How The Government's Arbitrary Alcohol Rules Killed A Knoxville Club
Here's the letter to customers from The Valarium. I've italicized some of the most disgusting conditions they were unable to meet under the new Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission rules:
Dear Friends and Patrons,
The Valarium and CiderHouse will cease operation on November 25th. The last event will be Taboo on November 24th.Due to new rule changes from the TN Alcoholic Beverage Commission concerning the minimum percentage of food an establishment must sell in relation to its gross sales, our venues will be closing. We also cannot comply with the minimum number of days they require us to be open per week. Since we cannot meet their requirements, we will relinquish and not renew our ABC license when it expires November 24th, 2012.
We have never received any citations for over serving or serving an underage. However, we have been told we will be fined, prosecuted, or subject to revocation procedure for not serving enough food. They do not recognize the fact that we are a big, fast-paced venue where people come to see shows, dance, drink and socialize on a large scale, not to eat dinner. This is as unreasonable as them passing a law stating that all restaurants must install a stage and dance floor.
Also, we cannot comply with the minimum number of days they require us to be open. Good business practices dictate that you don't open when it's not viable. Opening for the sake of just being open forces you to offer drink specials, steep discounts, ridiculous contests, and promotions that may encourage over serving. If the primary mission statement of the TN ABC is to promote temperance, what could be more temperate than not opening on off nights? We are not aware of any other state that has these rules.
As it happens, the timing of our license renewal date puts us in the forefront of any enforcement action. Our attorneys predict that a large portion of the nightclub venue licensees in TN will not be able to comply with these regulations. However, on their advice, our only recourse is to relinquish our license when it expires on November 24th, 2012.
We would like to thank all of our friends and patrons for supporting us and allowing us to bring such amazing national, regional, and local musical talent to our stages. We would also like to thank our employees who made it all possible.
Good luck to everyone as you move forward out in the world.
Sincerely,
Valarium and CiderHouse Management
Nick Gillespie notes at reason:
And so dies a joint that was named Best Rock Club and Best Dance Club in the 2011 Best of Knoxville listings by the alt-weekly Metro Pulse.
via @walterolson and @reason
The TSA: What Should Happen To It And What Likely Will
Travel writer Christopher Elliott, one of my fellow journalist posters at the anti-TSA TSA News Blog (which cross-posts many of my TSA blog items), is far more optimistic than I about what will or could happen with the TSA.
I am always mindful that bureaucracy protects itself. Especially when money is involved. The TSA is a jobs program for unskilled workers, those who supervise them, and a provider of dumptrucks of cash for the likes of Michael Chertoff, who've cashed in handsomely on their government tenure post-government.
Elliott blogs about yesterday's House Aviation Subcommittee hearing on the TSA, which you can watch here. (I just got home from Paris last night and haven't seen it.). Elliot writes:
TSA Administrator John Pistole refused to testify before the committee on the innocuous subject of "common sense" improvements to America's airport security, reportedly because the committee has no jurisdiction over his agency. (That's odd -- I always thought Congress funded the federal government, but maybe I wasn't paying attention during government class.)One by one, panelists took turns excoriating the agency charged with protecting America's transportation systems. It was plainly clear why Pistole was a no-show, and it had nothing to do with jurisdiction; it would have been an openly hostile crowd.
Charles Edwards, the Department of Homeland Security's acting inspector general, described the TSA as bureaucratic and dysfunctional. Stephen Lord of the Government Accountability Office, suggested the agency was ignoring the thousands of complaints from air travelers. And Kenneth Dunlap, who represented the International Air Transport Association, criticized the current TSA as expensive, inconsistent, and reactive.
"As this mushrooming agency has spun out of control," the committee chairman, John Mica, concluded, "passengers have not been well served."
The congressmen present in the hearing agreed with many of the criticisms, but it's the solutions that would have sent Pistole running for the exits. On the conservative end, critics recommended aggressively reforming the TSA to create a smaller, more responsive agency that fulfills its mission of protecting and serving air travelers.
But some went much further. Charlie Leocha of the Consumer Travel Alliance, who represented the interests of air travelers on the committee, said the TSA should not just be downsized, but also limited to protecting only air travel (something it currently isn't).
In his testimony, he described a future TSA that more closely resembled the pre-9/11 security system, which used magnetometers (metal detectors) as its primary screening method, had employees that dressed in non-threatening uniforms, and banned only the most dangerous weapons, such as guns and explosives, from aircraft.
The real security work would take place behind the scenes, prescreening every passenger with the help of technology and through coordination between intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and airlines.
"The mass screening of passengers would be replaced for the great majority of passengers with a Trusted Traveler program that seamlessly checks passengers before they fly, while at the same time being respectful of their privacy," says Leocha. "Every passenger is already prescreened for every flight."
I do agree with Elliott here:
The TSA as it exists can't die soon enough.
But, I don't think it'll happen.
To The Person Who Left Me The Phone Message About The TSA
Just home from the airport -- your message was cut off halfway through, so I don't know who you are or the rest of the details.
I'm hoping you'll email me with more: Please do.
Total Security Theater Stupidity, Amsterdam
We caught a 7:15 plane from Paris to our connecting flight to LA from Amsterdam, went through security, got on the plane, and then...were told to get off the plane because somebody left some door open for a little while in the airport.
Then, we went through security AGAIN. Idiocy.
Meanwhile, this is the airport that let the pantybomber through.
Also, we ended up with two gray iPads in Gregg's bag. I think this was my fault. At the first "security" check, I was trying to help him gather his stuff and I think I gave him some other guy's iPad after he'd already collected his (because they both had the standard Apple cover).
The second time we went through, they forced Gregg to go through the scanner and get groped, and I gathered all his stuff and put it in his bag. When I showed him that everything was in there, I noticed it was more than *everything* -- as we had two gray iPads in there. I told a security lady chop-chop and a very grateful man came to collect it. (I apologized to him -- told him it was probably my fault; that I probably picked it up thinking it was my boyfriend's; but he was just thrilled to have it back and very sweet about it.)
Anyway, this shows you how easy it is for people to unintentionally leave with other people's stuff. Which shows you how little security there actually is at airports. And which also shows how disgusting the TSA's little intimidation move is -- leaving your stuff out on the belt while you get groped and saying they just don't have personnel to watch it.
Government Schools And Government Prisons: Not All That Different
Compelling post at Lew Rockwell about the creep of the police state.
William Grigg writes:
Warrantless "drug sweeps" in government-run schools have become routine in recent years. So have "lock-down" drills in which SWAT teams conduct training exercises involving hostage or terrorism scenarios. In some lock-down drills,studentsinmates have been kept in the dark about the fact that the incident is a training exercise, rather than a genuine crisis.Vista Grande High School in Casa Grande, Arizona, held a lock-down drug sweep on October 31.
StudentsInmates were confined to their classrooms, then led in small groups to another room where they were forced to line up against a wall and be searched with the help of drug-sniffing dogs. This exercise introduced a new element: Among the four law enforcement agencies involved in the search was a group of prison guards employed by the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest for-profit prison contractor.Notes Caroline Isaacs of the Tucson office of the American Friends Service Committee: "To invite for-profit prison guards to conduct law enforcement actions in a high school is perhaps the most direct expression of the `schools-to-prison pipeline' I've ever seen."
Big Government Is Causing Your Big Food Bills
It's the failed ethanol policy, mandating the use of ethanol in gasoline, writes Rob Green in the WSJ:
Americans should understand that this year's drought--the worst in 50 years--isn't the primary reason for record-high food prices. The drought made things worse, but the leading driver of long-term increases in food costs is a deeply flawed federal mandate.In 2005, Congress enacted the Renewable Fuel Standard to mandate the use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline. The cost of food commodities immediately began to rise. As a result, Americans have had to deal with some of the highest food prices on record. While the drought will end at some point, the price increases caused by the ethanol mandate will continue unless the government reverses course.
Proponents of ethanol argue that it lowers greenhouse-gas emissions and gas prices, but these findings remain subject to intense debate. The higher food prices all Americans now pay are indisputable.
Under the federal mandate, Americans must use 15 billion gallons of ethanol in gasoline annually by 2015. To meet this goal, 5.3 billion bushels of corn per year--equal to more than 40% of the 2011 corn crop--must be processed and burned as ethanol, not used for food or livestock feed.
The result: higher prices across the entire food chain, from products directly containing corn to protein raised on corn feed and crops that compete with corn for farmland. That includes the bread on the table, the eggs at breakfast, the chicken or steak at dinner, and almost all dairy products.
...it is time for the ethanol industry to stand on its own, as restaurant owners and operators do every day. Congress and the president should repeal the misguided Renewable Fuel Standard and allow the free market to allocate corn to its most highly valued use--not one imposed by a government that forces food to be burned for inefficient fuel.
Voting for the powers that be -- whether the Obama or the Romney side -- continues policies like this.
Don't kid yourselves that the Republicans are, as they claim, the party of small government. They're the party of politicians making greasy deals, same as the other side, to benefit themselves in votes and cushy deals. This sometimes looks like they're benefiting the people who voted for them, but that's usually just a happy coincidence for those voters.
Islam: How Can A Woman Feel Like Somebody With A Black Tablecloth Over Her Head?
Okay, to be fair, a black tablecloth with an eye-slit.
This woman was across from the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris, which is across the street from Paris' main mosque.
There's all this bullshit put out about how burkas "empower" women. Please.
Of course, Muslim clerics argue that the objects/possessions of men that we commonly think of as women would be raped but for being covered up from male eyes and removed from existence like this. (Of course, this speaks poorly of Islamic culture, not uncovered Western women or any women.)
Also, consider the life you'd have if you went around all disappeared by a big black tablecloth. I was on rue Turbigo yesterday -- near where I've stayed in various apartments over the years -- and passed the wine store guy with the long white hair walking his dog.
For a moment, neither he nor I knew quite how we knew each other, but we both smiled and said bonjour.
You can't do that when a woman's erased from existence by black cloth.
Stellar Post By Popehat On Both The TSA And A Disappointing Post At Volokh
Popehat writes about Stewart Baker, who, by the way, "forgets" to identify himself as an author of TSA policy (more on that below):
The one thing I take away from Stewart Baker's extremely unsettling extended sexual metaphor about opposition to the TSA is that the man is very frustrated.Mr. Baker -- a self-described "privacy skeptic and national security conservative" -- is frustrated at his inability to comprehend all of that nasty opposition to the TSA. He seizes upon a belabored sexual analogy: TSA lines give us (him) performance anxiety, causing us to fumble about, alarmed at any change in routine, thwarting us from the smooth, economical physical movements that, Astaire-like, make us sexually irresistible to virginal women. No, really. No, damn it, I'm serious, go read it yourself. There. I told you.
Baker, surrounded by a tissue of lies about TSA opponents and a double handful of the balm of self-regard, flogs that metaphor raw, but is unable to conclude it satisfactorily. He dreams of a TSA that would post encouraging signs to us that we're doing fine, just fine, steadily building in tempo, moving us towards the end of the security line, until we shoot with a relieved sigh out of it all over the Sbarro Express.
...But there are no real women in his analogy; he dismissed them with a hand-wave: "I can't explain the women who hate TSA with a passion, though I'm not sure how many there are. Anti-TSA sites and comments have a distinct whiff of testosterone."
That would be a surprise to, say, Amy Alkon, who was threatened with a lawsuit by a TSA agent for having the temerity to complain about having fingers thrust into her during a search. It would be a surprise to women harassed over their breast milk by TSA agents to stupid or careless to know their own policies, or these women forced to remove prosthetic breasts, or this woman forced to expose her gastric tube to gawking polyster-clad subnormals, or this rape survivor cupped and groped and probed by TSA "professionals," or this woman told to remove her nipple rings, or any of these women. I'm pretty sure they aren't critics of the TSA because of some sort of surge of testosterone.
And yet I'm being unfair -- to the women. Women don't just criticize the TSA because some of them are getting groped and harassed and abused. Women, as much as men, love liberty. Women, like men, love America. Women love America, and they're skeptical if the proposition that, if America is in such grave danger that we must surrender rights to save it, we should be surrendering rights to the sort of people who get recruited by ads on pizza boxes.
He quotes (and I quote in the comments) TSA quisling and official propagandist Blogger Bob (Bob [Curtis] Burns) on the TSA workers (referring to my blogging their names):
also consider the privacy of the individuals involved.
I commented:
Why should a government worker, searching a citizen's body sans probable cause, be allowed to remain anonymous?This is not the same thing as posting the name of some citizen who works at Cinnabon and exposing them for their fat keister.
But, yet, they have been allowed to remain anonymous by wearing their badges upside down, though this should not be the case, per an email I found from TSA Press Rep Nico Melendez, who is now refusing to give me answers and essentially telling me to shove it (up some complaint phone line).
If complaint phone lines did anything, or complaint lines in general, after 17,000 complaints about the TSA, something would have changed. All that seems to have changed is that the TSA thugs now touch my hair and inside my turtleneck as if I could have a big charge of C4 in there.
And regarding Stewart Baker, Pete, in the comments at Popehat, writes:
Note that Stewart Baker spent 3½ years at the Department of Homeland Security as its first Assistant Secretary for Policy. This sexually frustrated nut job is not just a defender of the TSA, but an author of TSA policy:
And a right-on comment at Volokh from William Oliver:
It's not surprising that someone who doesn't believe that people deserve privacy or its associated dignity doesn't understand why people who do believe become concerned with TSA's disdain for it. I have found that folk who don't believe that the hoi polloi deserve these things hold commoners in such contempt that they think that sugar-coating their disdain will fool us. It doesn't.The problem is not whether to put your shoes on the belt or in a bin. It's degrading people with colostomies. It's drenching people with catheters in their own urine. It's sexually assaulting children. It's exposing young women's breasts for ogling. It's selectively choosing attractive women for pat downs. It's engaging in high tech voyeurism. It's theiving from passengers. It's actively intimidating and degrading people who object to it.
But then, what should one expect from an agency whose motto is "Dominate. Intimidate. Control."
A "privacy sceptic" is just a "liberty sceptic" who lives inside the beltway. I don't think you "fail to grasp" the intrusion on our freedom. I think you just don't care.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Baker is no fan of free speech, threatening to remove comments containing a word I used in my anti-TSA op-ed -- "sheeple" -- which correctly describes those who politely and docilely concede their Fourth Amendment right to not be searched without probable cause. A note below his post:
NOTE: Comments explaining that TSA is an intolerable intrusion on our freedoms that the rest of the country simply fails to grasp are inevitable, but those using the word "sheeple" or linking to stories from PrisonPlanet may be removed, or mocked.
Should we really "mock" people who seek to defend our civil liberties?
Two more posts on Baker's post by Scott Greenfield and Mark Bennett.
My Pet Car
My three-pound dog is in the USA, relaxing by my friend Debbie's fireplace, so I've decided to adopt a three-pound car while I'm here in Paris. Her name is Genvieve, and she eats gas that probably costs more than the wine.
In a contemplative moment at Debbie's, here is le chien microscopique, as our friend Pierre refers to Lucy:
How To Have A Kid Without Getting A Divorce To Go With
I just posted a column on the subject, Four Wettings And A Funeral. An excerpt:
I know, having a baby looks so idyllic in picture books. The stork drops him off one day, and then on the next page, he's 5. In real life, there are back-to-back trips to Poison Control, meaningful conversations about the day's shade of poo, and hopes that people will think you're just holding the baby for some other lady when he's screaming his lungs out on a plane.
Paris: Lessons To Live By (Or At Least Vacation By) In A Latin Country
Something to remember in France: It's a Latin country. Things do not always work as promised or expected; stores are not always open when they say they are.
This means the "bird in the hand" adage applies. For example: A working Métro ticket dispenser is to be patronized; you don't wait until you need a new carnet (book of tickets), because there may not be a ticket dispenser at that station or it may be out of order.
Accordingly, Monday night, I needed to print out the tickets we bought online for the dinosaur show at the Museum of Natural History (here in Paris) that we're planning on going to Wednesday. There are very few cyber cafes now in Paris, but there was one close to us. I went to the cyber cafe on the rue Mignon -- and of course found it shuttered, despite their reported hours (open till 22:00 -- 10pm). Not surprisingly, their own site is down, so I had to look at CityVox.
Luckily, I went to the Holiday Inn right by there, told them the cyber cafe was closed and asked if they knew another nearby. (There isn't one -- the closest one is adjacent to le Jardin du Luxembourg.) I was thinking I could maybe use the computer in their business center (which I assumed they had), but I thought it was probably better not to ask directly. The clerk suggested I do that, said it was a 3 eu minimum, showed me the way, and then printed the PDF of the tickets off my flash drive for me (because I apparently couldn't use the flash drive in the biz center's computer).
This is just Paris as usual. I don't get mad at these things; I just know to prepare. These are tickets needed Wednesday and Gregg was cooking dinner, so it was a good time to go stave off a big pain in the ass trying to print them on Tuesday.
P.S. If you're here, and you want to go to that dino show, you have to buy your tickets in advance -- online or at FNAC.
How Many Bureaucrats Do You Need To Run A University?
I have many friends who are professors, and the younger ones, especially, do not make a lot of money -- and yes, even those in hard sciences. This is after spending years getting a Ph.D.
But, check out who's raking it in on the college campus -- the administrators. From a Bloomberg piece by John Hechinger, "The Troubling Dean-to-Professor Ratio":
J. Paul Robinson, chairman of the Purdue University faculty senate, walks the halls of a 10-story tower, pointing out a row of offices for administrators. "I have no idea what these people do," says the biomedical engineering professor. Purdue has a $313,000-a-year acting provost and six vice and associate vice provosts, including a $198,000-a-year chief diversity officer. Among its 16 deans and 11 vice presidents are a $253,000 marketing officer and a $433,000 business school chief. The average full professor at the public university in West Lafayette, Ind., makes $125,000.The number of Purdue administrators has jumped 54 percent in the past decade--almost eight times the growth rate of tenured and tenure-track faculty. "We're here to deliver a high-quality education at as low a price as possible," says Robinson. "Why is it that we can't find any money for more faculty, but there seems to be an almost unlimited budget for administrators?"
Purdue is among the U.S. colleges layering up at the top at a time when budgets are tight, students are amassing record debt, and tuition is skyrocketing. U.S. Department of Education data show that Purdue is typical: At universities nationwide, employment of administrators jumped 60 percent from 1993 to 2009, 10 times the growth rate for tenured faculty. "Administrative bloat is clearly contributing to the overall cost of higher education," says Jay Greene, an education professor at the University of Arkansas. In a 2010 study, Greene found that from 1993 to 2007, spending on administration rose almost twice as fast as funding for research and teaching at 198 leading U.S. universities.
Anybody Can Go See The Beautiful Parts Of Paris: Amy Alkon's Accidental Paris Slum Tour
Pretty much everywhere you turn in central Paris, there's something beautiful or at least very interesting to see.
Only *I* can manage to travel to a neighborhood devoid of beauty, although there's a certain ruin-porn allure to this decaying, graffitied building on the Canal d'Ourcq. 
(There are quaint parts of the Canal d'Ourcq, apparently, but I did not take us to them.)
Because it was a beautiful, sunny Sunday, and I thought it would be romantic, I'd wanted to go with Gregg to the quaint, houseboat-lined Canal St. Martin.
Because I know Paris well, I knew pretty much to get off at the République Métro stop and walk in the direction of Place de la Bastille -- toward the Seine.
Well, dumb me, I second-guessed myself, and as we were leaving, paid heed to something I looked up on the Internet saying to start at the Eglise de Pantin Métro station, which turned out to be in a terrible neighborhood. (Apparently, this is the route you take if you are interesting in hiking past a lot of unattractive modernish buildings on a canal.)
Even worse, we were probably a few miles from Canal St. Martin, and then Gregg stepped in a space where some cobblestones were missing and turned his ankle, which meant we missed Jim Haynes' weekly Sunday night fete.
Gregg's ankle is now not quite as colorful as that building, but veering in that direction. And now, I will be teased for days by our American and Frog friends for taking him for a romantic sightseeing tour of some water-adjacent Paris slum.
Did You Give Birth To An Insensate Moron?
Lenore Skenazy at Free Range Kids posted a blog item entitled, "No Liquid Soap Allowed in Pre-School Bathroom: Children Might Drink It," based on a note from a reader:
Dear Free-Range Kids:So in my state the child care regulations state that children may be allowed to go to the bathroom by themselves if they can handle the whole process without help. This pretty much means kids 4 or 5 and older. But now the local licensing folks have ruled that you cannot leave the liquid hand soap in the bathroom. The kid has to come out and have the adult dispense the soap. This is all because the kid might put the soap in his or her mouth.
Putting aside the unlikelihood of this happening, if it did, the child would spit it out quickly and the small amount would do no harm. But the office seems to be going for zero risk, a really scary concept.
-Day Care Lady in New York
Unfortunately, You Can't Dot.com The Ugly Out Of Divorce For The Kid
Pamela Paul writes in The New York Times of how divorced parents are using the Internet so they won't be so verbally argumentative or so argumentative in front of their kids:
"Normally, when you break up with someone, you don't have to see them constantly," Ms. McGillivray said. "Now I have to see my ex and his current fiancée several times a week. He'll be a presence in my life for at least 17 more years, and probably more than that."When they see each other in person, she said, they inevitably quarrel. And so she keeps him at a safe electronic remove. "When it comes to child arrangements," she said, "we typically communicate via e-mail. Schedules, drop-offs, pickups, sick-day care: it's all done electronically. Neither of us wants to argue in front of our daughter, but as much as we would want to avoid it, it would happen."
It's not surprising that most people don't see eye-to-eye with the person they left seething on a couples therapist's sofa. If you didn't get along with someone well enough to stay married, chances are you will probably disagree after you divorce.
"People don't want to talk to their exes because just the sound of their voice is irritating," said Randy Kessler, chair of the American Bar Association's Family Law Section and a matrimonial lawyer in Atlanta. "But they can e-mail. They can share an online calendar. They can use any number of resources on the Internet. There are even divorce apps."
E-mail and texting alone have practically revolutionized postdivorce family relationships. "E-mail absolutely takes away the in-your-face aggravation and emotional side of joint custody," said Lubov Stark, a divorce lawyer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. "You just write, 'I want to pick up Kimmy at 5, but I'm running late and will be there at 6.' It's the best thing ever."
When Zeita Jones, a 39-year-old nurse in Los Angeles, divorced her husband of 15 years in 2010, dealing with her ex while shuffling their three children every week was difficult. "When emotions were running high at the beginning, everything was e-mail and text," Ms. Jones said. "It's a lot easier not hearing the voice. It's detached."
For Cheryl Wu, a 34-year-old Manhattan pediatrician, nailing down details on a Google calendar makes all the difference. First, she and her ex-husband, who have joint legal custody (she has primary physical custody) of their 5-year-old son, will e-mail each other possible arrangements until they reach a point of agreement. Once there, it goes into the mutual calendar. Since the two separated in 2010, they have only had to talk face-to-face two or three times.
Martin Amis On Elmore Leonard And Elmore Leonard On Elmore Leonard
I just got a letter questioning the way I wrote something, and I wrote back with a bit I will often include at the bottom of a column when I worry that some over-zealous copy editor will "correct" something I've written in a column.
I wrote back to the guy:
Very observant, and yes, technically, it would be half of everything THEY own, but I was writing from the man's point of view. I will often go by what Elmore Leonard advises in his 10 Rules of Writing: "If proper usage gets in the way, it may sometimes have to go."
If you're interested in Elmore's work (I recommend Swag), Martin Amis did a wonderful intro of him at The National Book Awards we just attended, referring to a bit of his rule-breaking and how he writes in the present participle: "We are in a kind of marijuana tense."
Amis comes up after a brief intro by a woman.
By the way, the "10 Rules" came from a speech Elmore scrawled on two sheets of yellow paper that he gave at a conference called Bouchercon. It was Gregg's idea to turn the "10 Rules" into a book, and he shepherded it along and got Harper Collins to agree to do it.
My favorite and probably the most important: "Leave out the part that readers tend to skip." (I live in terror of boring people. If you pay for a book, or take the time to read my column, I want you to have a great ride. A book containing science and information, as Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck, my next book, does, can't always be a laugh riot, so I at least strive to be very clear and to use interesting words and ways of saying things so people will get pleasure out of the entire ride...word after word after word.
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Annoying Vegans Block Paris Traffic
We're staying on what in Paris is the 6th floor and what in America would be the 7th (the first floor here is counted as zero), but we still heard this awful noise yesterday afternoon.
It sounded like really horrible "music," with people yelling, but it actually just turned out to be people yelling in a "manifestation" -- a protest against eating meat and wearing fur.
They were marching down the major street, Boulevard St. Germain, blocking everybody in cars or buses from getting anywhere. Assholes. That'll show all of us.
This guy did have a cute dog and kind of a similar snout himself:
Here is a photo by Gregg:
Luckily, the noise and annoyance and the subject matter served as a reminder that we needed to pick up some more paté later -- which we did:
Now, I wouldn't suggest eating fur (it's murder on the mouth), but I do highly recommend paté (with a few cornichons on the side).
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Cardiologist Dr. William Davis On Why Wheat Is The Worst Thing You Could Eat
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
This is a "best of" replay because I'm in Paris for the week, meat- and cheese-eating my way through the town. Regarding the topic of the show...
Wheat is murder. Or, if not murder, a form of slow suicide.
My guest, cardiologist Dr. William Davis, busts the widely believed myths about "healthy whole grains," the notion that bread "is the staff of life" (it's actually the staff of diabetes and many other ailments), and more.
Listen live at this link or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/11/26/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
I also recommend Dr. Davis' New York Times best-selling book: Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health
Here's a post about "Wheat Belly" by Dr. Michael Eades, who turned me on to Davis and his evidence-based thinking on wheat. My show with Eades and his wife, Dr. Mary Dan Eades is here. A related show, with dietary researcher Dr. Jeff Volek is here.
And don't miss last week's very interesting show with psychotherapist Carl Alasko, Ph.D., talking about blame -- one of the most toxic and destructive components of relationships and so many human interactions.
We talked about how to stop blaming and how to take healthier -- and far more productive -- steps to problem-solving, in relationships and beyond.
Alasko has written a very comprehensive book on blame -- Beyond Blame: Freeing Yourself from the Most Toxic Form of Emotional Bullsh*t
Listen at the link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/11/19/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday from 7-8 pm Pacific and 10-11 pm Eastern, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Buy my science-based but funny book on why we're so rude and how to change things, I See Rude People. And please look for my award-winning, nationally syndicated, science-based advice column in a paper near you or ask the editor to carry it. Getting paid for writing it keeps me writing it!
Pat Condell On Peace In The Middle East
And the lie that it's what the Gazans want:
See the differences here:
"The Arabs hate the Jews; it's not a matter of geography," Brigitte Gabriel notes:
"It is not a matter of territory. It is a matter of hate and the elimination of the Jews," Gabriel adds.
She explains something few Americans or Westerners understand: Pulling back is seen as weakness to Muslim adversaries.
The Hamas Charter itself says that the Rotary Club and the Lions Club, among others, are the enemy and all about sabotaging societies and advancing Zionist goals, and "will be obliterated" when Muslims are in power. (Bet that was something you didn't know.)
Don't Assume The Cops Will Solve Your Case -- Even If Somebody Was Murdered
As I wrote in I See Rude People, don't assume they'll even care unless, say, there's a body lying bleeding on your kitchen floor.
And just as I found in the case of my stolen pink Rambler and the hit-and-run done on my Honda Insight later, even when you present them with a pile of evidence about who committed the crime and where to find them, it's likely they'll just blow you off, and you'll either have to accept that or go after the person yourself. (Both perps ended up being prosecuted -- thanks to my efforts -- and being forced to pay me restitution.)
Anyway, somebody tried -- unsuccessfully -- to break into my house, recently, while I was there, and my landlord told me to have the cops "fingerprint the door." I found this hilarious. As I talked about on my radio show with Dr. Dylan Evans on risk intelligence, real policing is nothing like CSI.
I like my landlord a lot -- admire him, too. He's a guy who came over from England, worked construction, and started buying up inexpensive properties in a neighborhood that's now hot.
I called my landlord right after it happened (Gregg was on a plane coming back from Detroit, and still hadn't landed). We talked on the phone about various things for about half an hour and the police still hadn't arrived. My landlord remembered why I'd called and said, "Wait -- you told them you're a woman living alone, you reported a person breaking in, and they still aren't there?"
Now, maybe they had three murders, but probably not. And I wasn't surprised. Just the way things are.
Anyway, these thoughts were inspired by something I read about the Casey Anthony case. For anyone who's been in a coma for a number of years, she's the woman accused of murdering her daughter. She was found not guilty of first-degree murder and other serious charges.
Turns out the police really bungled the case.
From the HuffPo, Florida TV station WKMG reports that prosecutors were unaware of a Google search for "foolproof suffocation" made on the day little Caylee Anthony died. Circumstances that day point to Casey being the one who was home to make that search, not her father.
Prosecutors never learned about the search because the Orange County Sheriff's Office didn't know the search existed, even though the department had possession of the family's computer. Instead, the sheriff's office gave prosecutors a spreadsheet with less than 2 percent of the computer's Internet activity that day."There was an oversight," sheriff's Capt. Angelo Nieves told the station. "This has been a learning experience for investigators as well."
An "oversight"? Ya think?
A "learning experience for investigators"? Maybe they should "learn" before coming on the job.
And people think the TSA -- unskilled workers -- are going to find terrorists by engaging in a groping we all know can happen at the airport?
TSA: LAX Airport Workers' Sexparts Go Ungroped
At LAX, when we were leaving for Paris, my boyfriend Gregg saw the TSA letting airport workers through the metal detector ungroped and unscanned. "What happened was, I was next to the 'toaster oven' and the mag detector, and four people were let through the mag detector," Gregg, who was selected for the scanning/government-inflicted ball-grope, told me.
Gregg said to the TSA guy, "Why do they get to go through there?" (Meaning, they didn't have to go through the scanner or get groped; they just got to go through the metal detector.)
The TSA guy said to Gregg, "Because they work here."
Right. And the low-wage worker serving your fries could never be bribed to smuggle something into the airport.
Of course, as somebody pointed out in my blog comments, terrorists are not attacking malls or buses, and that isn't because everybody going into the mall bends over so a mall cop can see they don't have a bomb up their booty.
It is possible somebody will blow up a plane at some point -- or blow up the sheeple standing in line waiting to politely give up their Fourth Amendment right not to be searched without reasonable suspicion they've committed or about to commit a crime.
It is likely, if we give over our rights for "security," that we will neither have security nor rights before long.
Hair Tomorrow
In deeply superficial news, I now have bangs. I also seem to have a flower growing into my chest in this photo, taken in the bathroom of the Aubusson Hotel where we met photographer and Paris-dwelling Detroit girl Sue Rynski for drinks.
Cyber Monday Deals Week Starts Now
At Amazon
Amazon has finally fixed the "Powered by Amazon" button in Amy's Mall (although I haven't had a moment to fix the text that says it's still broken). So, to buy something that's not linked here, just go through this link
Your purchases support this site and keep my lights on and are much-appreciated.
Got Some Props For My Look Yesterday
This is cool, considering I'm a Yankee out in the rain in Paris, wearing clothes I bought off eBay and at the Santa Monica Salvation Army for a song. 
Business Week On TSA: Airport "Security" Is Making Americans Less Safe
"$100 billion spent and not one risk analysis study," wrote the engineering prof friend of mine who sent me this link from a Charles Kenny piece in Business Week:
In 2010 the National Academy of Science reported the lack of "any Department of Homeland Security risk analysis capabilities and methods that are yet adequate for supporting decision making." DHS (and the TSA in particular) is spending huge bundles of large denomination bills completely blind.All this spending on airline security is worse than wasteful. Following the official rules while still attempting to show decency toward passengers all but forces TSA employees to delay, embarrass, and inconvenience many thousands every day. Faced with the prospect of such unpleasantries this holiday season, countless Americans will skip the flight to grandma's house and drive instead.
But compare the dangers of air travel with those of driving. To make flying as dangerous as using a car, a four-plane disaster on the scale of 9/11 would have to occur every month, according to analysis published in the American Scientist. Researchers at Cornell University estimate that people switching from air to road transportation in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks led to an increase of 242 driving fatalities per month--which means that a lot more people died on the roads as an indirect result of 9/11 than died from being on the planes that terrible day. The Cornell researchers also suggest that enhanced domestic baggage screening reduced passenger volume by about 5 percent in the five years after 9/11, and the substitution of driving for flying by those seeking to avoid security hassles over that period resulted in more than 100 road fatalities.
That's not to say TSA employees bear responsibility for making the roads more dangerous--they're just following incentives that reward slavish attention to rules over common sense. ... Instead, the blame lies with politicians, the media, and yes, the traveling public, who will skewer officials over a single fatal plane incident while ignoring car crashes, gun homicides, and even bathtub accidents that kill far more than terrorism does.
The TSA should be encouraged in its efforts to expand lower-hassle approaches to airport security that don't dissuade people from using one of the very safest ways to travel. Washington should ask itself why it values the life of an airplane passenger so much more than a bus or train passenger (or the daredevil bath-taker) in terms of the time-wasting, expense, and invasions of privacy it's willing to tolerate to protect them from harm.
Some Great Points Countering Conventional Thinking On Food And Nutrition
I just came across Karen De Coster's review of Mark Sisson's book, The Primal Blueprint
A Couple of Real Pyramids to Live ByThe Primal Blueprint food pyramid, unlike the government's fraudulent apparatus, is not influenced by food subsidies, profiteering politics, special interests, or payoffs from powerful players in the food industry. You won't see a primal pyramid recommending 6--11 servings daily of bread, pasta, and cereal. Low-fat diets that emphasize grains have made people fat, and not just here in America. In Sisson's view, vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, fowl, and eggs should sit at the bottom portion of the food pyramid. He includes a primer on fats and oils -- I especially note his wicked defense of healthy-yet-demonized fats and oils (coconut oil, unprocessed palm oil, lard, tallow, butter, etc.) that became politically unpopular because of the drive to promote the subsidized oils (think corn and soybean) that are heavily refined and genetically engineered. In keeping with the 80% Rule, even dark chocolate -- with 70% or more cocoa -- and alcohol make the grade when consumed moderately, in Sisson's primal world.
...Since he discovered that too much exercise is detrimental rather than beneficial, he has worked hard to convince others that chronic cardio or endurance sports lead to sickness, burnout, hormone problems, injuries, and the acceleration of aging and disease. I often note that professional endurance athletes often look like aging skeletons at a young age. Most triathletes and marathoners look aged beyond their years, and even my favorite athlete, Tour de France cycling champ Lance Armstrong, looked like an old man at the young age of thirty-four.
...My burning question has always been this: what makes a medical doctor -- even if he is a great doctor -- an automatic "expert" on food and nutrition, let alone exercise? Answer: nothing at all. People make the mistake of automatically granting expertise to their (often overweight) family medical doctor who had very little in the way of basic nutrition training way back in those medical school days. Unless an MD has a burning passion for deeper knowledge on food and nutrition science, or has actually gone into the field professionally, he's not sitting around reading the food and nutrition science journals and following the hot and debated issues of the day. So, in my mind, you need to forget your family doctor's uninformed, pharmaceutical-influenced advice and learn to control your own destiny through a process of self-education.
Tomorrow night, there's a great place to start -- my rebroadcast of my show with Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly
The show will air from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/11/26/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
(I'm in Paris this week and my boyfriend has insisted I have an actual vacation.)
Oh, and a bit more from De Coster -- some food rules she lives by:
- Avoid all sweeteners, most sugar (unless it is cane sugar in the occasional homemade good), and even minimize natural fructose. I've never been much of a fruit eater.- Avoid all industrial oils because of their rancidity, poor fatty acids profile, and hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated properties.
- Use lard (home rendered or bought from those who render it and sell at the market); raw butter; Kerrygold Irish butter; olive oils; sesame oil; macadamia oil; coconut oil; tallow (beef and lamb).
- Avoid grains, except for occasional rice and, yes, beer in the warm months.
- Eat quality meat: pastured or grass-fed (lamb, pork, beef, chicken, turkey) stored in my large freezer, and eat only wild caught fish. See a photo of my freezer. I deal directly with all of my farmers via email and do pickups at their farms.
- Eat a high-fat diet with moderate protein.
- Don't focus on the macronutrient content (fats, protein, carbs). I keep it simple and eat real food and don't turn eating into rocket science. I don't have time for the tracking or logistics. By way of my real-food principles, my diet is naturally low in carbs.
- Utilize farmer's markets for obtaining the majority of my food (farmers and artisanal makers). I live right by the largest and most glorious market in North America, so I am fortunate: Detroit Eastern Market. During the off-season, I buy from Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and local specialty/produce markets. The Detroit metro area has a gazillion of these wonderful markets.
UPDATE: In reply to Storm's comment that this way of eating is out-of-range pricey. See my comment below on my frugal low-carb diet.
The results: Body by bacon. (Okay, to be completely fair, I do 12 minutes of slow-burn exercise every five days or so -- when I'm not too overwhelmed by book and column deadlines.)
Photo of Amy Alkon's 48-year-old ass by Gregg Sutter: 
Hickory Dickory Destroy, Paris
Love the French way of saying the hommes in the white coveralls will be coming to take out the mice (souris). From the door to my friend E's courtyard when we were en route to her apartment: 
Here's a picture from her courtyard. (And she's not even in a ritzy building.)
Leahy's Warrantless Email Surveillance Bill Scuttled
At a time when our civil liberties are being eroded right, left, and center, a bright piece of news. Declan McCullagh reports at CNET that Senator Patrick Leahy has withdrawn his disgusting proposal to grant government agencies more surveillance power -- including warrantless access to Americans' email accounts:
Leahy's proposal would have allowed over 22 agencies -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission -- to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would have given the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge.That was an abrupt departure from Leahy's earlier approach, which required police to obtain a search warrant backed by probable cause before they could read the contents of e-mail or other communications. He boasted last year that his bill "provides enhanced privacy protections for American consumers by... requiring that the government obtain a search warrant."
One person participating in Capitol Hill meetings on this topic told CNET that Justice Department officials have expressed their displeasure about Leahy's original bill. The department is on record as opposing any such requirement: James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, has publicly warned that requiring a warrant to obtain stored e-mail could have an "adverse impact" on criminal investigations.
Yeah? Probable cause is such a bitch.
From McCullagh's piece, more reaction to Leahy's proposed changes:
•Executives at DataFoundry, a provider of data center services in Austin, Tex., said the proposed changes were an unacceptable breach of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.•Ronald Yokubaitis, co-CEO of Data Foundry, said giving the government near-unchecked authority to search consumer information stored in the cloud would destroy confidence in cloud-based services and encourage more businesses to move overseas, where protections are greater.
"If this language comes in, we are opposed to the bill," Yokubaitis said. "It will kill cloud computing."
How Socialism Worked For The Pilgrims (They Were Pissed)
And how the settlers got fat and happy. Excerpt from the text from the video by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie of reason.tv:
When the settlers finally stopped croaking, they set about creating a heaven on earth, a society without private property, where all worked for the common good. Everything was shared. Especially bitching and moaning about working for the common good. Bradford again:"Yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and service did repine that they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompense....And for men's wives to be commanded to doe service for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brooke it."
With nobody working, everybody was suffering. And in case you think nobody was working simply because they couldn't understand a damn thing Bradford was saying, chew on this: In 1623, Bradford and the other leaders
"Assigned to every family a parceel of land...this had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more torne was planted then other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave farr better contente."
In no time at all "any generall wante of famine hath not been amongest them since to this day."
America would never go hungry again. So this week, before you drift into your annual tryptophan-induced coma, don't forget to give thanks to the true patron of this holiday feast: property rights.
Deals At Amazon
You support me and this site through your purchases through my Amazon links. Here are a few promo links for the holidays:
Shop Amazon - Black Friday Deals Week
Shop Amazon Home Entertainment - Black Friday Deals on TV, Video
(through 12/1).
Shop Amazon - Best Selling Products - Updated Every Hour
Amazon has finally fixed the "Powered by Amazon" button in Amy's Mall (although I haven't had a moment to fix the text that says it's still broken). So, to buy something that's not linked here, just go through this link
And thank you -- really, truly appreciate all the purchases that you all send my way.
Paris: Tie Up Your Chien In Style
The French may have the most untenable socialist economy in Europe, short of Greece, or at least be in the top of the most ridiculous, but they add style to even the most unexpected areas, like the place you leave your dog outside a shop. This was on the rue du Sevres, a few blocks from the Duroc Métro. 
Gregg and I had lunch nearby with our friends E, M, and Pierre at Le Midi-Vins, where we had a fantastic shitake mushroom appetizer with an egg yolk and some coarse sea salt on it.
(No time to go to the fab resale stores nearby, Chercheminippes -- and also a bad thing to do when you have a man with you who finds that shopping for anything but electronics or food makes him itch.)
Of course, Gregg's more than prepared in the electronics department. In fact, I think he could rewire half of Paris with the cables he brought with him "just in case." (Love that about a man, and my man in particular.) 
After lunch, Gregg and E and I went wine-tasting with Pierre at the annual Salon des Vignerons Independents -- the show of the independent wine sellers of France -- at the vast Porte de Versailles. Had some dry muscat that I loved from Domaine Pain de Sucre. (Didn't know it came in something other than sweet, but it does. Unfortunately, it's not sold outside of France.) 
A dry white wine that wine afficionado and novelist Peter Leonard
recommended to us that we bought at Monoprix (the Target with food of Paris) the other night to have with the dinner Gregg made me is Picpoul. I think this bottle I picked out was only 4 euros, and was very good. Never been disappointed by Picpoul yet, in the States or here.
Oh, and on a globally frugal note, I now not only have a Ralph's supermarket frequent shopper card but one from Monoprix. Gregg is off with the card now, but these are the little keychain thingies. 
Spiderman Gets It On With Uncle Sam At The Macy's Parade
Hilarious.
via @radleybalko
Government's Role In Health Care And The Responsibility Of The Individual
Via @PaulHsieh, via westandfirm, Dr. Amesh Adalja explains at Forbes, "Want To Fix Healthcare? Acknowledge That It's the Responsibility Of the Individual":
It is indisputable that, for the majority of individuals, obtaining health insurance of some sort -- catastrophic or ordinary -- is an advisable financial decision. Health care plays a crucial role in one's life and can literally be life-saving in certain situations; health insurance can protect financial solvency in such situations. It is also clear that having healthy employees who maintain their health is in the interest of every corporation, as employee well-being is an important component of profitability.While these facts suggest that it may be a prudent decision for an individual to purchase health insurance or firms to offer health insurance as an employment perk, there is no justification for the government to nullify individual rights by forcing individuals to provide for the healthcare of others -- irrespective of the effect on the national economy.
A government's sole function is the protection of individual rights; all other functions the modern U.S. government has assumed are usurpations which have required the violation of the very rights the government was established to protect. This strictly delimited function of government requires the establishment of a police force, a military, and a judiciary system. As such, the government's position on the economy of the nation should not be to steer it or bolster it, but to stay out of it.
"What's Yours Is Mine" Dining
Just asked for "a little taste" of Gregg's paté.
He said yes.
I guess my fork got a little carried away.
Gregg: "That was like the 'little taste' Hitler and Stalin had of Poland."
Update On Geoff McGann Case (Steampunk Art As Terrorism, According To TSA)
I've been in touch by email with Geoff McGann, the advertising creative director thought to be a terrorists by the geniuses running "security" in our airports, and now Lisa Simeone at the anti-TSA TSANewsBlog has updated my earlier post, crossposted there:
UPDATE by Lisa Simeone: Of course, the Alameda County prosecutor came to his senses and declined to press charges. He waited till the eleventh hour, though. McGann, with his defense attorney, showed up at court as scheduled. It was only then that the clerk told them the charges had been dropped. So not only do the cops and the TSA owe McGann $150,000 -- and more -- for detaining him, making him miss his flight, arresting him, putting him in jail, and requiring him to post bond, but they also wasted yet more of his time by not notifying him that this farce of a case was dismissed. Oh, and for all the naysayers out there, McGann had already traveled with the Big Scary Terroristy Watch before and was, in fact, explicitly told by a TSA supervisor that it was perfectly okay. But then, it's so much more fun to blame the passenger instead of the brainiacs of the TSA. As McGann's lawyer put it:The attorney said if McGann had planned to use the watch to detonate a device on the plane, he would have hidden it instead of wearing it.In other words, "Duh."
I still hope he sues the hell out of them.
The Crony Capitalist Airline Market Makes Your Ticket Cost More
In The New York Times, Clifford Winston, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, advocates opening the domestic U.S. airline market up to foreign carriers:
With five airlines now serving 85 percent of the domestic market -- four, if American Airlines and US Airways merge, as industry analysts expect -- the major carriers are worrying less about the one factor that could disrupt their cozy, cram-'em-in strategy: competition.That is, unless policy makers do what they should have done a long time ago and allow foreign airlines, including discount carriers like Ryanair and global players like Qantas and British Airways, to serve domestic routes in the United States. Why, after all, should an industry that has ingeniously used free-market principles to squeeze the most revenue out of each middle seat be protected from competing in a real free market?
As things stand now, the United States allows foreign airlines to serve its major cities as part of international agreements -- conventions that have been around for decades. Foreign airlines have never posed a threat to national security or to the safety of air travelers; there's no indication that such carriers have resisted American security measures in the past or any reason to think they'd violate any protocols required for domestic routes either.
Competition from foreign airlines would put downward pressure on wages, something that union workers may object to. But by reducing fares and expanding service, it would also increase the demand for air travel and related services -- thus, presumably, creating additional jobs during a time of persistently high unemployment.
Airline travelers, in fact, have already benefited significantly from increased competition among international carriers. Beginning with a successful agreement with the Netherlands in 1992, the United States has pressed for liberal free-trade pacts, called "open skies" agreements, with several nations.
In collaboration with Jia Yan of Washington State University, I have estimated that travelers have gained at least $5 billion annually as a result of lower international fares and additional flights generated by open skies agreements.
By allowing foreign airlines to serve American domestic markets, the process of creating a truly free market in airline services here would be complete and, as in the case of international markets, would provide travelers the benefit of more flight choices and lower fares.
Governments R Stoopid (And Stupide, Across The Pond)
Voters in LA passed a measure to raise the sales tax a half a cent. A friend of Gregg's pointed out what this will mean for builders, for whom a half cent in materials can add up to a lot: They will stop buying their building supplies from LA-based businesses and instead buy them in nearby Pasadena, which does not have the half-cent tax increase.
Likewise, I predict the porn business in Los Angeles will move to Las Vegas to avoid the condom-nannies the voters have mandated.
Idiot politicians and idiot voters don't really think about the big picture -- hell, the slightly big picture -- when they're voting in these measures. So, they sink us further into financial disaster by killing the businesses we do have.
In France, the rich people are fleeing like rats on a seenking sheep (that's franglais for "sinking ship") thanks to François Hollande's socialist brilliance. From Jean Rafferty in the The New York Times:
PARIS -- The tax changes slated for the 2013 budget by President François Hollande's Socialist government are having an effect on the Paris luxury property market before they have even passed into law.Quite a few of France's most wealthy already have moved abroad to avoid the country's stiff inheritance and wealth taxes. Now, real estate agents say, the younger, working wealthy also are on the move, unhappy at the prospect of being taxed at 75 percent on income of more than €1 million, or $1.27 million, and a capital gains tax of more than 60 percent on stocks, bonds and company sales, although protests have produced exceptions for investors and new business start ups.
"In the last eight months since the measures were revealed, over 400 new residences, each worth above €1 million, have come on the market as French entrepreneurs and investors leave France," said Charles-Marie Gottras, president of Daniel Féau, a high-end French real estate broker.
"We are seeing the kind of luxurious, high-quality properties that one used to see once a year or every six months now arrive on the market every week," he said.
Taking off with all those rich Frogs are their euro-filled bank accounts and the taxes they might have paid in France when the rate was merely exorbitant.
The Pension Time Bomb
San Bernardino filed for bankruptcy protection in August. Tim Reid and Cezary Podkul and Ryan McNeill write for Reuters:
San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino's city workers -- and especially its police and firemen -- grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.
Unions poured money into city council elections, and the city council poured money into union pay and pensions. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), which manages pension plans for San Bernardino and many other cities, encouraged ever-sweeter benefits. Investment bankers sold clever bond deals to pay for them. Meanwhile, state law made it impossible to raise local property taxes and difficult to boost any other kind.
No single deal or decision involving benefits and wages over the years killed the city. But cumulatively, they built a pension-fueled financial time-bomb that finally exploded.
In bankrupt San Bernardino, a third of the city's 210,000 people live below the poverty line, making it the poorest city of its size in California. But a police lieutenant can retire in his 50s and take home $230,000 in one-time payouts on his last day, before settling in with a guaranteed $128,000-a-year pension. Forty-six retired city employees receive over $100,000 a year in pensions.
Almost 75 percent of the city's general fund is now spent solely on the police and fire departments, according to a Reuters analysis of city bankruptcy documents - most of that on wages and pension costs.
...The chronic mismanagement in San Bernardino, though, is a common feature of local government in California and around the United States. Much power over municipal finance lies in the hands of those with the most at stake -- city employees, elected officials and others who depend directly on government for their livelihood. And California is moving to put even more responsibility and funds, not less, in their hands.
via @walterolson
Palestinian Brats Made To Taunt Israeli Soldiers
From the YouTube writeup:
Palestinian parents pressing their children to provoke IDF soldiers -- a side of the demonstrations not usually talked about, despite it being a frequent occurrence.
TSA Thuggery Supporter Bob Burns Comments On My Post
Bob Burns, the blogging quisling who earns his living (as Blogger Bob) supporting the violation of our right to not be searched without probable cause, left a comment on my post "How Orwellian Are We? TSA Supe Roger Grant Refused To Give Me Name Of TSA Worker Who Groped Me At JFK":
Here we go again... TSA seems to be a frequent and a convenient subject on this blog. The writer's language characterization towards TSA and our employees is offensive to say the least. Name calling, insults, the whole gamut...In her latest screening incident, she's angry because a supervisor wouldn't give her the name of an officer who had just screened her. An officer who - by the way - by all accounts other than Ms. Alkon's, did her job by the book. It is more likely that she wanted this information so she could post the officer's name on her blog as she's done before with other incidents. In fact, she named and publicly accused one of our officers of rape after a routine pat-down in an earlier allegation.
Ms. Alkon says all sorts of things in this post, but what Ms. Alkon doesn't tell you is that from the moment she entered our checkpoint, she began making statements such as "TSA gets paid to molest passengers and touch their private areas." Does that sound like somebody who wants to get through the checkpoint smoothly? No, it sounds like somebody who makes a living by agitating situations and writing about them.
Also missing in the details, Ms. Alkon wasn't selected for a pat-down as she states in this post. She opted out of advanced imaging technology (body scanner). It's acceptable to opt out, but the standard protocol when a passenger opts out is that they receive a pat-down, not a free pass through security. If you read Amy's comments, she knows this. As Ms. Alkon continued to make a scene, the checkpoint supervisor stated he would have to call airport police if she did not cooperate with the screening process.
We understand that not everybody likes or agrees with TSA's policies and procedures. Part of what makes this country great is that we can openly complain on blogs such as this one, but I think it's only fair that the blogger in question should be fair and accurate about what they write about and also consider the privacy of the individuals involved. After all, these individuals are doing the job the way they've been trained to do it. They show up to work daily with the intent of protecting our Nation's transportation network.
I can assure you of one thing, an infinitesimal number of our employees know of Ms. Alkon. I can also assure you that reoccurring allegations like hers seem to be more self perpetuated rather than based upon reality and do nothing but detract from the mission at hand.
Bob Burns
TSA Blog Team
Posted by: Bob Burns at November 20, 2012 7:16 AM
My response:
"TSA gets paid to molest passengers and touch their private areas." Does that sound like somebody who wants to get through the checkpoint smoothly?No, it sounds like someone who wants to defend our constitutional rights.
You, Bob Burns, are terrible person. You take money in order to support the violation of our rights. Being a prostitute would be a far more noble profession. In that case, consenting adults remove their clothes in a consenting exchange.
Tell me why in the world there is a reason to search me?
I NEVER make the metal detector buzz, but often I don't even get to go through it.
And yes, I was selected for a SEARCH. I am selected just about every time I fly. Random? I doubt it. The fact that I choose not to go through scanners -- scanners that professors at UC have written papers about the dubious safety of -- does not mean I opt for the grope-down.
Furthermore, the thugs taking money for violating our rights that work for the TSA do a little intimidation number on me every time that I forgot to mention in the post. They tell me that they "don't have personnel" to watch my computer, iPad and other items that are out on the conveyer.
You are part of a framework that is not about catching terrorists -- Thedala Magee, Tiffany Applewhite...Moore, whose name I was denied in the most Orwellian manner...a woman allowed to grope my body sans probable cause...are these people highly trained intelligence officers? No, they are not. They're people who would be working other unskilled jobs if they weren't hired to provide security theater at the airport.
Any single commenter here smart enough to make it in the debating fray on my blog could smuggle contraband onto a plane. No, not through the cartoon security Jonathan Corbett and others have shown is a joke. (There was a TSA tester in Dallas who smuggled a gun through FIVE times without any of the hamburger clerks you have manning security noticing.)
This is not security -- it's obedience training for the American public so we will give up our rights like blinking sheep. It is odious that you earn a living supporting it. The TSA has not caught a single terrorist, and in fact, is unnecessary, now that our cockpit doors are reinforced and that we know that there's an Islamic game-changer: That terrorists are now willing and even eager to die.
There is no inaccuracy to what I write.
Furthermore, because I need to get on my flight, I cooperate with the thuggery at the airport -- the entirely unnecessary groping of my body when I'm probably recognized by the agents. (One woman at the Delta LAX terminal a few flights ago said so.) This is punitive, this groping of me and the groping of other Americans, and has nothing to do with finding terrorists.
And while you're crowing about free speech, let's note that Thedala Magee tried to yank $500,000 out of me for exercising mine. My lawyer, the wonderful Marc Randazza, showed that when somebody you do not want to have touching your body touches your sex parts in any other arena we call this rape. What do you call it?
You are helping people like Michael Chertoff get rich and you are helping erode our rights. You are doing an extremely shameful thing and I just wish you could not go to sleep nights for taking money for this, but it seems you have all the conscience of cement.
Caught one single terrorist, Bob?
Where's your comment on the post about Geoff McGann, the advertising creative guy who was JAILED for wearing a watch that didn't look to the hamburger clerks manning "security" like it was bought at JC Penney?
Oh, and regarding this from Bob:
No, it sounds like somebody who makes a living by agitating situations and writing about them.
I don't "make a living" from my blog. I earn a little money from ads and from when blog commenters buy stuff from my Amazon links. But, my living is earned as a syndicated newspaper columnist and author working on her third book which just sold at auction, meaning more than one company bid on it.
My blogging about the TSA -- and my speaking up at the airport -- is something I do for the same reason I blog about campus civil liberties defenders theFIRE.org and ask people to donate to them and to Institute for Justice: I am extremely grateful for the civil liberties we have and do my part to defend them.
You, Bob Burns, on the other hand, proudly take money to support the daily violation of Americans' rights at airports, and in turn, the erosion of civil liberties in this country.
Vile.
UPDATE: Bob Burns has posted on this on the TSA's blog -- using our tax dollars to attack me, free speech, and defend searches that are expensive "security theatre" -- but the site won't let me post my comment, cut down to be of acceptable word length for this blog. I've tried numerous times to get it to accept my comment. These were a few of the captchas I put through. None were accepted. 
Somebody whose IP is accepted to post there please tell him that he needs to post this response. Not surprisingly, though perhaps coincidentally, there seems to be a stumbling block to free speech on the TSA's blog.
Judge Judy Versus The Economy Of Free
We enable the freeloaders like the defendant -- and, it turns out, the plaintiff -- in her courtroom. "Send in this tape to Congress," Judge Judy says.
The male freeloader talks about taking our tax dollars given to him to subsidize his rent and instead spending it "on me," in his words...and being proud of it:
If I hear this guy say "ya know what I'm sayin'" one more time, I will implode.
On the other hand, I LOVE JUDGE JUDY. Grade A bitch-slapper and sharp-tongued justice dispenser of the "don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining" school.
We need more just like her.
via @Instapundit
Is That A Gun In Your Pocket?
(Or perhaps in your purse?) Indeed, it seems, it was.
A masturbating flasher "whipped it out" for a woman and she had a surprise to whip out for him, too -- at which point, he retracted his "weapon" and scurried away.
via @instapundit
Pay And Repay Through The Nose: The Impact Of The "Death Tax"
At Fox, William La Jeunesse writes that ranchers and farmers will be hard-hit by the "death tax," the tax heirs have to pay on a person's estate after he dies:
Rancher Kevin Kester works dawn to dusk, drives a 12-year-old pick-up truck and earns less than a typical bureaucrat in Washington D.C., yet the federal government considers him rich enough to pay the estate tax -- also known as the "death tax."And with that tax set to soar at the beginning of 2013 without some kind of intervention from Congress, farmers and ranchers like Kester are waiting anxiously.
"There is no way financially my kids can pay what the IRS is going to demand from them nine months after death and keep this ranch intact for their generation and future generations," said Kester, of the Bear Valley Ranch in Central California.
Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.
For supporters of a high estate tax, which is imposed on somebody's estate after death, Kester is the kind of person they rarely mention. He doesn't own a mansion. He's not the CEO of a multi-national. But because of his line of work, he owns a lot of property that would be subject to a lot of tax.
..."For everyone to have to re-purchase the ranch or farm over and over for each generation, that's inherently unjust. So what we're doing is asking our politicians to understand that and repeal the estate tax."
...Currently, the federal government taxes estates worth $5 million dollars and up at 35 percent. When the Bush-era tax rates expire in January, rates increase to 55 percent on estates of $1 million or more. While some Republicans want to eliminate the death tax entirely, President Obama has proposed a 45 percent rate on estates of $3.5 million and up.
Calling this a tax is way too polite. It's theft, with a government stamp on it.
In tangible terms, this is like building a house and then dying and having the government come tear off the roof and keep it. Your wife and kids will get rained on unless they have the money to bribe the government to leave the roof on. (We call this "paying taxes" -- much more genteel).
"It's Not About The Calories"
Gary Taubes just posted a very informative and interesting blog item about the mistaken notion that calorie consumption and energy expenditure tell us anything meaningful about why we get fat or lose fat:
I believe that the mantra that 'a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" serves only to direct attention away from the meaningful characteristics of the macronutrients in our diets.I've been arguing that the original sin in obesity research is this belief that our body fat is regulated by the amount of energy we consume and expend. I think this is simply the wrong way to think about obesity and the chronic diseases with which it associates, and it's because this is the fundamental assumption underlying most obesity research, it's the reason why we've made so little progress. (And to those who think we have made real progress, I suggest they take a look around at the people walking by and reconsider.)
Another way to put this is that I think this energy balance hypothesis of obesity is an incorrect paradigm and it has to be replaced with a correct paradigm before progress will be made.
He talks about a thought experiment with an imaginary set of twins:
Our imaginary twins will be perfectly happy anyway because we say so.) We're going to feed them almost identical diets. Each one is going to get exactly 3000 calories a day so that their intake matches their initial expenditure. If we believe in calories, as my friend might have put it, the fact that we're matching intake to expenditure and both twins are getting the same intake suggests they will both maintain a stable weight for the duration of the experiment.But here's the experimental twist: the diets are not identical, they're only almost identical. They differ in the macronutrient content of ten percent of the calories. So 2700 calories of the two diets are identical. The other 300 calories of A's diet will come from sugar -- sucrose, to be precise, molecules of glucose bonded to molecules of fructose. In B's diet, these 300 calories will come from glucose alone. So A will get 150 calories of fructose that B won't get, and B will get 150 calories more glucose than A. Other than that the diets are indeed identical with all the macro and micronutrients necessary for the twins to flourish.
Now we run the experiment for 20 years. What happens? Care to guess? Will A and B still be identical after 20 years of A eating 300 calories of sugar every day that B does not eat?
We know sugar is metabolized differently from the glucose in starch because of the fructose component. Glucose is metabolized by cells throughout the body; fructose is metabolized primarily in the liver. We know the liver will turn some of this fructose into fat and if the fructose is delivered quickly enough (say in liquid form as sugar water), it likely to cause insulin resistance in the liver, which in turn might cause systemic insulin resistance. The extra 150 calories of glucose in B's diet will stimulate more insulin secretion, although for B this will come in the absence of any fructose-induced effects in the liver. One way or the other, A and B will experience different metabolic and hormonal effects, despite eating precisely the same amount of calories in diets that are otherwise 90 percent identical. Their fat cells, for instance, will be on the receiving end of different hormonal and metabolic signals. As Claude Bernard would say, the fat cells would be living in a different milieu intérieur and this will effect how they change over time.
Taubes is the author of two excellent books I highly recommend -- Good Calories, Bad Calories (for the experience reader of science) and Why We Get Fat (more of a layperson's book).
via @DrEades
"Injured" Palestinian Miraculously Recovers
In case you haven't seen it, a Palestinian man carried off as if wounded by other men when the cameras are looking on makes an amazingly rapid recovery afterward:
From the YouTube writeup:
Barely one day into the fighting in Hamas-run Gaza, the locals are hard at work playing the victim for the world's press.Footage from the BBC captured by watchdog group Honest Reporting shows a heavy man lying on the ground and being carried away by residents, apparently after being injured by an Israeli attack.
Moments later, that same man again fills the frame, except he is walking about and obviously unhurt.
The widespread staging of such victim situations is a favored tactic of Arabs fighting Israel and has come to be known as "Pallywood."
What happens when the cameras turn up at the scene of an airstrike in Gaza and there simply aren't enough Palestinian dead and injured to produce dramatic footage that can be used against Israel in the international media?
Welcome to Pallywood!
Life Is Fair -- Until It Isn't
I wrote about this sort of ridiculousness in I See Rude People -- kids being taught that everybody wins instead of being taught the truth: there are real rewards for achievement.
Professor Stephen T. Asma writes in his new book, Against Fairness
Our contemporary hunger for equality can border on the comical. When my six-year-old son came home from first grade with a fancy winner's ribbon, I was filled with pride to discover that he had won a footrace. While I was heaping praise on him, he interrupted to correct me. "No, it wasn't just me," he explained. "We all won the race!" He impatiently educated me. He wasn't first or second or third--he couldn't even remember what place he took. Everyone who ran the race was told that they had won, and they were all given the same ribbon. "Well, you can't all win a race," I explained to him, ever-supportive father that I am. That doesn't even make sense. He simply held up his purple ribbon and raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say, "You are thus refuted." . . .More troubling than the institutional enforcement of this strange fairness is the fact that such protective "lessons" ill-equip kids for the realities of later life. As our children grow up, they will have to negotiate a world of partiality. Does it really help children when our schools legislate reality into a "fairer" but utterly fictional form? The focus on equality of outcome may produce a generation that is burdened with an indignant sense of entitlement.
Hostess Execs Looted The Company Before Bankruptcy
Via Gawker, Hostess execs shoveled themselves some nice piles of cash before filing for bankruptcy. Annie Rose Strasser writes at ThinkProgress:
The Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International Union pointed this out in their written reaction to the news that the business is closing:BCTGM members are well aware that as the company was preparing to file for bankruptcy earlier this year, the then CEO of Hostess was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000) and at least nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises. One such executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256.Certainly, the company agreed to an out-sized pension debt, but the decision to pay executives more while scorning employee contracts during a bankruptcy reflects a lack of good managerial judgement.
It also follows a trend of rising CEO pay in times of economic difficulty. At the manufacturing company Caterpillar, for example, they froze workers' pay while boosting their CEO's pay to $17 million. And at Citigroup, CEO Vikram Pandit received $6.7 million for crashing his company, walking off with $260 million after the business lost 88 percent of its value.
Israelis Aren't Supposed To Defend Themselves
Phyllis Chesler lays it out at IsraeliNationalNews.com:
Day #6 of Israel's decision to fight back, to stop the constant barrage of Hamas rockets, meant this: according to the IDF, in the first five days, over 500 rockets from Gaza rained down on Israeli civilians and the Iron Dome intercepted 287 such rockets. Additionally, they note that 45% of Israelis live within rocket range of Hamas's missiles and rockets. That number is equivalent to 140 million Americans.Would America or any other non-Muslim majority country live with such constant terror, such overwhelming vulnerability to genocidal forces?
And yet, demonstrations in favor of just such terrorism to exterminate the Jewish state have been taking place around the world.
...While some Western democracies have finally supported Israel's right to defend herself, world leaders will soon want Israel, who is the true victim here and who is fighting a war of self-defense, to lay down its surgically precise weaponry and resign itself to a life in which Israeli civilians are expected to live with the sound of 1000 sirens and 1000 rockets--or more--exploding every single year.
World leaders are worried that Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups will be "hurt" and that this might translate into even greater instability in the region. The reasoning goes: Israel should allow itself to be sacrificed in order to....stop the Shiite Muslims from slaughtering Sunni Muslims and vice versa; stop Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood from taking over even more than just Egypt and Libya.
In reality, the knee-jerk reflex of believing that Israel can stop the Muslim-on-Muslim and Muslim-on-infidel violence is undergoing a small "aha" moment.
More people understand that none of this is Israel's fault and that the sacrifice and terrorization of Israel will not bring peace to the roiling region. It is also increasingly obvious, that Israel is the West's only stable and militarily sophisticated ally in the Middle East.
Even Westerner journalists "get" that Syrians are slaughtering Syrians; that Israel has nothing to do with this; and that, come to think of it, there are
Come to think of it, there are possibly 300,000 Syrian refugees (and 1. 5 million Afghan refugees still in Pakistani camps) for which no UNRWA exists.
possibly 300,000 Syrian refugees (and 1. 5 million Afghan refugees still in Pakistani camps) for which no UNRWA exists.Why is the United Nations supporting only terrorists and abandoning the world's real refugees as well as the civilian victims of terrorism?
For the last twelve years, Israelis, who do not hide behind children, do not stash their ammunition, rockets, and missiles in synagogues or among civilians, who take exquisite care to avoid enemy civilians--have, nevertheless, been portrayed as Nazi-Fascist-Apartheid aggressors. Israel and Zionism--the liberation movement of the perpetually persecuted Jewish people--have become the "dirtiest" words in the world; curse words.
Islamists, who routinely practice both religious and gender apartheid as well as the human sacrifice of their women, children, and civilians behind whom they hide--Islamists have been portrayed as innocent "freedom fighters."
Black Way Before Friday Deals In Electronics
At Amazon
Big savings on a little item -- the Joby GP1-A1EN GorillaPod Flexible Tripod (Grey and Black)
Amazon has finally fixed the "Powered by Amazon" button in Amy's Mall (although I haven't had a moment to fix the text that says it's still broken). So, to buy something that's not linked here, just go through this link
And thank you -- really, truly appreciate all the purchases that you all send my way.
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Carl Alasko On Blame
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My guest tonight is psychotherapist Carl Alasko, Ph.D., talking about blame -- one of the most toxic and destructive components of relationships and so many human interactions.
We'll be talking about how to stop blaming and how to take healthier -- and far more productive -- steps to problem-solving, in relationships and beyond.
Alasko has written a very comprehensive book on blame -- Beyond Blame: Freeing Yourself from the Most Toxic Form of Emotional Bullsh*t
Listen to tonight's show live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/11/19/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with child psychiatrist and trauma specialist Bruce J. Perry. He's talking about increasing empathy, and why it's key to living a happy, healthy, productive life -- from infancy on.
We talked about his wonderful book, Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/11/12/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday from 7-8 pm Pacific and 10-11 pm Eastern, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Buy my science-based but funny book on why we're so rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, at Amazon. And please look for my award-winning, nationally syndicated, science-based advice column in a paper near you or ask the editor to carry it. Getting paid for writing it keeps me writing it!
How Orwellian Are We? TSA Supe Roger Grant Refused To Give Me Name Of TSA Worker Who Groped Me At JFK
He also threatened me with arrest just for asking for her first name (which she refused to provide me), and which was impossible to see, since she wore her ID badge upside down.
A good many TSA workers seem to wear their badges upside down -- I suspect, so they cannot be identified on blogs, as I identified the TSA's Thedala Magee, and more recently, another LAX TSA gropenfrau, Tiffany Applewhite.
This is the text of my email to TSA press liason Nico Melendez, which details the disgusting actions of the TSA at JFK the other day, when Gregg and I were flying home.
The email asks for answers -- as well as names of those who think they're employed and empowered by the United States of Orwell.
Gregg and I were in New York attending the National Book Awards, not the al Qaeda Leadership Conference, and I'd had lunch with my book agent and my editor, a lovely Italian man whose name is decidedly not al-Zawahiri.
In other words, there was no reason whatsoever to search me -- to grope my breasts, graze my vagina, or touch me or my possessions in any way. But all of that was done to me, and Gregg was groped as well.
Let's be mindful that the government pension-seeking hamburger clerks the TSA hires couldn't find a terrorist if one crawled up their ass and whistled the al Qaeda theme song.
Any plots uncovered have been exposed by trained intelligence agents -- like Fred Humphries, the FBI agent who uncovered the Millennium bombing plot at LAX by noticing that a guy with a Montreal baptismal certificate had an Algerian accent.
SUBJECT: Nico, info needed for piece on TSA incident Nov 15 at JFKNico,
On Thursday, November 15, at around 2pm, I was going through Kennedy Airport, Terminal 2 (Delta), going to gate 27 for a Delta flight home to Los Angeles.As usual, I was pulled out for more screening. (It is odd that I, like many large-breasted women am always chosen -- always by men at the metal detectors -- to go for further screening. Every time I fly.)
Of course, in this case, there was no reason to believe I was guilty of anything other than flying home to Los Angeles to feed my dog and go to bed.
The serious issue at hand here: The light-skinned black woman who screened me, last name "Moore," was wearing her photo ID upside down so her first name could not be read. After she ran her hands, most disgustingly, all over my body, grazing my labia and touching my breasts and inside my turtleneck on my bare skin, I told her I needed her first name. She refused to give it to me.
It seems to me that when a government worker is doing a contested activity like groping my body for "security" purposes, sans probable cause, or engaging in any search of me as a citizen, I am entitled to that person's full name and badge number. In fact, we should be entitled to any government worker's full name when we have any dealing with them -- as long as we are still a free country.
I am asking you to provide both the full name and badge number of agent Moore now for a piece I am writing about this event.I also need to know if agents are required, for accountability to the public they are touching in their most private areas, to wear their identification so it is visible.
Does the public not have a right to know the name of the person they are being searched by, or have things become *that* Orwellian?
Furthermore, when I went over to agent Moore's supervisor, the supervisor, Mr. Grant, a light-skinned black man seated at a podium in the corner, also refused to give me his first name.
I could read his name on his badge -- Roger Grant -- as his badge was not upside-down.
When I told TSA supervisor Roger Grant I needed the first name of the woman (Moore) who'd searched my body, he refused to give it to me and told me he would call the police on me. He said this in concert with telling me to leave. This was upsetting, frightening, and extremely intimidating.
Is this truly TSA procedure? That when a citizen asks the name of the person who searched them, they are denied the name and then threatened with arrest?I want you to give me Roger Grant's badge number, his job history with the TSA, and an explanation of whether his behavior of threatening me with arrest for asking for the name of the agent who searched me was in line with TSA procedure.
I asked Roger Grant for a complaint form and he refused to give me one. He said I could complain online
I want to know whether there will be any reprimand or punishment made of these two, and if not, why not.I'd also like a complaint form since Grant refused to give me one.
Is this the America you want to live in?
Please answer all my questions in boldface, provide any additional information you might have that relates to this incident, and let me know when you can get back to me.
-Amy Alkon
How California Keeps Poor People From Getting Affordable Glasses
Of course, through protectionist legislation. Ilya Shapiro posts at Cato that states shouldn't discriminate against out-of-state-based retailers:
he National Association of Optometrists & Opticians represents eyewear manufacturers and distributors in California, where state officials have been myopic with respect to business regulation.Under California's Business and Professions Code, state-licensed optometrists and ophthalmologists are allowed to conduct eye exams and sell glasses at their place of business, while commercial retailers--such as the national eyewear chains represented by the NAOO--are barred from furnishing onsite optometry services. Since consumers have a strong preference for "one stop shopping"--buying their glasses at the same place where they have their eye exams--California's law gives instate retailers a crucial competitive advantage. Businesses that cannot co-locate their services have quickly vanished from the market.
The NAOO thus sued California officials for discriminating against out-of-state retailers in violation of the "dormant" Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from imposing unjustifiable burdens on interstate commerce. The district court ruled in the group's favor, concluding that the relevant statutes have a widespread and unjustified discriminatory effect that can't be reconciled with Supreme Court precedent. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, however, holding that state-licensed optometrists and out-of-state retailers aren't similarly situated competitors--even though they compete for the same customers in the same market.
...We argue that California's laws are unconstitutional because their true purpose--as revealed through legislative history and the scheme's hollow public health rationale--was merely to protect in-state business interests. California's protectionist regime also has an adverse impact on poor and minority consumers, who confront increased costs and diminished access to eye care while also being disproportionately afflicted with visual impairments.
...The Court will decide whether to take up National Association of Optometrists & Opticians v. Harris later this year or in early 2013.
Silicon Valley Censorship
I recently found that taxpayer dollars are being used to censor my website -- on taxpayer-subsidized Amtrak. Their nannyware wouldn't let people riding the train onto my site.
There's a whole lot of pre-emptive nannying going on. In The New York Times, Evgeny Morozov writes in an op-ed:
A BASTION of openness and counterculture, Silicon Valley imagines itself as the un-Chick-fil-A. But its hyper-tolerant facade often masks deeply conservative, outdated norms that digital culture discreetly imposes on billions of technology users worldwide.What is the vehicle for this new prudishness? Dour, one-dimensional algorithms, the mathematical constructs that automatically determine the limits of what is culturally acceptable.
Consider just a few recent kerfuffles. In early September, The New Yorker found its Facebook page blocked for violating the site's nudity and sex standards. Its offense: a cartoon of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Eve's bared nipples failed Facebook's decency test.
That's right -- a venerable publication that still spells "re-elect" as "reëlect" is less puritan than a Californian start-up that wants to "make the world more open."
And fighting obscenity can be good for business. Impermium, a Silicon Valley company that helps Web sites deal with unwanted reader comments, has begun marketing technology that identifies "all kinds of harmful content -- such as violence, racism, flagrant profanity, and hate speech -- and allows site owners to act on it in real-time, before it reaches readers." Impermium will police the readers -- but who will police Impermium?
Apple, too, has strayed from its iconoclastic roots. When Naomi Wolf's latest book, "Vagina: A New Biography," went on sale in its iBooks store, Apple turned "Vagina" into "V****a." After numerous complaints, Apple restored the title, but who knows how many other books are still affected?
True, these books are still on sale. Unlike the good old United States Post Office, which once confiscated "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and other books it deemed too lewd, Silicon Valley does not engage in direct censorship. What it does, though, is present ideas and terms that have gained public acceptance as something to be ashamed of. Silicon Valley doesn't just reflect social norms -- it actively shapes them in ways that are, for the most part, imperceptible.
Steampunk Art Is Now Terrorism, According To The TSA
Via David Burkhead, the TSA has now taken to arresting people with artsy homemade watches and shoes. The nitwits at the Oakland airport said his watch could be used to make a timing device for a bomb.
Um...any watch could be used for that -- especially digital ones. This watch, as Burkhead suggests, was probably some form of steampunk art -- a sort of Jules Verne style that hamburger clerks hired to man "security" would surely have no idea of.
This is not grounds for taking a man's freedom.
From the AP story:
Geoffrey McGann, 49, of Rancho Palos Verdes was taken into custody Thursday night after he tried to pass through airport security with an ornate watch that had switches, wires and fuses, according to Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff's Department.A bomb squad arrived within five minutes and determined there were no explosive materials in the watch, Nelson said. The checkpoint was closed while officers secured the area.
McGann was taken to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin where he was charged with possessing materials to make an explosive device, sheriff's officials said. He was still in custody Friday night and could not be reached for comment.
McGann told Transportation Security Administration officers that he's an artist and the watch is art, Nelson said.
While no actual explosives were found, McGann was carrying potentially dangerous materials and appeared to have made alterations to his boots, which were unusually large and stuffed with layers of insoles, Nelson said.
A profile for a person named Geoffrey McGann on the website LinkedIn.com lists him as the owner and creative director of a media production company called Generator Content. He attended the Art College Center of Design in Pasadena from 1984 to 1987, according to the website.
These idiots, idiots at the TSA. This is a guy who makes commercials, not bombs. Here's his profile from his website.
A question: Will this be enough? Creative dudes getting arrested for having creative watches and funny shoes? What will it take before people start to realize they could be next? And that the degradation of our rights and the sheeplike, blinking acceptance of that paves the way for more and more degradation of our rights?
The Frump Factor
I've avoided saying it publicly -- only mentioning it to Gregg or a friend or two -- but I found the image of David Petraeus next to his wife rather shocking. Now that Megan Daum has splayed it all over the LA Times op-ed page, I may as well blog what she wrote about Petraeus' wife's looks:
Showing no signs of slavery to high fashion, power yoga, Botox or hair dye, she can be seen as an unlikely partner for a staggeringly accomplished man famous for his obsession with physical fitness. The chattersphere has been particularly harsh, invoking the word "granny" and suggesting that the general can't be blamed for his actions. "I'd have done the same thing," said a commenter on CNN's website. A (female) reader of the Huffington Post offered that Holly Petraeus' "entire demeanor, her hair, no makeup, her frumpy clothes, seem to scream to her husband and others ... I don't care!"...As much as the main narrative of this scandal belongs to her husband and his mistress, her story contains an even more cautionary tale. If it's no longer shocking that a powerful man would have an affair with a younger, worshipful woman, it is a little shocking that the wife of that powerful man, nerdish as he is, would thwart the beauty industrial complex quite so vigorously.
It would be foolish, of course, to suggest that the general would have been able control himself if only his wife agreed to a makeover. After all, assiduous gym rats with nary a gray hair get cheated on; newlyweds get cheated on; all kinds of women -- and men -- are betrayed by all kinds of spouses.
Of course, Megan Daum, like so many, has no understanding that men and women are different -- physically and psychologically -- and are judged by different standards. Male sexuality is highly visual in a way female sexuality is not. But, Daum, in her cluelessness, ends with this bow to feminist lies about how the gender-free utopia should work:
The era of old, crotchety white male dominance may be coming to an end. But it won't matter much until the women that replace them are allowed to get old and crotchety too.
Feminism promotes the lie to women that what's inside is what really matters. And, as I wrote in my Psychology Today piece on the realities about beauty, what's inside matters a great deal. But, if you're a woman and you want a man or want to keep the one you have, you need to keep up your curb appeal.
Ignore that or deny that at your peril, ladies.
College Campuses: The Most Authoritarian Institutions In America
Free exchange of ideas? If you think that's what's happening on a college campus in this country, well, you haven't been on a college campus in a very long time.
Sohrab Ahmari writes in the WSJ about Greg Lukianoff, president of theFIRE.org (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and its mission and his to defend free speech rights on college campuses:
At Yale University, you can be prevented from putting an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on your T-shirt. At Tufts, you can be censured for quoting certain passages from the Quran. Welcome to the most authoritarian institution in America: the modern university--"a bizarre, parallel dimension," as Greg Lukianoff ... calls it...."The people who believe that colleges and universities are places where we want less freedom of speech have won," Mr. Lukianoff says. "If anything, there should be even greater freedom of speech on college campuses. But now things have been turned around to give campus communities the expectation that if someone's feelings are hurt by something that is said, the university will protect that person. As soon as you allow something as vague as Big Brother protecting your feelings, anything and everything can be punished."
...In his new book, "Unlearning Liberty," Mr. Lukianoff notes that baby-boom Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth. But that idealized university no longer exists. It was wiped out in the 1990s by administrators, diversity hustlers and liability-management professionals, who were often abetted by professors committed to political agendas.
"What's disappointing and rightfully scorned," Mr. Lukianoff says, "is that in some cases the very professors who were benefiting from the free-speech movement turned around to advocate speech codes and speech zones in the 1980s and '90s."
Today, university bureaucrats suppress debate with anti-harassment policies that function as de facto speech codes. FIRE maintains a database of such policies on its website, and Mr. Lukianoff's book offers an eye-opening sampling. What they share is a view of "harassment" so broad and so removed from its legal definition that, Mr. Lukianoff says, "literally every student on campus is already guilty."
At Western Michigan University, it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude." That just about sums up the line "I think of all Harvard men as sissies" (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 novel "This Side of Paradise"), a quote that was banned at Yale when students put it on a T-shirt. Tufts University in Boston proscribes the holding of "sexist attitudes," and a student newspaper there was found guilty of harassment in 2007 for printing violent passages from the Quran and facts about the status of women in Saudi Arabia during the school's "Islamic Awareness Week."
At California State University in Chico, it was prohibited until recently to engage in "continual use of generic masculine terms such as to refer to people of both sexes or references to both men and women as necessarily heterosexual." Luckily, there is no need to try to figure out what the school was talking about--the prohibition was removed earlier this year after FIRE named it as one of its two "Speech Codes of the Year" in 2011.
At Northeastern University, where I went to law school, it is a violation of the Internet-usage policy to transmit any message "which in the sole judgment" of administrators is "annoying."
As Greg Lukianoff points out in his compelling book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
Colleges now press out thought robots taught to never offend, but never taught to debate. We end up with polarized politics and people who think whatever the other side is, well, they're all the next best thing to (fill in name of evil person)...probably Hitler.
Oops, The Terrorists Forgot To BCC
A Taliban spokesman hit "cc" instead, sending out his mailing list to everyone on it, reports Uri Friedman at Foreign Policy.
Whiney Mass Murderer Breivik Complains, "I Am Not Allowed Moisturizer"
Lowering The Bar blogs about Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik's turn as the Goldilocks of jailed, cold-blooded killers, as he writes a 27-page letter of his complaints to the country's prison service. These, according to the BBC, include:
•his coffee is often cold;
•he has to "rush" when shaving and brushing his teeth;
•his cell is "poorly decorated" and has no view;
•he is not given enough butter for his bread;
•the TV switch is outside his cell; and, most diabolically,
•he is not allowed moisturizer.
Lowering The Bar continues:
Oh dear. We are sorry, sir. Was the Chateaubriand not to your liking? Wine not properly chilled? Perhaps the presentation of the Bananas Foster was insufficiently flamboyant. The explanation may be that the chef is new, or possibly that YOU ARE A MURDERING PIECE OF TRASH. I'll check, sir.... Yes, it is the latter. It appears one's hands will remain chapped for the foreseeable future, sir. Perhaps they have moisturizer in Hell, sir, although one thinks it unlikely.
via @overlawyered
Want A Beach House? You Pay.
I've posted about this before, how we subsidize other people's seaside living with Federal flood insurance, but they delivered a USA Today to our hotel room this morning, and I was all irate all over again reading their editorial. They talk about the assumption that those who lost their seaside homes should up and rebuild where they were:
At least one leading New Jersey politician is already talking about moving people out of some of the most flood-prone areas, those drowned last year by Tropical Storm Irene and again by Sandy. "Get appraisals for their homes, write them a check, knock the homes down and just let it go back to its natural state," said Steven Sweeney, a Democrat and president of the New Jersey Senate.Good luck with that. A huge federal apparatus and powerful special interests are intent on doing just the opposite. The best illustration of this misguided policy is the National Flood Insurance Program, created in 1968 to provide insurance to homeowners on coasts and near rivers who had trouble getting private coverage.
The creators meant well, but here's the flaw: The program's premiums don't reflect the actual risks, especially in an era of rising sea levels and extreme weather. As a result, federal insurance has encouraged developers to overbuild in risky areas, buyers to purchase there and residents to rebuild even after repeated flooding.
A USA TODAY analysis in 2010 found 19,600 properties where multiple insurance claims resulted in payouts greater than the property's value. One Mississippi home valued at $69,000 had been flooded 34 times since 1978, prompting insurance payouts of nearly 10 times its worth!
...Step one is to carefully decide what should, and shouldn't, be rebuilt. Encourage residents to leave the most vulnerable places. In the areas that are rebuilt, require homes to be raised on pilings, and restore dunes and other natural buffers.
Longer term, eliminate taxpayer subsidies of the insurance market. Premiums would surely rise, some drastically, reflecting the true risk of living so close to the water. And that's the whole point.
Big Red Ass On Park Ave
Niki de Saint Phalle's sculptures are riding Park Ave. Here's a shot of one on from our way back to JFK: 
A Roundabout Post On Elmore Leonard And How Cities Say Screw You For Staying With Us
We were in New York for the NBA -- which, if you're a book nerd, you know has nothing to do with Kobe dunking anything, but is the National Book Awards.
At this year's ceremony, Elmore Leonard
(My favorite Elmore Leonard novel is Swag
The event was at the beautiful Cipriani ballroom downtown. I got to sit next to both Gregg and the classy, talented and always friendly Graham Yost, who is the writer, showrunner, and executive producer behind Justified
Peter Leonard, who's always lots of fun, and who wrote a book I really liked about a Jewish scrapdealer who kicks some Nazi ass, Voices of the Dead
Elmore gave a great speech, quoting a review of him I loved, from New Music Express in the UK, calling him, "The poet laureate of wild assholes with revolvers."
Elmore's friend Martin Amis did a great introduction of him, noting that Elmore "doesn't write in the present or the perfect tense ... he writes in a kind of marijuana tense."
Leslie Kaufman wrote in the NYT:
It was only the second time that the award, which has been presented since 1988, went to a writer who was a popular favorite as opposed to a critically acclaimed legend. The first time was when the master of horror, Stephen King, won in 2003. Mr. King was also in the audience Wednesday night to help honor his friend.Mr. Leonard, 80, took a humble tone. He compared himself with the English novelist Martin Amis, who introduced him, saying that Mr. Amis was a critically acclaimed writer and that he "was a category on 'Jeopardy!' "
Still, Mr. Leonard concluded by acknowledging that the award had meaning for him. "I am energized by this honor. The only thing I've ever wanted to do in my life is tell stories, and this award tells me I am still good at it," he said.
Oh, and what got me started on this blog post (I'm still half-asleep) is noticing our bill under our hotel room door, with "OCC/Javits Center Expansion" of $3.50 a night, in addition to a buttload of city taxes. We did not go in or even near the Convention Center. But, we get stuck with paying for it for the two days we were here. No choice.
Yeah, it's just a few dollars a night and New York is already expensive, but voters in many cities, including New York vote in pocket-pickings like this of all kinds, and with the sales tax plus the "city tax," it added over $50 a night to our hotel bill.
Makes you think twice about coming back and staying at a hotel. (We'd tried to rent a friend's apartment but it turned out to not be available, and then Sandy hit and we ended up staying at a pricier hotel than we would have because EL's publisher got us in when none had openings.)
Napolitano On FBI: "If They Can Do This To Petraeus, They Can Do This To Anybody"
Very interesting piece by Matthew Boyle, interviewing Judge Andrew Napolitano at The Daily Caller:
Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano told The Daily Caller that, during its investigation of former CIA Director David Petraeus and his biographer, the FBI appears to have wrongfully treated a simple domestic dispute like a national security or criminal matter....Napolitano said the federal investigation was "the use of law enforcement either for a personal vendetta that [Tampa military liaison Jill] Kelley pushed through her FBI agent connection, or a political vendetta - somebody wanting to silence, by embarrassing, humiliating and destroying the credibility of Petraeus."
"Not only does it not appear there was a crime committed," Napolitano continued, "[and] not only does it not appear that there was a national security implication, but this is hardly the type of thing that the FBI investigates. This was instigated, apparently, by the Kelley woman, and her friend in the FBI. That is an inappropriate means to commence an investigation by the FBI."
Napolitano, who is a former New Jersey Superior Court judge, said federal agents, like members of the judiciary, are typically prohibited from working on cases that present a conflict of interest. (RELATED: CIA denies claim it held hostages at Libya annex)
"In fact, the FBI has an internal rule that if an FBI agent knows the complainant, the victim or the target, that FBI agent cannot have anything to do with the case, because that often clouds an individual's judgment," Napolitano continued. "It's like a judge trying a case in which he knows one of the parties. It's prohibited, and the judge has to reveal that, and get off the case. The principle is the same for the FBI. For that reason, I don't believe the government's version of these events."
According to numerous reports, the FBI began its investigation after Kelley told an agent, whom she knew as a friend, that she had received harassing emails from an anonymous source. The emails, which the agency eventually traced back to Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell, appeared to be an attempt to intimidate Kelley into staying away from Petraeus.
"It's inconceivable that the FBI decided to do an investigation based on one email between two private people, whether it mentions Petraeus' name or not," Napolitano added. "I don't know what criminal charges could be filed. It's not a crime for Mrs. Broadwell to send an email to Mrs. Kelley saying, 'Stay away from my guy.'"
via @smallggay
Cosby Sweaters
My dear journalist and syndicator friend David Wallis joked at breakfast this morning that Obama is still president because nobody wanted to cancel the Huxtables mid-season.
Sorry to be light on blog items these past few days. It's been a whirlwind in New York -- great time -- but I'll be back home and blogging more regularly on Thursday.
Feel free to post links -- one or two per comment (including the link you post with your name) -- or my spam filter will eat you. Or at least eat your comment.
It Isn't Just The Inner City Kids Doing Poorly At School
Arthur Levine claims in the WSJ that the U.S. economy could be $1 trillion a year stronger if American students performed at Canada's level in math:
Parents nationwide are familiar with the wide academic achievement gaps separating American students of different races, family incomes and ZIP Codes. But a second crucial achievement gap receives far less attention. It is the disparity between children in America's top suburban schools and their peers in the highest-performing school systems elsewhere in the world.Of the 70 countries tested by the widely used Program for International Student Assessment, the United States falls in the middle of the pack. This is the case even for relatively well-off American students: Of American 15-year-olds with at least one college-educated parent, only 42% are proficient in math, according to a Harvard University study of the PISA results. That is compared with 75% proficiency for all 15-year-olds in Shanghai and 50% for those in Canada.
Compared with big urban centers, America's affluent suburbs have roughly four times as many students performing at the academic level of their international peers in math. But when American suburbs are compared with two of the top school systems in the world--in Finland and Singapore--very few, such as Evanston, Ill., and Scarsdale, N.Y., outperform the international competition. Most of the other major suburban areas underperform the international competition. That includes the likes of Grosse Point, Mich., Montgomery County, Md., and Greenwich, Conn. And most underperform substantially, according to the Global Report Card database of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
Is our empire over?
What's the cause for the decline?
Paul Tough, whom I had on my radio show, says that character counts a great deal in why children succeed -- self-discipline, for example.
Here's what Peter Yurowitz, who says he was a teacher for 46 years (" Mathematics to Junior and Senior High School students in both poor urban and wealthy suburban schools") has to say in a comment on the WSJ's site:
America's standing in the world will continue to fall unless we accept and debate the real reason for this decline. America can throw a trillion dollars at this problem and I can assure you that every penny will have been wasted. The problem is not related to the quality of our schools, the ability of our teachers or the organizations that protect teacher's rights, aka unions. It is totally an issue of political correctness that refuses to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of those most to blame for the continuing decline - our society.Our kids don't read newspapers, they watch reality TV. Our kids don't spend after school hours doing homework and studying - they prowl the malls or "hang out" with their buddies. Our parents don't spend evenings overseeing their children - they're too drained having worked countless hours just to make ends meet. Our parents don't take responsibility for monitoring their children's activities and making certain that the education received at school is reinforced at home - they're busy blaming the teachers and schools for their kids failings.
In my final year of teaching, I was accused by one set of parents for not allowing their son to take a makeup exam, and then enduring an attack on my inefficiency and my "refusal" to give their son extra help, as needed. The parent seemed to ignore the fact that extra help to all of me students was offered both before and after school - their son never showed up. The make-up exam was scheduled for a pre-school hour - and their son never showed up. Where was their son? He was part of an extra curricular activity, which while lauded by both the school and parents, was not academic in nature. The parents, and through them, their son set their own priorities, yet they blamed me for the fact that they chose to prioritize elsewhere. By the way, their son was rescheduled to take the exam during class time, thus missing out on a new lesson, but again, that was their choice.
Over the many years, many, many colleagues had similar experiences. It should be noted that the number of these experiences has only increased over the years.
Here's the bottom line - our society does not value education. Period. Singapore does. That's why their children succeed while our continue to fail. If was pay oodles for students to pursue athletics and pittances to pursue academics, the results are self evident. If we continue to expect our governments to solve all of our problems and abrogate all responsibility for our children's education, the results are self evident. If we abrogate our responsibilities as parents and let our children's values be dictated by what they see on TV, then our slide downwards will soon become a plummet. That's the cliff we should be worrying about.
Douglas Oglesby follows up the teacher's comment with his own:
You appear to be a responsible teacher who cares about students and their performance. I admire and respect you. My parents were both public school teachers who, like you, tried their best to teach under difficult conditions.Having said that, I must confess that I consider teachers' unions to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, obstacle to student performance. California's teachers are very nearly the best paid teachers in the US and student performance is 48th. The Chicago teachers strike settlement appears to do nothing for students, but does increase teacher salaries. In the last 30 years there has been a dramatic increase in teachers' salaries (inflation-adjusted), class sizes have decreased (meaning more teachers), but student performance has been stagnant. Teachers have been unionized in California for over 30 years -- I don't think this is a coincidence. Firing a teacher is virtually impossible. Teachers' unions oppose merit pay and performance evaluations. Parents need to take responsibility for their children, and teachers need to take responsibility for teaching, and be individually accountable if they fail to perform acceptably.
The Pyramids Not At Giza
View out our hotel room window.
Sex Makes People Stupid
We know that already, but here's further evidence, from a piece about America's top spy from The Week's "The 7 strangest details of the David Petraeus affair"
7. America's top spy used Gmail to conduct his affair At the bottom of the whole sordid mess is this vaguely troubling fact, says Sam Grobart at Bloomberg: "Petraeus ran the largest, best-funded, most capable intelligence service in the history of the world, but even he failed to learn the lesson learned long ago by small-time mobsters and corner drug dealers: If you want something to remain a secret, stay off the phones and -- more important -- stay off email." He and Broadwell did employ one trick -- "known to terrorists and teenagers alike," The Associated Press notes -- to cover their tracks: Instead of sending emails, they saved drafts of their amorous messages in a Gmail account they both could access. But they didn't encrypt their "hot-and-heavy missives," and their whole scheme fell apart because Broadwell -- herself with a background in covert operations -- sent messages to the secret account. "Whoops," says Grobart. "That established a connection the FBI could follow" to their affair.
Where's That Kid Who Shouted About The Emperor Being Naked?
Is everyone asleep? Because very few people are speaking up about the TSA.
Regarding the odious and useless searches we are made to go through at the airport: If I've neither robbed anyone at gunpoint nor given signs I plan to, why are some de facto prison guard's hands wandering my body?
Gregg and I are in New York, and got back from dinner late -- I'll post more blog items in the morning.
Until then (and even after then), have at it -- post away. One or two links at most (and this includes the link to your own site in your address as one of the two), or my spam filter will eat you.
I will post more in the morning.
The Land Of Oz
New York, off in the distance, on the way in from JFK. Really cool Israeli driver. We talked about immigrants (like my landlord and one of the driver's relatives) who came to America with nothing, earned money, bought buildings and made something of themselves. I hope that's still possible these days!
Tiffany Applewhite Touched My Vagina
And my breasts. She's a "team leader" at the Delta TSA checkpoint at LAX. I had to ask her for her first name because her name tag only says "Applewhite" and "team leader."
There is not a shred of probable cause to search me at the airport because there is no reason to believe I am anything but what I am -- an advice columnist, author and blogger flying to New York with my boyfriend, where I'll have a business meeting and go with him to some events honoring his boss, Elmore Leonard.
But, in order to complete normal business travel, I have my body violated just about every time I take a plane.
I had my breasts and vagina and the rest of my body groped by Tiffany Applewhite, a tall, light-skinned black woman with tight-permed hair. She asked me if there were any sore areas on my body.
Hmmm...maybe the gropenfrau would take it easier if I said so. So, I said my breasts and vagina. She said she'd be gentle in those areas and only use the back of her hand. Well, that makes it all fine, then, doesn't it?
She instructed me at one point in how to lean over so she could correctly violate me in the name of "security." I didn't do it quite right -- partly because I was being violated at around 5 o'clock in the morning, and partly because I've never been in prison or been prison-raped.
Oh, and they again used the punishment and intimidation factor of making you worry your stuff is going to be stolen if you get the patdown -- leaving your stuff out on the belt unguarded. They just "don't have personnel to watch it, they told me -- as I'm always told. Yet, they can spend billions on useless machinery.
"You chose the patdown," a bald, light-skinned black man who chose it for me added (when he told me to go through the cooker instead of the metal detector).
Read any George Orwell, you big loser? You scumbag earning money for violating people's bodies and rights?
Caught any terrorists lately -- or EVER?
Of course not, because the TSA has not caught A SINGLE TERRORIST.
Beyond the fact that the problems we had on 9/11 were due to our not expecting terrorists to perform suicide missions, the TSA is staffed by McDonald's fry cooks on track to get a government pension. These people couldn't catch Al Zawahiri if he crawled up their ass and whistled.
They have, however, stopped some really good pot from reaching its destination and being smoked. And, this is a jobs program for unskilled workers and a way for government swells to funnel money to their friends who own the companies that make the scanners and other equipment useless in catching terrorists. (Jonathan Corbett showed how absolutely child's play it was to defeat the body scanners.)
And ultimately, as I wrote in my op-ed about the TSA, this is about obedience training for the American public -- teaching us to be docile as our rights are taken from us.
I cried as I was screened and told them they were horrible for violating our rights for money. I will at least make a spectacle of myself and in turn of what they are doing.
Don't go quietly, please. And name names of those who violate you -- post their name (THEDALA MAGEE!) and a picture of them if you can find or take it. (To avoid a libel suit, be absolutely sure it's the right person -- there were a number of Tiffany Applewhites, and most of them are regular people who don't appear to grope people's genitals for a living.)
If more people screamed and yelled and protested in some way, we might be able to make some change. In so many ways lately, our constitutional rights are being eroded. Keeping quiet will not end well for any of us.
Headline Of The Day
Stole the blog post title from Radley Balko, from whom (@radleybalko), I picked this up.
And that headline, from the NYT:
Finally, a Place in Brazil Where Dogs Can Go for Discreet Sex
Advice Goddess Free Swim
You pick the topics -- please just post only one or two links per comment. (Otherwise your comment will be eaten by my anti-spam software.)
Will post more blog items in the morning!
P.S. I did post this week's columns a day early -- Steaks On A Plane and Splendor In The Grass Cuttings.
LA City Council's Moronism Now Officially Beyond Boundless
Per Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (a massive vetting of the body of dietary research), it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
But, never mind what science says. The LA City Council knows what you should eat -- no, not the meat that the evidence says is the single best food for humans (providing all the nutrients we need, save for vitamin C, in the perfect proportions).
Nope -- they're calling for "Meatless Mondays."
And it is the City Council's job to tell people what to eat why?
Rick Orlov writes in the LA Daily News/HuffPo:
The Los Angeles council, in a 14-0 vote on Friday, adopted a resolution urging residents to adopt a personal pledge to have a "meatless Monday."While it does not have the force of law and police will not be checking what you brought to work for lunch, city officials said they hope it will start a trend, make residents healthier and reduce the impact on the environment.
"This follows the 'good food' agenda we recently adopted supporting local, sustainable food choices," said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who has called for a ban on new fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles to fight obesity.
"We can reduce saturated fats and reduce the risk of heart disease by 19 percent," Perry said. "While this is a symbolic gesture, it is asking people to think about the food choices they make. Eating less meat can reverse some of our nation's most common illnesses."
Councilman Ed Reyes, who joined with Perry in proposing the resolution, said one of his sons has been diagnosed with diabetes.
Hey, Ed -- Dr. Jay Wortman was also diagnosed with diabetes. He got rid of it, though -- BY EATING MEAT!
It's okay that you, as a City Councilperson, are a dietary idiot (in addition to being an idiot-idiot, which seems to be a prerequisite for being on the LA City Council).
But, please, please, find a big piece of tape and put it over your mouth and find some way to glue your fingers together so you have no access to any electronic means to disseminate your thoughts.
SWATting -- A Deadly Game
I've posted about this previously here -- "Patterico: 'THE NIGHT I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED BECAUSE OF MY BLOGGING'"
Simone Wilson writes in the LA Weekly about the horrible thing that was done to Patrick Frey -- Deputy DA Patrick Frey, aka blogger Patterico -- in the wake of his blog items about Anthony Weiner:
The deputy DA believes his widely followed revelations about Weiner's online escapades made Frey the target of a dangerous, unnerving hoax: a false 911 call that put Frey, his wife, Christi --a high-end sex-crimes prosecutor for the District Attorney -- and his two young children in the crosshairs of armed officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.On July 1, 2011, Frey, in his nighttime blogger role, was talking to a source over his cellphone just after 12:30 a.m. -- his wife and kids fast asleep upstairs in their Rancho Palos Verdes home -- when he heard a thunderous pounding at his front door.
"I was sitting right here in this chair," he says, re-enacting the haunting experience as he sits at his kitchen table, the South Bay harbor gleaming up through hot glass.
"I jumped up to the counter ... and peeked around the corner," he says. Five or six armed deputies on his porch were barking, "Come out with your hands up!"
As he opened the door, Frey, afraid to set down his cellphone -- any quick move could be deadly -- prayed they wouldn't mistake the device for a gun.
But the cops were cautious, and no shots were fired. Deputies handcuffed the longtime deputy DA and hustled him into a patrol vehicle. His stunned wife, Christi, was patted down against the garage wall. The couple's two young children tell L.A. Weekly that police burst into their bedrooms with flashlights to make sure they were safe. The Freys' neighbors, awakened by the spectacle, watched the dramatic midnight raid play out.
"People can turn other people's lives upside down just sitting in front of a keyboard," Frey says. "There's just something strange and disquieting about that."
Frey knew, even as the scene unfolded, that he'd just been SWATted -- a dangerous game being played by provocateurs who falsely report to cops a murder or violent attack supposedly committed by someone they hate.
In Frey's case, a man pretending to be Frey called the L.A. County Sheriff's station in Lomita, declaring: "I shot her -- my wife!" Frey has obtained the call, which he labels "one of the most bone-chilling pieces of audio you will ever hear."
Almost a year later, in May 2012, he posted the call on YouTube. It has since been played more than 40,000 times.
Frey says that the week before the incident, he'd received a disturbing, anonymous email warning: "Stop digging into [Rep. Weiner]. I cannot insure [sic] your safety if you continue."
Special agent Kevin Kolbye in Dallas, the FBI's point person for the SWATting phenomenon, says SWATters manipulate technology in order to mimic the caller ID of their targeted victim, the goal being to "incite fear and intimidation into the person that they're SWATting."
The hoax call:
Free Speech On Campus: Don't Be Too Quick To Assume You Have It
It seems most speech is now "hate speech," as far as many college administrators are concerned.
From Gawker, "University Suspends Journalism Student For Asking Questions For A Class Assignment."
Here's email that got Alex Myers, an Australian exchange student currently studying journalism at SUNY Oswego, part of New York's state university system, in trouble. (He was given a class assignment to profile a public figure and chose Oswego men's hockey coach Ed Gosek, and reached out to Gosek's fellow coaches at other schools.)
My name is Alex Myers, I work for the Office of Public Affairs at SUNY Oswego.I am currently writing a profile on Oswego State Hockey head coach Ed Gosek and was hoping to get a rival coaches view on Mr Gosek.
If you have time would you mind answering the following questions.
1. How do you find Mr Gosek to coach against?
2. Have you had any interactions with Mr Gosek off the ice? If so how did you find him?
3. What is your rivalry like between your school and Oswego State?Be as forthcoming as you like, what you say about Mr Gosek does not have to be positive.
Thank you, Alex Myers.
One coach wrote back that he found the last line of the email offensive. A day later, Myers was suspended indefinitely, pending a judicial hearing. The grounds:
Myers was charged with two counts. The first, a general charge encompassing "dishonesty," stemmed from Myers identifying himself as an employee of the Office of Public Affairs, where he was interning, even though that job had nothing to do with the class assignment. No question, he fucked up there.The second charge is unfathomable. The university cites the section of its code of conduct that covers "harassment, intimidation, stalking, domestic violence, or creating a hostile environment through discrimination or bias toward any individual or group." Most chilling, the section also covers "invasion of privacy." For doing research for a profile of a public figure. I know college kids like to call any authority figures "fascist," but man, Oswego, you're not exactly making your university a place where ideas can be exchanged freely.
This one has a happy(?) ending. After FIRE got involved, Oswego dropped the harassment charge. And at a disciplinary hearing last week, Myers was spared a suspension.
Of course, the "hate speech" prohibitions are violations of our right to free speech.
And off course, FIRE -- the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- came to the student's rescue...at no charge to the student...thanks to donations they get to support their efforts to defend free speech on campus.
FIRE needs donations -- even $5 helps. Here's a secure link to donate.
FIRE president Greg Lukianoff's recently published (and terrific) book I just finished reading is worth getting: Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
And if you're in Los Angeles, FIRE and LA Press Club are hosting an event at the end of the month -- November 29, 7pm -- free to all who want to attend. There will be complimentary appetizers and complimentary drinks and Greg will be talking a bit about the book. You need to RSVP and get a ticket to attend, but tickets are free.
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Bruce J. Perry On Empathy
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My guest tonight is child psychiatrist and trauma specialist Bruce J. Perry. He'll be talking about increasing empathy, and why it's key to living a happy, healthy, productive life -- from infancy on.
We'll be talking about his wonderful book, Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered
Listen to tonight's show live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/11/12/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with Dr. Dylan Evans, talking about risk intelligence and how you can increase your ability to make wise decisions.
His very smart book on the subject is Risk Intelligence: How to Live with Uncertainty
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/11/05/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday from 7-8 pm Pacific and 10-11 pm Eastern, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Buy my science-based but funny book on why we're so rude and how to change things, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, at Amazon. And please look for my award-winning, nationally syndicated, science-based advice column in a paper near you or ask the editor to carry it. Getting paid for writing it keeps me writing it!
Matt Welch (Small "l" Libertarian) On What Went Wrong With The GOP
Reason editor Matt Welch talks to The Daily Beast's Michael Moynihan, telling him that the GOP lacked narrative and failed to reach out to minorities, among other things, and that the argument should be on fiscal policy:
I think Matt Welch has ignored 30 years of history where the Republican base rid itself of moderate Republicans who were socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Disgusting Abuse Of 58-Year-Old Woman By TSA
This is America? The America you want to live in? Watch what happened to San Diego's Maggie Buckenmeyer at the TSA checkpoint in Birmingham, Alabama, and speak out about it.
As she says, "This needs to be stopped. Why the TSA is allowed to emotionally and sexually abuse passengers...I don't get it. If some stranger did to me what one of these TSA agents did, that stranger would be convicted of sexual assault and sent to prison":
Via Lisa Simeone, who writes at TSANewsBlog:
Americans are tolerating this abuse. I don't know what to say anymore, other than to repeat what I've said so many times: TSA administrator John Pistole is a criminal. He has instituted criminal procedures that his underlings follow, that our politicians endorse, and that millions of Americans tolerate.I give up. I've run out of words. So I'll let the words of civil rights crusader Frederick Douglass do the talking:
Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Obama Awakens After A Four-Year Nap
Andrew Malcolm IBD headline, echoing a similar bit from the President's speech:
Obama: Our top priority now is jobs and growth
Amnesty For Felons: Why Idiot Voters Should Stop Voting In Idiot Measures
Voters passed a measure in Los Angeles which will either mean paying our taxpayer dollars to inspectors to go check porn stars for condoms -- or, get this, to watch porn to see if there's latex on Fernando's Big Rod.
Hey, idiot voters: THESE. MEASURES. COST. MONEY.
Meanwhile, we are broke and unable to pay money for things like, you know, keeping the criminals in their cages, or putting criminals who belong there, in.
Paige St. John writes in the Los Angeles Times:
SACRAMENTO -- State corrections officials are poised to drop the arrest warrants of thousands of parole violators, releasing them from state supervision at a time when their detention would complicate efforts to ease crowding in state and county lockups.The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation intends to begin a massive review next week of more than 9,200 outstanding warrants, starting with individuals who were convicted of nonviolent crimes and absconded from supervision. Over the next eight months, parole field offices across the state will be given lists of missing felons, 200 at a time, to review and determine if retaining them on parole "would not be in the interest of justice."
The mass purge is an attempt to ease the burden on counties in July, when the state hands off responsibility for parole revocations to local courts, said agency spokesman Jeffrey Callison. Weeding out cases that are years old, or of parolees nobody is looking for, will make it easier to focus on those who pose a threat, he said.
It will not, Callison said, "allow some paroles to 'get off the hook.' "
"I have been told that discharging people is not the point of the exercise," he said Friday.
Which is exactly the claim of some victims' advocates who are infuriated by the state's so-called warrant review project.
"It's mass amnesty for felons," said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), a vocal opponent of Gov. Jerry Brown's plans to ease state prison crowding by shifting responsibility for low-level offenders to counties.
JosephLCooke comments at the LAT:
California: Making crime risk free one step at a time.
Consenting Adults Are Doing Business: Go Away, Government
I just did a radio show on risk intelligence (with Dr. Dylan Evans), and a big part of that is figuring out the tradeoffs, and how costly or valuable certain actions are to you.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, consenting gas sellers are selling consenting gas buyers their product for hefty sums over Craigslist.
If I, say, had an empty tank and a need to go take care of ailing grandparents several hours away, I would buy gas at a high price. But, if I just wanted to make it to a party that might be fun on Saturday night, the limit to what I'd pay would be lower. (This perhaps assumes that one's grandma is not the Wicked Witch Of The Northeast and that it's unlikely the party will be the fete of the century.)
This thinking was inspired by a story I saw around a little bit on Friday -- about legislators in New York and New Jersey looking to prosecute people for gas "gouging." From the WSJ, "Politicians want to prosecute people who sell gas to people who need it":
Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath continue to offer lessons in Economics 101, if not in political good judgment. One of them flows from the widespread notion that it is somehow wrong to allocate scarce resources to those willing to pay for them....Now comes word that the Attorneys General of both states intend to prosecute people for "price gouging." New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has subpoenaed the Craigslist website for the identities of people who advertised gas for sale at high prices. Mr. Schneiderman is doing this in the name of a New York law that forbids charging an "unconscionably excessive price" during an "abnormal disruption in the market."
But "unconscionable" isn't exactly the clear red line one might want in something calling itself a law. One man's unconscionable price might be another's job-saving gasoline supply.
...New Jersey's law is clearer, but more draconian and as wrong-headed. It says merchants can't charge more than a 10% mark-up for a 30-day period following a state of emergency. State Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa announced cases against eight businesses, including gas stations and a lodging provider, on Friday.
The danger of all this is obvious. Why would you want to discourage the private sector from moving goods to a needy region in crisis? The cost of doing so might easily justify a mark-up well in excess of 10%. Natural disasters are precisely when we most need market incentives for the provision of things like gas, power, clean water and lodging.
The Government Is Now The Emperor Of Your Front Lawn?
The government shouldn't get to tell you how attractive a lawn you need to have. But, that's exactly what's happening in Orlando, Florida. Kristin Giannas writes at ClickOrlando.com that the city of Orlando has ordered Jason Helvingston to dig up the edible garden in his front yard, and Helvingston has refused:
"I said, 'You'll take my house before you take my vegetable garden,'" he said. "There's nothing wrong here, there's nothing poisonous here. This is a sustainable plot of land."City code requires ground covers to be planted in a way that gives off a finished appearance so neighborhood lawns are clean, and inviting -- keeping property values up.
Helvingston has decided not to listen to the city. Instead, he's trying to petition the code to allow for veggie gardens in the front yard.
He's gathered more than 200 signatures, including one from his neighbor, Shelly Snow.
"(I'm) definitely not bothered by it. As a matter of fact, we love it," she said.
Helvingston hopes the city will reconsider the code when he meets with a code board in December.
"This is another example of the government telling us what we can do with our own property -- that should never happen," he said. "In any economic downturn in the past history of the United States, the government has always encouraged the people to grow their own food, and so we want to continue with that movement."
Video at the link.
via @mpetrie98
You Can't Call People "Lazy, Stoned Moochers" And Get Their Vote
Matt Taibbi writes in a blog post at Rolling Stone that Romney would probably have won if Republicans "were self-aware at all":
There's been a lot of hand-wringing among conservatives of the Rush/Hannity school in the last few days, a lot of concern about this outreach question, and honestly, the tone of the discussion is beginning to sound like the last days of a failed 1950s marriage. The husband who's gone all day at work comes home and throws his hands up in the air in mock frustration: what do you want from me, another Cadillac? Another fur coat? I just got you new shoes last week!And the wife, who's loved this man for 20 years despite his abject stupidity, just sighs. All she wants her husband to do is listen to her, or take a day off work sometime and take her for a drive in the country, or make some spontaneous show of affection, maybe popping home for lunch like in the old days - just some evidence that he's even faintly aware of what's going on in her head. But when they try to talk it out, things just get worse, because in his very manner of asking her what's wrong, all hubby does is reveal that he thinks of his wife entirely as a nagging, financial parasite who's always on his ass about something.
Similarly, the fact that so many Republicans this week think that all Hispanics care about is amnesty, all women want is abortions (and lots of them) and all teenagers want is to sit on their couches and smoke tons of weed legally, that tells you everything you need to know about the hopeless, anachronistic cluelessness of the modern Republican Party. A lot of these people, believe it or not, would respond positively, or at least with genuine curiosity, to the traditional conservative message of self-reliance and fiscal responsibility.
But modern Republicans will never be able to spread that message effectively, because they have so much of their own collective identity wrapped up in the belief that they're surrounded by free-loading, job-averse parasites who not only want to smoke weed and have recreational abortions all day long, but want hardworking white Christians like them to pay the tab. Their whole belief system, which is really an endless effort at congratulating themselves for how hard they work compared to everyone else (by the way, the average "illegal," as Rush calls them, does more real work in 24 hours than people like Rush and me do in a year), is inherently insulting to everyone outside the tent - and you can't win votes when you're calling people lazy, stoned moochers.
Agree? Disagree?
Plasma Infusion
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Oh, and this reminds me: If you can't afford to buy something plasma-screened, or even if you can, consider donating some. Crid, who comments here, donates his platelets and maybe more.
Women Make Less Money Because They Need To Be Told To Negotiate
Ben Popken writes at Today.com of a study that found that women negotiate 9% more frequently than men when told a salary is negotiable. If they aren't told that, men negotiate 29% more frequently:
So why do women earn less than men? There are many theories out there, but one thing is for sure: The lower your salary when you begin your career, the harder it is to catch up.That's why the experiment "Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations?" published in a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research is so important for working women. The research found that men were more likely to negotiate their starting salary than women, but -- and this is huge -- if applicants were told the wage was "negotiable," not only did the gap evaporate, women outpaced men in asking for a heftier paycheck.
Ledbetter said the findings from the study show that "we are still a long way from equal pay and equal benefits."The percentage varies depending on which study you use, but women as a whole earn at least a quarter less than what men earn (unless they're city-dwelling, under 30, single and childless, in which case they may earn about 8 percent more than their male counterparts.) Meanwhile, wages have been stagnant overall. According to Bureau of Labor and Statistics data, hourly earnings fell 1 cent in October, and worker wages have grown at an anemic 1.6 percent rate, slower than inflation.
If you have to be told to be entrepreneurial, there isn't a gender gap but a thinking gap, and it's your job to close that, not the government's.
I'm not good at many things (I think of myself as good at about six things, and one of them is napping), but I've always been good at negotiating and a strong negotiator. Perhaps that's because my father is in real estate -- selling and renting commercial property in that oasis of commercial real estate, Detroit. He would talk about how he brought together the buyer and the seller on a particular property, and maybe that rubbed off. And maybe it's from my early readings of works promoting individualism and self-determination.
Regardless, I've always tried to use reason to get as much as I could -- while not being outrageous (which can end up losing you a job if they feel you're overpaid for what you're doing). That's how you get paid a good wage; no fair having the government act as your mommy.
Also, per the oft-tossed-around adage, if it were true that you could get women for 70 cents on the dollar, wouldn't everybody hire women instead of men?
Americans Tolerating Domestic Violence -- Of The Government Kind
Wendy McElroy posts at DollarVigilante about what blinking sheep Americans have become. "Do not tolerate domestic violence," she writes:
I am not talking about spousal abuse. I mean the abuse heaped upon you by the United States government. The parallels are striking.America claims to own you, and so you pay a heavy price for leaving as an expat. It cruelly invades your breasts and genitals through pat-downs at the airport. Then it does the same to your children. America swears it is protecting you while violating your rights at every turn; and you have become so brainwashed that you now mistake a fist in your face for safety. There is no respect and no honesty in the relationship the government offers you - only a self-serving contempt that erupts into violence. Your response is to return a love of country along with the money you earn, all the while making excuses for America's bad behavior. Or, perhaps, you even defend America to critics.
I know how you feel. I was once in such an abusive domestic relationship that I am now legally blind in one eye from a fist in the face. After I managed enough self-respect to leave, one question haunted me: Why did I stay? Why would an otherwise independent woman allow herself to be literally beaten up when there were options?
The reasons are similar to why people stay in America. He expressed regret and swore he would "make it up" to me; I wanted to believe him because the love of a person diminishes slowly. He vowed to change; I hoped we could go back to before he exerted soul-crushing control of who I was and what I could do. I was frightened to be without him because I believed both his attacks on my self-worth and the pumped-up version of his own value. Besides which, leaving meant severing ties with close friends who would be called upon to take sides.
America and much of the Western world is doing much the same to you. Officials mouth regret at violations like a ruinous tax burden, and then offer entitlements with your own money. You stay because love of a country also diminishes slowly. America promises to change and you remember what "the land of the free" used to feel like; it was intoxicating. You now believe you are powerless while the government is a relentless Goliath. Besides which, leaving would mean moving away from family and friends.
She suggests walking away. I suggest doing what I'm trying to do, which as much free time as I have -- fighting civil liberties violations and fighting to change things.
If you have time but not money, please give generously to civil liberties defenders theFIRE.org (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and Institute for Justice, who fight, pro bono, for the rights of those who've had them violated by colleges or the government, or both.
We're From The Government And We're Here To Ignore You
Staten Islanders have had a hard lesson in the uselessness of big government and how important it is to have invested neighbors who will come to others' aid in a crisis. From FoxNews, Perry Chiaramonte writes that Staten Island Hurricane Sandy victims are boiling mad about being deserted by FEMA:
Already without power for more than a week in the wake of Sandy, hard-hit residents of the borough's South Shore braved a winter storm Wednesday night, with many -- perhaps hundreds -- huddling in condemned homes and ignoring orders to evacuate out of fear looters would take what little Mother Nature has left them."FEMA packed up everything yesterday and left the area," said MaryLou Wong, whose home in the Midland Beach neighborhood was destroyed. "They haven't come back."
...One group of residents, calling themselves the "Brown Cross," is patrolling the devastated streets, armed with walkie-talkies, and helping residents clear debris and pump water from their flooded homes.
"We've done more for our community than FEMA, the Red Cross and the National Guard combined, directly hitting houses and people in need," Frank Recce, the 24-year-old longshoreman and Iraq Army veteran who organized the group, told FoxNews.com.
...The agency was to open a pair of mobile disaster recovery centers at noon, after opening two earlier on Thursday. FEMA officials said the agency plans to bring in more of the mobile units in the coming days.
Republicans Need To Get Out Of People's Bedrooms
GOP Rep. Steve LaTourette says that at National Journal, and Ari Armstrong writes that as well:
As I've been pointing out for some time, Colorado demographically tends to be the type of place where people want government out of our wallets and out of our bedrooms. Unfortunately, the Republican Party in this state is dominated by a religious right that wants to outlaw all abortion and discriminate against gays--and that explains to a large degree why Democrats now control the entire state government, again.
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Why Go After Armed Men When You Can Cite 3-Year-Olds For Public Urination?
A cop in Piedmont, Oklahoma gave a mom a citation for public urination (with a $2,500 fine) when her 3-year-old, still potty-training, pulled down his pants to pee outside...in his own front yard.
Sam Rolley writes at Personal Liberty Digest:
"Dillan pulled down his pants to pee outside, I guess and the cop pulled up and asked for my license and told me he was going to give me a ticket for public urination," the boy's mother, Ashley Warden told Oklahoma's News9."I said really, he is three years old, and he said it doesn't matter. It is public urination. I said we are on our property and he said it's in public view," the boy's grandmother Jennifer Warden added.
The Wardens reportedly filed a complaint with the department that was rejected by the law enforcement agency. The family claims that they live on two acres near a public street, but are actually located in a quite rural area. They allege that the citation-writing officer parks on their street daily.
"I am disappointed that the officer thinks this is what he needs to do with my tax dollars is sitting and harassing our family," Jennifer Warden said.
The family apparently intends to challenge the ticket on the grounds that the kid didn't actually complete the act, reports the NYDaily News.
We have too many laws, and too much policing where it is unneeded -- which leaves officers too busy to police where it is needed.
The serious issue here is that anybody can be deemed guilty of something at pretty much any time, which means people who have "offensive" views or speech can be reeled in at any time.
@mpetrie98
It's The Demographics, Stupid
Anne Applebaum writes in the Telegraph/UK:
Overwhelmingly, and in every state, Obama won the votes of blacks, Hispanics, Asians and ethnic minorities of all kinds, groups whose numbers have grown since 2008 and are still growing. He won the votes of young people in overwhelming, disproportionate numbers: 60 per cent of voters aged between 18 and 29 voted for Obama, and only 36 per cent for Romney. He also won the votes of women, by a margin of 55 to 44 per cent.Romney's electorate was older, whiter and more male. The Republican Party's base is proportionally smaller than four years ago, and this time around its members proved less likely to vote as well, despite myriad efforts to "energise" them. Against expectations, the percentage of young people voting rose from 2008, a year in which many thought the youth vote had reached an all-time high. Meanwhile, the percentage of senior citizens voting went down.
Contrary to all conventional wisdom, the economy also appears to have mattered less than social issues. During its convention in the summer, the Republican Party took a big gamble. Hardly anyone who spoke in prime time mentioned abortion - or, for that matter, foreign policy - as the party once known for championing "family values" tried to brush its more unpopular views under the table. Noisy evangelicals were kept well away from microphones, as well as both ex-presidents Bush. Instead, Romney made a single argument: the recovery is weak, I am a competent businessman, and I can make it stronger.
A week later, the Democrats took another gamble. In his acceptance speech in Charlotte, Obama declared that "selfless soldiers won't be kicked out of the military because of who they are or who they love". In her speech, Michelle Obama stated that "women are more than capable of making our own choices about our bodies and our health care... that's what my husband stands for". The Democratic Party took the plunge, conducted a more holistic election campaign and bet that the majority of Americans not only wanted to hear about their social policies, they preferred them.
And the baby-from-a-rape is god's will-type candidates sure didn't help independents find their way to vote for Republicans.
I Think "Self-Important Asshole" Would Have Been A More Correct Term
Sheila Hardin, a Cleveland woman caught driving on the sidewalk to get around a school bus with children disembarking, will have to stand at an intersection wearing a sign, "Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus."
From the AP:
The judge ordered her to wear the sign from 7:45 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. both days.Hardin's license was suspended for 30 days and she was ordered to pay $250 in court costs.
Shame is probably a more effective deterrent than the traditional punishments.
Here's a link to an interesting paper I read recently on shame -- the "information threat theory of shame," specifically -- by Dr. Daniel Sznycer and colleagues.
via ifeminists
Republicans Need To Stop Pandering To The Social Conservatives
They lose moderate voters they might retain if they sold themselves as fiscal conservatives alone.
The problem is the primaries -- they're all trying to out-social-conservative each other to pander to the primary voters.
Hans Bader writes at Open Market:
There is a huge difference between even a moderate Republican like Romney and a liberal Democrat like Obama. What this writer calls a "cheap imitation liberal" is exactly what many suburban voters wanted, like my wife.My wife, a moderate with libertarian leanings, reluctantly voted for Romney, because she views Obama as supporting the redistribution of wealth and vast expansions of welfare, and views such redistribution of wealth as a key reason for the economic stagnation of her native France. But she only voted for Romney because she viewed him as a moderate, and thus did not expect him ever to push for a federal ban on first trimester abortions if elected, or to try to ban gay marriage.
(She doesn't care if late-term abortions are restricted. In France, unlike in the U.S. under the Supreme Court's decision in Doe v. Bolton, late term abortions have historically been prohibited. Late-term abortion is much less regulated in the U.S. than in most of the world.)
She would never vote for a social ultra-conservative like Todd Akin who wants to ban abortion in cases of rape and incest. (My wife was also alienated by Obama's big spending in areas like the $800 billion stimulus package and bailouts.) Alienating moderates is disastrous for political parties, especially for parties like the GOP that have a shrinking demographic base.
Conservative publications like National Review came up with strained rationalizations for believing that Romney would win despite being behind in the polls. For example, it claimed that Romney would win most undecided voters because "68 percent" of undecided voters were white -- which is silly, because more than 80 percent of registered voters are white, meaning that whites, who are typically GOP-leaning, were actually underrepresented among undecided voters.
Meanwhile, it ignored the fact that 63 percent of undecided voters supported gay marriage, suggesting that undecided voters were disproportionately liberal on social issues (since only about half the general public supports gay marriage).
Sh*t Southern Women Say
I love hearing women talking Southern:
"Does this pistol come in pink?"
via Nashville-dwellin' @radleybalko
The Free Shit Parade
A quote:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."--Attributed to everybody from de Toqueville to some guy named Tytler
The TSA Is Taxpayer-Funded Welfare For The Airlines
Bill Fisher wrote in February at TSANewsBlog about how the TSA, paid for by taxpayers, is largely a subsidy to the airlines -- which is maybe why they aren't squawking about it:
The TSA now costs Americans $8 billion a year and has cost approximately $60 billion since its inception. The FY 2012 Consolidated Spending Act (Public Law 112-074), signed into law in December, appropriated $7.85 billion to TSA, an increase of $153 million from 2011, and included funding to expand the deployment of body scanners to smaller airports.What has gone largely unreported is that all of this taxpayer expense has effectively amounted to a subsidy of the airline industry and is borne by many who seldom if ever fly. While an airline ticket now includes a $2.50 security fee (and that fee is about to go higher), up from $2 in earlier years, this is miniscule in comparison to the true cost associated with one passenger screening.
Based on the 2011 TSA budget of $8.1 billion and enplanements of 712 million passengers, the total cost per screening is $11.38, with the taxpayer contributing $8.88 of that for every airline passenger boarding an aircraft in the US. When the cost is distributed across the 144 million taxpayers in the US, the TSA adds an additional $43.86 to each household tax return.
If viewed in terms of the 7.15 million flights in the US in 2011, the security subsidy costs taxpayers an average of $1,133 per flight.
The major airlines are the primary beneficiaries of this government largesse. The 10 largest carriers received $4.8 billion in free airport security in 2011 while posting a collective profit of only $1.7 billion.
Delta and Southwest received nearly $1 billion in free security, while American, United, and US Airways received roughly a half-billion dollars or more in taxpayer-sponsored passenger screening services. Only United and Alaska earned profits that exceeded their portion of security expense, and the other eight carriers would have posted losses had they been charged their portion of security costs.
Airlines should be in charge of their own security for their planes and they should be paying for it.
(Here's the latest in TSA contract coziness.)
Your Predictions For The Next Four Years?
Mine: Picture a big toilet, picture the remains of our economy being flushed down it.
My friend Catherine, who's staying over here tonight (before fleeing to Mexico to drown her sorrows in tequila and brainy conversations at a conference), referenced that South Park episode:
"Choosing between Obama and Romney is like choosing between a douche and a turd."
I voted for Gary Johnson, and didn't even have to hold my nose.
Should We Let Some Children Vote?
Age-based controls often seem ridiculous. I've met a good many irrational, uninformed idiots in their 40s, and I know some smart, politically active and highly informed kids.
Ilya Somin argues at Volokh.com that at least some kids should be allowed to vote, "if they are more knowledgeable than the average adult voter":
On this election day, as on most others, we will hear a lot about the need to increase turnout and the dangers of voter suppression. But few will even consider questioning the systematic exclusion of a huge part of our population from the franchise: children under the age of 18. We allow even the most ignorant and irresponsible adults to vote, but exclude even the most knowledgeable and insightful children. And to add insult to injury, we saddle them with a mediocre education system and trillions of dollars in public debt that they will someday have to repay.
He wrote in a previous post:
The main objection to giving children the vote is that they lack the knowledge to make informed choices. Of course the same is true of most of the adult electorate, who are rationally ignorant about politics and public policy, and often don't know even very basic facts. Nonetheless, it's probably true that the average child knows a lot less about politics than the average adult, and that may be a good reason to deny most children the franchise. But why deny it to all of them? If a minor can pass a test of basic political knowledge (say, the political knowledge equivalent of the citizenship test administered to immigrants seeking naturalization), why shouldn't he or she have the right to vote? Such a precocious child-voter would probably be more knowledgeable than the majority of the adult population. Giving her the right to vote would actually increase the average knowledge level of the electorate and thereby slightly improve the quality of political decision-making.
Other objections he shoots down:
Some people might worry that even knowledgeable child-voters will be "unduly" influenced by their parents' preferences. Given the existence of the secret ballot, I doubt that this would be a major problem. Moreover, children who are knowledgeable enough to pass the test and interested enough to take it will probably have at least some political ideas of their own that aren't easily susceptible to parental suasion. In any event, I'm not sure that the possibility of parental persuasion would necessarily be a bad thing. The objection is in fact similar to one of the arguments once raised against giving women the right to vote - that they would be unduly influenced by their husbands or fathers. Husbands will often influence the views of their wives (and vice versa); similarly, parents will influence those of their children. That doesn't by itself justify denying either married people or children the right to vote....[C]hildren might lack maturity or life experience, as well as knowledge.... I'm just not convinced that either is tremendously useful for voting. Most voting decisions have to do with complex, large-scale policy issues that can't easily be weighed based on personal experience. Realistically, even most adults have little life experience that is directly useful in assessing difficult policy issues... At the very least, it seems to me that superior knowledge might well outweigh inferior maturity and life experience. And I'm only advocating giving the franchise to children who can demonstrate knowledge levels superior to those of the average adult voter...[Moreover, we don't exclude even the most immature adults from the franchise, even if they are highly ignorant to boot].
[Some cite] the value for voting of such "adult" experiences as holding a job, paying taxes, owning property, and so on.... I'm skeptical that these experiences greatly improve the quality of voting decisions. Even more to the point, however, we don't exclude from the franchise the many adults who lack some or all of these experiences - even if they are also ignorant of even the most basic political knowledge. If lack of life experience is not enough to justify exclusion of even the most ignorant adults from the franchise, I don't see why it should be considered sufficient to exclude vastly more knowledgeable minors.
The TSA And The Unknowable: What You Can And Can't Carry On
Yet another smart post from Sommer Gentry at TSANewsBlog:
The TSA confiscates larger-than-3-ounce containers of shampoo, toothpaste, and perfume because these items supposedly might be liquid explosives, and then tosses these potentially explosive items into a huge unsecured bin right there at the checkpoint. If the TSA knows these liquids are harmless, then passengers should be allowed to take them; and if the TSA thinks these liquids might explode, then they are endangering themselves and the traveling public by their careless handling.What about empty breast milk bottles? How are those a threat to the aircraft? One TSA screener found empty breast milk bottles so threatening that he forced young mother Amy Strand to pump her breasts in a dirty public bathroom to satisfy his power trip. Or there was the six-inch plastic toy hammer that mentally disabled adult Drew Mandy had carried for 20 years as a comforting constant, until the TSA senselessly stole it from him. Cupcakes might actually be liquids, depending on the mood of your screener. Sterile bags of saline might be ruined at the checkpoint, as cancer sufferer Michele Dunaj experienced. Jean Weber had to remove her mother's adult diaper on the say-so of the blueshirts.
...What exactly are all these confiscations accomplishing? They sure as heck aren't keeping weapons off planes, because TSA screeners miss box cutters, twelve-inch razor blades, clearly labeled blocks of C4, and loaded guns, all of which have been carried on to airplanes recently.
It's time we stopped this massive over-investment in security theater. The TSA's procedures don't work! Luckily, they don't have to, because air travel is the safest form of long-distance transportation known to man - and it always has been, even without the TSA boondoggle.
Jews In Black Hats Look Out For Their Black Neighbors
The Daily Beast goes PC, calling them "African-American."
The thing is, many black people are, say, Haitian, or from St. Lucia; Haiti and St. Lucia being islands which are not attached to the continent of Africa, and really aren't even near it.
If you want to get geographically close to accurate, they'd be South-American-Americans, or more specifically, Afro-Caribbean-Americans.
But, isn't all of that ridiculous? I don't call myself a "Russian-German (but basically chased around Europe by Jew-rapers)-American." And I have a friend whose family is from St. Lucia who has skin the color of dark chocolate. If someone needs to know what color her skin is, she just calls herself "black."
But, anyway, the story that inspired this little rant is a nice one. David Freedlander writes at the Daily Beast that when the hurricane hit, the city's ultra-Orthodox Jews stepped up to care for their African-American neighbors:
African-American and working-class neighborhoods of Far Rockaway and Coney Island had to be evacuated when their assisted-living facilities flooded or lost power. They were moved to the Park Slope Armory, where the only food available was Army rations--high-preservative, high-sodium ready-to-eat meals. So Brad Lander, a local city councilman, called Rabbi Alexander Rapaport, who runs the MASBIA soup kitchen in the ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Boro Park."We were supposed to be closed on Tuesday, what with the blackouts and the flooding," Rapaport said. "But this food they had, it was a like a mix between cholent [a traditional Sabbath stew] and lasagna, and it came in this inner pouch that they somehow call 'food.'"
Rapaport and Lander put out the message on Facebook and Twitter that the soup kitchen needed volunteers. Even as the city still struggled to slough off the effects of Sandy, nearly 100 showed up, peeling potatoes, dicing squash. They delivered 200 lunches of eggplant and pasta that day and made twice that many chicken and meatloaf dinners. By Wednesday, their stocks were depleted, so they put out another call on social media; more donations came in. At week's end, they were still making hot meals for evacuees and volunteers all over the city, delivering hundreds of meals to a command post in the flood-ravaged Seagate neighborhood in Brooklyn.
...Does this mean that the ultra-Orthodox reputation for insularity is a false one? "I don't know," Rapoport said. "My agenda is to feed people. If you want to find a new cultural trend here, that is up to you."
Natural Gas Gets Government Cash: More Welfare For Business
Veronique de Rugy writes at reason about why there's no need for the shovels of cash in subsidies that the natural gas industry is looking to pull out of Washington (and which, of course, lawmakers are eager to shovel in their direction):
The rationale behind NATGAS is familiar. Backers say that they've got a whiz-bang technology whose benefits are guaranteed. The only problem, they say, is that transition costs to the new and better technology are really high. In this case, investors are reluctant to spend the billions of dollars in capital expenditures necessary to earn natural gas the much larger share of the transportation market it supposedly deserves. Such a view is as self-serving as it is ahistorical. The automobile itself provides a counter-example. The shift from horse-powered vehicles to gasoline ones came about without tax subsidies for filling stations. And in fact, some companies are already converting trucks, cars, and buses to run on natural gas without the NATGAS Act's large subsidies. Honda, the only company that sells factory-ready natural-gas-powered cars in the country, is offering buyers $3,000 of free fuel as an incentive.Natural gas does in fact provide a proven, less-polluting alternative to conventional fuels for cars and trucks. But the reluctance of investors to pour the $130 billion to $210 billion that may be needed over the next 20 years to build for the natural gas infrastructure alone stems from precisely the sort of market forces that government should respect. Natural gas prices are well below historic levels while oil prices are well above historic levels. There's no guarantee that these prices will stay at those mismatched levels over the life of the capital expenditure needed to ramp up the market for natural-gas vehicles.
If the recent string of government-subsidized energy failures such as Solyndra teaches any lesson, it's that government should be extremely slow to overrule investors' reluctance to wager their own money. Just as it does with more chic "green energies," the acknowledged need for subsidies shows that natural gas technology is not ready for prime time. Tilting the scales in its favor will introduce even more economic inefficiency into the market while putting taxpayers on the hook for yet another "sure thing" that will help America move forward into a future of cleaner and greener energy.
As it stands, natural gas companies are already set to benefit from regulations that hamstring competing energy sources.
She's absolutely right that government has to stop overriding the free market. When we don't, we pay.
And I love her example of the automobile and gas stations. Accordingly, Henry Ford didn't get a wad of money from the government, and it's not like we're all saddling up Rambler to get to the office.
Looking Beyond Election Day
Rutherford Institute's John W. Whitehead writes at the HuffPo about America's ongoing transformation to a police state:
SWAT team raids.
With more than 50,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties is on the rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.Suspect society.
Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Making matters worse are Terrorism Liaison Officers (firefighters, police officers, and even corporate employees) who have been trained to spy on their fellow citizens and report "suspicious activity," which includes taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements and drawings, taking notes, conversing in code, espousing radical beliefs and buying items in bulk. TLOs report back to "fusion centers," which are a driving force behind the government's quest to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on American citizens.VIPR Strikes.
Under the pretext of protecting the nation's infrastructure (roads, mass transit systems, water and power supplies, telecommunications systems and so on) against criminal or terrorist attacks, VIPR task forces (comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams) are being deployed to do random security sweeps of nexuses of transportation, including ports, railway and bus stations, airports, ferries and subways. VIPR teams are also being deployed to elevate the security presence at certain special events such as political conventions, baseball games and music concerts. Sweep tactics include the use of X-ray technology, pat-downs and drug-sniffing dogs, among other things. These stings inculcate and condition citizens to a culture of submissiveness towards authority and regularize intrusive, suspicion-less searches as a facet of everyday life.Invasive surveillance technology.
Police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike -- including homes. Coupled with the nation's growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.Rise of the Imperial President.
During his two terms in office, George W. Bush stepped outside the boundaries of the Constitution and assembled an amazing toolbox of powers that greatly increased the authority of the Executive branch and the reach of the federal government. Bush expanded presidential power to, among other things, allow government agents to secretly open the private mail of American citizens; authorize government agents to secretly, and illegally, listen in on the phone calls of American citizens and read our e-mails; assume control of the federal government following a "catastrophic event"; and declare martial law. Thus, the groundwork was laid for an imperial presidency, a state of affairs that continued after Barack Obama's ascension to the Oval Office and one that will likely not improve, no matter who wins on Election Day, unless something is done to restore the balance between government and its citizens.
via Lisa Simeone
Should The US Lower The Minimum Drinking Age?
Sheela Doraiswamy writes at Mind The Science Gap about the arguments for and against lowering the drinking age:
Those in favor of lowering the drinking age basically argue that the current minimum drinking age of 21 doesn't serve much benefit as it is. For example, in an editor's note published in a 2007 issue of the Journal of American College Health, author Dr. Reginald Fennel argues that the current drinking age is essentially like prohibition all over again- meaning that, even though alcohol is outlawed for people under 21, that certainly doesn't stop them from drinking....With the mindset that they're not supposed to drink, underage students may actually be more likely to binge when given alcohol (in other words, they may think along the lines that "this is my only chance to do this, I may as well enjoy it" and drink more than would have without restriction). In fact, underage students are more likely to binge drink than their peers who are of age.
Some arguments against:
According to a review of literature published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, author Ralph Hingson cites several studies on the issue done in the 70s and 80s. In 1971, some states did try and lower the drinking age to 18, and in the years following had an increase in fatalities from alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents. These numbers declined after 1988, by which time all 50 states had raised the minimum age back to 21.Another article by Robert Voas and James C. Fell also argues that lowering the drinking age to 18 will have too many unintended consequences. Aside from increasing motor vehicle accidents again, they claim that this will make it easier for even younger adolescents (high school students) to obtain alcohol from their 18 year old peers. They also discuss the fact that there hasn't been as much research on binge drinking among 18-25 year olds who don't attend college, and we don't know how lowering the drinking age may effect this group.
Actually, as addiction treatment specialist Stanton Peele noted on my radio show, kids who come from families where there's a responsible culture of drinking tend not to binge drink. He notes that the Jews and the Chinese tend to foster healthier attitudes toward alcohol. The Jews, for example, do it through exposure to it young, and through being less accepting of abuse of alcohol. (This isn't to say no Jews abuse alcohol, just that there's a culture, like that in my family, where drinking is not prohibited and where drunkenness would be entirely unacceptable. Wildly so.)
Silliness from the piece:
Proponents of the Amethyst Initiative have also discussed the idea of creating a "drinking license" for 18-20 year olds, who would have to take a course on safe alcohol consumption and pass a test before they can legally buy alcohol. Whether or not this would work should be a subject of further research. For now, it's probably safe to say that public health experts should look to other interventions in the quest to decrease binge drinking on college campuses.
Your vote? (On the drinking age, not which of the two substandard candidates will win the presidency.)
Correct Response To Attempted Twitter Shaming
Guy: "I want to think better of you than that."
Me: "Please don't."
Twitter, Lately
"People on the left are Adolf Hitler!"
"People on the right are Adolf Hitler!"
Anti-Bullying Programs: Teaching Kids To Remain Victims
Through reading a review of Greg Lukianoff's new book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
1. First of all, what got you interested in bullies and bullying?I'm not interested in bullies and bullying - and neither should anyone else be. Society's current obsession with bullies is little more than a witch-hunt - the most massive and popular witch hunt in the history of the world. The idea of trying to get rid of bullies sounds so good that I have never heard anyone question its value.
Everyone on the political spectrum, from the far right to the far left, has embraced the anti-bully movement. Every religion has jumped on the anti-bully bandwagon. Unfortunately, witch-hunts inevitably never succeed in eradicating the epidemic that initiated them, and cause more harm than good.
What I am interested in is victims and victim behavior. When I teach you how not to be a victim, no one can bully you. You don't have to wait for society to get rid of bullies for you to become happy.
Though we may not always think of it in such terms, the mental health professions have always been about helping victims to change, for everyone who comes asking for help feels like a victim. Unfortunately, we haven't done such a good job at this, which is why psychotherapy is often expected to take many months or years, and why the success rate is nothing to rave about. (For example, most people who go to marriage counseling end up getting divorced.) I believe the professions began asking, "But why should the victim have to change? The victim is the good one. Their problems are caused by abusers [and more recently, 'bullies.']. Let's promote mental health by fighting for laws against abuse." So, our professions began trying to promote mental health by fighting for laws against abuse and bullying. Which means that we are looking for legal solutions to the problem because psychological ones aren't working. The mental health professions today are becoming increasingly a branch of the legal justice system and less one of science.
But making abuse illegal doesn't make abuse disappear. It just changes who we deal with. So today, instead of trying to get victims to change, we are trying to make abusers change. And you know what we discover? It is not so easy to help abusers, either - after all, they are personality disordered and have no conscience! But I believe that our own conscience feels better failing to help evil abusers (and bullies) than failing to help poor, innocent victims.
Over two decades ago, I developed a very simple, effective way of teaching people not to be victims. My technique is grounded in simple principles that are consistent with all major schools of psychology, philosophy and religion. But after Columbine, I saw that the country was dealing with the problem in exactly the wrong direction. Instead of teaching kids how not to be victims, which is the only reliable way to reduce bullying, we began trying to target and eradicate bullying. I knew that such an approach was bound to make the situation worse, and I began warning about this - and research has since borne out my predictions.
...Bullying is said to be skyrocketing in the country in recent years. During the same period, anti-bully programs have been proliferating. Shouldn't bullying be going down with all our anti-bully education? No one is daring to put two and two together to realize that bullying is on the rise because of our anti-bully programs. School mental health professionals have told me things like, "Ever since our school adopted its anti-bully program, we're having three times as much bullying as before." Thanks to my website and my seminars, I am in touch with school mental health professionals throughout the country. Some of them love the sense of power they get from going after bullies. Most of them, though, have become miserable because their schools' anti-bully policies have turned them into security officers, policemen, detectives and judges. They did not go into the mental health professions to become law enforcement agents.
In the Dec. 2004 issue of the School Psychology Review - the research journal of the National Association of School Psychologists - a paper was published that was so important it should have made headlines in every newspaper and caused uproar in the Western World. If the news has fallen on any ears, they have been deaf ears. A Canadian psychologist, J. David Smith, conducted a meta-analysis of all the published research on whole-school anti-bullying programs. Do you know what he discovered? The great majority of these programs produced no benefit at all or even made the problem worse. Only a small minority showed a mild benefit.
And who knows what the researchers would come up with if they actually set out to measure the harmful effects of these programs.
Izzy's Psych Today blog is here.
This Morning's Fun: A Little Explosion, Well-Contained
A covered 14-inch Pyrex bowl (in which I was cooking kale in bacon grease) exploded in the microwave. Apparently, this happens to others.
LA's Going To Hire People To Do Condom Checks On Porn Sets?
I guess that'll be the deal if voters decide to meddle on Election Day. Susan Abram writes in the LA Daily News:
In an only-in-L.A. moment, Los Angeles County voters will decide on Election Day if adult-film actors should wear condoms while shooting pornographic scenes.Known as the Safer Sex Initiative, Measure B would not only mandate the use of condoms in porn films but require the Los Angeles Department of Public Health to lead inspections and enforcement efforts.
Technically, condom use on porn sites already is required under state and city law, but the current statutes are not enforced.
The measure also requires producers to obtain a public health permit after completing training on blood-borne pathogens and submitting an exposure control plan.
Fees charged for the permits would be used to pay for enforcement.
Perhaps they can hire TSA ball- and vagina-grabbers who've been fired for theft or other violations.
via @radleybalko
Advice Goddess Free Swim
You pick the topics -- please just post only one or two links per comment. (Otherwise your comment will be eaten by my anti-spam software.)
Will post more blog items in the morning! (Sunday was a long day's journey into a little wiped out.)
Gray Friday
Pre-Black Friday deals in home, kitchen, garden at Amazon
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Dylan Evans On Risk Intelligence - Increasing Your Ability To Make Wise Decisions
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My guest tonight, Dr. Dylan Evans, will be talking about risk intelligence and how you can increase your ability to make wise decisions.
Wise decisions are fact-based decisions instead of the superstition- and ignorance-based ones that are often the defaults ones our brain pushes us toward.
It's especially important to be factual about your own level of ignorance surrounding an area you need to make a decision about and factor that in.
Dylan Evans will help you and us all learn how, well, to be a lot less idiotic and self-defeating in the way we do business, act in our relationships, and live our lives.
His very smart book on the subject is Risk Intelligence: How to Live with Uncertainty
Listen to tonight's show live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/11/05/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with addiction treatment specialist Dr. Stanton Peele, who laid out his groundbreaking thinking on the personal responsibility approach to addiction and kicking everyday bad habits.
Peele wrote a really fantastic book, co-authored with Archie Brodsky, called Love and Addiction, and more recently, and also very wise, the book, 7 Tools To Beat Addiction, which we'll be discussing on the show. He blogs at Psychology Today and The Huffington Post.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/10/29/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes.
Do Starbucks Employees Have More Emotional Intelligence Than Your Doctor?
Probably. Eric Barker posts at Bakadesuyo.com that medical school actually reduces empathy, while Starbucks employees are taught to Listen to the customer, Acknowledge their complaint, Take Action to solve the problem, Thank Them, and Explain why the problem happened.
Barker asks, "Is there room in those barista training sessions for some medical students?"
Repressing Free Speech: A Mission On Far Too Many College Campuses
If you know anyone in academia, professor or student, you know what a chill there is in free speech on campuses.
I just read Greg Lukianoff's excellent book, "Unlearning Liberty," which is PACKED, cover to cover with examples -- examples I wish that were made up, because they're so wildly and terribly wrong in terms of both our Constitution and the cultural principles our country is based on.
And Greg is right -- the issue goes way beyond the particular campus speech violations they've fought. The chill (and prohibitions) on dissent on college campuses lead to a societal chill on free speech, and left and right being opposed in ugly ways because there's no means of or training in how to have a debate. (If there's no possibly upsetting speech allowed, you can't get practice speaking to people who disagree with you.)
Greg writes in a NYT op-ed about the disgusting chill on free speech on college campuses (often in the name of protecting college students' terribly delicate feelings):
Colleges and universities are supposed to be bastions of unbridled inquiry and expression, but they probably do as much to repress free speech as any other institution in young people's lives. In doing so, they discourage civic engagement at a time when debates over deficits and taxes should make young people pay more attention, not less.Since the 1980s, in part because of "political correctness" concerns about racially insensitive speech and sexual harassment, and in part because of the dramatic expansion in the ranks of nonfaculty campus administrators, colleges have enacted stringent speech codes. These codes are sometimes well intended but, outside of the ivory tower, would violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. From protests and rallies to displays of posters and flags, students have been severely constrained in their ability to demonstrate their beliefs. The speech codes are at times intended to enforce civility, but they often backfire, suppressing free expression instead of allowing for open debate of controversial issues.
...In a study of 392 campus speech codes last year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where I work, found that 65 percent of the colleges had policies that in our view violated the Constitution's guarantee of the right to free speech. (While the First Amendment generally prohibits public universities from restricting nondisruptive free speech, private colleges are not state actors and therefore have more leeway to establish their own rules.)
Some elite colleges in particular have Orwellian speech codes that are so vague and broad that they would never pass constitutional muster at state-financed universities. Harvard is a particularly egregious example. Last year, incoming Harvard freshmen were pressured by campus officials to sign an oath promising to act with "civility" and "inclusiveness" and affirming that "kindness holds a place on par with intellectual attainment." Harry R. Lewis, a computer science professor and a former dean of Harvard College, was quick to criticize the oath. "For Harvard to 'invite' people to pledge to kindness is unwise, and sets a terrible precedent," he wrote on his blog. "It is a promise to control one's thoughts."
...Elsewhere, rules that aim for inclusiveness do more to confuse students than to encourage debate. Earlier this year, Vanderbilt prohibited student groups (if they wished to receive university support and financing) from barring students from leadership positions based on their beliefs. The apparent goal was to prevent evangelical Christian groups from excluding gay students from leadership positions -- but the policy also means that a Democrat could be elected as an officer of the College Republicans.
...For reasons both good and bad -- and sometimes for mere administrative convenience -- colleges have promulgated speech codes that are not only absurd in their results but also detrimental to the ideals of free inquiry. Students can't learn how to navigate democracy and engage with their fellow citizens if they are forced to think twice before they speak their mind.
Greg is president of theFIRE.org, the wonderful organization that defends free speech on college campuses. I recommend his book: Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
Here's a wonderful review of the book in Psych Today, by Izzy Kalman:
Throughout Unlearning Liberty, Lukianoff documents the injustices committed by universities in their efforts to eradicate offensive speech and the resulting damage to students' ability to think critically and control their emotions. But one of Lukianoff's most startling discoveries in his years of work for FIRE is that speech codes that are designed to protect students are used most often by administrators to protect themselves. As in all totalitarian police states, they use the codes to punish students and faculty that dare to criticize the administration! Surveys have indeed confirmed that the majority of university professors do not feel safe to express themselves freely.I, as the world's most persistent critic of antibullyism, have experienced first hand the very issues Lukianoff writes about. I have seen how this movement meant to promote tolerance is promoting intolerance (just read the comments to my Psychology Today blog); how the effort to promote social justice is resulting in injustice; how academic journals refuse to publish anything that challenges the orthodox approach to bullying despite its obvious failure; how people have learned to use accusations of being offended or bullied as a tactic to win arguments and stifle debate; how vague terms such as "harassment" and "bullying" allow schools to punish children for engaging in constitutionally protected behaviors; how anti-bullying laws have outlawed humor; how teaching children that words can cause them irreparable harm is fostering a generation of emotionally vulnerable children who have little ability to handle the ordinary stings of life.
And that's why I am so excited by Unlearning Liberty. I hope it becomes a runaway best seller so society can begin saving itself from its well meaning but misguided attempt to protect people's feelings. To create educational policies and laws that maximize human wellbeing and achievement, we need to be guided by legal scholars like Lukianoff who understand the philosophy of law and appreciate the brilliance of our Constitution rather than by legally naïve social scientists lobbying the government to promote their own scientifically questionable political agendas. No serious legal scholar would endorse the idea that we can create a society in which no one exerts any power over anyone else by invoking the power of the government to punish anyone who exerts power over anyone else. That is a recipe for a totalitarian police state.
If wish I were capable of writing a review that does justice to this book, which is packed full of valuable insights and revelations, and written with an eloquence and depth I can only envy. Go out and buy it. The profits go to FIRE, so that Lukianoff and staff can continue doing their essential work.
And if you live in LA, do come to the LA Press Club event for Greg's book on November 29 at 7pm. It's free -- you just need to RSVP at the link (and then click on the EventBrite link at the bottom of the FIRE blog item).
Developing Resilience
Andrew Zolli writes in the NYT about how to bounce back. He notes that in Hurricane Sandy, newly redeveloped Lower Manhattan, which should have been the least vulnerable part of Manhattan, was not, because it was rebuilt to be "sustainable," not resilient, as urban planner and developer Jonathan Rose put it:
"After 9/11, Lower Manhattan contained the largest collection of LEED-certified, green buildings in the world," he said, referring to a rating program for eco-friendly design. "But that was answering only part of problem. The buildings were designed to generate lower environmental impacts, but not to respond to the impacts of the environment" -- for example, by having redundant power systems.The resilience frame speaks not just to how buildings weather storms but to how people weather them, too. Here, psychologists, sociologists and neuroscientists are uncovering a wide array of factors that make you more or less resilient than the person next to you: the reach of your social networks, the quality of your close relationships, your access to resources, your genes and health, your beliefs and habits of mind.
Based on these insights, these researchers have developed training regimens, rooted in contemplative practice, that are already helping first responders, emergency-room physicians and soldiers better manage periods of extreme stress and diminish the rates and severity of post-traumatic stress that can follow.
...Unfortunately, the sustainability movement's politics, not to mention its marketing, have led to a popular misunderstanding: that a perfect, stasis-under-glass equilibrium is achievable. But the world doesn't work that way: it exists in a constant disequilibrium -- trying, failing, adapting, learning and evolving in endless cycles. Indeed, it's the failures, when properly understood, that create the context for learning and growth. That's why some of the most resilient places are, paradoxically, also the places that regularly experience modest disruptions: they carry the shared memory that things can go wrong.
"Resilience" takes this as a given and is commensurately humble. It doesn't propose a single, fixed future. It assumes we don't know exactly how things will unfold, that we'll be surprised, that we'll make mistakes along the way. It's also open to learning from the extraordinary and widespread resilience of the natural world, including its human inhabitants, something that, counterintuitively, many proponents of sustainability have ignored.
That doesn't mean there aren't genuine bad guys and bad ideas at work, or that there aren't things we should do to mitigate our risks. But we also have to acknowledge that the holy war against boogeymen hasn't worked and isn't likely to anytime soon. In its place, we need approaches that are both more pragmatic and more politically inclusive -- rolling with the waves, instead of trying to stop the ocean.
Zolli's book, co-authored with Ann Marie Healy: Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back
A Bunch Of Signs Bloomberg Is Worth Watching
Of course, the signs have nothing to do with Bloomberg and everything to do with Lydia Callis, the expressive woman standing next to him interpreting for the deaf:
Forget FEMA And The National Guard; You Want Something Done, Call Victoria's Secret
Matthew Feeney posts at reason:
Victoria's Secret has saved the National Guard.On Monday night Superstorm Sandy left the armory of the New York Army National Guard's 69th Infantry Regiment without power. Thankfully Victoria's Secret was in town for an event at the Regiment's armory, and had brought in huge generators. The National Guard reached out for help from the producers of the show. Power was restored hours later.
...The National Guard also turned to Victoria's Secret for help distributing food provided by FEMA. For some reason a lingerie retailer was better equipped to distribute food in the aftereffects of a natural disaster than FEMA and the National Guard, and was on hand to provide a fork lift.
More on private sector disaster relief here.
Cato's Michael Tanner writes in the WSJ:
Mitt Romney is being attacked in some quarters because he suggested in a 2011 debate that some federal disaster-relief functions might be shifted to the states. Critics claim that this means he simply doesn't care about people affected by disaster--that he is putting dollars and ideology before people's lives. But might not a more locally focused disaster-relief program make sense?After all, much of the federal government's relief efforts simply amount to shifting funds from one part of the country to another and back again. Yesterday New York paid for assistance to Louisiana; today Louisiana pays for assistance to New York. Is that necessarily the most efficient way to accomplish our goals?
FEMA essentially represents a centralized "command and control" approach to disaster relief. It presumes that only the experts in Washington--not state and local officials, and certainly not private charities--know best how to respond to local needs and conditions.
In the wake of Katrina and other disasters, there have been numerous stories of federal officials rejecting offers of assistance--from Coca-Cola KO -0.67% offering to send water, for example, or private organizations trying to deliver hospital supplies--because those offers didn't fit neatly into the bureaucratic script. Initial indications do suggest that with Hurricane Sandy, federal, state and local coordination has been better. But that doesn't argue against giving more authority, and more responsibility, to those actually in the affected areas.
The bottom line: Big government is seldom the same as effective government. That applies as much to disaster relief as to anything else.
Un-Clement Weather In The Obama Administration
On clemency, compared to Obama, Ronald Reagan is practically a flower child.
Obama has granted clemency more rarely than any modern president, writes Dafna Linzer at ProPublica:
A former brothel manager who helped the FBI bust a national prostitution ring. A retired sheriff who inadvertently helped a money launderer buy land. A young woman who mailed ecstasy tablets for a drug-dealing boyfriend, then worked with investigators to bring him down.All of them and hundreds more were denied pardons by President Obama, who has granted clemency at a lower rate than any modern president, a ProPublica review of pardons data shows.
The Constitution gives the president unique power to forgive individuals for federal offenses. While pardons do not wipe away convictions, they can restore a person's full rights to vote, possess firearms and obtain business licenses, as well as remove barriers to certain career opportunities and adoptions. For many applicants, a pardon is simply an opportunity for a fresh start.
But Obama has parceled out forgiveness far more rarely than his recent predecessors, pardoning just 22 individuals while denying 1,019.
He has given pardons to roughly 1 of every 50 individuals whose applications were processed by the Justice Department. At this point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan had pardoned 1 of every 3 such applicants. George H.W. Bush had pardoned 1 in 16. Bill Clinton had pardoned 1 in 8. George W. Bush had pardoned 1 in 33.
Obama also has been stingy with commutations, applications for early release by those still serving federal prison sentences.
Under Reagan and Clinton, applicants for commutations had a 1 in 100 chance of success. Under George W. Bush, that fell to a little less than 1 in 1,000. Under Obama, an applicant's chance is slightly less than 1 in 5,000.
He has commuted the sentence of one individual, a woman with terminal leukemia whose case was championed by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.
"This idea of 'tough on crime' took root around the time of Ronald Reagan and it is striking that President Obama is showing so much less mercy than Reagan," said Jeffrey Crouch, a political science professor at American University and the author of "The Presidential Pardon Power."
via @radleybalko
Dealing With Phone Text Spam
Just awakened by text spam. If you got nosmoke11 text spam (or other text spam) on your ATT phone, forward text to ATT (when on the text, hit edit, forward to 7726).
Do not reply to phone text spammer, much as you'd like to tell him/her to throw him/herself on a rusty poker. Responding tells them your number is good so they can text you further.
ATT will message you back and ask you for the number the text was sent from, so look at that (in your overall messages lineup) that before you text them and write it down.
Save 7726 in your contact list and send text spam to ATT whenever you get it.
If you don't have ATT, Google the name of your company and "text spam" so you don't have to call them. I hate calling. Hate, hate, hate.
Muslim Brags That Muslims Are Winning The War Against Free Speech
"Muslims are winning the argument about supposed freedom of speech," (through the rioting and violence and the creation of fear), according to a piece in Crescent Magazine by Iqbal Siddiqui:
In almost all cases, Muslim reaction starts on a relatively small, often local scale, escalating as word spreads around the Ummah, which may happen very quickly or take weeks or months. Nowadays, this is often on the back of internet or social networking campaigns, although these tools of communication were not available at the time of Rushdie's satanic prose. The forms of protest vary from place to place, ranging from letter-writing and media campaigns in Western countries, to violent anger on the streets of Muslim cities, often targeting Western embassies and other institutions, including both those directly associated with the attack and others....The real aim of the Muslim response, as the late Dr. Kalim Siddiqui said, was to take a stance, to say, "...you may have gone this far, but you go no farther; and in future, you will never go this far again." And that is precisely what has been achieved. The Rushdie book may remain in circulation, but it has never been serialised or filmed or adapted for television or the stage. And no author has tried to produce another book treating the Prophet (pbuh) in a similar way, at any level, from that of high literature claimed by Rushdie to the mass market level of popular fiction. There will never be anti-Islamic equivalents of The Last Temptation of Christ or Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. That is the measure of Muslim success.
...And this is not just a matter of people fearing the personal or commercial consequences of Muslim anger, though that is clearly a factor. It is also a broader recognition that Islam still enjoys a standing in the world, reflected in the fervour and commitment of its followers, that no other faith or culture maintains. It is a recognition, however subconscious or grudging, and however much it may be denied, that Islam is not just history; it is not just a remnant of an irrelevant and increasingly forgotten past. It is a vibrant, living, thriving civilizational force with the potential to reinvigorate the societies of those who follow it...
Yes, with violence, death or forced conversion to Islam as the Quran commands.
People need to wake up that Islam is not just another religion but a violent, totalitarian system bent on removing the freedoms of all of us through installing The New Caliphate around the globe.
Those trying to advance Islam use Western technology, made possible through the freedoms born of The Enlightenment, to try to ship us all back to the dark ages they live in, where women have the rights of furniture and gays and lesbians are slaughtered as per the Quran.
Start reading the Quran and Hadith, and reading about Islam, as I have since 9/11, and you'll be horrified by what you find. And FYI, the later Medina Quran (the latter part) abrogates the nicey-nicey passages in the early portion of the Quran, the Mecca Quran, from the time before Mohammed had power. Back then, he was pretending to be all inter-faith-y.
Once Mohammed got power, he showed himself to be a raping, looting, pathologically narcissistic mass murderer.
I'm an atheist, but thanks, I'll take the Jesus believers and all that "turn the other cheek" and "feed the poor" stuff. They believe some nasty stuff, too, but they aren't telling me I have to accept Jesus as my savior or they're going to stone me in the parking lot of Home Depot.
via @blazingcatfur
The Bridge Always Wins
Via LiveLeak:
The Durham train trestle has stood its ground for the last 100 years. This fact doesn't deter some drivers from challanging the bridge about once a month. All of them fail.
There's something oddly compelling about this. Kind of like LA freeway chases.
Wave Goodbye To Your Civil Liberties! Warrantless Video Surveillance Okay, Court Rules
Declan McCullagh writes at CNET:
Police are allowed in some circumstances to install hidden surveillance cameras on private property without obtaining a search warrant, a federal judge said yesterday.CNET has learned that U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled that it was reasonable for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to enter rural property without permission -- and without a warrant -- to install multiple "covert digital surveillance cameras" in hopes of uncovering evidence that 30 to 40 marijuana plants were being grown.
This is the latest case to highlight how advances in technology are causing the legal system to rethink how Americans' privacy rights are protected by law.
The losing "War on Drugs" is not reason enough to yank away American's civil liberties -- like the very important right to privacy and prohibitions against unreasonable search.
Two defendants in the case, Manuel Mendoza and Marco Magana of Green Bay, Wis., have been charged with federal drug crimes after DEA agent Steven Curran claimed to have discovered more than 1,000 marijuana plants grown on the property, and face possible life imprisonment and fines of up to $10 million. Mendoza and Magana asked Callahan to throw out the video evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds, noting that "No Trespassing" signs were posted throughout the heavily wooded, 22-acre property owned by Magana and that it also had a locked gate.Callahan based his reasoning on a 1984 Supreme Court case called Oliver v. United States, in which a majority of the justices said that "open fields" could be searched without warrants because they're not covered by the Fourth Amendment. What lawyers call "curtilage," on the other hand, meaning the land immediately surrounding a residence, still has greater privacy protections.
"Placing a video camera in a location that allows law enforcement to record activities outside of a home and beyond protected curtilage does not violate the Fourth Amendment," Justice Department prosecutors James Santelle and William Lipscomb told Callahan.
Private property, no matter how wooded, no matter if it is "open fields," should be respected for what it is: Private property.
via @Drudge
"Laugh At The Crippled Girl" Verdict: We Don't Have The Right To Not Be Offended
Kimball Perry writes at Cincinatti.com that a jury decided on Thursday that Forest Thomer II committed no crime -- a victory for free speech rights (photo of the comic with muscular dystrophy at the link):
To promote the comic career of his friend, Ally Bruener,Thomer walked up to groups of people, pointed at the wheelchair-bound Bruener and asked them, "Do you want to laugh at the crippled girl?"As the people were trying to recover from the seemingly inappropriate question, Bruener - who has muscular dystrophy - wheeled up, told a joke and then announced where and when her next performance would be.
Lori Salzarulo of the USA Regional Chamber of Commerce complained to police about Thomer's comments.
Police threatened to shock Thomer with a Taser and then arrest him.
Cincinnati Police Officer Dan Kreider charged Thomer with disorderly conduct, accusing him of "grossly abusive language."
That is a crime that could have sent Thomer to jail for up to 30 days and, Thomer insisted, also violated his right to free speech. After Thomer accused the police of censorship, the city twice changed the charges, finally deciding to try him on a charge of "turbulent behavior."
Thomer and his attorney, Danielle Anderson, said they believe Salzarulo wanted Thomer thrown out because she feared his kind of humor would ruin the chamber's event.
Her displeasure, though, doesn't trump free speech rights, even for Thomer's shocking language, the jury decided.
"It might be tasteless and you might not agree with it, but it's legal," Anderson said. "No one else (other than Salzarulo) came forward to complain."
My late friend John Callahan, the quadriplegic cartoonist, used to get all sorts of complaints from "abled" people about the cartoons he made about disabled people. "How would you feel if you were quadriplegic," they'd ask, not knowing he actually was. He just wanted to have disabled people be treated same as we treat able ones -- not with kid gloves.
He used to buzz around Portland in his motorized wheelchair asking people things like, "See my new shoes? I hear they're comfortable."
If a person finds another's speech offensive, they have the right to march up to them and tell them so, not to use the law as a billy club. (And as I find about officers where I live, and through the reading I do in civil liberties, they are often clueless on the law, except for the parts like "Don't rape people.")
via @CincyFan73
Your College Is Now Your Mommy: Smoking To Be Banned At UCLA
This country has really gone off the deep end. I always romanticized the American West as a place of freedom, but now they're trying to one up New York for telling people what they can't put in their bodies.
I hate cigarette smoke, but if you aren't blowing it in my face, it's really none of my business if you smoke. (I do have a problem with paying the health care costs for smokers, and if it were up to me, people would pay buttloads extra for health care for behaving in ways that could tax the system. And no, we can't count on all smokers to die younger and without costing us for emphysema or lung cancer treatment.)
Back to the subject of this blog item, I think coercive government measures -- like Bloomberg's soda nannying -- encourage more measures like them beyond government, like the upcoming ban at UCLA on all tobacco products...even electronic cigarettes. From the LA Times:
The days of lighting up a cigarette between classes or of a smoke break outside the dorm will soon be over at UCLA as the campus prepares to become tobacco-free.Chancellor Gene D. Block said in a letter that tobacco products -- cigarettes, cigars, oral tobacco and electronic cigarettes, among them -- will be prohibited as of April 22.
"Tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke remain the leading causes of preventable disease and death worldwide," Block said in the letter. "Cigarette butts, which are non-biodegradable, account for one-third of all the litter in California. Cigarette butts and cigarette smoke are toxic and degrade the quality of our air, water, forests and beaches.
"It is important to protect our community from these serious health risks and adverse environmental effects," he wrote.
The ban comes as part of a push across the UC system to eliminate tobacco use on campuses by 2014.
President Mark Yudoff said in a January letter that UC Medical Center and more than 500 university campuses nationwide already ban smoking, and the UC system -- as a "national leader in healthcare and environmental practices" -- should follow suit.
"Offering a smoke-free environment will contribute positively to the health and well-being of all UC students, faculty, staff, and our patients and visitors," Yudof wrote.
What's next, taking weekly stool samples from the student population -- and visitors, too?
What of people who continue smoking and have to leave campus to have a cigarette -- or maybe start fires sneaking one?
And what's with the ban on electronic cigarettes, which don't burn anything or contain tobacco? Will they also be banning Nicorette gum and The Patch?
TSA: The Only Consistent Thing Is The Idiocy
Scott McCartney writes in the WSJ about the security stupidity that is the TSA:
Sometimes you can carry your wallet through the airport X-ray machine, sometimes you can't. Sometimes that trusted-traveler membership speeds you though security, other times, well, sorry. And you might get a surprise check of your driver's license at the boarding gate.For the past decade, travelers have learned to adapt to a changing array of security requirements--shoes off, liquids restricted, bodies scanned and patted down. Frequent fliers try to adjust, knowing that following a routine makes navigating airports quicker and less stressful.
...Six times this year, Laura Aguiar, a frequent traveler and health-care consultant from Albuquerque, N.M., has run into unexpected TSA checks of her driver's license at boarding gates. The identification sometimes isn't even matched to her boarding pass. The screener just wants to see if she has an I.D.
"It's crazy. It's completely unnecessary. How is this keeping me safe?" asks Ms. Aguiar.
...Consider a situation I witnessed last month in Santiago, Chile. Passengers were facing a 10-hour flight in coach and so, worried about dehydration, taking medication and the potential for blood clots, some passengers bought bottled water after passing through security screening. When it was time to board, security agents lined the jet-bridge and confiscated the unopened water bottles.
There were no warning signs in the terminal or gift shops. An agent declared, contrary to rules in the U.S., that "Liquids aren't allowed in the cabin."
Yet clerks then handed passengers their wine bottles purchased in the duty free store.
TSA says security plans for U.S.-bound flights must meet TSA policies. A spokeswoman for American Airlines, the largest U.S. carrier to South America, said some countries don't search for liquids and gels to U.S. standards, and so a special check has to be made at boarding of U.S.-bound flights.
Duty-free liquids are permitted if handed to travelers at the gate because they have been under airport control. Countries with that procedure include Chile and Argentina, American said.
Commenter Mike Sullivan on the WSJ's site:
Oh, yeah -- here's how to get a full pint of any liquid you like onboard an airplane:Go to the drugstore and buy any brand of saline solution for contact lens wearers in the big 16-oz. bottle.
Take it home and empty out the saline solution.
Fill it with whatever you want, leaving the saline solution label on it.
On your next flight, proudly waltz through the security check, keeping the bottle outside and separate from your other 2.7-oz mini-bottles of dangerous shampoos, deodorants, conditioner, etc.
If questioned about the big bottle of liquid, remind the TSA of their official policy (bring a printed copy with you since most agents are ignorant of it), here: http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/medically-necessary-liquids -- note that TSA "will not touch the liquid or gel" during inspection.
Let's hope the bad guys don't figure this out by, say, reading the TSA Web site.
Gobble, Gobble
Thanksgiving kitchen and dinnerware markdowns at Amazon
Obama Supporters Confronted With The President's Record On Surveillance, Detention, Kill Lists
Scott Schackford posts at reason that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz isn't the only one who's clueless about what the president she's supporting is up to.
He posts a video from WeAreChange.org that pulls a little trick:
They detail a bunch of Romney's positions on surveillance, detention and drone strikes that just so happen to match Obama's. When supporters think these are Romney's positions, they are quick to judge him as bad and dangerous. But then the reporter tells them that these positions are also Obama's and detail actions he's taking right now. And then? Watch:
via @Popehat
Legalized Stealing: The Caswell Case -- Civil Forfeiture
I've blogged about this before, and the wonderful non-profit civil liberties defender, Institute for Justice, takes the case to court this week -- as the title of the YouTube video says, "POLICING FOR PROFIT -- Feds try to take innocent elderly couple's Mom-and-Pop motel":
The most contentious civil forfeiture fight in the nation will be the subject of a week-long trial starting Monday, November 5, 2012, in Boston. Throughout the week, the Institute for Justice, which represents the property owners in the case, will expose the ugly practice of civil forfeiture--where law enforcement agencies can pad their budgets by taking property from innocent owners who have never been convicted or even charged with a crime.The trial will start at 10 a.m. at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse, 1 Courthouse Way in Boston. The case of Tewksbury, Mass., motel owner Russ Caswell and his wife will be presided over by Magistrate Judge Judith G. Dein in Courtroom 15. At the heart of the trial will be the protections afforded innocent owners, like the Caswells, when faced with the loss of their property.
All Russ and his wife want is to peacefully operate their motel. But because their property was worth one million dollars and carried no mortgage, and because a handful of drug crimes had taken place on the property over 20 years (which represent less than .05 percent of the 125,000 rooms the Caswells rented over that period of time), the federal government is trying to take the Caswell's property through civil forfeiture, sell the land and keep the money. Under a process known as "equitable sharing," the federal government would keep 20 percent of what they net and the local police department would pocket 80 percent. Russ and his wife stand to lose everything they worked their lives to build.
"The Caswell case epitomizes everything that is wrong with our nation's civil forfeiture laws," said Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice. "People who are never even charged let alone convicted of criminal wrongdoing can face the loss of their homes, cars, cash, or, like with the Caswells, their entire business and livelihood."
"This outrageous forfeiture action should never have been filed in the first place," said Larry Salzman, an IJ attorney. "What the government is doing amounts to little more than a grab for what they saw as quick cash under the guise of civil forfeiture. Our goal in this case is to not only spotlight the inevitable abuse that transpires when law enforcement agencies are allowed to use civil forfeiture, but to set a precedent that will end this nightmare for the Caswells and stop an abuse of power that has ruined the lives of too many innocent Americans."
Russ said, "I think it is quite obvious why the federal government has come after us and not other businesses. We own a million-dollar property with no mortgage, so anything they get here, they get to keep for themselves. This case took a huge financial toll on our family before the Institute for Justice stepped up to defend us. And it continues to put a huge personal strain on both me and my wife. At this point in our lives, we should be thinking about our retirement. Instead, we have to take on this fight to save our business and make sure that it won't happen again to the next generation that comes along."
What's Wrong With Oregon's Vote By Mail As The Only Option
Wendy Willis writes at Zocalo about Oregon's all vote-by-mail system, which they went to in 1998:
There are others who, like me, fought the change. We miss chatting with the blue-haired ladies and wearing the "I voted" sticker all day. As my husband put it, "I miss pulling the curtain behind me and privately voting in public." We mourn the loss of the thread of connection with other citizens and with a tradition of voting. Our parents and grandparents voted in polling places, so why not us?But a solid majority of my friends and colleagues love the vote-by-mail system. They like the convenience of being able to vote when they have time. They talk about the issues and the candidates with their family members and loved ones over coffee and wine. They say they feel like better-informed voters because they can research each race as they go through the ballot, and they never have to guess on a judicial election or an obscure charter amendment when they're locked in a voting booth without access to Google.
My friend Phil Keisling, Oregon's former secretary of state and a national leader in the vote-by-mail movement, calls my resistance--very gently--"misguided sentimentality." He argues that the essence of democracy is not anachronistic ritual but maximum participation. Oregon and Washington, the only two exclusively vote-by-mail states, consistently post some of the highest voter turnouts, particularly in primary and off-year elections.
Of course, this makes me feel like a granny pining for the rotary dial phone or the metallic taste of well water. Who am I to miss my little sticker when there are mothers with four kids working two jobs who don't have time to go chat with volunteers from the League of Women Voters? Who am I to oppose a democratic innovation that strengthens self-governance? As Phil sweetly suggested to me, "Now that we have worked on participation, we can create new rituals."
Indeed, after 14 years, people have done just this. Some people have dessert with friends and fill out their ballots together. Many people vote with their children, answering questions and puzzling through the issues together. And many, many of my friends have created tender moments with their sweethearts over the mail-in ballot.
But here's the trouble. Those are private rituals. I love private rituals. I believe in lovers and parents and families anticipating and repeating gestures that mean something to them. But I am mourning the public ritual--a shared sense of duty, an act of common purpose fulfilled together whether we know each other or not.
I like the convenience of voting by mail when I'm busy but not so busy that I'm unable to research everything ahead of time, but I also love going to the polling place in person, seeing my neighbors vote, getting the little sticker to show that I'm an active part of our democracy.
I just voted in community elections where I live and I also felt that even about in-person neighborhood democracy.
Pennsylvania Closes The Liquor Cabinet
When government runs the liquor stores, it doesn't have the incentive that private businesses do to stay open. (No need to earn money, really -- they can just tax the skin off the citizenry.)
Consumerist reports that Pennsylvania has closed all of their 600 state-run liquor stores in the wake of Sandy to assess the damage.
How precious and prissy -- and how different things would be in a free market.
Of course, they make it illegal to bring liquor over state lines, but from Philly.com, from a story by William Bender, here's how they answered the phone in Delaware:
"Tri-State Liquors, open all day," was how an employee at the Claymont, Del., store answered the phone Tuesday morning....Gov. Corbett - and other Republicans before him - have sought to bust the state's liquor monopoly, to no avail.
"Texas Values" Scumbags Invent Phony Baloney Religious Freedom Violation
As I wrote to the losers at txvalues.org, who sent me multiple copies of the same press release: There are plenty of real violations of various religious and civil liberties. You have to make them up to get attention?
Here's the headline from their press release:
"Vote the Bible" T-Shirt Banned In A Texas County, Called Offensive: Texas Values Assists Intimidated Voter Forced to Cover Up Her Religious T-Shirt Before Voting
And here's text from the release:
Austin, TX, October 31, 2012--During early voting last week, a Texas voter in Williamson County was banned from wearing a t-shirt with the words "Vote the Bible" printed on the front. On October 24, Williamson County election workers at the Taylor City Hall polling place told Kay Hill that before she would be allowed to vote she had to turn her shirt inside out, go home and change, or cover up the words "Vote the Bible" because they "may be offensive to some people."
After voicing disagreement numerous times, Ms. Hill ultimately complied and was forced to cover up the words "Vote the Bible." Williamson County election workers provided her with an election worker's jacket to cover up the "offensive" words. Ms. Hill later spoke with Williamson County Election Administrator Rick Barron who confirmed that the election workers could make this decision to ban the words "Vote the Bible."
"It's outrageous that a person of faith would be mistreated this way while trying to vote. If this isn't voter intimidation, I don't know what is?" said Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values. "We hope Williamson County officials step up and put an end to this injustice immediately. No one else should have to suffer the humiliation, embarrassment and intimidation that Ms. Hill endured. No one should be asked to give up their religious freedom in order to vote," said Saenz.
What a scummy guy.
I'm for freedom of religion and religious speech but this actually about something else: It's called "electioneering" at a polling place, and messages calling on people to vote a certain way aren't allowed no matter what they are.
ANY shirt calling for ANY particular vote is illegal under laws regarding polling places. This is a bullshit protest that pretends to be about violated faith when the real deal is violated election laws and a legitimate response in the face of that.
Texas values? Aren't Texans supposed to be straight shooters?
Here, from FOXAustin:
(Williamson County Public Affairs Director Connie) Watson says the shirt violates state laws regarding elections."Electioneering or loitering within 100 feet of the entrance to the polling place or inside the polling place is not allowed. Electioneering would cover wearing a hat, a pen, a T-shirt or a sign that would indicate a position for a political party, candidate or a proposition," said Watson.
To find legit violations of civil liberties, read the work of organizations like theFIRE.org and Institute for Justice that are agenda-free, other than defending the civil liberties of those who cannot afford lawyers. FIRE will defend you whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or an atheist. Or Wiccan or whatever else. And they defend REAL civil liberties violations, of which there are plenty -- they don't feel compelled to make them up.
Institute for Justice just protected the right of monks in Louisiana to sell caskets.
California's Prop 30: Rewarding Irresponsible Politicians With Tax Cash
The amazing thing is, citizens don't seem to get the connection between politicians voting in bigger and bigger government that the state can't pay for and the decline in quality of life. From the WSJ:
The most important single vote in America next Tuesday, after the Presidential race, is Governor Jerry Brown's attempt to stick Californians with another giant tax increase. Mr. Brown and his labor allies say Proposition 30 will fix the state's budget deficit and ward off education cuts. But the real choice before voters is whether to issue Sacramento's incorrigible spendthrifts another blank check.Two years ago the Governor staged a bow to democracy by pledging that he wouldn't raise taxes without a vote of the people. The truth is he couldn't pick off enough Republicans in the legislature for a tax increase without delivering significant pension reforms, which government unions won't allow. Thus the last-ditch resort to the ballot box.
The Brown-union plan includes a "millionaire's tax" that kicks in at $250,000, three new income brackets for high earners and an increase in the top rate to 13.3% from 10.3% for individuals and many small business owners making more than $1 million. This would give California the highest income tax in the country, leaping over Hawaii's 11%. Oh, and by the way, these higher rates would be retroactive to this year.
...The only way California can escape its recurring fiscal Frankenstorms is through reform and economic growth. The former would stimulate the latter while the Governor's tax initiative would squelch both. Raising taxes on small business owners when one in five Californians is out of work or employed part-time because he can't find a full-time job is the definition of insanity.
Once more cash starts flowing to Sacramento, taxpayers can forget about budget and regulatory reforms that the Governor has suggested are on his agenda after the election. The only thing Democrats in Sacramento have planned after November is more spending.
And although this is specifically a California story this article is talking about, this is the story in most states these days.
"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much." --Ronald Reagan, to National Association of Realtors, March, 1982
