about it, should exist to protect you against catastrophic expenditures. For example, car insurance doesn't cover the cost of gas and oil, as it would be outrageously expensive due to the incentive for increased driving. Similarly, health insurance should not cover ordinary and predictable costs, yet remains outrageously expensive because it does."
"Then why do consumers continue to buy overpriced insurance that covers predictable costs? Government. First, the senseless connection of health insurance to employment is the result of a system that taxes cash wages but not health benefits, punishing employees who would rather have higher cash wages while making their own personal choice of health coverage. Second, special interests in every state have lobbied legislators to mandate coverage for their particular product or service. Finally, regulation not only drives up the cost of healthcare, but also restricts entry into the field, leading to even higher prices."
"The result is this: if you want inexpensive health insurance, but don't want coverage for alcoholism, weight loss programs and baldness treatments, and would prefer a deductible based on your personal finances: TOUGH. Even if you're not stuck with your employer's choices, the type of individually tailored coverage you want is illegal.
"Instead of ObamaRomneyCare, we need to decriminalize good health insurance.Eliminate the coverage mandates, the laws against purchasing health insurance across state lines, and the unfavorable tax treatment of personal insurance policies. Remove the regulations that block entry of new insurers, including charitable organizations which could provide catastrophic protection for the poor and the club-based insurance policies that were once popular before the insurance industry and American Medical Association both pushed to make them illegal."
"As for contraception? Women shouldn't need a permission slip from their doctor to have safe sex. Removing the prescription requirement would massively reduce the cost of contraceptives, making it far more affordable. In turn, this would ease the burden on groups such as Planned Parenthood that have long provided free contraceptives to those in need."
"An Affront To Self-Government"
That's what Mark Steyn calls a law with as many pages as Obamacare (2,700):
"What happened to the Eighth Amendment?" sighed Justice Scalia the other day. That's the bit about cruel and unusual punishment. "You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages? Or do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks?"He was making a narrow argument about "severability"--about whether the court could junk the "individual mandate" but pick and choose what bits of Obamacare to keep. Yet he was unintentionally making a far more basic point: A 2,700-page law is not a "law" by any civilized understanding of the term. Law rests on the principle of equality before it. When a bill is 2,700 pages, there's no equality: Instead, there's a hierarchy of privilege microregulated by an unelected, unaccountable, unconstrained, unknown and unnumbered bureaucracy. It's not just that the legislators who legislate it don't know what's in it, nor that the citizens on the receiving end can ever hope to understand it, but that even the nation's most eminent judges acknowledge that it is beyond individual human comprehension.
...If the Supreme Court really wished to perform a service, it would declare that henceforth no law can be longer than, say, 27 pages . . .
Madison On How Our Freedoms Are Taken From Us
A Michael Ramirez cartoon.
Penicillin Is The Best Medicine
(Laughter won't do shit against a bacterial infection.) On the other hand, penicillin posts poorly in a blog comment.
Eyes On Bargains
Bargain of bargains: I ordered prescrip sunglasses through zennioptical.com for $19.99 including shipping.
You upload a closeup of yourself to try on various pairs, which I did. Some of the pairs there are $27, but many are $9.99. You pay about $5 for the sunglass tint and about $5 for shipping. I have my prescrip already from Kaiser, my HMO, so I just input it with my order.
They just came and they look great on, and the nosepiece is very comfortable. The only hiccup is that the site's tracking (of your shipment, which I got via the USPS) doesn't seem to work.
No photos of me in them yet -- I got carsick on the way home from Palm Desert (embarrassing -- it's not like I'm 8) where we went to visit friends, so Gregg brought me home on Sunday and put me to bed.
Dinner With Leonard And Leonard
Crime novelist Elmore Leonard and his novelist son Peter talk to Ann O'Neill from CNN:
The Leonards say there's no big mystery to writing fiction. You simply have to want to do it more than anything else on earth. It has to be an undeniable part of you.You have to crave it.
...Elmore never lets himself get in the way of a good story. The narrator is almost invisible as characters move from scene to scene, cracking wise while they do stupid, violent things.
He is the master of quirky, well-drawn characters, snappy dialogue, clever plot twists and a narrative style so spare it reads like haiku. Its simple beauty can put a bullet through your heart.
He thinks most crooks are dumb, and that dumb is funny. He likes a good caper and the violence seems to be almost incidental, more like an occupational hazard.
And, he thinks most books have "too many words in them." It's a point he made in his famous essay "Ten Rules of Writing," which was turned into a very short book. It includes tips such as: Don't open with the weather; avoid adverbs; leave out the parts readers skip over. A bonus 11th rule: If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.
Tonight, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Advice Goddess Radio: Dr. David J. Ley On "The Myth Of Sex Addiction"
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in psychology and research -- all with really compelling things to say about how to be smarter in being human.
Tonight on Advice Goddess Radio, Dr. David J. Ley, author of The Myth of Sex Addiction
Listen live at this link or download after the show (click "Play in your default player"). And do call in with questions when the show is live -- 347-326-9761:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/04/02/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Don't forget to listen to last week's show with social psychologist Dr. Roy Baumeister on an issue we all have issues with: self-control -- how to have more of it and how to have less of what we do have depleted. His book, co-authored with John Tierney, is Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
Listen at the link or download (click "Play in your default player"):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/03/26/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and all my fascinating guests live every week from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, and listen to all my previous shows and listen live at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
Paris: Topless Ukranian Women Protest Islam's Oppression Of Women
Yes, topless. In front of the Eiffel Tower. You go, girls!
Here's what they're protesting:
Another video: Islam is behind the state-ordered slaying of a young mother.
via @JarradWinter
Shits And Giggles
Deposit here. (Preferably the latter.)
Treating A Kid Like Meat
Vicki Glembocki writes at Readers Digest of a divorced father who'd converted to Judaism and wanted his 9-year-old son circumcised -- an idiotic unnecessary surgical procedure on a kid who apparently told his mother he didn't want it (smart kid!), and was afraid to tell his father:
The next day, she filed for a temporary restraining order against her ex-husband to prevent the circumcision. She got it, then filed a motion to keep James from having the boy circumcised at all, and another to have custody switched to her.She'd appealed for a change in custody before, but this time, the case would travel all the way to the supreme court of Oregon, the state where she lived.
Since their divorce in 1999, when their son was four, the Boldts had battled over who should be the primary caregiver. First it was Lia. Then in 2002, the court gave James sole custody because it determined that Lia's attitude toward James was turning the boy against his father. Lia's appeals were still awaiting court review when she filed the request to block the circumcision.
James, insisting that his son did want the procedure, submitted an affidavit from the boy's doctor in support of his claim. James also argued that stopping him from having his son circumcised violated his own religious rights.
The trial court ruled that decisions regarding elective surgery rest, as they always have, with the custodial parent--in this case, James Boldt. Still, the court barred the circumcision from taking place until the prior custody appeals were resolved.
...The Verdict
Throughout five years of deliberations--with many affidavits, briefs, and claims from both parents about their son's wishes--the boy was never questioned, not even in a judge's private chambers. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that he didn't need to wait until age 18 to make up his mind. It decided that the 14-year-old should be asked now what he wants.
None of these geniuses bothered to ask the kid? Brilliant.
Last April, at a hearing in the judge's chambers of the Jackson County Circuit Court, the boy finally spoke for himself: He did not want to be circumcised. He also said he didn't want to convert to Judaism, was afraid to tell his father how he felt, and was even afraid to continue living with him. It took five more months to resolve the custody issue, but finally, in September, the judge approved a settlement that James proposed and Lia accepted: The Boldts will have joint custody, with Lia as the primary parent and James receiving visitation. The main factor in their agreement: their son's preference.
Of course, as I've blogged before, no child should be put through an unnecessary surgical procedure without being old enough and able enough to consent. (All the uncircumcised 9-year-olds looking to get a piece of Mr. Happy hacked off, raise your hands!)
What's In That 2,700-Page Healthcare Bill None Of The Legislators Read?
The Gormogons blog about the real deal on Obamacare:
Does Obamacare lower the costs of health insurance for all Americans?
We know the answer is no, and this comes from the CBO. We also know that insurance costs have jumped up since passage. Strike this one.Does Obamacare provide increased access to healthcare?
No.Does Obamacare provide insurance coverage to more Americans?
Again, no: the number of options actually dwindles under Obamacare, and buy-in costs are much higher than if free markets were allowed to pursue competitive options.Does Obamacare reform Medicaid?
No, it makes Medicaid worse by dumping millions of previously disallowed participants, while also pulling a half-billion dollars out of it.Does Obamacare provide better healthcare to participants?
No, again. In fact, evidence of rationing and regulated control of treathments ensures that participants will have fewer health options.
P.S. The Supremes haven't read the thing, either.
April Fires!
April Fools post with jokeopathic flair from Science Based Medicine's David Weinberg:
Having a housefire is a one of the most stressful, dehumanizing experiences a family can experience. Like cancer, fires appear unexpectedly, and fill victims with fear, grief, and hopelessness. Western firefighting methods do not adequately meet the needs of these victims....Consider the following story: Sonya of Westchester Missouri had a grease fire in her kitchen. When the flames began to spread, she did what she had been programmed to do since childhood. She called 911, summoning the local fire department. When they were finished, the fire was extinguished, but her windows were smashed, and there were thousands of dollars worth of water damage to her house. It took nearly 6 months to complete all the repairs. 1 year later her house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. This failure of conventional firefighting is commonplace in our country.
Methods of fire-fighting in the Western world are based on a set of principles derived from the scientific philosophy of fire propagation. Western philosophy reduces fire to only 3 elements, commonly know as the "fire-triangle." This reductionist approach teaches that heat, fuel and oxygen are the three essential elements to a fire. True to the bidding of Big Hydrant, the Western philosophy of fire is indoctrinated in our children starting in elementary school. It is the only philosophy considered in American fire fighting. The Western approach is one of many ways of understanding fires. Yet, alternative philosophies are systematically ignored, and even ridiculed...
