Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Sam Sommers - Understand The Power Of Context And Live, Love, Work Smarter
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
Context matters, Tufts psychology professor Dr. Sam Sommers explains. What we believe, how we behave, and even how we see ourselves shifts more than we understand, depending on the situation we find ourselves in at a particular moment.
For example, contrary to popular belief, context (like whether we're standing in a crowd), and not moral character, will often determine whether people will reach out and help someone in need.
On tonight's show, Dr. Sommers will lay out how understanding the surprisingly powerful impact of context can help us combat our biases in seeing and decision-making -- in turn helping us be more effective at work, with our families, in our friendships and relationships, and out in the world.
Sam's book: Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World
Listen to tonight's show live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/31/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show on how you can use the new field of adult attachment science, which is actually very simple to understand, to find love -- or to keep and even vastly improve the relationship you have.
My guest was neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine, co-author with psychologist Rachel S.F. Heller, of Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find -- and Keep -- Love.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/24/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 or Stitcher.
LAPD Risking Their Lives To Bring In Serious Criminals (aka The Puppetry Of The Penis)
Undercover cops are protecting...themselves from gunfire?...by hanging out in porno stores and busting men who get a little naughty there. This time, it's actor Nick Stahl, arrested by the LAPD and facing a "misdemeanor count of lewd conduct," according to the LA Times.
Wow. I feel so much safer now. You?
If a guy isn't running down the street with his dick out, scaring the little old ladies, this is a problem why?
I'm still pissed off about what the porno theater arrest did to PeeWee Herman's career. A hint: Want to avoid seeing men whack off? Stay out of porno theaters.
Problem solved!
UPDATE: The fact that he was arrested gets more ridiculous when you find out where he was caught jerking off -- in a private booth! (As usual, the LA Times reports the news without the essential details!)
Blasphemy As A National Security Threat -- Vs. Western Values
Daniel Greenfield writes at RSN about countries giving up free speech to try to appease Muslims and quell the violence built into and commanded by Islam:
Spain has begun deportation proceedings against Imran Firasat, a Christian refugee from Pakistan, for making a documentary about Mohammed and thereby threatening the national security of Spain. If Firasat is deported back to Pakistan, he will face the death penalty proving that it's a short step from the Spanish Inquisition to the Pakistani Inquisition.The United States has a man sitting in prison for making another blasphemous movie, which the government spent weeks blaming for worldwide attacks on American embassies. And he isn't the first man persecuted or prosecuted for offending Islam.
Offending Islam has become a national security issue involving all levels of government.
When Bubba the Love Sponge, a Tampa DJ, proposed to burn a Koran, the commander of the Afghanistan war contacted his girlfriend, who would later be stalked by Petraeus' girlfriend, to contact the Mayor of Tampa to keep Bubba from burning a Koran. Instead of explaining how the American system works to the Lebanese temptress and her four-star general, the mayor wrote back that the city was working on it.That month 50 percent more Americans were killed in Afghanistan in the long slow death march of the war, but a Koran was not burned in Tampa. Mission accomplished.
Muslims did not have to kill a great number of Americans to enforce blasphemy law in this country. Counting the various reactions to burnt Korans, rumors of a flushed Koran and assorted things of that nature, the number is still well below a hundred. Even counting every casualty in the war from September 11 onward, it took fewer deaths to make the United States give up on the Bill of Rights than it took to liberate it in the War of Independence.
But it's not really about the deaths, if it were then the United States wouldn't be senselessly squandering the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan to avoid offending the natives. It's not the death of men that our leaders are worried about, but the death of stability.Knowing that a hundred men will die today in car accidents does not alarm anyone, but knowing that somewhere a dozen men might die in a bomb explosion, anywhere and at any time, can bring a nations to its knees. That is the difference between predictable and unpredictable death. Predictable death makes it possible for most everyone to go about doing what they normally do. Unpredictable death however erodes daily order.
Blasphemy makes terrorism seem predictable. It delivers that false sense of control that is at the root of Stockholm Syndrome, the seductive illusion that the thug can be reasoned with and that we can restore control over our perilous environment by accepting responsibility for the enemy's violence. If we meet a set of conditions then we will have peace. And what kind of lunatic wouldn't want peace? The kind who needs to be deported or locked up in the name of peace.
...Islamists have not launched a thousand years war in order over Bubba; they have done it so that the cities and countries where Bubba and Imran live submit to Islam. Locking up filmmakers and warning off DJ's is not quite up to Saudi and Iranian standards of submission, but it's a start. Once the principle has been established, then the rest is a matter of negotiation. And the negotiations always begin and end with a bang.
Do You Have Unreliable Sperm?
People are starting to have children as they get older and older -- but should they? (Pretty soon Mommy and Baby will be wearing diapers at the same time.)
Lenona sent me a link to a blog item by Robert Franklin at Fathers & Families. Critiquing a Judith Shulevitz article on the subject in The New Republic, Franklin writes:
Entitled "How Older Parenthood will Upend American Society," the article comes to grips with the fact that Americans (and others around the world) are deferring childbearing until later in life than ever before. That discussion of course is feminist territory since Second Wave Feminism has long instructed women to put off childbearing - or preferably eschew it altogether - in favor of a career. Many women have done just that, and Shulevitz is now calling those choices into question....Roiphe calls it an "excellent and disturbing meditation." And indeed, the piece contains a lot of fascinating information, some of which we've known for a long time, some of which I, at least, haven't.
For example, we've long known that babies born to mothers in their 40s are significantly more likely to have Down Syndrome and other more obscure conditions. More recently we've learned that older fathers are more likely than younger ones to produce offspring who become schizophrenic later in life. Shulevitz reveals that older fatherhood also is associated with increased likelihood of autism. Apparently, the sperm of older men can be problematical.
...As Shulevitz points out, not all the problems with older parenthood are biological. For one thing, the older a person is when they become a parent, the older they are when their children reach adulthood. That means they're older and less likely to provide vigorous grandparenting to their children's children. And of course they die on average when their children and grandchildren are younger, cutting off their ability to provide the wisdom and guidance elders can impart to later generations.
Franklin's analysis:
So all of the angst about childbearing in advanced age is really about the choices of comparatively few, comparatively privileged women and men. For many months now we've heard the angry and anguished words of those who rightly decry the power of "the 1%." And yet here we have Judith Shulevitz arguing for major policy changes (e.g. government subsidies for bearing children) to accommodate the poor choices of the 2%, i.e. those who elect to have children past the age of 40. To top it off, she'd give those subsidies (a) to less educated women who are having babies earlier in life and (b) to better-off women who don't need them. Shulevitz proposes sweeping reforms for the few well-to-do that would likely have little effect on their behavior.No one argues for more children burdened with autism or Down Syndrome. But a little education about the detriments of having children late in life will, I predict, go a long way toward rectifying behavior that can be bad for all concerned. That such behavior is yet another outgrowth of feminism that still believes that it can reconstruct families and children to suit its political ideology comes as no surprise. Once women and men figure out that it's better for children to bear them when the parents are under the age of 40, and preferably earlier than that, I suspect we'll see a change in behavior.
And perhaps a change in thinking is in order as well. In Franklin's words:
It's by no means clear that we need to increase childbearing; indeed, I'd say the opposite is true, whatever political negotiations may need to be made to accommodate future generations.
Crass Half-Empty
Fill 'er up, boys and girls!
Do We Really Tip Based On The Waiter's Service?
It's a question I read on Freakonomics. A waiter who works in my neck of the woods, Joshua Talley, writes:
It seems likely to me that aside from instances of extremely good or extremely poor service, most people simply tip what they normally tip. For instance, some people are 10 percenters, many are 15 percenters and some are 20 percenters, etc., and it takes either very good or very poor service to change this. Am I right?
Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History
At Washington's Blog, via Crid:
Mike Masnick from TechDirt notes:
In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who's been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.
More from America's blog:
The American government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American.Some also claim that the government is also using facial recognition software and surveillance cameras to track where everyone is going. Moreover, cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And - given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google - it would be child's play for the government to track your location that way.) Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying on virtually everything you do (ProPublica notes: "That's No Phone. That's My Tracker").
As the top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency explained this week, the American government is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year.
...He says that if anyone gets on the government's "enemies list", then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, he notes that if the government decides it doesn't like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him.
This is terrifying stuff. Those of you who aren't actively fighting for our civil liberties need to start.
Related: Glenn Greenwald writes at Guardian.co.uk, "GOP and Feinstein join to fulfill Obama's demand for renewed warrantless eavesdropping: The California Democrat's disgusting rhetoric recalls the worst of Dick Cheney while advancing Obama's agenda."
If TSA "Security" Measures Were Even More Invasive
Or, as I like to call it, the shape of things to come, thanks to the sheep of things we've had -- all the people who are so polite as their right to not be searched without probable cause is yanked from them.
Not For Polite Company
Every link needs a good home.
Do You Think People Who Are Unpartnered For A Long Time Get More Neurotic?
This was an opinion expressed to me over the holidays, while I was a dinner guest at somebody's house.
Another guest, yet to arrive, had had a little neuroticism attack (as they often do), and the host had to calm this person down on the phone, and tell them to just come -- everything would be fine. (The host was not without things to do at this time, so this was a little crazy -- this air traffic controller moment of talking the guest down onto the social tarmac.)
After hanging up the phone, the host expressed to me the opinion that people who are alone for an extended period of time get neurotic -- more so than if they had a partner -- and especially as they get older.
This is possible. I know Gregg and I both serve the (loving) function of telling each other when we're being unreasonable (or maybe a little nuts) about something we're dealing with out in the world.
In a relationship, because you have to manage being with another person, you also get in the habit of being wise on a daily basis -- knowing what to let slide. (That is, in a relationship that isn't a pit of interpersonal hell.)
What's your take on this?
Thought Crimes: The Subject Of Yet Another Petition
I love the photo of the kid standing out protesting the Westboro Baptist Church creeps -- I think his placard said "God hates hate."
And I think these Westboro are just awful, protesting soldiers' funerals with their homo-hate signs and jeering.
But, we have a First Amendment, and it exists to protect the assholes of the world. (Nobody needs to protect your right to say "have a nice day!")
So, it galls me when people use their right to free speech to try to deem others' speech "hate" -- especially since "hate speech" can amp up a crime a few punishment levels. (Is a person any more or less murdered because the person who went after them didn't like their race -- or their shoes?)
Apparently, rational thought is also a crime. The latest dumbshit petition at The White House site calls for designating the Westboro losers a "hate group." Nick Wing writes at the HuffPo:
The individual push has since received the support of nearly 250,000 signees, making it the most popular single petition ever created through the White House initiative. It recently cruised past a call for federal action on gun control, which along with a number of other petitions on the issue of gun rights, drew a response from President Barack Obama last week.But the quarter-million signature effort to recognize Westboro as a hate group is also getting a boost from two other petitions calling for the congregation's tax-exempt status to be revoked. Both of those have also crossed the 25,000 signature threshold needed to prompt a response from the administration.
Official action has been taken against Westboro's most frequently utlized weapon -- its highly inflammatory, anti-gay displays at military funerals -- though not directly against the church itself. In August, Obama signed the Honoring America's Veterans Act, which declared that protests must be held at least 300 feet from military funerals and were prohibited two hours before or after a service.
I would love it if the Westboro creeps would just mysteriously and spontaneously disintegrate -- it's horrible what they do at these funerals. And I'm no constitutional scholar, but it seems this "Honoring America's Veterans Act" violates the Constitution that so many of these soldiers died defending.
Question For Michael Moore's Bodyguard: "Is That A Squirtgun In Your Pocket?"
Uh...apparently not. Story from January 20, 2005, but I'm guessing his bodyguards today aren't protecting him with their facility with sharp words.
via Walter Moore
The Fiscal Canyon
Via @Instapundit, law prof William A. Jacobson quotes Nick Troiano and Ryan Schoenike, co-founders of The Can Kicks Back, the Millennial outreach partner of the Campaign to Fix the Debt.
Troiano and Schoenike wrote in USA Today:
Our country is fixated on the fiscal cliff. Rightly so. Unless Washington gets its act together by the end of this month, huge tax hikes and across-the-board spending cuts are set to take effect - amounting to an economic shock that could cause another recession. But beyond this fiscal cliff lies something far more treacherous, which we should not ignore.Call it the fiscal canyon. It's not the $1.1 trillion projected deficit for this fiscal year, nor is it our $16.3 trillion national debt. The fiscal canyon is $71.7 trillion worth of liabilities, unfunded obligations and other long-term commitments of the federal government. It's the massive tab that is being handed down to future generations-- like ours.
We are both "Millennials," part of the largest generation ever, 80 million strong, now age 32 and younger. While the fiscal cliff threatens an economic recession, the fiscal canyon threatens our entire American Dream. As young Americans who plan on being here for a while, we have the most at stake in this debate.
The American Dream? Not scheduled for the Millennial generation. Pay off Granny's debt, kiddies! While she retires to Florida and has the government (read: young taxpayers working two crappy jobs) pay for her her health care -- whether she's in poverty or not.
Watercrass Salad
This would be the place.
Jools!
Up to 75% off in a year-end clearance at Amazon
I Suspect A Man's Self-Image Is More Harley Than Tricycle
Perhaps that's just a prejudice on my part, that this is entirely the wrong gift to give your husband.
But, a tricycle for a man (who isn't 96)?
Emasculation, anyone?
One message I think it sends: "Ladies, I keep his balls in a drawer with the Christmas ornaments, and take them out and let him play with them once a year -- if he's lucky."
The best was the subject line from the friend who sent this to me: "Mamapundit castrates husband for Christmas." (I think she might have meant "emasculates," but then again...)
Earned Success Makes People Happier
I tell this to the kids I speak to at the high school -- not in so many words -- but about how satisfying it was to go from a point where I had terrible jobs and slept on a door propped up on two milk crates because I couldn't afford a bed...to the point where I was earning a living.
(I haven't spoken there recently because the teacher who brought me in changed jobs, but we're hoping to do a big speaking event in the latter part of this year with a bunch of different speakers I bring in, some of whom went to college and some of whom did not.)
On a related note, there's an op-ed by Arthur Brooks in the WSJ noting how lottery winners tend to end up miserable, but how people who earn their success tend to be happier:
The University of Chicago's General Social Survey reveals that people are twice as likely to feel "very happy" about their lives if they feel "very successful" or "completely successful" at work, rather than "somewhat successful." The differences persist whether they earn more or less income.Entrepreneurs of all types rate their well-being higher than do members of all other professional groups in America, according to years of polling by the Gallup organization. And it's not because of the money. The employment website CareerBuilder.com reported in 2011 that small business owners made 19% less per year than government managers.
While earned success facilitates the pursuit of happiness, unearned transfers generally impede it. According to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, going on the welfare rolls increases by 16% the likelihood of a person saying he or she has felt inconsolably sad over the past month (even after controlling for poverty and unemployment). A study by economist John Ifcher at Santa Clara University shows that single mothers who were required by the 1990s welfare reform to work for their benefits--and therefore lost leisure time, had to find child care and the like--were still significantly happier about their lives after the reforms than before.
All this data relates to our policy debates because every year, fewer and fewer people earn their way in America without a government subsidy. As my colleague Nicholas Eberstadt has written, entitlements have doubled as a percentage of the ballooning federal budget since 1960. Today, more than half of American households receive government transfer benefits.
And this isn't just a case of senior citizens taking the Social Security they have paid for. Unearned transfers are exploding. Consider that the number of Americans receiving disability benefits has increased almost 20-fold since 1960, to 8.6 million today from 455,000. The Tax Foundation notes that nearly 70% of Americans now take more out of the tax system than they pay into it.
It is a simple fact that the United States is becoming an entitlement state. The problem with this is not just that it is bankrupting the country. It is that the entitlement state is impoverishing the lives of the growing millions dependent on unearned resources. The good news is that we have a golden opportunity to rein in entitlements, for the first time in many years.
We may have "a golden opportunity," but I think the likelihood it will be taken is right up there with my walking out and finding a purple unicorn eating my fern.
Brit Doctors Advise Keeping Long, Pointed Kitchen Knives Out Of The Hands Of Adults
No, that wasn't a mistake -- I didn't mean to type "Out Of The Hands Of Children."
And no, as @WalterOlson tweeted, it's actually NOT a story out of The Onion, but from the BBC, about British doctors urging a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing:
A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.
The research is published in the British Medical Journal.
The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.
They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.
None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.
The researchers said a short pointed knife may cause a substantial superficial wound if used in an assault - but is unlikely to penetrate to inner organs.
In contrast, a pointed long blade pierces the body like "cutting into a ripe melon".
Of course, at least a few of the adults who may end up getting their kitchen knives taken away will still have their axes, machetes, and like a friend of mine, their collection of medieval swords and battle axes. (Word has it, many people use these items in place of stuffed animals to curl up with and rock themselves to sleep at night.)
It occurs to me that, cribbing from my Free Range Kids friend Lenore Skenazy, we wussies in the US, Canada, and the UK are overdue for a blog and a book entitled "Free Range Adults."
Pathetic.
The LA Times: Where They Like To Have Entertainment Reporters Cover Science
It's just a blog item, and I have yet to read the study, but just glancing at the few lines of text, there's much to be snarly about.
But, a little background: The LA Times has a tendency of moving over reporters from fashion, Metro, and other general interest reporting positions to report on science, as if they can just slide down from the red carpet to the land of beakers and probabilities and get right down to business.
Mary MacVean blogs in the LA Times, in "Nice preteens don't finish last":
Kindness matters - if a child wants to be happy and popular, researchers say.Preteens assigned to do three acts of kindness a week found they were better liked than kids who were assigned to visit three places of their choice a week, the researchers from UC Riverside and the University of British Columbia wrote Wednesday in the journal PLoS One.
"Increasing peer acceptance is a critical goal, as it is related to a variety of important academic and social outcomes, including reduced likelihood of being bullied," the researchers wrote.
They say it's the first study to link performance of a simple helping behavior to an increase in popularity. Previous studies have shown that there's a link between happy people and popular people, and that happy people are more likely to do helpful or kind things.
My comment at the site:
Hey, LA Times, do you have to pay the reporter extra to get the researchers names in the story? Some of them are even local -- Sonja Lyubomirsky, for example. The researchers names: Kristin Layous. Katherine Nelson, Eva Oberle, Kimberly A. Schonert-Reichl, Sonja Lyubomirsky.Also, somebody might like to actually read the article, which happens to be open-source (meaning free to read), especially considering that your science reporters so rarely have a background in, you know, science. Here's a link to the study.
Finally, about this: "Both groups showed increases in positive effect and satisfaction." I have yet to read the study, but I'm pretty sure that should be "positive affect." Of course, general interest reporters moved over to take notes on science would not have heard the common term in psychology, "affect," meaning a display of emotion.
Keep up the great science reporting!
Screen shot in case they edit the piece in the wake of my comment: 
More from Mary MacVean in the LA Times.
Hmm, next thing you know, LAT editors will be ringing me up to cover The...The...what's our LA football team called? Hmmm...do we actually have a football team?
Bat Taste
Fly me a river.
Breaking Fun
This seems like a good idea -- much better than an all-purpose gift card. You can send it along with some suggestions: Shop Amazon - New Video Gift Cards
Better get 'em one with more than a few shekels on it if you want to get them one of the shows Gregg and I were addicted to: The Wire: The Complete Series
Another we loved: Breaking Bad - The Complete Seasons 1-4
Another I especially loved: The Shield: Complete Series
What we're probably watching next: Homeland: The Complete First Season
And while these are kind of pricey overall -- over $100 -- we save piles of money because we watch these instead of going out. It's more fun and romantic -- Gregg comes over and cooks me dinner and we cuddle on the couch. He sometimes rubs my feet -- behavior that does not go over well in a movie theater, though I'm sure some people engage in it, and the rubbing of other body parts.
How An Inability To Get Guns Stops School Shootings
A Chinese man rammed a car loaded with a spare gas tank and firecrackers into a group of 23 middle schoolers, injuring 13 in the country's latest attack on students. He later lit a bottle of diesel fuel to set the car on fire, but police put the fire out. SFGate, via @Drudge:
Students were hospitalized with injuries that included skull fractures and crushed feet.....Citing eyewitnesses, the Beijing-based state-run Jinghua Times said the accident occurred when students were leaving school for noon break and that the car accelerated and knocked down students, many of whom were on bikes.
On Dec. 14, a Chinese man took a kitchen knife and went on a stabbing spree that left 23 students wounded in an elementary school in Henan province.
China has seen more than a half-dozen school attacks in less than three years, though the death tolls have been mostly in single digits, largely because knives have been the most-used weapon. China largely prohibits private ownership of guns.
Government Didn't Build That
From Slate, a 1901 note to Santa from 8-year-old Edsel Ford shows that there were tougher times before the going got good for Henry Ford:
"Dear Santa Claus, I Haven't Had Any Christmas Tree in 4 years And I Have Broken All My Trimmings And I Want Some More..."
Henry Ford's history here. More on the Dodge Brothers here. If you're in Detroit, visit Matilda Dodge Wilson's Meadow Brook mansion, on Oakland University's grounds.
When You're Looking For Health Food You Eat A Bowl Of Kale, Not An Apple Turnover
Following the lead of nanny Bloomberg, Chelsea, Massachusetts has a looming ban on trans fats -- leading a bagel shop owner to vow to stop making pastries.
Mike Beaudet and Kevin Rothstein put out this story for Fox News Boston:
At Katz's Bagel Bakery, a Chelsea fixture since 1938, the bagels have always been the big draw, but owner Richard Katz also does a brisk business with pastries like turnovers and whoopie pies, pastries that he makes with partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening.That shortening will be banned on Jan. 1, leaving Katz vowing to stop selling pastries rather than peddle what he calls "awful" tasting trans fat-free baked goods.
...Public health experts from the city and Massachusetts General Hospital have been working with Chelsea restaurants and bakeries to prepare for the ban and help come up with alternatives without artificial trans fats. But Katz tried several kinds and they all came up short.
"I made some dough, and I made it the same way I make everything else. I rested it and made turnovers from it, and they looked pretty good, but when you ate them they were awful," Katz said.
...But Dr. Dean Xerras, a Chelsea board of health member, says the board took action because city residents have higher than average rates for obesity and associated problems like heart disease and diabetes.
"We actually don't think it goes too far," he said. "Our intention was to help the health of Chelsea and really improve the health outcomes of the residents of Chelsea."
Not that I support government or any other nitwits controlling what adults can eat, but if Dr. Dean Xerras knew anything about dietary science, he'd be banning flour and sugar, which actually are what lead to diabetes (by causing the secretion of insulin that puts on fat).
Hey, Dr. Xerras, maybe spend less time meddling in other adults' lives, and pick up a copy of Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories," and maybe flip through a few medical journals.
By the way, Dr. Mary Dan Eades, who knows a thing or two about evidence-based dietary science, will sing you the health praises of lard (which is delicious in baked goods). Of course, the keeping kosher-ish thing may be a problem for the bagel maker-- tragic, because a world without bacon is a joyless place.
Additionally, eating shitty-tasting baked goods can leave you unsatisfied, which can lead to eating more and more baked goods. (I can be satisfied on a tiny piece of really good chocolate because really good is really satisfying, even in a really small size.)
And back to the headline, let's get real: People are not going to start putting their muzzle in a bucket of greens instead of having desert simply because the local power-mad, medical knowledge-deficient morons banned tasty deserts.
People in Chelsea have motor vehicles...do they not? And unless the article left an essential note out, it appears there's no giant forcefield around the town keeping the people in it from driving to a place where grownups get to be grownups and make their own food decisions.
via Overlawyered
Should Drowsy Driving Be A Crime?
It's so tempting for people -- and especially legislators -- to tell themselves they can solve every problem every by creating yet another law.
Now, it's drowsy driving some hope to criminalize -- even if the driver has caused no accident and broken now laws. Overlawyered's Walter Olson blogs at The New York Times that this is wrong -- that existing laws already apply to recklessness:
And libertarians and defense lawyers are right to object.To begin with, under the principle of the rule of law, persons exposed to criminal penalty deserve fair notice of what conduct is lawful and what is not. In the case of drunken driving, we pretend at least to objectivity in the form of breath analysis and a rule of thumb of so many drinks per hour. Yet there's no objective or even pseudo-objective test for drowsiness. Will cops be empowered to pull over the stone-sober driver at the D.U.I. checkpoint whose eyelids look too droopy, or watch the convenience store for drivers who seem too eager for a double coffee at 3 a.m.?
Highway fatalities have been declining for decades, and we've already forfeited enough of our individual liberty to uniformed officers at checkpoints. Quoted in The Times, the New York lawmaker who sponsored one failed bill against drowsy driving seemed mystified that "There was a concern that government again was encroaching into people's day-to-day lives." Yes, there was. And that concern is valid.
Questionable Taste
Come on, leave us all tsk-tsking...if you can.
Year-End Deals!
At Amazon
Thank you so much to everyone who's shopped for Christmas -- and in general -- through my links, and to those who've put money through in my PayPal link (you know who you are...it's truly appreciated). These purchases and gifts really help.
Christmas With Her Homeless Aunt
Moving piece (sans sugar-coating) on Slate by Janet McKenzie Smith. An excerpt:
The last time I saw my aunt was Christmas 2007. I was home in North Carolina for winter break during my senior year of college. I'd just completed my second term of French, and, on Christmas day, I was arrogant in my use of rudimentary language skills to make snide remarks to my French-fluent mother. A gruff smoker's laugh interrupted my stilted chatter, and Debbie piped up in proficient French. I was shocked into silence--chagrined because I'd been talking about my aunt and beyond surprised because, being homeless and an alcoholic, Debbie was the last middle-aged person you'd expect to recall lessons learned in high school.That Christmas, my aunt brought in her suitcase two white mice that quickly took up residence in the guest room closet, presumably pleased to be no longer homeless.
At one point, Debbie made me tea, and, to test the heat, she'd sipped from my cup. I took the cup but never had a sip myself. Taking me aside, my dad demanded that I stop treating her like a homeless person. "Dad, she is a homeless person," I said.
That Christmas, Debbie told us that, while she was living in "the forest" - a phrase so Disney-movie-inspired we all found it darkly hilarious - her morning wake-up call involved overly friendly raccoons scratching her gently on the nose.
During her visit, Debbie never smelled homeless. She smelled quite fragrant, minty fresh, in fact. She'd been reduced to satisfying her alcohol addiction with Dollar Store mouthwash and remnants oozed from her pores with her sweat.
Until he passed, my grandfather offered Debbie some monetary support for her flophouse lifestyle with an ever-changing group of fellow addicts and enablers packed into overcapacity roach motel rooms or near-condemned dank one-room apartments in Wildwood, N.J. But when he died, Debbie refused to be taken in by my father and retreated to "the forest." When winter chill set in, the cops in Cape May arrested forest dwellers on loitering charges, or whatever outstanding warrants were on the books, to protect them from the elements...
Bonfire Of The Vulgarities
Remember SPY magazine, and the wonderful "short-fingered vulgarian" used to describe Donald Trump?
Life Without Parole: The Penalty For Five Senior Citizens Who Sold Pot
Why should the government be allowed to tell you what sort of plant you can grow and sell to other consenting adults? Why should they be allowed to take away your freedom for growing and selling plants they say can't be grown or sold?
If you break down the laws against pot and the punishments for violating them to their simplest terms you get an idea of how terribly absurd and terribly wrong they are.
Yet these five men are rotting in jail, in poor health, and will likely remain there for the rest of their lives because they sold pot or were alleged to. Are these really people we should be paying to keep locked up? Kristen Gwynne writes for Alternet:
Right now, five adults await death in prison for non-violent, marijuana-related crimes. Their names are John Knock, Paul Free, Larry Duke, William Dekle, and Charles "Fred" Cundiff. They are all more than 60 years old; they have all spent at least 15 years locked up for selling pot; and they are all what one might call model prisoners, serving life without parole....Michael Kennedy [3] of the Trans High Corporation has filed a legal petition [4] with the federal government seeking their clemency. Otherwise they will die behind bars for selling a drug 40% of American adults have admitted to using, 50% of Americans want legal, and two states have already legalized for adult use. Since these men were convicted of these crimes many years ago, public opinion and policy related to marijuana have shifted greatly. Should these five non-violent senior-citizen offenders die behind bars for a crime Americans increasingly believe should not even be a crime?
1. John Knock, 65, has been incarcerated for more than 16 years. The only evidence against him was the testimony of informants; Knock was convicted of conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana. The judge sentenced him to 20 years for money laundering plus not one, but two terms of life-without-parole -- a punishment typically reserved for murderers. Despite the uniquely unjust sentence, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his pleas for reconsideration via appeal or court order.
Waiting for death in jail, Knock suffers from chronic sinus problems linked to an untreated broken nose. Due to circulatory problems, one of his ankles swells to twice its size. Knock also suffers from what the legal petition called "untreated" hearing and vision problems. Easing some of his pain are visits from his family and his participation in prison programs. He has taught home building and physical education inside the prison that has become his home. According to the legal petition, he is assured employment and a home should his sentence be commuted.
...While these men have all spent many years behind bars for crimes they were convicted of many years ago, the same draconian punishments are handed down to marijuana criminals -- young and old -- to this day. Conspiracy charges, combined with mandatory minimums for marijuana sale and firearms charges, can quickly add up to decades behind bars. Should anyone in the entire criminal operation have a gun (legal or not), everyone involved can be charged with firearm possession during a drug offense, a five-year mandatory minimum that can reach 20 if the person is charged with continuing criminal enterprise -- a long-term, large-scale operation. In the end, these sentences are often not applied, but used to encourage guilty pleas in exchange for a lesser sentence.
Marijuana prisoner Chris Williams [5] is an example of one such case. He was recently facing a mandatory minimum of 85 to 92 years behind bars for providing medical marijuana in Montana, where it is legal. Citing a moral opposition to plea bargains forced by the threat of a lifetime in jail, WIlliams rejected a deal that would have drastically reduced his sentence by cutting away mandatory minimums. Then, this Tuesday, federal prosecutors agreed to drop six of eight of Williams' charges, provided he waive his constitutional right to appeal. Now Williams faces a mandatory minimum of five years for the firearm-related charge, and another five for distribution.
"With the rest of my life literally hanging in the balance, I simply could not withstand the pressure any longer," Williams said in a statement. "If Judge Christensen shows mercy and limits my sentence to the five-year mandatory minimum, I could be present at my 16-year-old son's college graduation. This would most likely be impossible had I rejected the latest compromise."
Blasphemy Laws Belong In The Dark Ages
Evolutionary psychology professor Gad Saad blogs at PsychologyToday:
One of the defining features of a free, liberal, and secular society is the fact that individuals have the unalienable right to criticize every imaginable scientific theory, belief system, political ideology, religious narrative, political figure, etc. without fear of persecution (or prosecution).No one has the birthright to be protected from being offended. Rational discourse and the scientific method are the means by which enlightened societies resolve their debates. This has been one of the foundational tenets of liberal democracies, and it is uniquely enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
In the recent past, a disturbing global trend has begun to materialize. For example Ireland has instituted a new blasphemy law. I wonder if under such a law, it might be illegal to criticize or mock the Catholic Church for the numerous sex scandals that its priests have been involved in.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC; recently renamed the Organization of Islamic Cooperation), which consists of 57 member states, is trying to supersede the existing UN Declaration of Human Rights by arguing that any criticism of religion (they really mean of Islam) in any country that is a signatory of their proposed charter would constitute a punishable offense.
Hence, if the United States were to sign the charter, and if an American journalist were to write an article (in an American outlet) criticizing some aspect of Islam deemed religiously insulting, he/she would be liable under this universal law.
Incidentally, Hillary Clinton is hosting several dignitaries from the OIC (December 12-14) to discuss ways by which "religious defamation" might be curtailed (see here). None other than Barack Obama appears quite sympathetic to the OIC's stated agenda.
It is difficult to imagine how such a reality would fit within the notion of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. If the First Amendment cannot guarantee one's right to criticize any and all religions in the most forceful of manner, the United States is no longer a free country.
Related: Trailer to the documentary Silent Conquest about the squelching of free speech imposed by Islam.
Related: Tim Worstall writes at Forbes:
The protest being about the presence of that film clip, The Innocence Of Muslims, on YouTube. The demonstration is really an example of the way in which some people just haven't quite grasped the concept of free speech.Organiser Masoud Alam said: "Our next protest will be at the offices of Google and YouTube across the world. We are looking to ban this film. "This is not freedom of expression, there is a limit for that. This insult of the Prophet will not be allowed."I'm afraid that Mr. Alam has not quite managed to grasp this essential concept of a free society.
Government Will Protect, Uh, Poison You
If you have two thoughts to rub together, and you rub them in the direction of government for 20 minutes or so, it should occur to you that government is not the benevolent auntie so many like to believe it is:
There's a story on Slate that reflects that -- about how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during prohibition. Deborah Blum writes:
It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City's Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.Before hospital staff realized how sick he was--the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom--the man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.
Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.
Every Day Is Christmas For Your Kitchen
At least until the end of the year. Year-end kitchen and dining specials at Amazon
Electric Knife sharpener
Espresso and Cappuccino Maker
My sister, however, recommends this AeroPress
But from the bizarre excess department, no your wine does not need jewelry
And sadly, the Sous Vide
Before You Tattoo The Second Amendment Across Your Forehead, Read The First One
According to the AP, tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for the deportation of Piers Morgan, simply because they disagree with his views on gun control:
A petition created Dec. 21 on the White House e-petition website by a user in Texas accuses Morgan of engaging in a "hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution" by targeting the Second Amendment. It demands he be deported immediately for "exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens."
It's called the right to free speech, and if you don't like it, there are many other countries that will have -- and oppress -- you.
Lying About Vacation Days: Cough, Cough, I'm On Vacation
On CBSNews.com, Evil HR Lady Suzanne Lucas makes the point that it's unfair for workers to do so -- to call in sick and use a sick day as a vacation day. But, one survey says 47 percent of workers have done it, and that may not reflect well on the workers, but it also may not reflect well on the way of the particular workplace:
Yes, people want more vacation. That's obvious. But secondly, they feel they are not being treated fairly.Here's how I make the jump from lying about why you are out of the office to unfairness. Yes, when you accept a job, they tell you how much vacation you have. (Incidentally, younger workers have much less vacation than older works). They also tell you how many sick days, bereavement days and holidays you have. So, it should be a surprise that when you use all your vacation days by June, you can't take the week between Christmas and New Year's off. That part is obvious.
But when employees start to lie, that indicates they believe they are being treated unfairly. And as evidence of this, 20 percent of employees have been denied vacation time, when they asked. And a previous survey by Beyond.com showed that 48 percent of people don't feel they can easily take vacation -- either there is too much work or the boss doesn't make it easy.
So, getting a day off (one that you have earned), can be difficult. But, if you say, "Gosh, I'm sick," there's nothing a boss can do about that. Sick is sick. (Not that your job is protected for regular run-of-the-mill illness, but most companies won't fire you for a single absence.) And if Grandma died you have to take time now, no matter if it's busy season or not. (Although people who lie about bereavement should be careful. Eventually you run out of false dead relatives.) And bereavement policies are generally ridiculous in the first place, offering 1 to 3 days to deal with the death of a spouse, parent or child.
Managers should be managing performance and not by the clock anyway. (For exempt employees. For non-exempt employees, legally, managers have to track hours.) If you promote an atmosphere where employees feel respected and valued, they won't have to resort to lying to get time off. If someone has been putting in extra hours to get a key project done, or has accomplished something grand, even if it was within regular hours, rewarding that person with an extra vacation day can go a long way towards building trust and respect within the office.
Newt Comes Around: Marriage Bigotry Failed Strategy For Getting Elected
You know it's obvious when even Newt Gingrich recognizes that gays should be allowed to marry the one person of their choice -- or rather, that the Republicans should grudgingly get behind that.
Via iFeminists, Newt finally comes to the conclusion that conservatives need to accept gay marriage.
Sam Stein and Jon Ward write at HuffPo:
Newt Gingrich blames Mitt Romney for being a bad candidate.More than that, he blames the Republican party for fostering a corrosive culture that produced Romney as its candidate. The former House Speaker argued that the GOP has grown stale and introverted, putting itself on the wrong side of history on issues like immigration and painting itself into a corner on others, like gay marriage.
...On gay marriage, meanwhile, Gingrich argued that Republicans could no longer close their eyes to the course of public opinion. While he continued to profess a belief that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, he suggested that the party (and he himself) could accept a distinction between a "marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state" -- the latter being acceptable.
Translation: We'll never fucking get elected again until we let the homos tie the knot.
Stepping back from the political, Gingrich noted that he has a personal stake in the gay marriage debate. His half-sister works at the Human Rights Campaign. He has gay friends who've gotten married in Iowa.
Also known as the "I know several homos and they really aren't all that scary" argument.
Excuse me if I'm a tad cynical about his conversion to equal rights activist.
Bad Tasties
This would be the spot.
No fruitcake, please.
FBI Hair "Forensics": Wave Hello To A Whole Bunch Of Criminals
Some of them -- maybe even thousands and thousands of them -- may be getting out of jail.
And then there are the people wrongly jailed on bad science.
Spencer S. Hsu writes in the WaPo:
Thousands of criminal cases at the state and local level may have relied on exaggerated testimony or false forensic evidence to convict defendants of murder, rape and other felonies.The forensic experts in these cases were trained by the same elite FBI team whose members gave misleading court testimony about hair matches and later taught the local examiners to follow the same suspect practices, according to interviews and documents.
In July, the Justice Department announced a nationwide review of all cases handled by the FBI Laboratory's hair and fibers unit before 2000 -- at least 21,000 cases -- to determine whether improper lab reports or testimony might have contributed to wrongful convictions.
But about three dozen FBI agents trained 600 to 1,000 state and local examiners to apply the same standards that have proved problematic.
None of the local cases is included in the federal review. As a result, legal experts say, although the federal inquiry is laudable, the number of flawed cases at the state and local levels could be even higher, and those are going uncorrected.
...Morris Samuel "Sam" Clark was the head of the FBI's hair unit when it began training state and local analysts in 1973. He said he long believed that examiners could trace hairs from a crime scene to a particular person with a high degree of probability -- even though there is no scientific proof that is possible.
But Clark, who did graduate work in biology at Harvard and retired in 1979, said laboratory experience should not be discounted. He did "hundreds and hundreds of comparisons" over nearly 20 years, and he believes that he was a qualified court expert, he said in an interview from his home in Spotsylvania County.
The FBI's training regimen, which required agents to compare hairs side-by-side under high-powered microscopes for a year before working on live cases, gave lab veterans confidence that they could tell the difference between individuals' hairs just as an ordinary person could distinguish between their faces.
They embraced a set of vague standards. In written lab reports, FBI agents would include the caveat that hair examination was not a basis for positive identification.
In court, however, they could suggest that it would be highly unlikely for an examiner's match to be wrong. The bureau left it up to individual labs and examiners to explain matters to jurors. Agents were trained to say that in their "personal experience" they had rarely seen hairs from different people that looked alike.
That evolved into jurors' hearing numbers that had a huge impact even if they lacked scientific grounding. After a slaying in Tennessee in 1980, an FBI agent testified in a capital case that there was one chance in 4,500 or 5,000 that a hair came from someone other than the suspect.
But as experts from around the world would later note, the FBI-taught answer was misleading. In reality, FBI examiners did not compare every hair to every other hair they had ever examined. They simply compared crime-scene hairs and hair samples from individuals relevant in each case.
Examiners kept no "database" of samples, which went back to police evidence files. And differences between hairs are so fine that a person can generally keep only a handful of hairs in mind at any time.
"The claim you could keep all those hairs in your head and sort them in your mind, that would be hard to do," said Mark R. Wilson, a 23-year FBI veteran who helped develop DNA testing for hair in 1996. "After about three or four [hairs], it gets confusing."
That's not science -- and it's not justice.
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Amir Levine On Finding And Keeping Love Through The New Science Of Adult Attachment
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My show this week will help you use the new field of adult attachment science, which is actually very simple to understand, to find love -- or to keep and even vastly improve the relationship you have.
My guest is neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine, co-author with psychologist Rachel S.F. Heller, of Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find -- and Keep -- Love.
If you're seeking a partner, by recognizing which of the three attachment styles you fit into, you can help yourself avoid all the usual troubles you get into while dating.
If you're in a relationship, by recognizing which form of attachment you exhibit and which your partner does, you can stop battling each other, behave more lovingly to each other, and better meet each other's needs.
The partner who longs for more closeness can recognize their need and stop always acting so demanding of a partner who needs a little more distance to feel comfortable. At the same time, they can come to understand that their partner loves them, and that it's largely their style of attachment that makes them harangue the other person for closeness, which can help them pull back a little.
In turn, the person who's more distant can recognize their style but come around in small and regular ways that reassure their more intimacy-seeking partner.
Listen to tonight's show live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/24/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show on how to bring what I call "entrepreneurial thinking" ("thinking outside the box") to your life, improving your work life, your relationships, your friendships, and even little everyday interactions you have with other people.
My guest last week was Mark Sanborn, a business consultant and motivational speaker who wrote a fantastic book, The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary
I usually have researchers and psychologists on my show, but I occasionally make exceptions for exceptional non-scientist guests, and Mark Sanborn is definitely one of the exceptional thinkers. I promise: This is a not-to-be missed show that you can use to shift your thinking and, with relatively little effort, improve every area of your life.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/17/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 or Stitcher.
TSA Can Find The Vagina In Your Pants Just Fine (It's Your Gun They'll Have Trouble Locating)
Matthew Mosk, Angela Hill and Timothy Fleming write for ABC about gaping holes in airline "security," thanks to the hamburger clerks working "security" at the airports, with test bombs and guns being missed by screeners 20 out of 22 times at Newark:
Last fall, as he had done hundreds of times, Iranian-American businessman Farid Seif passed through security at a Houston airport and boarded an international flight.He didn't realize he had forgotten to remove the loaded snub nose "baby" Glock pistol from his computer bag. But TSA officers never noticed as his bag glided along the belt and was x-rayed. When he got to his hotel after the three-hour flight, he was shocked to discover the gun traveled unnoticed from Houston.
"It's just impossible to miss it, you know. I mean, this is not a small gun," Seif told ABC News. "How can you miss it? You cannot miss it."
But the TSA did miss it, and despite what most people believe about the painstaking effort to screen airline passengers and their luggage before they enter the terminal, it was not that unusual.
Experts tell ABC News that every year since the September 11 terror attacks, federal agencies have conducted random, covert "red team tests," where undercover agents try to see just how much they can get past security checks at major U.S. airports. And while the Department of Homeland Security closely guards the results as classified, those that have leaked in media reports have been shocking.
According to one report, undercover TSA agents testing security at a Newark airport terminal on one day in 2006 found that TSA screeners failed to detect concealed bombs and guns 20 out of 22 times. A 2007 government audit leaked to USA Today revealed that undercover agents were successful slipping simulated explosives and bomb parts through Los Angeles's LAX airport in 50 out of 70 attempts, and at Chicago's O'Hare airport agents made 75 attempts and succeeded in getting through undetected 45 times.
Feel safer with the TSA at the airport? If so, is it because your IQ is commensurate with the speed limit?
Of course, a gun won't bring down a plane, but once you get a jobs program in place for unskilled workers, and one that makes the Michael Chertoffs of the world beaucoup bucks to boot, well...just remember that any bureaucracy's foremost job is to protect itself.
"Guns Make Us Less Safe!"
Hilarious Instapundit post, complete with hilarious photo. It starts out: "DID WE EVER GET AN ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION? Does Piers Morgan's Bodyguard Carry A Gun?"...
The Best Explanation Of The Fiscal Cliff
Simply explained and very clear.
Via @reasonpolicy and @lewrockwell, Doug Casey explains during an interview with Louis James:
L: Okay; let's start with a definition, as usual. What is the fiscal cliff anyway?Doug: Well, of course, fiscal cliff is really a misnomer. Part of it's good, and part is bad for the economy. The term refers to the simultaneous expiration of the Bush tax cuts and automatic spending cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 that go into effect next year. Many pundits say this will cause the US to go into a recession. Well, we're already in the Greater Depression. But here's what would happen. The higher taxes would suck more capital out of the productive economy and divert it to the government - that's very bad. And lower government spending would help unravel distortions and misallocations of capital that spending was causing - which is good. In the process, some people would have to find new jobs, and some businesses dealing with government handouts would go bust. Painful, but necessary, and we need to see lots more of both.
However, it's not the US economy that's facing this alleged cliff; it's the US government. It just goes to show how hopeless the situation is, when people equate the government with the economy. They're two entirely different things. The only way to revitalize the US economy is a vast reduction in taxes and a vast reduction in government spending. Instead, these idiots are arguing over how much to raise taxes and how little they can cut spending. Of course it will be a disaster.
[...] The economy would be just fine if the government disappeared. The problem is the US dollar, which has no intrinsic value and is backed by nothing but confidence. The dollar is a complete fiat currency, and its accelerating debasement has the potential to destroy the economy. The economy itself is the aggregate of all the people, businesses, inventory, manufacturing plants, mines, farms, transportation networks, research facilities, and accumulated capital of all the participants.
The economy grows when people produce more than they consume, and save the difference. They then have capital to put into new ventures, create new jobs, develop new technologies, and so forth. No government is needed to make this happen - rather the opposite.
But the average American, who is completely ignorant of economics, thinks the government is a magic cornucopia. As proof of that statement, I offer the fact that Obama is president, Romney was offered as an alternative, and dingbats like Boehner, Pelosi, and Ried control the Congress.
Read the whole thing at the link.
Too Hot To Keep Her Job
You probably saw this story around on Saturday -- an Iowa court ruling that bosses can legally fire an employee they see as an "irresistible attraction."
My question for you all below -- but first a recap of the story...
The AP from the Nat Post of Canada:
The court ruled 7-0 that bosses can fire employees they see as an "irresistible attraction," even if the employees have not engaged in flirtatious behavior or otherwise done anything wrong. Such firings may be unfair, but they are not unlawful discrimination under the Iowa Civil Rights Act because they are motivated by feelings and emotions, not gender, Justice Edward Mansfield wrote.An attorney for Fort Dodge dentist James Knight said the decision, the first of its kind in Iowa, is a victory for family values because Knight fired Melissa Nelson in the interest of saving his marriage, not because she was a woman.
...Nelson, 32, worked for Knight for 10 years, and he considered her a stellar worker. But in the final months of her employment, he complained that her tight clothing was distracting, once telling her that if his pants were bulging that was a sign her clothes were too revealing, according to the opinion.
He also once allegedly remarked about her infrequent sex life by saying, "that's like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it."
Knight and Nelson -- both married with children -- started exchanging text messages, mostly about personal matters, such as their families. Knight's wife, who also worked in the dental office, found out about the messages and demanded Nelson be fired. The Knights consulted with their pastor, who agreed that terminating Nelson was appropriate.
This sucks for Nelson, but I don't see why any business should be forced by the government to keep on an employee who is wrong for them in some way. Why should they?
Give Bad Taste A Good Home
Anybody can adopt a puppy.
Buttwads In Motion
I'm just beginning the Transportation chapter of my next book, "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," for St. Martin's Press.
I need to hear your pet peeves (and any good personal stories you have) about transportation-related rudeness: in cars, on foot and on bikes, on planes, and on public transportation.
Also, if you've taken corrective steps when somebody's tried to roll all over you, love to hear that, too.
I'm getting a little nervous as I haven't heard back from the person (who wished to remain anonymous, but gave me permission to blog it), and I just wrote the chapter beginning around this photo.
So...if you're out at a mall or big shopping center parking lot in the days before and after Christmas, and you see a fancy car hogging two spaces, please take a photo of it for me for my book. It's particularly important to get a shot like this right now, since malls and stores are really crowded, making the parking hogging even ruder.
Gun Laws: Like Laws Named After Crime Victims
How well do gun laws work? Well, Mexico is one of the murder capitals of the world, and they have strict gun laws.
Jon Hammar, an American ex-Marine, got caught up in them and ended up in a Mexican prison after trying to bring a family heirloom gun across the border. He's finally been freed.
The US Consulate in Mexico posts about the Mexican gun laws:
Don't bring firearms or ammunition across the border into Mexico.Don't carry a knife, even a small pocketknife, on your person in Mexico.
You may become one of dozens of U.S. Citizens who are arrested each month for unintentionally violating Mexico's strict weapons laws.
If you are caught with firearms or ammunition in Mexico...
•You will go to jail and your vehicle will be seized;
•You will be separated from your family, friends, and your job, and likely suffer substantial financial hardship;
•You will pay court costs and other fees ranging into the tens of thousands of dollars defending yourself;
•You may get up to a 30-year sentence in a Mexican prison if found guilty.If you carry a knife on your person in Mexico, even a pocketknife . . .
•You may be arrested and charged with possession of a deadly weapon;
•You may spend weeks in jail waiting for trial, and tens of thousands of dollars in attorney's fees, court costs, and fines;
•If convicted, you may be sentenced to up to five years in a Mexican prison.
•Claiming not to know about the law will not get you leniency from a police officer or the judicial system. Leave your firearms, ammunition, and knives at home. Don't bring them into Mexico.
Those calling for stricter gun laws in the USA should consider how little a deterrent that is to all the people gunning each other down across the border.
Again, after a tragedy, there's a compulsion to "Dooo something," but we have to be mindful that that will be our compulsion, and try to be rational and reasonable instead. Laws are passed more easily than they are repealed, and few laws protect our rights -- most restrict them. And for the most part, the people who abide by the restrictions are the sane and law-abiding.
A related area is laws named after crime victims. Radley Balko writes at the HuffPo:
This is about vengeance. They're angry at this verdict.That anger is understandable. But anger is a bad reason to make public policy. New laws, especially laws with serious criminal sanctions, demand careful consideration: Will the law actually address the problem it is intended to address? Is it enforceable? What are some possible unintended consequences of this law? Could it be abused by police and prosecutors?
Laws named after the victims of brutal crimes make it difficult to ask these questions, especially for politicians, who aren't exactly known for taking bold stands against an angry public. When you put Caylee Anthony's name on a bill, you imply that anyone who opposes the bill -- even for good reasons -- is indifferent to the death of its namesake, or at least isn't as concerned about it as you think they ought to be. That's not a formula for an honest discussion of the bill's merits.
In a country of 308 million people, bad things are going to happen. We already have laws against murder, child abuse, and child neglect. When you pass laws that make it easier to imprison people in cases where the state doesn't have enough evidence to prove the crime everyone knows they're actually prosecuting, you undermine the integrity of the justice system. The "flaw" that led to the Casey Anthony verdict is pretty straightforward: The state failed to prove its case. And the government must prove its case, even when all of America is 100 percent certain of the defendant's guilt, because we want to be sure the state will always also have to prove its case when we aren't so certain.
Like Jailing Your Mother Because Some Guy Robbed A Bank
There was this line in a HuffPo piece about a Newtown memorial:
The Obama administration will push to tighten gun laws in response to the shooting, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday, and Speaker John Boehner said the GOP-controlled House would consider the proposals.
Nancy Lanza's guns were apparently all legally purchased. The problem wasn't their purchase; it was her irresponsible storage of them in a home with a mentally ill youth.
How LA Regulated A Business Out Of Business
Nick Benetatos' business, Tam's Burger's, will close its doors in January 2013 thanks to the city's meddling. From The Blaze, via Jim P., Becket Adams writes:
The trouble between Benetatos and the city began after authorities decided his restaurant was a contributing factor to the area's crime rate.No, really.
"It has a nexus and a connection to a disproportionate amount of criminal activity," Detective Eric Moore, head of LAPD's Nuisance Abatement unit, told Reason.
But it's not as if Benetatos didn't ​try ​to work with the city.
The police asked him to remove payphones, so he removed the payphones. Then they asked him to remove tables for outdoor seating, and he removed the tables for outdoor seating (it resulted in a 15 percent drop in revenues). Then the city's zoning board ordered him to comply with 22 separate conditions, including hiring a full-time security guard, putting up fences, and installing a security camera system.
Needless to say, Benetatos couldn't afford to keep up with the city's demands.
"The LAPD wants to control my business and run it in their view of how it should be run, and I'm trying to run it in the view that I've been here for 30 years and know how it should be run, and I'm successful," he said.
Benetatos appealed the zoning board's conditions at a recent city council meeting. They turned him down.
The reason.tv video:
Who do these city council morons think will pay the taxes to fund all the unaffordable and stupid measures they and the idiot voters vote in? (And never mind doing the extremely simple math to figure out we can't afford all the stupid measures they voted in previously.)
Speech Codes: The Biggest Scandal On College Campuses Today
Greg Lukianoff, president of campus free speech-defending theFIRE.org writes at Forbes.com about speech codes -- alive and squashing rights on college campuses across America...to an alarming degree:
An appalling 62 percent of institutions surveyed maintain policies that restrict a substantial amount of speech protected under the First Amendment--what we call "red light" speech codes. Such schools include Harvard, Columbia, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro....Speech codes come in many forms. The University of North Dakota bans student speech that "feels offensive" or "demeaning." The University of Missouri at St. Louis boasts a policy restricting speech that will "discredit the student body"...
...At public colleges, speech codes are unconstitutional. And as I demonstrate in my book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, administrators are unafraid to use them. But even when they aren't enforced, speech codes chill student speech and send the wrong messages about the values that should govern a free society--let alone our universities, which are supposed to be our most bustling marketplaces of ideas.
...There are four major factors that explain the tenacity of speech codes. First is the misguided belief that campuses must protect students, faculty, and administrators from offense of all kinds. Second is the dramatic expansion in the administrative class at universities over the past few decades. Third is ignorance among these armies of administrators of both First Amendment law and, perhaps more importantly, the moral principles and philosophy upon which that law is based.
Yet the fourth factor--fear of liability--may be most determinative. College lawyers incorrectly believe that speech codes can be a prophylactic measure against lawsuits for harassment or discrimination. This is wrong. Maintaining broad and vague speech codes won't stave off lawsuits, and universities may easily prohibit true harassment while protecting free expression by adopting policies that track existing legal definitions. Yet speech codes persist in large part because university general counsels, often far more worried about the expense and bad press of a harassment lawsuit than the comparatively rare and inexpensive free speech lawsuit, have deemed it rational from a cost-benefit standpoint to censor.
See FIRE's annual study of free speech codes here.
Ship, Ship Hooray
At Amazon
Don't forget what a great gift my book I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society makes!
Tasteless Jokes And Links
The bad bratwurst of the Internet. All the off-topic things that need somewhere to go.
Santa Gets Suspended From High School Because... Because... Sandy Hook
Crawford County High School sophomore John George III said he'd planned to go to school dressed as Santa and posted on Facebook:
"Students of cchs ur in for a big surprise tomorrow - let the games begin."
From WMAZ, Thomas George (unrelated to the guy in the story) writes:
A parent found the post threatening and called police.According to a police incident report, an officer then interviewed the parent and reviewed George's Facebook page. The officer said it "appeared to have a very Gothic and dark theme," with references to gangs and fighting.
At 10 p.m. Tuesday, two officers went to John George's home and questioned him and his parents.
George said the post referred to plans for him and two friends to go to school dressed as Santa and his elves. Police say George's mother confirmed that her son bought a Santa costume. George said he had revealed his plans to a teacher at school.
The police report said: "We then spoke briefly about the nature of the post and how with the recent tragedy of school shootings that had occurred that the post could cause unrest if taken the wrong way. We then left the residence without further incident."
But at the request of school principal Mike Campbell, police followed up Wednesday morning by escorting George off his school bus and taking him directly to the principal's office.
Campbell issued a news release Wednesday calling the Facebook post "disturbing," and said George was suspended while the school investigated.
The investigation could take up to 10 days, said the video accompanying the story. Michael Graham, whose tweet led me to the story, wrote:
Investigated WHAT? The school and the police knew what was going on. The police checked it out. But they kicked out the Santa Kid anyway?
Again, it's the ethos of "Dooo something!" -- anything. As long as it's something.
I Think The World Forgot To End
A big raspberry to all the wildly irrational beliefs out there, especially those that lead people to slaughter those who don't believe in the same unfounded crap they do.
Fine Print Everywhere: NY Yankees Wave Goodbye To First Amendment
There's the pottymouth passage in their fine print on tickets. For MSNBC, Bob Sullivan reports on it and the bug type presented to us by so many companies:
"Ticket holders acknowledge and agree that the Yankees' ban on foul/abusive language and obscene/indecent clothing does not violate their right to free speech," the team wrote recently in a new far-reaching set of fine print published in the October edition of Yankees Magazine. The phrase appears on tickets, too....U.S. consumers rarely engage in any kind of transaction today without clicking or signing away a wide swath of their rights. Cellphone contracts, software purchases, baseball tickets, credit card applications -- all include lengthy tomes full of ominous warning that most of us ignore.
But in a new book titled "Boilerplate," author and lawyer Margaret Jane Radin is taking aim at the intellectual and legal basis of fine print, trying to put a serious dent in the legal argument behind it.
"I don't think there's a contract, ever, when something is just dropped on us," Radin said, "especially when there is no option to vote with your feet as a consumer, when there are no alternatives."
Radin's point is that contracts, by definition, involve two equal parties that negotiate terms, while fine print is issued on a "take-it-or-leave-it" basis. (Just try to negotiate a lower early termination fee or strike out any clause when you sign a cellphone agreement.) In layman's terms, fine print is merely a list of bad things that can happen to you, the consumer. You might get hit with a penalty fee; your service might be terminated; your right to join a class-action lawsuit is surrendered.
Some lawyers would call these take-it-or-leave-it agreements "contracts of adhesion," a special class of contracts that can be ruled unenforceable if the consumer persuades a judge that the provisions are "unconscionable." As you might imagine, that's a high bar -- it means generally that such provisions would be shocking to a normal person's conscience as excessively unfair. Such a legal battle also involves an excessive amount of legal fees, so it's not a realistic option for an aggrieved cellphone holder.
Radin wades into this confusing situation with a fairly radical idea. Trying to shove fine-print agreements into contract law, she argues, is like trying to shove a round peg into a square hole. She calls it "legal gerrymandering." Instead, courts need to adopt a brand-new way of looking at fine print, she says.
Her view is simple: Interactions between consumers and companies are more like brief encounters with strangers than negotiated bargains between equal parties. As such, they fall into the realm of tort law, rather than contract law, Radin argues.
That change would have dramatic implications for fine-print haters everywhere. Were these agreements viewed as torts, angry cellphone owners would retain the right to sue for damages, including pain and suffering, if they believe a company has violated their rights, by making an unauthorized withdrawal from the consumer's checking account, for instance.
UN Continues Attempts To Justify Its Existence
Latest is calling for a ban on female circumcision. Phew! Well, that will for sure stop the practice!
(Male circumcision, however, is no problem for them.)
Baruch Ben-Chorin writes at NBC News:
On Thursday, in a major victory for that campaign, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a global ban on FGM.The resolution urges the 193 U.N. member states to condemn the practice, and to launch educational campaigns to eliminate it. It urges all countries to enact and enforce legislation to prohibit FGM, to protect women and girls "from this form of violence" and to end impunity for violators. Although not legally binding, UN General Assembly resolutions carry considerable moral and political weight.
Yeah, I'm sure all the toothless illiterate lady witch doctors in backward, Islamic countries are quaking in fear.
Police Officer Goes Pottymouthed Asshole Over The Fourth Amendment
Via Lew Rockwell, a cop goes all "Fuck You!" and "motherfucker"-y when a guy he stopped refuses to let him search his car without a warrant.
It's actually a prank video, per the YouTube writeup, but it's a good example of somebody exercising their Fourth Amendment right to not be searched without a warrant (and probable cause -- reasonable suspicion they've committed a crime).
Allowing it to be searched isn't a sign of innocence but of gullibility.
Running In High Heels To Have Sex In A Park? Wave Bye-Bye To Workers' Comp Claim!
Via @Overlawyered, Lowering The Bar blogs this San Jose Merc story:
[A California woman] was caught on videotape in August 2009 throwing her crutches into a car and running in high heels to meet her boyfriend at a public park, where she took part in a sex act that doctors concluded she couldn't have done with an injured ankle, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.
More from the story:
Claiming the injury left her unable to walk, Martin made 10 visits to doctors over a three-month span. A co-worker suspected she was exaggerating and alerted the district, which advised investigators.Martin was taken into custody after sentencing. A call to her attorney, Emily Andrews, by The Associated Press was not immediately returned.
Martin was also sentenced to 3 years of supervised probation and ordered to pay more than $79,000 in restitution.
Why We All Don't Get Cancer
Interesting talk by Memorial Sloan-Kettering president Craig B. Thompson. Answer, in two words, via Dr. Michael Eades, who led me to the talk: "Controlling glucose."
Love his line about what made the difference in the cancer rates in modern times -- "the refrigerator."
I eat almost no sugar, and pretty much no flour. I have a scoop of ice cream every couple of weeks, or a tiny bar of dark chocolate. I sometimes have a single chocolate-chip cookie at a dinner I go to once a month.
Other than that, I eat a diet that is made up largely of of beef, Omega-3 eggs, bacon, salmon, liver, sausages, cheese, cream, Kerry Gold butter, green beans, asparagus, salad, and kale. I drink a bit of very dry white wine about every other day. I take magnesium and vitamin D. More and more, consume coconut oil, which has Medium Chain Triglycerides (on another tip from Mike Eades).
I can't be sure, but I suspect this way of eating protects me against a lot of the cancers I'd get if I ate differently.
(Oh, and if anybody has any luck finding F. Glum's bread experiment, please post a link. P.S. Not sure that's how you spell it.)
Crass, Vulgar, And Off-Topic
Please try to hit at least two out of three.
Other People's Bratty Children
Has being a parent changed how you feel about them? Via RR, mom Tracie Egan Morrissey blogs at Jezebel, "Fuck You, Other People's Kids":
I fucking hate other people's kids. Before I became a mother, and some shitty child would be having a total meltdown in a restaurant, screaming at the top of his lungs and writhing around on the floor, trying to escape from his table as though sitting properly in a chair was tantamount to Lingchi torture, I used to be like, "Well, having kids must be so hard. I'm sure those parents are doing the best they can." But now that I have a child of my own, I'm like, "I hear enough of that shit at home! Hire a fucking sitter like the rest of the people in this restaurant did. God!"Seriously, though, other people's kids are the worst. I actually thought that once I had a child, I'd start to like all children. But the opposite has been true--I like other children a lot less now. Experience as a parent has given me some real perspective on the matter. Asshole children didn't get that way despite the best efforts of doting parents. They're assholes because they're born of assholes who never correct asshole behavior because they don't even recognize how asshole-y it is.
Cyclist Tracks Down His Hit-And-Run Driver
I love this guy. In the mode of my tracking down my stolen pink Rambler (which you can read about in full in I See Rude People), cyclist Don Ward tracked down his hit-and-run driver and had him prosecuted. Like me, he had his naivete about what the cops will do for you rapidly removed:
He was stunned at the disinterest the LAPD investigator showed.
Hillel Aron tells the whole story in the LA Weekly. An excerpt:
The mowing down of Don Ward wasn't even a blip in a city where authorities have lost whatever grip they once may have had. But the public is getting angry: Ward's post in 2009 on the Midnight Ridazz message board generated hundreds of responses, including one from DJ Wheels -- lawyer Danny Jimenez.Jimenez had a friend in the California Highway Patrol who took five minutes, not LAPD's two weeks, to "run down the plate." Of four possible matches, one was a Jaguar registered to Glenn Gritzner, who lived near Silver Lake Reservoir, about two miles from the Echo Park crime scene.
Ward and Jimenez Googled "Glenn Gritzner" and found a blog site where he reviews bars in downtown L.A. The logo: a martini glass. Then their Internet search turned up something shocking: Gritzner wasn't an illegal immigrant fearing deportation, or a laid-off worker without insurance. He's a well-to-do, high-flying lobbyist and political player in City Hall and Sacramento, a managing director of Mercury Public Affairs, a powerful firm whose top partners include former California Speaker Fabian Nuñez and Adam Mendehlson, former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mercury is paid by corporate and union biggies to influence California's politicians; its past clients include Wal-Mart, Blue Shield, even the City of Los Angeles.
"We were almost 100 percent sure this was the guy," Ward recalls. "We were operating on the premise that the cops were gonna do nothing. We had to get evidence."
They visited trendy downtown bars, including the Edison and the Standard, hoping somebody had seen Gritzner getting hammered. Nothing. They drove by his house. No gray Jaguar.
They finally deduced that a man as successful and connected as Gritzner probably would take his Jag in to repair the damage.
The first place they called was Rusnak, a Jaguar dealer in Pasadena.
"Yeah, I wanna see if my Jaguar's gonna be ready," Ward said.
"What's your name?"
"Glenn Gritzner."
"Oh yeah, your car's gonna be ready Thursday."
Ward was tingling. He and Jimenez rushed to Pasadena and found the Jaguar getting a new coat of paint. Its hood and grille had already been replaced.
Where Was Dad In All Of This? The Question Not Being Asked In Newtown Mass Murder
Even if there was mental illness as the root of this -- as I think there must have been -- an intact family, a father in the home, may have made a big difference. Imagine being a single mother handling a troubled, mentally ill son all by yourself. No backup. Nobody to be the bad guy -- the guy who puts his foot down.
Ned Holstein emailed from Fathers And Families about the question not really being asked (save for a few places here and there, I'd add):
We don't hear about the effects of fatherlessness, especially on young men. We don't hear that the most reliable predictor of crime is neither poverty nor race but growing up fatherless. We don't hear that a large majority of violent criminals were fatherless. We don't even hear that young male elephants go on violent rampages unless they are kept in line by the old bulls.We know that Adam's parents separated around 2006 and divorced around 2008. We know that his father, Peter Lanza, moved to Stamford, CT, re-married, and is believed to earn about $1 million per year as a General Electric executive -- enough that Adam's mother and he have lived in a big home and that she has not worked.
The Daily Mail reports quotes several of Adam's former classmates to the effect that his problems got much worse after the separation. "He was always weird but the divorce affected him. He was arguing with his mother. He was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode."
Several news organizations have combed through the divorce records for tidbits, but none of them have reported obvious issues of importance. Was Mom stable and capable of helping and of overseeing Adam (apparently not)? Was she careful about keeping her guns out of Adam's hands (apparently not)? Did Dad try and fail to get custody? Has he remained active in Adam's life (probably not: he chose to move 40 miles away, and we have heard almost nothing from him since the tragedy.)? Was he more capable of keeping Adam in line than Mom, or of seeing that he got help? Was Adam's distress after the divorce about losing the love and guidance of his Dad, or what?
The fatherhood narrative is absent from our society and from this terrible story.
It was also absent from the awful stories of mass shooters Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Seung-Hui Cho and Jacob Tyler Roberts. Of this group, only Roberts was without a father, but we still need to understand what it is about fathers that inhibits violence in young men.
In fairness, most rare and awful events are the result of numerous influences acting together. The accident happened because the driver was intoxicated and the brakes were worn and the pedestrian was careless and the road was slippery and the lighting was poor. No one factor explains all. If just one of these factors had been different, there would have been no accident.
But fatherhood is not even on society's list. This is especially sad because a simple change in divorce laws towards shared parenting would take a big chunk out of this factor at no cost. This is a much cheaper fix than a bureaucracy to enforce new gun laws or more mental health services, not that these might not be good ideas.
...The dominant narratives of the age close the door on other truths. They are not remarked upon, analyzed, or investigated.
Our job as a movement is to put the fatherhood narrative front and center. That is my job and your job. It may be one of the most powerful ways to help troubled kids -- and prevent mass murder.
It is possible that with reformed family courts and more fathering, Adam Lanza and his victims would be alive today. We just don't know, and we never will know.
They Put The Latex Gloves On To Violate Your Body And Rights
Disgusting violation of the rights of two Texas women that seems to me to be a fishing expedition on the part of the officers to find some crime committed...or maybe an attempt to commit one and get away with it, if the women's allegation about a missing bottle of prescribed hydrocodone is true.
The officer claims he smelled marijuana. Unlikely, considering none was found, but a ploy police use to get around that Constitution thingie and the prohibition against searches without probable cause -- reasonable suspicion you've committed a crime.
Frank Heinz and Ken Kalthoff write at NBCNews.com of how the women were given a roadside cavity search in full view of the public, sans probable cause, and how -- eeeuw, gross! -- the trooper cavity searching them didn't change her glove between searches:
On July 13, while driving along State Highway 161, Angel Dobbs and her niece Ashley Dobbs were stopped for littering by Trooper David Ferrell. In the dashcam video released by the women and their attorney, Ferrell can be heard telling the women they would both be cited for littering for throwing cigarette butts out of the car.Farrell then returned to his cruiser and, in the video, can be heard calling female Trooper Kelley Helleson to the scene to search both women whom he said were acting weird.
While waiting for Helleson to arrive, Farrell asked Angel Dobbs to step out of the vehicle and began questioning her about marijuana use. In the video, the trooper is heard telling Dobbs he smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle while asking her several times how much pot was in the car.
Farrell: How much marijuana is in that car? And don't lie to me.
Angel Dobbs: I don't smoke marijuana.
Farrell: OK, how much marijuana is in that car? That's my question.
Dobbs: I swear to God, I don't smoke marijuana.
Farrell: I'm not asking you if you smoke it.
Dobbs: I don't think there is any marijuana in that car.
Farrell: OK, when was the last time somebody smoked marijuana in that car?
Dobbs: I honestly don't know. It's my boyfriend's car. So, I just borrowed it.
Farrell: There's an odor of marijuana coming from the car and that's why I've got to talk to you further about it. Um, and the more upfront you are the better it's going to go for you. So, you're telling me there's no marijuana in that car?
Dobbs: To the best of my knowledge, no there is not.
Farrell: Is there anything hidden on your person?
Dobbs: On my person?
Farrell: On your person, in your shoes, in your underwear?
Dobbs: No. I feel like I'm being treated like a criminal right now. What's going on?
Farrell: I've got a female Trooper up the road, she's going to come down here and we're just going to check a little bit more.After Helleson arrived, she can be seen in the dashcam video putting on blue latex gloves to conduct a search of both women. According to the lawsuit, when Angel Dobbs asked about the gloves, Helleson "told her not to worry about that."
Here's a video of the search -- notice that the trooper never puts new gloves on to search the vagina and butt of the other girl:
via ifeminists
Americans With No Abilities Act
Update on an Onion piece from 2006. An excerpt:
"Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said California Sen. Barbara Boxer. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability (POI) to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing.
I know -- seems like something Boxer would say and that a lot of legislaturds would vote for.
Bad Tastycakes
Deposit here, please.
How To Stop School Shootings
No, the answer isn't "More gun control!" Which is another way of saying, "Dooo something!"
Gun control is no more effective at stopping people from getting guns than the drug laws are at stopping people from getting drugs. I can get either just blocks from my house. All it takes is the cash.
You stop school shootings by having two or three people on campus who have more than their bodies to try to stop the shooter. Ideally, the principal of every school and one or two other people should have guns, safely stored or worn, and there should be measures to make sure there is a backup person (or persons) in case of their departure from the school (like at lunchtime) or illness.
How The Soy In My Dinner Very Likely Was The Thing That Kicked My Ass To Migraineville
I first assumed the migraine that just ached at first this morning and then exploded was caused my punishing work schedule these past few weeks. Now, I think it may have been the Kogi food truck's soy-soaked beef and pork I ate last night at a super event thrown by reason to celebrate the opening of their new HQ.
See below, with bold-faced bits by me, a bit from the website of the Kogi truck guys:
THASS RIGHT, KIDS! Soy sauce is made with WHEAT, which makes it NOT GLUTEN-FREE. So any of our meats and tofu (it's organic!) is MARINATED in stuff that contains SOY SAUCE. YEAH, BASK IN OUR ASIANNESS!!!!!111ONEONE I'd teLL ya to get the saLad, but hey -- it's tossed in a chiLi-soy vinaigrette. So I'd advise you to get griLLed onion muLita w/ SaLsa Verde (roasted jaLapeño, citrus, garLic oiL and ciLantro). AND THAT'S IT. I know, it's a pretty weak-arse list of options, but that's the onLy thing I can think of that is stiLL dericious and WON'T KILL YOU. Sorry, foLks, I don't want to be responsibLe for your trip to the hospitaL.Oh, and before I forget -- based off some lazy internet research, I've found out that soy sauce has smaLL quantities of naturaLLy-occuring gLutamate -- for those deathLy afraid of MSG. So just keep that in mind.
From bed, in between sleep jags with the lights off and my noise-canceling headphones and little sleep mask on, I Googled up psychiatrist Emily Deans and "migraines." And yay, she had something -- on a gene migraine sufferers have in common, rs1835740:
The punchline. rs1835740 is an area of a chromosome that has two genes for glutamate regulation. Yes, glutamate, that excitatory neurotransmitter that can be exceedingly annoying and cause all sorts of trouble (like seizures, bipolar disorder, depression, and migraines) when the regulation is out of whack. The actual gene they think is implicated is MTDH. MTDH is responsible for downregulating the major glutamate transporter in the brain.The hypothesis of migraines is that too much glutamate is left out in the synapse, causing too much excitement in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading to spreading neurotoxic communication, head pain, sometimes aura - a migraine. Why would too much glutamate be left out in the synapse? Because some people appear to have inefficient pumping mechanisms to get it back into the cell. The glutamate transporter is one you need to be working tip top!
This is all indirect evidence, but it is sensible and very cool. Maybe your common migraines are due to this very gene and mechanism. Perhaps topamax or valproate or other GABA-influencing medicines could work to improve the headaches. Or you could actively work to reduce your stress so the glutamate isn't so prevalent. Or maybe even try a ketogenic diet. (not an FDA approved treatment for migraine - and I couldn't even find any case trials on pubmed, but I have heard of cases mentioned on the internet. I'll look harder) Intriguing!
I'm already on a ketogenic (low-carb diet), and the only variation last night was my dinner -- with that soy sauce on top. (I of course ordered my kogi sans tortillas.)
Coconut oil is ketogenic, so I just made some chamomile tea with hot milk and about a tablespoon of organic coconut oil, which I foamed together with my milk foamer, and I'm hoping that will help.
I have a mammo at 3:30, and I'll be damned if I'm going to miss it, get charged and have to go another day -- a day I could spend writing my ass off.
And no, in case you're wondering, I don't get the kind of migraines that give you a visual aura, so I'll be okay -- but maybe in pain and crabby -- to drive the three miles to the facility where I'm getting this done.
How crabby? If anyone suggests I take an aspirin, which are about as effective against my migraines as throwing a ping pong ball is at eradicating a tumor, come close and see how I can turn you into a small pile of ashes with a single glare.
TSA's Continuing Success In Continuing To Violate Our Bodies And Rights
Jeff Pierce at Freedom To Travel USA emailed me:
The gutless courts - and yes, they are gutless - have just concluded for the third time that the legal option to challenge the TSA procedures is first in Appeals Courts. Without getting into details, the courts are taking an old FAA legal procedure and agreeing that the TSA scanners and groping procedures are an "administrative order" which gets tried in the Appeals Court first. This would be somewhat defensible - IF it was an order. But there has been no public notice of the procedures, the procedures are secret, and most importantly there has NEVER been an agency administrative hearing with any complaintant! Without the hearing, there is no ability to have a trial whose sole intent was to review an administrative hearing. The latest affirmed victim is Mr. Blitz...TSA propaganda link is here.
Autism Doesn't Cause Murder
I am on the autism spectrum, having ADHD, and I can't imagine how you would even point a gun at a 6-year-old, let alone pull the trigger. (Autism, Asperger's and ADHD are all mental health disorders on the Autism spectrum.)
Priscilla Gilman, a mother with an autistic child, writes in The New York Times in the wake of Adam Lanza's Sandy Hook school slaughter:
Let me clear up a few misconceptions. For one thing, Asperger's and autism are not forms of mental illness; they are neurodevelopmental disorders or disabilities. Autism is a lifelong condition that manifests before the age of 3; most mental illnesses do not appear until the teen or young adult years. Medications rarely work to curb the symptoms of autism, but they can be indispensable in treating mental illness like obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.Underlying much of this misreporting is the pernicious and outdated stereotype that people with autism lack empathy. Children with autism may have trouble understanding the motivations and nonverbal cues of others, be socially naïve and have difficulty expressing their emotions in words, but they are typically more truthful and less manipulative than neurotypical children and are often people of great integrity. They can also have a strong desire to connect with others and they can be intensely empathetic -- they just attempt those connections and express that empathy in unconventional ways. My child with autism, in fact, is the most empathetic and honorable of my three wonderful children.
Additionally, a psychopathic, sociopathic or homicidal tendency must be separated out from both autism and from mental illness more generally. While autistic children can sometimes be aggressive, this is usually because of their frustration at being unable to express themselves verbally, or their extreme sensory sensitivities. Moreover, the form their aggression takes is typically harmful only to themselves. In the very rare cases where their aggression is externally directed, it does not take the form of systematic, meticulously planned, intentional acts of violence against a community.
And if study after study has definitively established that a person with autism is no more likely to be violent or engage in criminal behavior than a neurotypical person, it is just as clear that autistic people are far more likely to be the victims of bullying and emotional and physical abuse by parents and caregivers than other children. So there is a sad irony in making autism the agent or the cause rather than regarding it as the target of violence.
In the wake of coverage like this, I worry, in line with concerns raised by the author Susan Cain in her groundbreaking book on introverts, "Quiet": will shy, socially inhibited students be looked at with increasing suspicion as potentially dangerous? Will a quiet, reserved, thoughtful child be pegged as having antisocial personality disorder? Will children with autism or mental illness be shunned even more than they already are?
This country needs to develop a better understanding of the complexities of various conditions and respect for the profound individuality of its children. We need to emphasize that being introverted doesn't mean one has a developmental disorder, that a developmental disorder is not the same thing as a mental illness, and that most mental illnesses do not increase a person's tendency toward outward-directed violence.
Dr. Barbara Oakley, an engineering professor who writes on psychology (better and in a less doctrinaire way than so many in psychology), has talked to me about how psychological and psychiatric diagnoses that are made are often way too clear-cut. A psychologist or psychiatrist will deem a person to have a particular disorder when they actually seem to have a spectrum of disorders.
I think it's important to remember how inexact psychological and psychiatric diagnoses actually are. They're basically somebody's opinion, based on a list of symptoms in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical manual), which is often as relevant as my diagnoses that I have incurable cancer at 3 a.m. (I try to avoid doing that now!)
The thing is, symptoms that check off in one disorder may also check off in another. But, a psychologist or psychiatrist may have a pet disorder they like to diagnose, and may be prone to find that particular disorder.
I was shocked at how inexact diagnosis for ADHD was. There was no brain scan (none exists to determine it that I know of); a doctor just listened to what I said and prescribed me with Ritalin, which, by the way, didn't quite work for me. Years later, when I got a psychiatrist I felt was solid on science -- my current psychiatrist -- and who I didn't feel had a prejudice against ADHD (like the last one, who doesn't believe it's real, the ass), I trusted him and told him it wasn't really working. He put me on Adderall and changed my writing life from torture to sometimes hard work I love.
UPDATE: Related piece by Rishawn Biddle at DropoutNation.
A Solar-Powered Screwing In California
The caption above an SF Gate story by Christopher Martin and Mark Chediak says it all:
Power companies in California are required to buy electricity from residents and businesses with solar generator systems at the same price they resell it to other customers, meaning utilities earn nothing to cover their fixed costs.
More from the piece:
About 20,000 customers of San Diego Gas & Electric had connected 146 megawatts of solar panels to its grid as of Nov. 1, accounting for 1.2 percent of its peak load. The company is adding 409 new net-metering customers a month, said Stephanie Donovan, a spokeswoman for the state's third-largest utility.SDG&E can't collect about $18 million to $20 million a year in grid costs from customers with rooftop solar panels, according to Dan Skopec, vice president of regulatory affairs for San Diego's Sempra Energy, the utility's owner.
The utility will be shifting about $200 million in annual costs to customers without panels when the state reaches its cap, Skopec said. Solar customers "avoid charges, not just for energy, but also the costs of the transmission and distribution system," he said. "That's why we say it is not sustainable."
Pacific Gas & Electric, the state's biggest utility, will pass on about $700 million in annual costs to people without solar systems when the state hits the cap, according to Denny Boyles, a spokesman. Southern California Edison will transfer about $400 million annually, according to spokesman David Song, for a total of $1.3 billion from the three utilities.
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.)
Tuesday was deadline day, with a double deadline for Christmas week's columns, plus I taped a Ricki Lake show on rudeness (airdate TBD), plus I had to go to an evening event (a rare but very fun and libertarian-filled one) at which I had the pleasure, among other things, of introducing a hilarious judge and a famous pornographer.
In short...I'm wiped out. I must go to bed. Will post more blog items in the morning!
Bringing Out The Ass In "Assumption"
Just like nutbag religious leaders in the wake of 9/11, some religious bloggers are coming out to blame the horrific shooting in Connecticut, not on what's likely -- mental illness (how else do you gun down children?) -- but on the lack of god in our lives.
From a site called Freedom Torch (freedom, it seems, to make asinine assumptions based on the evidence-free belief that there even is a god), Jonathan Cousar blogs:
The tragic mass murder of all those children in Connecticut yesterday is another great example of what happens when millions of people have outright hostility to God. Some people will blame God and ask how can we follow a God who allows such a thing. But you can discount their views, because they hate this God in the first place and they're always looking for things they can twist into arguments against him. And this particular argument is upside down.Christians in this country have been warning for a very long time - and especially strongly since the 1960s, that if we keep heading in the direction of rejecting the God of the Bible, that exactly these kinds of things will become more and more common. And not because God is judging or punishing us, but because they're the direct result of rejecting God. The murderer yesterday wasn't following God. He was in open rebellion against him. God didn't tell him to go murder 20 young children. If he was following the God of the Bible he never could have done that.
But the irreligious among us have worked tirelessly for more than a hundred years to push God out of the schools, out of the media, out of all public places.
Um, it's called the Constitution, dude -- and it also preserves your right to practice your evidence-free beliefs in non-government funded situations...or to create your own media to try to push those beliefs on others.
Kids like yesterday's mass child murderer can grow up in America today and never hear a single word from God's Bible. This kid was taught the atheist view that we're all the result of some random molecular accidents and there is therefore no purpose or meaning to our lives - except to reproduce. He very likely grew up without ever coming into contact with any Christian teachings that would have helped him avoid doing what he did yesterday. If he grew up going to public schools and watching Hollywood TV and movies, he could have easily gone his entire 20 years without hearing even a mention of Biblical teachings.
I particularly like bits like the ones that say people need to be executed for committing adultery, and the bizarre prohibition against getting a haircut. Fantastic Sam's, thou art the root of much evil!
What If Tax And Pension Death Spiral States Try To Tax Fleeing Residents?
Bill Frezza writes at Real Clear Markets:
One of the most fascinating characteristics of government borrowing - whether at the local, state, or federal level - is that debts contracted over time are obligations tied to specific geographical boundaries but not to the citizens living there when those debts were incurred. For example, while it's customary to say that each of the 210,000 residents of Stockton, California, are on the hook for their share of the bankrupt municipality's estimated $700 million in unpaid bills, the day one of them picks up and moves, personal responsibility for that debt drops to zero.Imagine if that type of tax "evasion" were eliminated. How would it change America?
Government debts are accrued on your behalf by elected officials for whom you had a chance to vote, all supposedly representing your interests. In a democracy, all citizens are obliged to pay the government's bills as determined by the duly empowered taxing authorities - regardless of whether they voted for a particular officeholder or not. What's to stop legislators from passing laws that make debt obligations due and payable by any citizen who decides to leave for another jurisdiction? After all, they don't hesitate to take your money when you die.
Mayors and governors of most tax-and-spend, heavily unionized, low-growth cities and states are both desperate for revenue and tired of watching disgruntled citizens vote with their feet. Think how politically attractive it would be for them to make "economic deserters" pay their "fair share" of old debts. I can see the arguments already: "You can't move away from credit card debt or commercial debt, so why should government debt be so easy to dodge?" Politicians could easily win kudos from both public employee unions and the overtaxed residents left behind, for the mere cost of enraging emigrants who won't be around to exact retribution at the next election.
...Exit taxes imposed on emigrants have a long history, including their use in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They were imposed under the theory that, since citizens were educated by the government and were either provided benefits or allowed to profit from jobs and business held while living under the government's protection, they were obligated to pay back some of that money on their way out.
Sounds like something only a Hitler or Stalin would love? If only. Try surrendering your U.S. citizenship and moving to another country. Thanks to a series of expatriation tax laws passed by Congress dating back to the 1960s, with the most recent revision sponsored by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) (no stranger to tax evasion himself), emigrants leaving the U.S. must pay capital gains tax, including on unrealized gains, across all their holdings marked to market as of the day of departure. In addition, expats are liable for gift taxes on amounts above $12,000 a year given to anyone in the U.S., for the rest of their lives, even though they are no longer citizens themselves.
To date, the Supreme Court has had no problem with any of these laws. So what is to stop, say, California from imposing exit taxes on the steady stream of citizens heading off for Texas, Arizona, and Nevada? More than 200,000 people flee the Golden State every year, taking their money with them while leaving behind their share of the state's $617 billion in state debt, which comes to about $16,000 per resident. That's $3.2 billion a year in tax evasion!
Boys Will Be Boys. Got A Problem With That?
There's an article in The Atlantic by Christina Hoff Sommers on those who stick kids with gender-neutral toys and then have a hard time getting them to play with them:
Twenty years ago, Hasbro, a major American toy manufacturing company, tested a playhouse it hoped to market to both boys and girls. It soon emerged that girls and boys did not interact with the structure in the same way. The girls dressed the dolls, kissed them, and played house. The boys catapulted the toy baby carriage from the roof. A Hasbro manager came up with a novel explanation: "Boys and girls are different."They are different, and nothing short of radical and sustained behavior modification could significantly change their elemental play preferences. Children, with few exceptions, are powerfully drawn to sex-stereotyped play. David Geary, a developmental psychologist at the University of Missouri, told me in an email this week, "One of the largest and most persistent differences between the sexes are children's play preferences." The female preference for nurturing play and the male propensity for rough-and-tumble hold cross-culturally and even cross-species (with a few exceptions--female spotted hyenas seem to be at least as aggressive as males). Among our close relatives such as vervet and rhesus monkeys, researchers have found that females play with dolls far more than their brothers, who prefer balls and toy cars. It seems unlikely that the monkeys were indoctrinated by stereotypes in a Top-Toy catalog. Something else is going on.
Biology appears to play a role. Several animal studies have shown that hormonal manipulation can reverse sex-typed behavior. When researchers exposed female rhesus monkeys to male hormones prenatally, these females later displayed male-like levels of rough-and-tumble play. Similar results are found in human beings. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a genetic condition that results when the female fetus is subjected to unusually large quantities of male hormones--adrenal androgens. Girls with CAH tend to prefer trucks, cars, and construction sets over dolls and play tea sets. As psychologist Doreen Kimura reported in Scientific American, "These findings suggest that these preferences were actually altered in some way by the early hormonal environment." They also cast doubt on the view that gender-specific play is primarily shaped by socialization.
Professor Geary does not have much hope for the new gender-blind toy catalogue: "The catalog will almost certainly disappear in a few years, once parents who buy from it realize their kids don't want these toys." Most little girls don't want to play with dump trucks, as almost any parent can attest. Including me: When my granddaughter Eliza was given a toy train, she placed it in a baby carriage and covered it with a blanket so it could get some sleep.
Androgyny advocates like our Swedish friends have heard such stories many times, and they have an answer. They acknowledge that sex differences have at least some foundation in biology, but they insist that culture can intensify or diminish their power and effect. Even if Eliza is prompted by nature to interact with a train in a stereotypical female way, that is no reason for her parents not to energetically correct her. Hunter College psychologist Virginia Valian, a strong proponent of Swedish-style re-genderization, wrote in the book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women, "We do not accept biology as destiny ... We vaccinate, we inoculate, we medicate... I propose we adopt the same attitude toward biological sex differences."
Valian is absolutely right that we do not have to accept biology as destiny. But the analogy is ludicrous: We vaccinate, inoculate, and medicate children against disease. Is being a gender-typical little boy or girl a pathology in need of a cure?
How To Keep Old, Crappy Teachers
Bhavini Bhakta writes in the LA Times that she won the school's 2009 Teacher of the Year Award, and shortly afterward, got a pink slip, warning that she was at high risk of being let go due to budget cuts:
Sometimes the pink slips are rescinded at the last minute; sometimes they aren't. But the system has forced many excellent teachers out of teaching and into more stable professions.The annual madness is the result of LIFO, which stands for "last in, first out." It is currently the law in California, and what it means is that school administrators must make teacher retention decisions based solely on seniority, without regard to a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom. LIFO is the functional equivalent of an NBA team being forced to fire LeBron James because a bench warmer on the team has more years in the league. In the case of schools, it can mean that 30 or more children who have only one shot at, say, third grade, are being taught by an inferior teacher
LIFO's tag-team partner in the substandard education derby is California's antiquated tenure system. Under current law, teachers receive tenure after only 18 months of work and minimal administrative review; there is virtually no evaluation process to determine whether teachers are effective before receiving tenure, and after receiving it, tenured teachers are virtually impossible to fire.
The legal roadblocks to firing a tenured teacher are so formidable that even abject ineffectiveness is not considered a fireable offense. In a recent survey, 68% of teachers said they knew of at least one grossly incompetent teacher at their school who deserved to be fired but had not been.
The combined results of LIFO and the tenure system can be catastrophic for students. Multiple studies have shown that even a single year with an ineffective teacher can set students back for a lifetime. They are less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to attend college, and will on average earn lower incomes compared to peers who had the good fortune to be taught in that year by an effective teacher.
She calls for regular, comprehensive evaluations of teachers. But, oops -- what's standing in the way? Surprise: Teachers unions, which value teachers' rights over those of students to get the education taxpayers are paying for.
A caption under Bhakta's piece:
Bhavini Bhakta lost teaching positions in four schools over eight years because she lacked seniority. She now teaches fifth grade in Arcadia. She worked on this piece with Students Matter, an organization that is challenging California's teacher protection laws in court.
In Very Bad Taste
Don't be slipping to simple bad taste today, boys and girls.
Smoking And Your Face
Life makes your face look like an alligator handbag soon enough; no need to speed the process.
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
Perhaps you can replace your real one with a sheep-droid at Amazon.
Now On: 48-Hour Electronics Overstock Event
at Amazon
Saunders: A Conservative Position On The War On Drugs
This is a blog item both about the War On Drugs and mandatory minimum life sentences for people who aren't violent criminals. More on that below.
Debra J. Saunders writes at SFGate:
"Mandatory sentences breed injustice," Judge Roger Vinson told the New York Times. A Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Florida, Vinson was railing against a federal system that forced him to sentence a 27-year-old single mother to prison life without parole because her dealer ex-boyfriend had stored cocaine in her house.Note to D.C. Republicans: This would be a great time to take on the excesses of the war on drugs.
The Times was writing about conservatives, including Jeb Bush and former Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson, who advocate for smarter, more humane incarceration policies under the rubric "Right on Crime." In light of the GOP's need to woo more young voters, drug-war reforms offer an ideological good - limited government - and also might be politically savvy. Think: Ron Paul and his rock star status on college campuses.
Two areas cry for immediate action.
One: sentencing reform. The single mother, Stephanie George, had prior drug convictions, which contributed to her draconian prison term. Even she says that she deserved to do time, but not the rest of her natural life.
What's more, her costly incarceration won't do anything to dry up the nation's drug supply or scare kingpins straight. Career dealers, like George's ex-boyfriend, who was released five years ago, know how to game the system and reduce their sentences by testifying against amateurs and patsies who think they can win at trial. As the judge explained, the guiltiest parties "get reduced sentences, while the small fry, the little workers who don't have that information, get the mandatory sentences."
When the federal government imprisons small-time criminals for life, the system has grown too costly and too ineffective. It embodies the definition of big government. University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt found that American penal policies decreased crime in the 1990s. Since then, incarceration rates have risen so steeply that Levitt told the Times he now thinks that the prison population - more than 2 million people are in prison or jail - could be reduced by a third. If he's half right, Washington should act.
President Obama was critical of mandatory minimums before he was elected to the White House. But he has failed to use his presidential power to pardon as he should. Obama has commuted only one sentence to date, and right now, a commutation is George's only hope of release.
Julie Stewart, who founded Families Against Mandatory Minimums, knows Democratic and Republican politicians who have issues with the war on drugs. Congress should not wait for the White House to enact sentencing reform; GOP members should lead the way.
"Should." But, they pander just as well as the Democrats, and are highly unlikely to.
John Tierney has an article in the New York Times rethinking sentences of life behind bars for lesser crimes mentioning the woman Saunders mentioned above, whose name is Stephanie George:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Stephanie George and Judge Roger Vinson had quite different opinions about the lockbox seized by the police from her home in Pensacola. She insisted she had no idea that a former boyfriend had hidden it in her attic. Judge Vinson considered the lockbox, containing a half-kilogram of cocaine, to be evidence of her guilt.But the defendant and the judge fully agreed about the fairness of the sentence he imposed in federal court.
"Even though you have been involved in drugs and drug dealing," Judge Vinson told Ms. George, "your role has basically been as a girlfriend and bag holder and money holder but not actively involved in the drug dealing, so certainly in my judgment it does not warrant a life sentence."
Yet the judge had no other option on that morning 15 years ago. As her stunned family watched, Ms. George, then 27, who had never been accused of violence, was led from the courtroom to serve a sentence of life without parole.
"I remember my mom crying out and asking the Lord why," said Ms. George, now 42, in an interview at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee. "Sometimes I still can't believe myself it could happen in America."
Her sentence reflected a revolution in public policy, often called mass incarceration, that appears increasingly dubious to both conservative and liberal social scientists. They point to evidence that mass incarceration is no longer a cost-effective way to make streets safer, and may even be promoting crime instead of suppressing it.
..."It is unconscionable that we routinely sentence people like Stephanie George to die in our prisons," said Mary Price, the general counsel of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "The United States is nearly alone among the nations of the world in abandoning our obligation to rehabilitate such offenders."
The utility of such sentences has been challenged repeatedly by criminologists and economists. Given that criminals are not known for meticulous long-term planning, how much more seriously do they take a life sentence versus 20 years, or 10 years versus 2 years? Studies have failed to find consistent evidence that the prospect of a longer sentence acts as a significantly greater deterrent than a shorter sentence.
Longer sentences undoubtedly keep criminals off the streets. But researchers question whether this incapacitation effect, as it is known, provides enough benefits to justify the costs, especially when drug dealers are involved. Locking up a rapist makes the streets safer by removing one predator, but locking up a low-level drug dealer creates a job opening that is quickly filled because so many candidates are available.
There's a huge cost to keeping people in prison as well. I think prisoners should be made to earn their keep, but that's not the way it works.
And here's a sickening bit from Tierney's piece that Saunders touches on above:
Because the government formally credited the other defendants with "substantial assistance," their sentences were all reduced to less than 15 years. Even though Mr. Dickey was the leader of the enterprise and had a much longer criminal record than Ms. George, he was freed five years ago.Looking back on the case, Judge Vinson said such disparate treatment is unfortunately all too common. The judge, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan who is hardly known for liberalism (last year he ruled that the Obama administration's entire health care act was unconstitutional), says he still regrets the sentence he had to impose on Ms. George because of a formula dictated by the amount of cocaine in the lockbox and her previous criminal record.
"She was not a major participant by any means, but the problem in these cases is that the people who can offer the most help to the government are the most culpable," Judge Vinson said recently. "So they get reduced sentences while the small fry, the little workers who don't have that information, get the mandatory sentences.
TSA to Court: Only Hear Our Version of the "Facts!"
Jonathan Corbett blogs at TSA Out Of Our Pants. He describes himself:
I'm a 28 year old entrepreneur and frequent flyer who opposes visual and manual inspection of the private parts of our bodies! I hope you'll join me in my fight to have our rights restored!
His court case against the TSA is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court -- but not if they can help it, the power-mad Constitution-flouting slimevats. And the Department of Justice, instead of working for, you know...justice...works to disenfranchise anyone who seeks court review of the TSA and their violations of American's rights, bodies, and dignity. As Corbett writes:
They've challenged standing (whether or not the TSA affects me enough that I'm entitled to review), they've challenged jurisdiction (which court I can go in and when I can file), and here and there, they've compared me to a terrorist. Nice, right?But last week's filing by the government is the most blatant slap to the face the Fifth Amendment has yet received in those 2+ years: the TSA has asked the Court to decide my lawsuit to end the scans and groping solely by reviewing their "administrative record" -- which of course contains only the "facts" as the government presents them. They've essentially asked the court to bar discovery, experts, witnesses, and any other source of facts, because the TSA knows it all, and will fairly present all the facts to the court.
I truly wonder what kind of person writes these government briefs. Who goes to law school to study the incredible history of American jurisprudence, including and especially the Constitution, to end up in a career where they fight to take away the rights of the citizens?
TSA: Pretend Security
A tweet, retweeted by @TSARants
@zsofsusanyi Paying for an extra bag and having to go back because TSA thinks tennis rackets are weapons before a red eye.. Go to hell
Don't Waste Bad Taste
Give it a good home.
Last Minute Shipping
From December 17 through December 22: Shop Amazon - FREE One-Day Shipping on Select Products
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Mark Sanborn On How Entrepreneurial Thinking Can Improve Your Life
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My show this week will explain how to bring what I call "entrepreneurial thinking" ("thinking outside the box") to your life, improving your work life, your relationships, your friendships, and even little everyday interactions you have with other people.
My guest this week is Mark Sanborn, a business consultant and motivational speaker who wrote a fantastic book, The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary
I usually have researchers and psychologists on my show, but I occasionally make exceptions for exceptional non-scientist guests, and Mark Sanborn is definitely one of the exceptional thinkers. I promise: This is a not-to-be missed show that you can use to shift your thinking and, with relatively little effort, improve every area of your life.
Listen to tonight's show live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/17/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with cognitive behavioral therapist Sarah Edelman, Ph.D., who explained how you can use rational problem-solving techniques to eliminate the need to spend years and thousands of dollars in therapy by using reason to solve your emotional problems.
Her book is Change Your Thinking: Overcome Stress, Anxiety, and Depression, and Improve Your Life with CBT
The late Dr. Albert Ellis, who along with Aaron Beck, originated much of cognitive behavioral therapy, has been a big influence on me and the thinking you read in my column. Tonight's show -- and Dr. Edelman's book -- is based largely on his work.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/10/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 or Stitcher.
TSA: How Dumb Are The People Searching Us At The Airport?
It would be hilarious if their cluelessness didn't coincide with the violation of our constitutional right against unreasonable search. Travel writer Christopher Elliott blogs at TSA News Blog:
You've probably seen this video of TSA screener Andy Ramirez, who is accused of swiping an iPad at Orlando International Airport. The device was left in the terminal by ABC News, and a few days later, it came calling for the iPad with a camera crew. Ramirez hemmed and hawed before handing over the tablet computer, which had been tracked to his house. He's been fired.What's so funny about it: TSA agents taking iPads from passengers is only funny in the sense that it's ironic -- the very people who are supposed to be protecting us are stealing from us. What's leaving the terrorists in stitches is the fact that Ramirez apparently didn't know iPads can be tracked. And he's supposed to be screening passengers for weapons and explosives? Hilarious.
The Problem With Gun Control: Who It Stops, Who It Doesn't
Glenn Harlan Reynolds writes at USAToday.com:
"After a shooting spree," author William Burroughs once said, "they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it." Burroughs continued: "I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."Plenty of people -- especially among America's political and journalistic classes -- feel differently. They'd be much more comfortable seeing ordinary Americans disarmed. And whenever there is a mass shooting, or other gun incident that snags the headlines, they do their best to exploit the tragedy and push for laws that would, well, take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.
There are a lot of problems with this approach, but one of the most significant is this one: It doesn't work. One of the interesting characteristics of mass shootings is that they generally occur in places where firearms are banned: malls, schools, etc. That was the finding of a famous 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William Landes of the University of Chicago, and it appears to have been borne out by experience since then as well.
...Policies making areas "gun free" provide a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking, but in practice, of course, killers aren't stopped by gun-free zones.
...Gun-free zones are premised on a lie: that murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers. That's an insult to honest people. Sometimes, it's a deadly one. The notion that more guns mean more crime is wrong. In fact, as gun ownership has expanded over the past decade, crime has gone down.
And, on a related note, what is the answer for mentally ill children -- who grow up in to mentally ill adults? Powerful piece, "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother," by Liza Long, a woman with a mentally ill son.
Why Do Teen Girls Dress Like Sluts?
Well, for one thing, because they're teenagers -- living to rebel. L.V. Anderson at Slate comments on an Atlantic blog item by Nanette Fondas, "When Your Daughter Asks for a Victoria's Secret Gift Card":
Her 12-year-old son asks her, "Why do girls want to dress like sluts?" Fondas replies with a rant against pop culture: "Girls see it everywhere: on TV, in stores, magazines, movies, online. That's why they think it's the definition of 'pretty'!" Her son is unconvinced.I'm unconvinced, too. As someone who was a teenage girl not too long ago, I can't help but think that Fondas is overlooking a much simpler answer to her son's question: Teen girls dress like sluts because they're teenagers, with all the excellent decision-making skills, well-developed impulse control, and exquisite taste that teens are renowned for. Are there cultural factors in play? No doubt (although I'm more concerned about the message sent by Victoria's Secret models' lack of body diversity than by the message sent by their sexuality). But let's not pretend teen girls are just passive victims of nefarious marketing forces. Teens are hard-wired to rebel against authority and to explore their sexuality; it's a necessary part of growing up. The notion that teen girls wouldn't ever show off their cleavage if we burned every Victoria's Secret catalog in the world reminds me of the absurd rationale behind abstinence-only education: If we don't tell kids about sex, they won't have any.
Of course, not every teen girl rebels by buying push-up bras and mini-skirts--some of them dye their hair pink and pierce their noses instead (or as well!). But many do, and most of them grow out of it. When I was 13, my wardrobe included quite a few tight, low-cut, and generally tacky items of clothing. I even--and this is very likely the most embarrassing confession I will ever make publicly--once bought a tank top with a glittery Playboy bunny printed on it. Now, in my 20s, I favor shifts and cowl-necked sweater dresses, and I spend a good portion of my free time railing against the patriarchy over drinks with friends. Despite my slutty-dressing teen ways, I turned out mostly OK. And I attribute a good part of my turning out OK to the fact my parents just rolled their eyes at me every time I left the house with my bra peeking out from underneath my shirt, instead of wringing their hands about whether my clothing choices were irreparably damaging.
Crass Exit
Crass, Elmer Fudd, Dislodging...
(An unedited line from my brain.)
A Man And His Balls
Funny:
Electronics 48-Hour Overstock Event
At Amazon
Of course, a great gift to go with is my book, I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle To Beat Some Manners Into Impolite Society. It's only $11.49, brand new, with Amazon's discount at the link above. (New copies or Kindle books go against my advance, and help me keep writing...and eating, and help fund this blog and my answering questions that will never make my column.)
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.
Victim Ages Are Heartbreaking
ABC has the list here.
The Worst School Massacre In America Took Place In 1927
Lenore Skenazy writes about it at Quartz, and writes about what happened in its aftermath -- "nothing":
No cameras were placed at the front of schools. No school guards started making visitors show identification. No Zero Tolerance laws were passed, nor were background checks required of PTA volunteers--all precautions that many American schools instituted in the wake of the Columbine shootings, in 1999. Americans in 1928--and for the next several generations --continued to send their kids to school without any of these measures. They didn't even drive them there. How did they maintain the kind of confidence my own knees and heart don't feel as I write this?They had a distance that has disappeared. A distance that helped them keep the rarity and unpredictability of the tragedy in perspective, granting them parental peace.
"In 1928, the odds are that if people in this country read about this tragedy, they read it several days later, in place that was hard to get to," explains Art Markman, author of "Smart Thinking" (Perigee Books, 2012). "You couldn't hop on a plane and be there in an hour. Michigan? If you were living in South Carolina, it would be a three-day drive. It's almost another country. You'd think, 'Those crazy people in Michigan,' same as if a school blows up in one of the breakaway Republics."
Time and space create distance. But today, those have compressed to zero. The Connecticut shooting comes into our homes-even our hands-instantly, no matter where we live. We see the shattered parents in real time. The President can barely maintain composure. This sorrow isn't far away, it's local for every single one of us.
And of course it brings up Columbine. Two horrors, separated by years and miles, are now fused into one. It feels like terrible things are happening to our children all the time, everywhere. Nowhere is safe.
As a result, I expect we will now demand precautions on top of precautions. More guards. More security cameras. More supervision. We will fear more for our kids and let go of them even more reluctantly. Every time we wonder if they can be safe beyond our arms, these shootings will swim into focus.
Will this new layer of fear and security make our children any safer? Probably not, but for a reassuring reason: A tragedy like this is so rare, our kids are already safe. Not perfectly safe. No one ever is. But safe.
That's a truth the folks in 1928 America understood. We just don't feel that way now.
As for people looking to gun control as the answer to this, clearly, people looking to do harm will do harm.
Can Life Not Go On Without Regulation?
Walter Olson at Overlawyered posts about the Ernest Hemingway Museum and its 40 to 50 cats, descended from Hemingway's six-toed cat:
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled Friday that the Hemingway Home falls under the classification of an "animal exhibitor," subject to regulation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Animal Welfare Act.
If there's no sign these cats are being tortured or otherwise abused, why should they be regulated? Why must so many animals be regulated? (It isn't regulation that stops people from abusing animals; it's humanity.)
More on the story from David Demirbilek at The Daily Caller.
Do people not understand that regulating is not free? And now we regulate just about everything short of...well, we regulate pretty much everything.
And people think it's some sort of cure.
Witness all the calls for gun regulation on Twitter, following the horrible mass murder in Connecticut. As I wrote to a few of those calling for it:
@Sustainable2050 @Reillymj @mims Do you really think gun control w/keep guns from murderous any better than drug laws stop drug use?
I continued:
@Reillymj @mims I could walk eight blocks -- if even -- and buy illegal guns & illegal drugs & be home in about 20 minutes, round trip.
The Crass Is Always Greener
Vulgar and off-topic comments here.
What Allows A Person To Gun Down Children?
18 children were among those murdered in Connecticut.
Feel free to post more links, but only one or two per comment (only one if you post a website link in your signature), so your comment won't go to spam.
TSA Detains Yet Another Child: A Wheelchair-Bound 12-Year-Old
She supposedly tested positive for explosives. 
Lisa Simeone writes at TSANewsBlog:
As we've reported many times, the TSA's so-called explosive detection devices routinely alarm on ordinary, everyday things. Have you been working in your garden? Oops. You might have fertilizer residue on you. Do you use hand or body lotions? Oops. There's glycerin in them thar things. All those can get you hauled aside as a potential terrorist. Because fertilizer and glycerin show up as "bomb-making residue."It happens all the time. TSA agents know it happens all the time. They even joke about it. And it just happened to a 12-year-old, wheelchair-bound child named Shelbi Walser. She was traveling with her mother for medical treatment when she was flagged by the TSA at Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport and detained for almost an hour. Shelbi's mother's name is Tammy Daniels.
Daniels said a bomb specialist showed up and TSA agents prevented her from getting close to her crying daughter.
Preventing you from comforting your child is standard TSA practice, as Isabella Brademeyer's mother and plenty of others can tell you.
Simeone, like me, is amazed that the TSA thugs didn't stop the mother from videotaping, as they so often do (if they get paid to ignore your Fourth Amendment rights, why would they respect your First Amendment ones?). Here's the video:
KMSP-TV
Our New National Motto Should Be "Land Of The Wussies"
American used to be pioneer country. Now, the pioneer spirit has given way to the worrywart, fraidy-cat spirit.
In Florida, a high school went into lockdown and the haz mat team was called -- after a student brought a thermometer to school, because the thermometer contained...a rare radioactive element?
No, because the thermometer contained mercury.
Shall we change our national symbol from the bald eagle to a little girl hiding under the bed?
Companies Should Be Allowed To Bid On Visas For Foreign Workers
Derek Satya Khanna, at NRO, tells the story of his grandfather, Satya Paul Khanna, who, at Bell Labs, helped develop the original equipment for the mobile telephone. He almost didn't get to remain in this country, because he couldn't get a green card after earning his Ph.D. and getting offered the job at Bell. He and his family packed their bags and he went to close his bank account:
The teller asked why he was closing his account. Paul explained his situation, and the teller told him to expect a call from a congressman. And just like that, a private bill providing immigration for his family was introduced by Representative Wendell Wyatt (D., Ore.) and enacted....Most such stories don't end so happily. In fact, this series of events would be nearly impossible today, as Congress rarely considers private bills (although occasionally a member will try to introduce one). The legal way to address these needs is now primarily through the H-1B visa system, which allows non-citizens to work in the U.S. in particular skilled fields, mostly technical, where the need is great.
For decades, politicians have been calling for an expansion of the H-1B visa system. There is a massive disparity between the supply and the demand for these visas. Companies try to get their applications in as quickly as they can for some share of the 85,000 H-1B visas that are allotted each year on a first-come, first-served basis. In 2008, the cap was reached in a single day. In 2012, all slots, which became available on April 1, were filled by June 12.
He has a proposal:
In the current H-1B visa system, the price of the visas does not rise or fall in response to market conditions. The entirely predictable consequence is that companies scramble for visas and often fail to get enough of them. A company whose need for the visas is strong receives the same treatment as do companies whose need for them is weak. It's a failed market model.We should greatly increase the number of H-1B visas and put them up for competitive bidding. There are many models for this. One is the spectrum auction, whereby telecommunications companies bid on government licenses to transmit signals over specific bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Competitive bidding would enable the companies that value visas the most to pay for them. And it would help small and medium-sized businesses, which often have the most difficulty filing their paperwork on time and often lose out to big businesses in the competition for the few available visas. Competitive bidding for visas would mean a rational market governed by supply and demand. If as a society we want to "protect" Americans from foreign workers competing for jobs, then perhaps the best way to do that is to put a price-tag differential on the foreign workers.
For example, let's say we double the number of H-1B visa allotments. If competitive bidding for 170,000 H-1B visas resulted in an average bid of $60,000 per worker, that surcharge would amount to $10.2 billion in government revenue. I would suggest that those funds be used toward deficit reduction...
via @veroderugy
Crass Houses
Make it a housewarming party.
Outrageous Salaries And Benefits For State Workers
A quote from the Bloomberg piece by Mark Niquette, Michael B. Marois, and Rodney Yap, which shows how wildly lucrative "public service" can be:
Forty-two nurses in California's prisons and mental hospitals have reaped especially rich overtime payouts. They made an average of $1.3 million each during the seven years, including $674,000 in overtime.The highest-paid nurse in the seven years was Lina Manglicmot, who worked at a state prison in Soledad, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of San Francisco. She collected $1.7 million from 2005 through 2011, including $1 million in overtime, the data show. Manglicmot declined to comment.
I have loads of respect for nurses, but $1.7 million in six years, including $1 million in overtime? For giving out Benedryl at a prison?
Public employee unions have made some concessions at the bargaining table, such as contributing as much as 5 percent more of their earnings toward pensions, and forgoing overtime pay for some holidays. State worker furloughs under Schwarzenegger amounted to a 15 percent pay cut; under Brown, they've been about 5 percent.Yet the legacy of California's collective bargaining, budget battles and court struggles over inmate care continue to elevate its payroll, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Allowing that to happen was a mistake, and taxpayers will be dealing with it for years, said Bob Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles.
"The labor unions really called in their chits, and Davis went along with it," Stern said by telephone. "In hindsight, they should not have done it, because they made future generations pay for the benefits they approved."
Agreements are agreements, it seems. As disgusting as the agreements are. I don't really see a way out of this -- until California becomes so debt-laden that it simply breaks off and falls into the Pacific.
Are You A Government Virgin? (A Post About Orwellian Alimony Terms)
People tend to assume government is good -- and fair -- until they or someone they know has dealings with the government.
Then they realize the Orwellian absurdity that government often is. (And sorry to drag that word out again so soon after the last time, but that's the time we're living in -- more and more Orwellian.)
Just one is example is a man in New Jersey, John Waldorf, who sits in jail while unable to pay court-ordered alimony that exceeds his entire income (as stated in the article by Bruce Eden, the civil rights director of an organization called DADS -- Dads Against Discrimination).
Lillian Shupe writes in the Hunterdon County Democrat:
Waldorf, who divorced his wife of 11 years in 2011, was ordered to pay $2,000 a week in alimony to his ex. That amounts to $104,000 a year. In addition he was ordered to pay $3,300 in child support. The problem is that Waldorf has only been taking home about $90,000 a year on average, according to Eden. Eden said he has Waldorf's tax returns dating back to 2000. The highest income reported by Waldorf during the marriage was $147,000 before taxes according to Eden. In most years Waldorf made $90,000 to $120,000 before taxes. His average take home pay has been about $90,000 a year.The alimony payments are in addition to about $100,000 in legal fees incurred during the divorce process.
It now also appears Waldorf has lost his job because of his jailing. Meanwhile, Waldorf's ex-wife, who is disabled, has been getting nothing, all while taxpayers are footing the bill to feed and house him as long as he remains in jail.
Eden also questioned Judge Hany Mawla's motives for keeping Waldorf in jail. He said before Mawla became a judge (he) was involved in Woman Against Family Assault. Eden said his role with the group creates a prejudice that should prevent Mawla from being in family court.
...Eden said Waldorf is essentially being jailed for his debt, which he said is unconstitutional.
Eden got to know Waldorf through NJ Alimony Reform, a group that is lobbying to change the alimony rules in New Jersey.
The group hopes to eliminate permanent or lifetime alimony and restrict the wide discretion judges have in setting alimony payments. Massachusetts became the most recent state to update its alimony rules to bring them in line with modern circumstances. New Jersey's laws were written when most women did not work outside the home and had no means of support in the event of a divorce, according to the group's web site.
A comment from the site:
PassionForIndependence
I am a young professional woman. I don't pay alimony or receive alimony. In 2012, I can't believe any former spouse actually believes it is their right to take funds from an ex spouse to sustain living. More importantly, I can't believe there are draconian NJ laws that support that way of thinking. This is all about INDIVIDUAL CHOICES. Marriage is a choice. Having children is a choice. Being uneducated and dependent, is a choice. Acts leading to divorce are choices. No one is forced to do anything. The expectation of someone else being ordered to pay (alimony) for an individuals decisions, is ludicrous. This is big girl and big boy time. It's time for divorcees collecting alimony, to take accountability for their own decisions. Just like a job, once the position is terminated so do the benefits. Once a marriage ends, so do the perks of the marriage.
Times have changed, as a matter of fact, a long time ago. It's foolish to give up everything and depend on one person. Is alimony a generation gap thing, a greed thing, a state culture thing? I just can't wrap my mind around it. For decades women and men have been raised to get an education and be self-reliant, therefore, it must be a greed thing. A gold digger thing. I don't have any friends that think that it's a man's job to take care of them. This way of thinking is so foreign to me and therefore, shocking. The last time I checked, this is the United States; the birthplace of Women's Lib. I didn't even know that alimony still existed, until I met the man in NJ who later became my husband. NJ, with all do respect, get with the times.
Another comment from the site -- and remember that there's a difference between alimony and money to support your children (child support):
tuffbrk
Personally, I think TX is the state that all states should use as their alimony model. When you're only paying for 3-5 years, you can get through it. When it's for life? Really, what's the point of getting up in the morning when you're paying your ex more than you're taking home?
And an exchange:
forumfun
Without reading hundreds of posts, has anyone asked why if a woman is married and her husband's income drops, she has to live within the constraints of that income while if she is divorced she gets to keep living a higher lifestyle than her husband? Is that one of the reasons when a major plant shuts down the local divorce rate jumps? I still want MY money says the princess?tuffbrk
I've asked the question over and over. Although I prefer alimony recipient than "woman" as I'm a woman paying alimony. It's almost as if the alimony recipient becomes a protected class insulated from the reality of life in today's economy.I also object to judges trying to figure out if it is temporary or permanent. What difference does it make? No one pays the wage earner the difference between their former salary and unemployment or temp/perm disability until they get back to work so why is temporary vs permanent an issue? The state knows what the alimony payer is receiving from them don't they?! If there's less money, there's less money. Common sense and the use of technology (for good) is just too much to ask for apparently.
via ifeminists
Oliver Sacks: Debunking Eben Alexander
Hallucinations are not proof of god.
Bad Taste
Give it a good home.
TSA: They Confiscate Your Personal Property And Then Sell It At A Profit
That's what commenter Dev said on CNN.com about the TSA. His comment in full:
So they confiscate your personal property, acquired for nothing, then sell it for a profit, which is no different from stealing, but it's all legal....sounds like a great business model.
Aaron Smith writes at CNNMoney:
Last year the Transportation Security Administration collected 888,000 items -- from knives and scissors to snow globes and sunglasses -- that were confiscated or left behind by airline passengers as they boarded their flights.But airport contraband has an afterlife.
It ends up in state-run stores, where thrifty customers can rummage through bins of objects from the TSA's no-fly list. In warehouses around the country, bargain-seekers browse through crates of knives, tools and even box cutters, the weapon used in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Everything is sold at a steep discount, sometimes for $1 apiece, and sometimes by the pound.
"These places actually collect what's discarded at our checkpoints," said TSA spokesman David Castelveter. "We are required to give those leftover items to the state governments, and then they decide what to do with it."
The "leftover stuff" includes not just items that can be used as weapons, like meat cleavers, ice picks, sabers, bows and arrows, nunchucks, hammers, power saws and cattle prods, but also forgotten items like books and jewelry. Some of the items are sold at state-run stores and some are auctioned off in bulk on the website Govdeals.com.
Pennsylvania press secretary Troy Thompson said that his state has made $800,000 in revenue from the online auctions since they began in 2004. The state's Harrisburg store, which sells things surrendered at airports in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Maryland and Washington, D.C., has logged $15,000 in sales since it opened last year.
The stuff they've stolen from passengers is "contraband" only in the world of "security." As somebody tweeted last night:
@dijjidog
Thank You #TSA for catching the lady with eye drops & the book " 101 ways to make a bomb out of eye drops! "
9/11 was a game-changer. Before that, we thought terrorists wanted a bag of money and a trip to Bolivia.
These days, nobody's going to bring down a plane with a gun, an ice pick, or even a cattle prod. There are reinforced doors and we've all heard about the 72 virgins the gullible jihadists think they'll get after they kill a bunch of "infidels" -- which means a bunch of big American guys will tackle the ass of anybody who stands up with a boxcutter and screams Allahu Akbar.
But, this was a great excuse for our government to roll back our civil liberties, while creating a jobs program and more bureaucracy, and while funneling dump trucks of cash to disgusting "public service" employees like Michael Chertoff who've cashed in big on their government jobs and connections.
Only 7% Of Detroit Public School 8th Graders Can Read Proficiently
Terence P. Jeffrey writes for CNS:
In the public schools in Detroit, Mich., according to the U.S. Department of Education, only 7 percent of the eighth graders are grade-level proficient or better in reading....Statewide in Michigan, only 32 percent of public-school eighth gradersscored grade-level proficient or better in reading, and only 31 percent scored grade-level proficient or better in math.
...Over the past decade, Michigan's public school have shown no improvement at all in teaching children how to read. In 2002 just as in 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Education, only 32 percent of Michigan public-school eighth graders scored proficient or better in reading.
Meanwhile, teachers' union members ditched the kids to lobby against Michigan Governor Snyder's right-to-work reforms, which would allow teachers to work without being forced to pay union dues. Lindsay M. Burke writes for FoxNews:
Linda Moore, the President of a local union affiliate in Michigan, said the protests are about "our students' future." That would be true only if by "our children" she means those who are forced to attend an assigned government school. Unions consistently use the money teachers are forced to contribute to lobby against reforms -- such as school choice -- that are in the best interest of children.Governor Snyder's efforts have the support of the workers that will be affected. Over half of Michigan voters support the effort, and 40 percent of union households are in favor. Yet organized labor's bosses see this as such a threat to their entrenched power that they will go so far as to leave children sitting at home, or on the streets, when they should be at school.
Sadly, the union's tactics aren't new. The educational futures of 5,000 Louisiana children now hang in the balance because the teachers' union has filed suit against the state's newly minted voucher program. The Chicago teachers' union forced schools to shut down this fall for an entire week, in order for education employees to demand an increase to their already extravagant salaries and benefits. Teachers' unions have tried similar scare tactics recently in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Wisconsin.
Here's hoping the children's unscheduled absence from school will be short-lived. Governor Snyder could sign the right-to-work legislation into law as early as today. Not only would that be great news for Michigan workers, but 26,000 children could return to their classrooms.
Here's reason.com on school choice.
Politicians Bewail The Results Of Their High Taxes
So notes an editorial in the WSJ:
In the crime of the century, Google routed $9.8 billion in revenue through a subsidiary headquartered in Bermuda in 2011. Strike that. What Google did was entirely legal, but you wouldn't know it from the political uproar that has made the search giant the latest target of the higher-tax chorus.Last month, Google, Starbucks and Amazon were hauled in front of a U.K. Parliamentary committee to explain why they don't pay more to Her Majesty's Treasury. And if you are a lawmaker whose job it is to spend other people's money, there's a certain attraction to this logic. The governments of the U.K., the U.S. and most of Europe are deep in the red. Raising taxes on ordinary folk is rarely fun or popular--but getting businesses to pay more is good sport in the halls of Washington and Westminster.
Starbucks's decision earlier this month to fork over £10 million ($16 million) in a voluntary donation to the U.K. Treasury may have bought the coffee purveyor some peace and good press, but it muddied the debate over corporate taxes. Such a donation--don't call it a tax payment--reinforces the impression that multinationals are holding out and could pay plenty more if only they were more public-spirited.
But £10 million given to the government is £10 million that Starbucks won't have to create jobs, or fund expansion, or even give to charities, if it chose to--which might well do more good than giving it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
As for Google's Bermuda billions, they are chiefly a testament to the economic insanity of America's corporate-tax system. Under the U.S. tax code, American corporations are liable for tax made on world-wide profits--but only if they repatriate those overseas profits to the U.S.
J.P. Morgan estimates that American companies currently hold a cool $1.7 trillion in profits outside the U.S. They keep them there because if they brought them home, they'd be taxed at 35%.
Off-Topic, Vulgar And Offensive
Well, do your best, anyway.
As Crid remarked in one of the posts from today:
We need a blog post where we can post funny or stupid or offtopic comments* without distracting from the flow of your conversation. Make every commenter send in a personal funny foto every three months and post one per day, or something like that.
Fun With Embarrassing Confessions
We'll start out with one of mine: I listen to show tunes. Often. On purpose.
I especially like anything by Julie Andrews and everything from Cabaret.
Also: Until about five years ago, I didn't know Jimi Hendrix was black.
Also: When Gregg mentioned that Ginger Baker used to be in Cream, I asked, "What's she doing now?"
Laugh at me and confess your sins and idiocies below.
Best Christmas Or Hanukah Gift Or Gifts You've Ever Been Given?
And why so great? Post about it -- or them -- here.
The Police State Advances Daily: Warrantless, Sophisticated Audio Surveillance On Buses
Few people care, speak up, or even notice the constant advance of the police state in this country, and the constant erosion of our rights.
It's getting a little late to start defending the Constitution, but more people need to wake up to the need, because once rights are taken from us, they could be impossible to peacefully get back.
There's yet another shocking civil liberties grab going on, MIchael Brick of The Daily reports:
The era of private conversations on city buses -- and even on San Francisco's iconic streetcars -- may be coming to an end.Government officials are quietly installing sophisticated audio surveillance systems on public buses across the country to eavesdrop on passengers, according to documents obtained by The Daily. Plans to implement the technology are under way in cities from San Francisco to Hartford, Conn., and Eugene, Ore., to Columbus, Ohio.
Linked to video cameras already in wide use, the microphones will offer a formidable new tool for security and law enforcement. With the new systems, experts say, transit officials can effectively send an invisible police officer to transcribe the individual conversations of every passenger riding on a public bus.
But the deployment of the technology on buses raises urgent questions about the boundaries of legally protected privacy in public spaces, experts say, as transit officials -- and perhaps law enforcement agencies given access to the systems -- seem positioned to monitor audio communications without search warrants or court supervision.
"This is very shocking," said Anita Allen, a privacy law expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "It's a little beyond what we're accustomed to. The adding of the audio seems more sensitive."
Procurement documents explain the supposed rationale in SF:
"The purpose of this project is to replace the existing video surveillance systems in SFMTA's fleet of revenue vehicles with a reliable and technologically advanced system to increase passenger safety and improve reliability and maintainability of the system," officials wrote in contract documents.
Sorry -- you're going to stop two passengers from stabbing each other because you can listen to hours of audio?
This is bullshit.
"Safety" on buses is like "security" in the airport. Again, it's about getting us used to giving up our privacy, our dignity, and our Constitutional rights.
The Govt. Won't Let You Make Adult Decisions About Your Food
From reason.com, Baylen Linnekin writes about the closure of the Underground Market, a roving San Francisco club for budding food entrepreneurs and their customers, who'd pay a $5 fee to gain entrance to the market:
Once inside, members would be treated to a variety of foods prepared and sold by a rolling list of unlicensed vendors. These Underground Markets could draw more than 2,000 people....The Underground Market will cease to exist this month because--as you probably guessed by now--it fell victim to California regulators.
The California Department of Public Health and San Francisco Fire Department shuttered the market in June 2011. They hit Forage and its founder and leader, Iso Rabins, with a cease and desist order that forbade Forage and the vendors who took part in the Underground Market from "donating, giving away, selling, trading, or other means of sharing food with/to the public until approval and permits are issued[.]"
Why must there be official permits, as long as people know the government has not stuck its nose up the ass of every piece of food?
Rabins has it right:
"The idea that what makes food safe is at the local level is not inspectors, but the inherent responsibility and care created by the local community," Rabins wrote recently. "I think we proved that point. With over 50,000 people eating everything from Webber grill fired pizza to pulled pork, there was not one illness reported to the health department."
Are You Rude? If So, Ricki Lake Wants You!
I'm posting this for a Ricki Lake producer:
RICKI LAKE is on the hunt for the rudest people in America.Is your husband rude? Do you know someone with gross table manners? Does your sister or best friend constantly interrupt you during conversation? Maybe you have a friend or relative who is addicted to their cell phone, speaking loudly or texting at restaurants, oblivious to others?
If you know someone rude who can use a lesson in manners, please tell us your story.
Guests will receive expert advice from some of today's preeminent etiquette experts.
Contact: DELETED, NO LONGER PERTINENT.
Depardieu May Have Decided To Divorce French Taxes
This is a picture of the door of Depardieu's house on the rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris, just down the block from his restaurant.
(Our friend Pierre, who is in his 70s and once drove a tank in the Algerian war, pointed out the house to me as Depardieu's, and I happened to like the door, so I took a picture.) 
The French president, like the idiots in Los Angeles, forgot how easy it is to get around his attempt to grab more of rich people's money.
As I blogged recently, here in LA, the building industry will get around the new half-cent LA sales tax by no longer patronizing building supply places in Los Angeles and instead patronizing those in Pasadena, and the adult film industry, now stuck with condom inspectors by the idiot voters, will find more amenable, less meddly terms to do business in nearby Vegas.
About Depardieu, Vicky Buffery writes at Reuters:
Actor Gerard Depardieu has become the latest Frenchman to look for shelter outside his native country after a series of tax hikes by Socialist President Francois Hollande on the wealthy.The "Cyrano de Bergerac" star has bought a house in the Belgian village of Nechin near the French border, local mayor Daniel Senesael told French media on Sunday, adding he had also enquired about procedures for acquiring Belgian residency.
Senesael said Depardieu would join some 2,800 French living in the same area a few minutes drive from the border, including the Mulliez family, owners of French hypermarket chain Auchan and Decathlon sports stores, who have lived there for years.
Belgian residents do not pay wealth tax, which in France is now slapped on individuals with assets over 1.3 million euros, nor do they pay capital gains tax on the sale of shares.
It's a mobile society, people -- filled with trains, planes, and automobiles. And Skype. (I haven't seen the woman who edits for me part-time in probably a year and a half, because she moved to Santa Barbara and then elsewhere, and we use Skype voice all day on days we work, sending documents back and forth over Skype as well.)
In an age when you don't need to get around by mule cart, legislation to steal one's earnings can be pretty easily avoided.
Brief note outside Depardieu's restaurant:
(Cave means basement or wine cellar, in this case. I highly doubt his basement is anything like the one at my parents' house, and in terms of their "wine cellar," there's probably an open bottle of Manischewitz in their refrigerator.)
KLM Makes You Like Them; Delta Gives You Salt For Your Food
Sometimes, the lessons in how to run a business are written in salt and pepper.
The KLM salt shaker is on the left. The Delta one, which Gregg got when he got upgraded to business class on his last flight to Detroit, is on the right.
The difference in salt shakers seems like a small thing, but it's not.
KLM's care in having adorable salt shakers reflected how cared-for we felt by the friendly flight attendants, and echoed the care in how good the food was and how little details were just better, like the bag of goodies they gave us for the flight and the pleasing design of some of the dishes they served our meal in.
Gregg had flown us KLM business class -- utterly fab -- on the miles he gets from going to Detroit, so we got a little Victor & Rolf bag with an eyeshade, ear plugs, socks, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a tiny toothpaste. It's an elegant little bag -- unlike the cheapo nylon ones we've gotten on Air France business class.
Also, when we were getting off the plane on either end of our journey, they gave us little pottery replicas of Dutch buildings that we got to choose. I now have the beginnings of a Dutch town on the windowsill of my bathroom -- two little houses. I tried to Tom Sawyer Gregg's little houses away from him and into my tiny city -- but he was having none of that.
This salt shaker and the rest surely can't cost piles more than the other airlines spend, but it all speaks volumes in telling me who shows care for the customer.
Obama Admin Eats Away At Civil Liberties: Due Process Is Discrimination
There's a Jonathan Turley op-ed in USA Today on the reduction of due process in sexual misconduct cases at universities demanded by the Obama administration. What Turley calls a "seemingly friendly" letter making this demand went out from the administration to schools:
If they did not, the letter warned, they could lose federal funding and face discrimination charges discrimination. The helpful "colleague" on the other side of the letter was Russlynn Ali, then assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education. She explained that the reduction of protections for students was essential for preserving education as "the great equalizer in America."Ali just resigned, providing an opening for the Obama administration to reconsider. That's overdue because the interpretation of due process as a form of discrimination has shaken the academic community, which is deeply divided on whether to yield to the overt threats. It is a Faustian bargain for academics: Either strip students and faculty of basic due process protections or be declared discriminatory.
In the past, many schools have required significant evidence to find students or faculty guilty, often a "clear preponderance" or "clear and convincing evidence." These standards require less than the criminal "beyond the reasonable doubt" standard but still a 75% or 80% certainty of guilt. The administration, however, demands that schools adopt the lowest evidentiary standard short of a presumption of guilt -- "preponderance of the evidence," just slightly above a 50-50 determination.
Because many of these cases involve the classic "he-said-she-said" situation, they come to the university as an even split based on opposing testimony. Add in the fact that many of these cases involve drinking, and the "preponderance" standard becomes a recipe for injustice. Even the slightest evidence can dictate the result and tends to favor conviction.
While this low standard is used in some civil cases, the accused is generally afforded other protections that the Obama administration directive strips from the accused. For instance, the directive discourages schools from allowing a student or faculty member to question the accuser. And schools have seized on that. Last month, a Georgia college student was expelled after rape allegations without the opportunity to confront the accuser or even, the student alleges, know the names of other witnesses in the case. After a judge halted the expulsion, the parties reached an "undisclosed resolution."
The Supreme Court has insisted in criminal cases that the right to confront the accuser must be honored even when a court believes that the victim's testimony is highly credible. The court stated in 2004 that "dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with a jury trial because the defendant is obviously guilty." Yet, the administration insists that this right "may be traumatic or intimidating (for the victim), thereby possibly escalating or perpetuating a hostile environment."
Obama is no friend to civil liberties and people who voted for him -- happily, thinking he would be the anti-Bush -- need to wake up to what they've ushered in and put some pressure on their representatives and The White House.
I'm not hopeful that things will change in any substantial way, but maybe by recognizing what dangerous waters we're now in, and taking some action to protest, people will be a little more interested in the libertarian candidates the next time around.
Note the word "liberty" tucked in there in "libertarian." It's actually pretty essential to the philosophy of anybody calling themselves libertarian, and it's what's going missing more and more frequently in this country, at TSA checkpoints, in drug war arrests, in pushes for warrantless surveillance, in civil asset forfeiture when no crime has been committed, and in so many ways.
Wake up before the police wake you up and cart you away.
And don't be too quick to pooh-pooh that thinking.
With as many ridiculous laws on the books as we have, we're all very committing felonies daily -- sometimes, maybe just by sitting in our home, drinking coffee, and reading a blog.
Islamic Countries Have Ugly Values
For all those who would "coexist," you'd better hope you're trying to do it in a country that does not have a Muslim majority, because "tolerance" of other religions only happens when Muslims aren't in power. Time and time again, Coptic Christians are slaughtered in Egypt. The lucky ones are just persecuted, and not murdered. Michael Carl writes at WND:
An Algerian Christian sentenced to five years in jail for sharing his faith is still waiting to learn if he will have to serve the time.That's because the appeals court judge in the Algerian city of Oran has decided to delay a decision of whether to overturn the conviction given to Karim Siaghi, also known as Siaghi Krimo.
Krimo was sentenced in 2011 to five years in jail and fined about $2,500 after being accused by a Muslim shopkeeper of handing a Christian CD to a man on the street.
In a press statement, Christian human rights group Open Doors says Krimo was charged with blasphemy for simply not "sounding like a Muslim" during a conversation with a shop keeper.
"Authorities arrested Siaghi in April 2011 after he purportedly gave a CD about Christianity to a Muslim. Siaghi had gone to a phone shop to buy airtime minutes for his mobile phone, and the merchant there initiated a conversation on religion," Open Doors said.
"Unhappy with Siaghi's non-Muslim answers, the merchant tried to force him to pay homage to the prophet and to recite the Muslim shahada that says there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet," the Open Doors statement said.
Open Doors says that Algeria is one of the more moderate Arab and North African countries, but that Krimo's arrest and conviction are an example of the influence jihadists have there.
"When Siaghi refused and said he was a Christian, the merchant filed a complaint that the convert had belittled the prophet, and in the absence of further witnesses, charges were brought against him," the statement said.
Krimo was arrested and given the five-year term in May 2011 without any witnesses for the prosecution being present.
Even being the "wrong" kind of Muslim can get a person slaughtered.
Related: How wrong The New York Times' Roger Cohen has been about The Muslim Brotherhood, by Cornell law prof William A. Jacobson.
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Sarah Edelman On Solving Your Problems Without Therapy
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My guest tonight, cognitive behavioral therapist Sarah Edelman, Ph.D., will explain how you can eliminate the need to spend years and thousands of dollars in therapy by using reason to solve your emotional problems.
Her book is Change Your Thinking: Overcome Stress, Anxiety, and Depression, and Improve Your Life with CBT
The late Dr. Albert Ellis, who along with Aaron Beck, originated much of cognitive behavioral therapy, has been a big influence on me and the thinking you read in my column. Tonight's show -- and Dr. Edelman's book -- is based largely on his work.
Listen to tonight's show live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/10/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show with psychiatrist and business coach Dr. Mark Goulston, author of the terrific book Just Listen
On this show, he explains why listening is the key to persuading and where we fail as listeners, and he lays out concrete advice on the things we need to do to be better listeners and persuaders.
Listen at this link or download:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/03/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 or Stitcher.
Electing 'Em To Line Up At The Trough
Naive voters believe politicians run for office to make a difference, and they kinda do -- in the level of luxury in their own lives, in their bottom line, and other self-interested pursuits.
Incoming California lawmakers are being jetted around by lobbyists to places like Hawaii, China, Belize, and New Zealand, and some Democratic ones get the posh treatment in the luxury suite at a Sacramento basketball game, writes Patrick McGreevy in the LAT:
20 legislators jetted off to Hawaii, China, Brazil, New Zealand and other locales -- with some trips paid for in large part by healthcare, energy and communications companies."It's the start of lobbyists inculcating them, saying 'Hey guys, line up and receive your gifts,' " said Bob Stern, former chief counsel to the state Fair Political Practices Commission.
It's a new day in Sacramento, with one of the largest-ever freshman classes elected in districts drawn for the first time by an independent, bipartisan commission.
And the lobbying campaign to shape their minds has begun.
The intent of the redistricting -- as well as a rule change that allows lawmakers to serve up to 12 years in either legislative house -- was to make the Capitol more accountable. In theory, the changes would reduce the influence of lobbyists and give lawmakers more time to gain expertise and independence.
But old traditions die hard.
Following the example of veteran legislative leaders, including Assembly Speaker John Pérez (D-Los Angeles), more than a dozen Democratic freshmen headed off to AT&T's suite at the Sleep Train Arena.
Lawmakers are not allowed to take more than $420 in gifts per year, and they are supposed to report what they receive. But sidestepping the rules is hardly a challenge.
The freshmen who joined Pérez didn't have to report the value of their tickets because the gathering was hosted by the state Democratic Party.
Here's a hurl-producing bit from the Maui trip:
In between rounds of golf and poolside lounging, the sponsors talked with lawmakers."I was learning about the issues," said Jones-Sawyer, the only freshman on the trip. "There were some things I didn't know -- such as how businesses really need help to flourish here in California."
Clearly, he should have been applying for a job at a car wash, not running for office.
Innocent Until Proven Rich
Asset forfeiture, sans proof a crime has been committed, is a government-sanctioned -- and practiced -- crime against citizens, and it needs to be stopped. Isaiah Thompson writes in Philly City Paper that their local D.A. seizes millions in alleged crime money -- whether there's been a crime committed or not:
When Philadelphia Police officers stopped Dwayne Marks as he was driving north on Broad Street near Temple University last year, Marks says he wasn't particularly worried. Marks, who is a black man in his late 30s from East Mount Airy, has faced drug charges in the past -- but he's straightened up, he says. When the police asked whether he had a criminal background, "I told them, 'Yeah,'" he recalls. "I told them the truth."As he saw it, he had done nothing wrong and had nothing to hide. And so, when police asked to search his truck, Marks said they could go ahead.
He describes the encounter, initially that is, as calm. It was when police found more than $6,000 in cash in his car -- money he says was related to a number of rental properties he owns, he says -- that things changed.
"They ... took me down to the district, handcuffed me, took my money ... [searched] my whole truck again. Then they got a dog to sniff my whole truck out -- and still didn't find nothing." There were no drugs on Marks or on his vehicle; no charges were filed. But the interaction wasn't over, Marks says: "They got mad. ... They said, 'We're going to make you go to court for your money, then.'"
Marks would soon find himself sucked into a strange, upside-down corner of the legal system, where the burden of proof would be reversed to rest on the accused, where those opposing him would seem to call the shots -- and where the minor matter of his undisputed innocence of any charge would not seem to be a factor.
That police officers regularly confiscate cash from persons arrested in Philadelphia might not come as a surprise. State law allows police to seize money -- and other personal property, including cars, guns, even real estate -- from suspected criminals, as possible evidence in a criminal trial.
What you might not know is that that money is likely destined to become not just evidence but revenue for the Police Department and the District Attorney's Office prosecuting the case -- long before those alleged drug dealers are ever proven guilty or innocent in court, and often regardless of the outcome of any criminal proceedings.
By way of a process known as "civil asset forfeiture," carried out in Philly by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, the DA may sue to take ownership of confiscated property and, if successful, keep it.
The law's intent is straightforward enough: to target drug criminals (and, to a lesser extent, other types of criminals) by going after the proceeds and mechanisms of their crimes, and to use those ill-gotten gains for the benefit of the public.
The implementation, though, is more complicated. In Philadelphia, the law has laid the framework for a civil asset forfeiture program that brings in upwards of $6 million a year from cases against thousands of Philadelphians, with little oversight of how cases are pursued or how profits are distributed. And, as Marks learned all too well, that process has little regard for a property owner's guilt or innocence.
"Probable cause" has become "probable cash":
"Find a black guy, let him walk around the neighborhood with some money," Lawton suggested. "He'll be stopped."
White House Austerity
It's the age of austerity for the citizenry only. At The White House, Mark Steyn writes, it's spend and spend, on extravagant, taxpayer funded trips to Hawaii -- and more:
The president has one pooch, a photo-op accessory called Bo, who unlike the corgis requires a full-time handler. In contrast to the stingy remuneration offered by the royal household, the presidential dog-walker is one of 226 White House staff earning over $100,000 a year. For many centuries, the King had a courtier whose somewhat intimate duties were reflected in his title: the Groom of the Stool, a position abolished in 1559. Now, after two and a third centuries, the American presidency has evolved to the point that it has a full-time six-figure Groom of the Canine Stool. Will he be accompanying the president on Air Force One to liaise with the Keeper of the Privy Flatscreen over screenings of Lassie?
Santa Gregg Came Early This Year
Gregg, who had a computer back when people thought they were only for NASA, and who has an entire closet devoted to only wires and cables, has this way of changing my life through the appliances he gets me.
Now, I sometimes joke, "I don't cook; I heat," which is the truth, but I happen to make killer coffee, the fuel of my writing day and one of the joys of my existence. I grind it to near-Turkish in one of the few grinders that will do that, the Capresso 560 Infinity Conical Burr Grinder
Yesterday, Gregg gave me a BonJour Cafe Latte Frother
And one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given was the other thing he got me yesterday -- Asshole Canceling Headphones. Specifically, Bose® QuietComfort® 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones
In addition to the chainsaw or other construction noises that begin and end precisely in the time I have to take my nap on my deadline days, my neighborhood frequently has people who park in it, right outside our houses, or not even that close, and play that annoying low bass on their car stereos -- with their windows open for all to hear.
As I've joked before, I am only hostile, not violent, but this can make me feel homicidal, having this thump-thump-thump attack my existence. One should reasonably be able to presume that the sounds they hear in their house are house sounds -- the dog snoring, the bacon frying, the tea kettle whistling -- and not the house-foundation-shaking stylings of "Fuck Da Ho." These headphones are incredible, and make that a reality.
Los Angeles Is Going Broke. Answer: Have The City Hire A Poet
Los Angeles is going to pay $10K a year to Eloise Klein Healy to be the poet laureate of Los Angeles. (More in the LA Times.)
I hope, as her first on-the-job act, she renames this place. "The City of Angels" is clearly "The City of Assholes."
Is This What They Mean By "Male Privilege"?
Feminists try to shut down Warren Farrell's speech at a Canadian university -- including creating a human blockade to keep people from hearing him:
Joshua Kennon has a good piece on this and how to deal with speech you disagree with:
It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with Warren Farrell. It doesn't matter if you think his ideas are good or bad, whether you think he walks on roses or throws puppies over overpasses, or whether you are convinced his concepts will help or hurt the world. Intellectual honesty means you do not censor speech. You work to persuade your fellow citizens that your position is right based on reason and facts. You do not shut down their access to information.
Video of the thugs here:
Note: Any speech you disagree with isn't "hate speech," and if you can't do better to articulate an argument than that and "Fuck Warren Farrell," it's no wonder you take the thug's approach to another person's speech.
via Robert Werner
More TSA Theft: TSA Workers Like To Take Home Travelers' iPads
The TSA workers tell you, when you "opt out" of having your constitutional rights violated by scanner and instead have them violated by grope-down, that they "don't have personnel to watch your stuff." But, it seems they have plenty of personnel to swipe your stuff.
Christina Bonnington writes at Wired, "TSA Agents Like to Steal iPads":
It seems the TSA has a problem with sticky-fingered agents who like to swipe Apple products, particularly iPads. Case in point: An agent at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport is the latest to be charged with stealing travelers' iPads. It's but one example of iPad pilferage by some of our nation's "security" officials.TSA baggage screener Sean Henry reportedly was caught leaving the airport with two iPads after a joint TSA and Port Authority sting, according to ABC News. Officials used the iPad's own GPS tracking mechanism to keep tabs on the tablet and pinpoint the thief.
Other instances of note: In September, a TSA agent in Florida was caught pilfering an iPad left at a security checkpoint. In July, a Continental Airlines employee caught a TSA worker trying to take an iPad by stashing it in his pants. Not smooth, bro. He was alleged to have sold around $50,000 of stolen gear on Craigslist. And a TSA screener at Dallas-Fort Worth International was arrested in January and found with seven Apple tablets in his possession. One for each day of the week, perhaps?
So, $60-plus billion down the airport drain (and into Michael Chertoff's deep pockets), not a terrorist caught, and it's citizen travelers who are getting sold out -- beyond violating our right to not be searched with probable cause.
It is an utter, wild waste to treat every person going through an airport as a suspect. You find terrorists by having highly trained intelligence officers find perps long before they get to the airport -- or frankly, the mall, the synagogue, or countless easy targets.
Watch The Booby!
There are naked breasts everywhere in Paris, and although their economy is collapsing, their civilization doesn't seem to be.
Got Harrassing Calls Three Times Last Night: Phone Company Makes You Pay For Blocking
I got them on my iPhone, which Gregg got me, and which I use for an alarm clock, so it was next to my bed and woke me up at around midnight. And then the guy called at 2:07 am and 2:08 am. It was on vibrate but the second one woke me up.
This sucks because I'm working so hard on the book that I didn't even leave the house this week, and wake up at 5 am every day, write and write, and push it until 8 at night most nights. (Last night, I prepped for the radio show from 7 to 8 because I was too exhausted to keep writing after finishing many sections of a chapter and the chapter itself.)
The first time the guy called, because I'd gone to sleep with noise-cancelling headphones on, I couldn't quite hear him -- he said something about my calling his number, which I NEVER have. (I really call almost no one -- only Gregg, really.)
The third time he called, he said nothing and I yelled into the phone that I would call the cops on him -- and I knew how to do it. (I was getting obscene phone calls for a while and knew the process.)
But, the last time, I got the police involved (by filing a report so they could get the number from the phone company) because I got the calls from a blocked number. This idiot's number reads out and I was able to trace it in a reverse directory to his name and the fact that the phone is a Sprint phone.
The phone companies have quite a racket going, though. There's no way, no app, to block a number. ATT apparently won't allow it, if what I read on a bulletin board last night is correct (after I couldn't get back to sleep for an hour). You have to pay $4.99 a month to ATT to block a number. I emailed Gregg in Detroit, and he was up, and I called him and he ended up doing this. (He pays for my iPhone on a family plan with his.)
Gregg and I both had the same thought. (I talked to him before his plane left from Detroit this morning.) We both wondered whether the phone company is behind this, because we had to get the $4.99 service (which blocks 30 numbers) to block just this one.
I almost never make calls on my cell. I only text Gregg, my editorial assistant, and my neighbor ("Hey, can you pick me up some kale at the market?") (And yes, I use perfect, grammatical English for the most part when texting, out of fear that I'll degrade my writing by starting to text in bad grammar and abbreviations.)
I suspect calling Sprint and reporting the guy will do nothing. Chances are, he just thinks he got my number from some person in a bar and wrote it down wrong. The guy has a Spanish name -- like from Mexico, Guatemala, etc. -- and had a bit of an accent, and his number traces to LA zip code 90001. It's the Florence-Graham section of Los Angeles, which is listed as one of LA's top 12 gang-infested neighborhoods.
(I'm guessing it's not somebody I met at LA Press Club.)
The FDA Attack On Free Speech
From the WSJ one of the many erosions of our civil liberties -- one that affects patient health -- has been dialed back:
On Monday a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals said that Food and Drug Administration rules on the promotion of drugs violate the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.Sales rep Alfred Caronia probably thought he was only doing his job when in 2005 he told a doctor that a drug called Xyrem that had been approved for narcolepsy might also be effective in treating chronic pain and fatigue. But it turned out the doctor he was talking to was a government informant with a wire, and he was convicted in 2008 of selling a "misbranded" drug.
Mr. Caronia was understandably puzzled why engaging in a conversation that would attract no legal attention had it occurred between two doctors, or between a doctor and patient, or indeed anyone besides a doctor and a pharmaceutical rep, should be considered a crime.
Also puzzled was the Second Circuit. "It only furthers the public interest to ensure that decisions about the use of prescription drugs, including off-label usage, are intelligent and well-informed," wrote Judge Denny Chin for the 2-1 majority. "The First Amendment directs us to be especially skeptical of regulations that seek to keep people in the dark for what the government perceives to be their own good."
While the FDA tries to make "off-label" drug use seem sinister and criminal, it is often the state of the art in medicine. A great number of cancer medications are now first-line treatments for conditions different from the one for which they were originally approved.
In talking off-label uses, sales reps like Mr. Caronia are often trying to share the results of government-funded studies. By the FDA's logic, it should have stopped the promotion of aspirin to prevent stroke and heart attack as a crime. The decision guts the FDA's rationale for off-label speech regulation and could be a landmark that liberates companies and doctors to spread news about medical innovation.
A comment from the WSJ, from Michael Carter:
My father was a kidney dialysis patient. Following a dialysis session he was afflicted with itching sensations over most of his body that prevented sleeping.The kidney doctor prescribed Valium to help him sleep, but they discovered that it alleviated the itching. If given before dialysis no itching occurred at all. As one doctor described to me some of the greatest uses of medicines come from serendipitous side effects.
It is high time to remove the government from the doctor - drug representative and doctor - patient relationships. No good ever comes from government intrusion in personal decisions.
Baby Goats Are Cute
Gratuitous cute animal video. Enjoy.
There Is Hope
Doggie in Paris cafe where Elmore's French publisher took us for drinks:
New Jersey Is Latest To Say No To Creating Obamacare Exchange
Cato's Michael Cannon offers a clear explanation of why states should refuse to create these exchanges:
Meanwhile, in yet another example of how poor the government is at running things, The White House dodges the question of why people in New York and New Jersey still don't have power "weeks" after Hurricane Sandy.
via Weekly Standard's John McCormack
Well, Who Woulda Thunk It: We're Providing Arms To The Jihadis Again
We never learn. Once again, U.S. arms intended for the rebels in Libya seem to be falling into jihadi hands.
James Risen, Mark Mazetti and Michael S. Schmidt write for the The New York Times:
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.No evidence has emerged linking the weapons provided by the Qataris during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to the attack that killed four Americans at the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in September.
But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government.
The experience in Libya has taken on new urgency as the administration considers whether to play a direct role in arming rebels in Syria, where weapons are flowing in from Qatar and other countries.
The Obama administration did not initially raise objections when Qatar began shipping arms to opposition groups in Syria, even if it did not offer encouragement, according to current and former administration officials. But they said the United States has growing concerns that, just as in Libya, the Qataris are equipping some of the wrong militants.
The United States, which had only small numbers of C.I.A. officers in Libya during the tumult of the rebellion, provided little oversight of the arms shipments. Within weeks of endorsing Qatar's plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups. They were "more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam" than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official.
And a comment from the NYT's site from someone (who apparently typed this on a smartphone) who clearly does understand Arab and Muslim cultures:
cpmt8PAAnd when we Americans are going to understand the Arab culture? It happened in Iran some years ago, and it will happen everytime we try to help them, always go the other way. If and when they had a dictator or a life president... and they are inteligent students or people who want to change things to improve their country and to became more advance and a free democracy, then it goes the oposite way. religious fanatics, extremist take over AND WIN. Bad for women, Bad for children, Bad for the ones wanted more freedom and more democracy. EVERY TIME HAPPENS THE SAME ... WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND THEIR CULTURE. Before we try to help them, someone should study the consequences, and seriously study how to do it so it doens't back fire.
via Lisa Simeone
They Have Color -- Just Not Necessarily In Their Faces
The latest multi-culti boohoo is about Latino kids supposedly not seeing themselves in books. Motoko Rich writes in The New York Times, in a story headlined "For Young Latino Readers, an Image Is Missing":
PHILADELPHIA -- Like many of his third-grade classmates, Mario Cortez-Pacheco likes reading the "Magic Tree House" series, about a brother and a sister who take adventurous trips back in time. He also loves the popular "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" graphic novels.But Mario, 8, has noticed something about these and many of the other books he encounters in his classroom at Bayard Taylor Elementary here: most of the main characters are white. "I see a lot of people that don't have a lot of color," he said.
Hispanic students now make up nearly a quarter of the nation's public school enrollment, according to an analysis of census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, and are the fastest-growing segment of the school population. Yet nonwhite Latino children seldom see themselves in books written for young readers. (Dora the Explorer, who began as a cartoon character, is an outlier.)
Education experts and teachers who work with large Latino populations say that the lack of familiar images could be an obstacle as young readers work to build stamina and deepen their understanding of story elements like character motivation.
While there are exceptions, including books by Julia Alvarez, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Alma Flor Ada and Gary Soto, what is available is "not finding its way into classrooms," said Patricia Enciso, an associate professor at Ohio State University. Books commonly read by elementary school children -- those with human characters rather than talking animals or wizards -- include the Junie B. Jones, Cam Jansen, Judy Moody, Stink and Big Nate series, all of which feature a white protagonist. An occasional African-American, Asian or Hispanic character may pop up in a supporting role, but these books depict a predominantly white, suburban milieu.
"Kids do have a different kind of connection when they see a character that looks like them or they experience a plot or a theme that relates to something they've experienced in their lives," said Jane Fleming, an assistant professor at the Erikson Institute, a graduate school in early childhood development in Chicago.
Ridiculous. Literature is about the HUMAN experience. I just read Louise Erdrich's "The Round House." The main character is a 13-year-old Indian boy living on a reservation. Did I relate? Yes. On every page.
My friend KateC said something similar in a post on Facebook:
Growing up on a cattle ranch, I sure didn't see myself in books (Little House? Puleeze.) I'm not sure that Asian kids find themselves in schoolbooks either. Maybe the education establishment needs a new way to get kids to read. Great literature--even at the 6th grade level--reflects universal truths about the human condition, not just about people who look just like you.
This commenter on the NYT site sounds like he's Latino, and he gets it:
jorge, San Diego
A chicano kid with professional parents is going to read just as well as an anglo kid with professional parents. Whatever "pictures" his second grade teacher shows him will have nothing to do with it. Whether there are books at home will have everything to do with it.Kids are astonishingly flexible, in spite of such rigid and unimaginative edicational assessments. It is economics, pure and simple.
Boyfriend, "Security" Reminiscing
Gregg just said to me, looking back on our trip to Paris and our Amsterdam flight connection:
Just think, just a week ago we were getting off the plane to be rescreened.
(Somebody had left a door open at the Amsterdam airport and they saw this as cause for alarm, not just cause for what it should have been -- shutting the door so it wouldn't get cold in the airport.)
Le Jungle Love Ees Making Me Crazy
Car, Paris. Photo by Gregg Sutter, the wonderful boyfriend of mine who just unchained me from my computer and took me there:
Of course, the old Citroens are actually attractive.
There's Supposed To Be Probable Cause, Not Maybe You'll Be Criminal
The Constitution guards against unreasonable search and seizure, but the cops, calling to mind Minority Report, (in what's increasingly becoming a police state) want cellphone providers to save everyone's text messages just in case anybody commits a crime. In the future.
Of course, anyone who has watched The Wire
Declan McCullagh writes at CNET:
AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to record and store information about Americans' private text messages for at least two years, according to a proposal that police have submitted to the U.S. Congress.CNET has learned a constellation of law enforcement groups has asked the U.S. Senate to require that wireless companies retain that information, warning that the lack of a current federal requirement "can hinder law enforcement investigations."
They want an SMS retention requirement to be "considered" during congressional discussions over updating a 1986 privacy law for the cloud computing era -- a move that could complicate debate over the measure and erode support for it among civil libertarians.
As the popularity of text messages has exploded in recent years, so has their use in criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. They have been introduced as evidence in armed robbery, cocaine distribution, and wire fraud prosecutions. In one 2009 case in Michigan, wireless provider SkyTel turned over the contents of 626,638 SMS messages, a figure described by a federal judge as "staggering."
Chuck DeWitt, a spokesman for the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, which represents the 63 largest U.S. police forces including New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago, said "all such records should be retained for two years." Some providers, like Verizon, retain the contents of SMS messages for a brief period of time, while others like T-Mobile do not store them at all.
I know it's picky and all, but the cops should not be putting this burden on business first of all -- on the just-in-case basis.
And, yes, despite having the technology to have the goods on every citizen, we need to stick with the Constitution...which does not suggest we are allowed to preliminarily and proactively gather evidence on citizens.
Helicopter Pet-Owning
Lenore Skenazy, my friend and former New York Daily News colleague, and the blogger behind Free Range Kids, writes in the WSJ about animal shelters that have adoption requirements about as stringent as if the British Royal Family were farming out one of their own:
Here are the requirements on one pet-rescue website:"All dogs must be constantly supervised in their yards for their safety. Dogs of any size can scale fences within minutes of an owner's inattention. Physical fencing is not a guarantee of safety, because . . . animals such as bats, bees and snakes can gain access to yards. [Our agency] recommends checking on the condition of fencing and digging/jumping deterrents on a regular basis, securing all gates with locks, and installing outdoor floodlights to illuminate the entire yard."
Excuse me--no dog can be outside in a fenced-in yard these days without a human being standing guard? Didn't guarding used to be the dog's job?
And how about this fear of bats swooping in on poor Fido? Maybe Hartz makes a flea, tick and bat collar that's laced with garlic, just in case.
And floodlights? Are we talking about keeping tabs on a dog or Bernie Madoff?
Ah, but that's exactly the idea: constant surveillance. The only safe pet is a pet that's watched and worried over. You've heard of helicopter parents? Welcome to helicopter pet-owners.
Kristen Stelzer, a civil engineer who lives near Washington, D.C., recently told me about going with her husband to adopt a dog. During the application process, she happened to mention that they looked forward to the fun of taking the pooch to a dog park. The agency interviewer was appalled. "She was very anti-dog park," Ms. Stelzer recalled. "She said some of the other dog owners 'will not control their dogs.' " In other words, dog park = poorly supervised playdate. Tsk, tsk.
The rest of the application process didn't go so smoothly for Ms. Stelzer either. Handed a 50-question form, she had to secretly Google some answers. "Like, 'How do dogs get heartworm?' I don't know. I just give my dog a heartworm pill once a month."
Then, even though she listed all the vets she'd used for the past 15 years--yes, another requirement--the application was rejected. She suspects that it was because she didn't promise to cheerfully go bankrupt if the pet needed extensive medical care.
Three months later, the dog that the Stelzers wanted to adopt was still awaiting rescue by a more perfect owner.
Russia: A Place Never To Get In An Automobile Or Anywhere Near A Road
That is, if this video reveals typical driving behavior. Some incredible stuff:
From the YouTube notes:
All crashes and everything in this video are non-fatal.
Caging Citizens
A tweet from @Antiwar2:
In the civilized US we only cage people 80 years for growing plants.
Gender Bias In Hiring At American Research Universities
James M. Gentile writes at SciAm:
A peer-reviewed report, published in September by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that science professors at American research universities demonstrated bias against women in hiring. As the abstract explains: "In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student--who was randomly assigned either a male or female name--for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant... The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student."
Just wondering -- could this have to do with the fact that women are likely to get pregnant and take time off?
I haven't read the study -- just woke up for my deadline day and have to get cracking, but if somebody can take a peek at it and report on it, please do.
More:
As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, "Engineering and teaching are among the most lopsided disciplines in academe's gender split. In 2010, women received 80 percent of the undergraduate degrees awarded in education, the U.S. Education Department reports. And they earned 77 percent of the master's and 67 percent of the doctoral degrees in that field. In engineering, by contrast, women earned just 18 percent of undergraduate, 22 percent of master's, and 23 percent of doctoral degrees... Perhaps nowhere has the gender gap been more pronounced ... than in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--the STEM fields. Women are still a minority in those fields... Not surprisingly, the gender distribution of professors in the STEM disciplines is similarly skewed."
I would suspect -- very strongly suspect -- that this is because women want to enter teaching and not the hard sciences.
Pinker talked about this at an ev psych conference -- how absurd it would be to try to force large groups of men to enter talk professions and nursery school teaching, yet we try to shove women into the hard sciences when few, it seems, want to be there.
In fact, because of that, I would say that a female engineering professor probably has an advantage when seeking a professorship at a new university.
Sommer Gentry Does The Math For The TSA
Another hard-hitting, evidence-based post by USNA Math Professor Sommer Gentry at the anti-TSA TSANewsBlog:
I was pleased recently to receive an email from Russell Wooten, the IT Strategy Branch Chief of the TSA. His email reached me through my membership in the Maryland chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS). For the uninitiated, operations research is the discipline of applying advanced analytical techniques to help make better decisions. Mr. Wooten was soliciting input on these questions:Do you have any ideas on how the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) can improve its capabilities in utilizing its current security technology, upgrading its security technology, or improving its security processes?What can/should we do to improve these technologies and their processes?
AIT, Advanced Imaging Technology
AT, Advanced Technology
BLS, Bottled Liquid Scanner
EDS, Explosives Detection System
ETD, Explosives Trace Detector
An excerpt from her response:
Explosive Trace Detection (ETD): The ETD technology is designed to detect materials used in explosives, though identical chemical compounds could be detected in medications, lotions, fertilizers, and other innocuous sources. As I understand the TSA's procedures (though of course the public is not permitted to know what the TSA's procedures are), when an ETD alarms that passenger is flagged for a secondary search in a private room.However, there is an extremely low base rate of passengers trying to bring explosives through a checkpoint - let's use 21 in 10 billion, though of course it should really be 2 in 10 billion, since the weapons used on 9/11 were boxcutters rather than explosives. Using Bayes' Rule, we can calculate that even if explosives detection technologies were nearly perfect: catching every actual explosive and only falsely alarming on one in every ten thousand passengers, then only one out of five million positive test results actually indicates presence of an explosive device.
The psychological impact of processing millions of false alarms without a single real hit guarantees that screeners implementing the secondary screening process will assume that every positive is a false positive, undermining the effectiveness of any secondary screening process that could possibly be designed.
In similar fashion, screener psychology defeats secondary bag searches. Passengers report that when a bag is flagged at the checkpoint, screeners search the bag looking for a prohibited item - and stop looking when one is found, even when multiple prohibited items are present. This is reported to be how one passenger was allowed to fly with a clearly labeled 5-pound block of C4 in his carry-on.
What to conclude? ETD and other technologies that flag passengers for extra screening based on any test can never be made to be effective, because the base rate fallacy dooms even a near-perfect flagging system. The false positive rate would need to be something like an unattainable 1 in 1 million chance of a false alarm on a non-threat passenger in order to achieve a sustainable ratio of false alarms to real alarms. Resources being spent on ETD should be directed elsewhere.
Another excerpt from her thoughts on AIT -- Advanced Imaging Technology:
A recent RAND study of airport vulnerabilities at LAX concluded that "small, portable explosives have been the most likely and most lethal means of attacks at airports" and that "The greatest risks for casualties for most types of attacks are in the high-density areas passengers encounter before reaching the security checkpoint, particularly lines for ticketing and for passing the security checkpoint." Thus, AIT is not only ineffective, it is actually dangerous because it leaves passengers waiting in long lines vulnerable.But surely the most glaring weakness of the AIT system is that one can plan one's flights to avoid AIT scanners, as I have been doing ever since they came into use. Thus, we can be utterly certain that AIT technology has never played even the slightest role in discouraging an attack, since any adversary who feared AIT might discover his plot could simply choose, say, Reagan's terminal A or Fort Lauderdale's Southwest terminal for his departure. From the Congressional Research Service's recent report, we know this wide-open door for anyone to fly sans AIT will remain open: "Even at full operating capacity, not all airports and not all screening lanes will be equipped with AIT under TSA's plan." Only innocent travelers will ever be screened with AIT - terrorists can evade it easily.
Neglected risks: The TSA appears to have blind spots for some threat vectors. The insider threat looms large after a number of high-profile arrests of screeners for smuggling drugs through the checkpoint. Bribing a screener to speed explosives through a checkpoint (perhaps unwittingly) would clearly be a winning strategy for a terrorist. Many passengers also report seeing large pallets of food and merchandise bound for secure-side vendors being waved through the checkpoint or delivered through unscreened corridors.
I've highlighted these two risks because there appear to be no fundamental barriers to addressing them. One way to address insider threat is to hire fewer part-time screeners, both because they may have a more tenuous sense of loyalty than full-time screeners, and because fewer screeners means fewer opportunities to find a compromisable person. Another good practice would be to search screeners arriving for their shifts, in checked baggage rooms as well as at passenger checkpoints. Searching vendor supplies is as straightforward as it sounds. In contrast, perhaps the TSA chooses not to address the risk of ground-launched missile attacks on planes because of a dearth of effective countermeasures.
The TSA has also entirely failed to consider the risk that TSA procedures will divert would-be flyers onto the roads. Blalock, Kadiyali, and Simon found that a decrease of 1 million emplanements leads to an increase of 15 driving-related fatalities. If negative publicity and the accumulated impact of negative passenger experiences at the checkpoint causes only a 1% drop in emplanements, then the TSA is responsible for 100 or more deaths each year. While it's true that the TSA will probably avoid blame for these deaths, it is simply unacceptable engineering practice to neglect this obvious side effect of the TSA's screening choices.
Paris' Nanny Bloomberg
Via Jay J. Hector, Aurelien Breeden writes in the The New York Times:
BY proposing to reduce air pollution by banning vehicles made before 1997, Mayor Bertrand Delanoë has angered vintage car owners and motorist groups and raised concerns among those who say they cannot afford new cars.Mr. Delanoë's proposal is part of a wider push by local authorities to comply with European regulations and establish a low-emission zone around metropolitan Paris, including many suburbs, by 2014. The plan would extend the mayor's efforts to make the city more pedestrian-friendly by reducing the number of cars. These efforts include introducing the Vélib' bicycle rental program, establishing the Autolib' electric-car rental system and cutting vehicle traffic along the banks of the Seine.
Mr. Delanoë has been mayor since 2001, but will not run again in 2014. "In Paris, where polluting industries have nearly disappeared, cars are the main source of pollution today," he said in a statement presenting the antipollution plan to city councilors.
But the ban would include many of the most recognizably French cars, including the Citroën 2CV, known as the Deux Chevaux; the Citroën DS, celebrated for its clean, distinctive design; the Renault 4L, a practical Everyman's car of the 1960s and '70s; and many classic Peugeots.
The mayor's critics say he is doing everything he can, in his last years in office, to discourage driving. Among the disgruntled are collectors, who fear they won't be able to take their vintage cars for a spin.
Obamanomics
(Which, pssst, Republicans, aren't all that different from the Bushanomics that came previously.) Nick Gillespie writes at reason:
So what's the harm in the feds spending like there's no tomorrow, especially when people are still hurting in terms of jobs, wages, and the like? There are many harms - we're saddling future generations with debt squandered even before they were born, for instance. Imagine being stuck with your parents' credit card bills for vacations they took and cars they bought (and sold) back in 1970. Feh.
Yes, let's repeat that and see how it goes over:
Imagine being stuck with your parents' credit card bills for vacations they took and cars they bought (and sold) back in 1970. Feh.
Nick goes on:
But for the sake of brevity, let me focus on just one serious problem with running perpetual deficits and racking up huge debts at the federal level: Countries whose governments that carry debt loads of 90 percent or more of their economies for prolonged periods squeeze down long-term economic growth, the one thing everyone agrees is central to improving living standards.
As Veronique de Rugy wrote in the October issue of Reason:
In a recent National Bureau of Economics working paper called "Debt Overhangs: Past and Present," economists Carmen Reinhart, Vincent Reinhart, and Kenneth Rogoff show that in 11 of the 26 cases in their sample, countries in which debt exceeded 90 percent of GDP for at least five years did not experience an increase in interest rates.But stable interest rates are not a sign that these countries are in good shape. Economic growth in the 26 cases was 1.2 percentage points lower than in other periods, "the average duration of debt-overhang episodes is 23 years, and it produces a 'massive' shortfall in output that is almost one-quarter less, on average, than in low-debt periods."
In other words, the fact that bond markets are blasé about high levels of debt in countries perceived as safe tells you very little about how well they are doing. It certainly should not be mistaken for a signal that the government can borrow more without risk.
Nick continues:
How many of us will be consigned to live out our futures in that Phantom Zone of missing economic growth?All to pay for, what, military adventures that have done precious little to reduce the world's supply of suffering? Or for expanded drug benefits for already-wealthy seniors? For a war against weed that has turned the Home of the Free into history's greatest jailer nation?
Obamacare Causes Walmart To Roll Back Its Employee Health Insurance
I, along with many others, complained bitterly a bunch of years back about Walmart sticking taxpayers with their employees' health care costs -- and then they mended their ways. Well, their ways have been unmended, thanks to Obamacare.
From the HuffPo's Alice Hines (and the who couldn't have predicted that files), Walmart's new health care policy shifts the burden to Medicaid:
Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart's decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company's health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said."Walmart is effectively shifting the costs of paying for its employees onto the federal government with this new plan, which is one of the problems with the way the law is structured," said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
For Walmart, this latest policy represents a step back in time. Almost seven years ago, as Walmart confronted public criticism that its employees couldn't afford its benefits, the company announced with much fanfare that it would expand health coverage for part-time workers.
But last year, the company eliminated coverage for some part-time workers -- those new hires working 24 hours a week or less. Now, Walmart is going further.
"Walmart likely thought it didn't need to offer this part-time coverage anymore with Obamacare," said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "This is another example of a tremendous government subsidy to Walmart via its workers."
New York State: Inka Binka Better Not Drink
There's a NY Post story on a proposal Cuomo is expected to sign on New York's State's new "sin" taxes on booze, new limits on the numbers of new bars and liquor stores, and and other regulations on alcohol consumption. @MGraham969 tweets:
Of COURSE NY is regulating booze. When your neighbors pay for your health care, they get to tell you to stop drinking.
Supposedly, the nannying is intended to cut down on underage drinking and on binge drinking by adults.
Like anyone who is determined to drink alcohol will be swayed by having to walk an extra block or pay more for it.
They should rename the state: New Mom.
Is "Vermont" Another Name For Bed-Stuy?
A dad in Vermont has taken helicopter parenting to an unbelievable level of absurdity by creating a drone to follow and video his kid on the way to the school bus. Mike Flacy writes at Digital Trends:
Covered in extensive detail on the IEEE Spectrum magazine site, a father names Paul Wallich in Vermont decided to build a camera-equipped quadcopter to follow his son from home to the school bus stop. He specifically wanted to build the security device for extremely cold mornings in December and January in order to avoid the quarter-mile walk to and from the bus stop. To get started, he first purchased a basic quadcopter kit and was quickly able to get up in the air due to the simple construction. He also designed a few sets of replacement legs out of foam board to cushion landings....While the software controlling the quadcopter can be programmed to travel a specific set of coordinates, Wallich needed to come up with a solution that would work with the varied path his son took each day on the way to the school bus stop. In order to accomplish this, he created a small GPS beacon powered by a coin-cell battery that lasts up to a week. This beacon was placed within his son's backpack and the quadcopter was programmed to stay a specific distance from the beacon.
According to Wallich, he ran into issues with wind as well as obstacles in the path such as branches on trees. In an interview with NBC News, Wallich stated "Vermont, as it turns out, is a really bad place for doing this kind of thing because you have hills and you have trees. Hills mean that the altitude control gets a lot more complicated and trees mean you have to do obstacle avoidance. If my kid is walking along the road and there is a branch overhanging the road, the quadcopter will gleefully run smack into it."
Imagine having no privacy whatsoever from Psycho Dad. Fun game: Find all the nanny-cams!
What's next, Rectal-Cam, and a "gleeful" how-to on that?
via @mims
Marital Happiness: Surprise Is More Satisfying Than Stability
Positive psychologist Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, whom I've referenced in my column and had on my radio show, has a piece in The New York Times on happiness in marriage. She talks about the two-year slump -- the time when newlyweds' happiness at their marriage tends to shift back to baseline:
When married couples reach the two-year mark, many mistake the natural shift from passionate love to companionate love for incompatibility and unhappiness. For many, the possibility that things might be different -- more exciting, more satisfying -- with someone else proves difficult to resist. Injecting variety and surprise into even the most stable, seasoned relationship is a good hedge against such temptation. Key parties -- remember "The Ice Storm"? -- aren't necessarily what the doctor ordered; simpler changes in routine, departures from the expected, go a long way.In a classic experiment conducted by Arthur Aron and his colleagues, researchers gave upper-middle-class middle-aged couples a list of activities that both parties agreed were "pleasant" (like creative cooking, visiting friends or seeing a movie) or "exciting" (skiing, dancing or attending concerts) but that they had enjoyed only infrequently. Researchers instructed each couple to select one of these activities each week and spend 90 minutes doing it together. At the end of 10 weeks, the couples who engaged in the "exciting" activities reported greater satisfaction in their marriage than those who engaged in "pleasant" or enjoyable activities together.
Although variety and surprise seem similar, they are in fact quite distinct. It's easy to vary a sequence of events -- like choosing a restaurant for a weekly date night -- without offering a lot of surprise. In the beginning, relationships are endlessly surprising: Does he like to cook? What is his family like? What embarrasses or delights him? As we come to know our partners better and better, they surprise us less.
Surprise is a potent force. When something novel occurs, we tend to pay attention, to appreciate the experience or circumstance, and to remember it. We are less likely to take our marriage for granted when it continues to deliver strong emotional reactions in us. Also, uncertainty sometimes enhances the pleasure of positive events.
...The realization that your marriage no longer supplies the charge it formerly did is then an invitation: eschew predictability in favor of discovery, novelty and opportunities for unpredictable pleasure. "A relationship," Woody Allen proclaimed in his film "Annie Hall," "is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies." A marriage is likely to change shape multiple times over the course of its lifetime; it must be continually rebuilt if it is to thrive.
I recently posted a column referencing Lyubomirsky's research with Dr. Kennon Sheldon:
The advice to have "date night" that you probably see everywhere but the bottom of your shoe is right on. Where it misses is in how to do it and why. Researchers have actually quantified where happiness comes from (no, not from stoned leprechauns passing around a bottomless bag of Doritos at the end of the rainbow). According to studies looking at fraternal and identical twins raised together and apart, how happy you are appears to be as much as 50 percent genetic. About 10 percent of your happiness level stems from your life circumstances (stuff like your health, income, and the fact that you are now parents and feel like you haven't had a good night's sleep since John Quincy Adams was president).The good news is, about 40 percent of your happiness is within your control, through how you think and activities you can do (like date night). The bad news on the good news is something called "the hedonic treadmill," which is not a new form of torture at the gym. It's researchers' cute name for how we quickly adapt to both positive and negative changes in our lives and pop right back to our baseline level of happiness or mopeyness. This means it might not be enough to drag your weary, bleary parental cabooses out to dinner every Wednesday night. Sure, that's better than sitting home fretting that your kid won't get early admission to Harvard, but research by positive psychologists Dr. Kennon M. Sheldon and Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky finds that variety -- "a continual stream of fresh, positive experiences" -- is key in increasing and sustaining happiness.
So, you need to go out on a variety of date nights -- changing up your activity every week and taking turns planning it so one of you will always be surprised. Lyubomirsky talked on my radio show about having Grandma babysit her toddler overnight and taking off with her husband to a hotel just a few miles from their house. (If you can't afford babysitters, or Grandma's six states away, trade babysitting with friends with a kid around the same age.) You don't have to do anything elaborate or expensive. You can borrow a Wii and ski the Swiss Alps from your living room rug, have a picnic dinner and then ride the Ferris wheel, or just go get hot dogs and make out in the car.
And a comment from the NYT:
PJS, Los Altos
Perhaps the moral of the story is: Don't have children. My husband and I opted out. At ten years of marriage we remain smitten. I sometimes wish this alternative approach to marriage had more cultural acceptance. If our lives are any indication, being childless is a valid option that can lead to greater happiness.
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Mark Goulston On Listening As The Key To Persuading
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
This week's show is a "best of" replay, thanks to Gregg taking me to Paris for a week. (He made me promise that I would take an actual vacation while there.) Next week, I'll resume my live Sunday night shows.
Tonight's guest is psychiatrist and business coach Dr. Mark Goulston, author of the terrific book Just Listen
I learned a whole lot just by prepping the show.
On this show, he explains why listening is the key to persuading and where we fail as listeners, and he lays out concrete advice on the things we need to do to be better listeners and persuaders.
Listen live at this link or download after the show:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/12/03/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's Advice Goddess Radio with cardiologist Dr. William Davis, busting 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 at this link or download the podcast:
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.
Join me and all my fascinating guests live every week from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, and listen to all my previous shows at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
Los Angeles: First World City, Third-World Power Grid
Just had a power outage for maybe an hour and a half or so in West LA.
These happen with some frequency.
Yes, on the East Coast, it takes Hurricane Sandy to knock out the power.
Here in Los Angeles, Tinkle Sandy -- a little light rain -- is all it takes to have us reading by candlelight.
Paging Sheriff Andy: Punishment For Juvenile Delinquents
Where do you stand? Are you for Andy Griffith-style policing (a good talking-to and maybe some chores) or going by the letter of the law and putting teens who, say, vandalize property, into the system?
Very interesting post on this subject by law blogger Scott Greenfield on a vandalized mailbox, four teens in a yellow sports car fitting the description of the vandalizing vehicle, and cops who decided to reprimand the teens by having them do a dozen pushups and sending them on their way.
No cuffs. No tasers. No criminal records. And for this, the community built them a statue, right? Not exactly.
An internal investigation has been ordered.
Clearly, the cops acted as judge, jury and executioner, conceptually a position that most are disinclined to relegate to the police. As Chief Martellini ponders whether this was "professional" behavior, he asks the wrong question. It wasn't. Professional behavior would have compelled the officers to arrest the youths and turn the matter over to prosecutors, ultimately resulting in a determination of guilt or innocence, and if the former, a life saddled with a criminal conviction. Now that would have been the way a "professional" cop behaves.Instead, they did what a cop would have done a few generations ago, when the idea of hanging a criminal record on every stupid kid would have been considered absurd and outrageous by pretty much everyone, cops included.
Scott also points out that they should have been made to pay to repair the mailbox. And then, he writes:
On the one hand, putting the handling of punishment in the discretionary hands of cops doesn't strike many as a good idea. There have been far, far too many times when police have demonstrated that they so utterly lack the judgment and discretion to control vicious urges, violent tempers and the knee-jerk resort to the weapons of their trade, to ever willingly go down the road to Mayberry. Especially when it comes to children.Yet, in this instance, what happened was clearly the best outcome for all involved. The alternative of prosecution and potential criminal record would have ruined lives over a stupid, juvenile act. The boys needed to learn they can't destroy things, that vandalism isn't fun or cool. But once the lesson was learned, they similarly need the chance to grow up and lead productive lives, unencumbered by the yoke of the criminal justice system.
Let's come to grips with reality here: no child is better off for having become embroiled in the system. Some may have engaged in conduct sufficiently serious that it can't be avoided, but they are no better for it. When the offense is more prank than crime, and can be effectively dealt with by a good metaphoric spanking, we are all better off.
Agree? Disagree?
When Corporate Welfare Recipients Like GM Pack Up And Go
Louise Story writes in the NYT of towns feeling ripped off in the wake of GM plant closings -- after forking over plenty in hopes of bribing GM into locating in or staying in their area:
In the end, the money that towns across America gave General Motors did not matter.When the automaker released a list of factories it was closing during bankruptcy three years ago, communities that had considered themselves G.M.'s business partners were among the targets.
For years, mayors and governors anxious about local jobs had agreed to G.M.'s demands for cash rewards, free buildings, worker training and lucrative tax breaks. As late as 2007, the company was telling local officials that these sorts of incentives would "further G.M.'s strong relationship" with them and be a "win/win situation," according to town council notes from one Michigan community.
Yet at least 50 properties on the 2009 liquidation list were in towns and states that had awarded incentives, adding up to billions in taxpayer dollars, according to data compiled by The New York Times.
Some officials, desperate to keep G.M., offered more. Ohio was proposing a $56 million deal to save its Moraine plant, and Wisconsin, fighting for its Janesville factory, offered $153 million.
But their overtures were to no avail. G.M. walked away and, thanks to a federal bailout, is once again profitable. The towns have not been so fortunate, having spent scarce funds in exchange for thousands of jobs that no longer exist.
One township, Ypsilanti, Mich., is suing over the automaker's departure. "You can't just make these promises and throw them around like they're spare change in the drawer," said Doug Winters, the township's attorney.
Yet across the country, companies have been doing just that. And the giveaways are adding up to a gigantic bill for taxpayers.
Need A Better Story -- Perhaps Yours?
This is a point from my Communicating chapter of my next book, "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," for St. Martin's Press. I need a story to illustrate it. Got one? Heard of one in the news? Please post it below.
It's also okay to say you don't know and never will, although it tends to irritate the hell out of people.
I Want To Visit Europe, Not Have America Become It
Harvey Mansfield, interviewed by Sohrab Ahmari in the WSJ, on the real cost of entitlements:
"We have now an American political party and a European one. Not all Americans who vote for the European party want to become Europeans. But it doesn't matter because that's what they're voting for. They're voting for dependency, for lack of ambition, and for insolvency."...American elites today prefer to dismiss the "unchangeable, undemocratic facts" about human inequality, he says. Progressives go further: "They think that the main use of liberty is to create more equality. They don't see that there is such a thing as too much equality. They don't see limits to democratic equalizing"--how, say, wealth redistribution can not only bankrupt the public fisc but corrupt the national soul.
"Americans take inequality for granted," Mr. Mansfield says. The American people frequently "protect inequalities by voting not to destroy or deprive the rich of their riches. They don't vote for all measures of equalization, for which they get condemned as suffering from false consciousness. But that's true consciousness because the American people want to make democracy work, and so do conservatives. Liberals on the other hand just want to make democracy more democratic."
Equality untempered by liberty invites disaster, he says. "There is a difference between making a form of government more like itself," Mr. Mansfield says, "and making it viable." Pushed to its extremes, democracy can lead to "mass rule by an ignorant, or uncaring, government."
Consider the entitlements crisis. "Entitlements are an attack on the common good," Mr. Mansfield says. "Entitlements say that 'I get mine no matter what the state of the country is when I get it.' So it's like a bond or an annuity. What the entitlement does is give the government version of a private security, which is better because the government provides a better guarantee than a private company can."
...The welfare state's size isn't what makes it so stifling, Mr. Mansfield says. "What makes government dangerous to the common good is guaranteed entitlements, so that you can never question what expenses have been or will be incurred."
How They See Security Theater In The Netherlands
We flew from Paris to Amsterdam to catch our flight home on KLM. While on the plane, I asked one of the flight attendants about how crew members feel -- and how Dutch citizens feel -- about the security measures there.
Going by that experience, their ridiculousness is very similar to ours -- X-raying your bags, groping you or scanning you or maybe both.
I was disgusted by my groping, which I got twice, thanks to how they yanked everyone off the plane for a second "security" check after a door got left open at the airport. (The first groper got my labia going up my leg on either side. The second one didn't end up going to Third Base.)
And no, I didn't feel anywhere the rage and upset I feel when I'm groped in this country, since the Dutch don't have our Constitution and thus can't expect to have its protections.
For me, standing up to the TSA and fighting these "security" measures is about standing up for the Constitution and keeping our rights from being further eroded (and maybe yanking some of them back). It's even more tragic that we have given them up for the pretense of safety, and really have let the terrorists "win" by rolling back our rights, diminishing business, and causing many deaths on the roads (when people drive in stead of flying.)
As for how the Dutch see the "security" measures, the flight attendant said people there know it's just "for show"; that it's "not real security."
She said people in Holland were mad at first but now they just put up with it. Which, as I keep saying, is the danger here. Give away some rights and at first, it may be a little uncomfortable (if you even understand what your rights are), but over time, you get used to it. Like a beaten dog, you just submit, and in turn, others, who would stand up for our rights, are expected to submit as you have -- or risk various harms, including maybe losing their freedom.
In the long run, these sheeplike cooperation is extremely dangerous to all of us.
Crony Socialism
From the WSJ, Costco president Jim Sinegal found a way to support Obama and keep the money:
When President Obama needed a business executive to come to his campaign defense, Jim Sinegal was there. The Costco COST +2.00% co-founder, director and former CEO even made a prime-time speech at the Democratic Party convention in Charlotte. So what a surprise this week to see that Mr. Sinegal and the rest of the Costco board voted to give themselves a special dividend to avoid Mr. Obama's looming tax increase. Is this what the President means by "tax fairness"?Specifically, the giant retailer announced Wednesday that the company will pay a special dividend of $7 a share this month. That's a $3 billion Christmas gift for shareholders that will let them be taxed at the current dividend rate of 15%, rather than next year's rate of up to 43.4%--an increase to 39.6% as the Bush-era rates expire plus another 3.8% from the new ObamaCare surcharge.
More striking is that Costco also announced that it will borrow $3.5 billion to finance the special payout. Dividends are typically paid out of earnings, either current or accumulated. But so eager are the Costco executives to get out ahead of the tax man that they're taking on debt to do so.
Shareholders were happy as they bid up shares by more than 5% in two days. But the rating agencies were less thrilled, as Fitch downgraded Costco's credit to A+ from AA-. Standard & Poor's had been watching the company for a potential upgrade but pulled the watch on the borrowing news.
We think companies can do what they want with their cash, but it's certainly rare to see a public corporation weaken its balance sheet not for investment in the future but to make a one-time equity payout. It's a good illustration of the way that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's near-zero interest rates are combining with federal tax policy to distort business decisions.
One of the biggest dividend winners will be none other than Mr. Sinegal, who owns about two million shares, while his wife owns another 84,669. At $7 a share, the former CEO will take home roughly $14 million. At a 15% tax rate he'll get to keep nearly $12 million of that windfall, while at next year's rate of 43.4% he'd take home only about $8 million. That's a lot of extra cannoli.
This isn't exactly the tone of, er, shared sacrifice that Mr. Sinegal struck on stage in Charlotte. He described Mr. Obama as "a President making an economy built to last," adding that "for companies like Costco to invest, grow, hire and flourish, the conditions have to be right. That requires something from all of us." But apparently $4 million less from Mr. Sinegal.
The best is the end of the piece:
To sum up: Here we have people at the very top of the top 1% who preach about tax fairness voting to write themselves a huge dividend check to avoid the Obama tax increase they claim it is a public service to impose on middle-class Americans who work for 30 years and finally make $250,000 for a brief window in time.If they had any shame, they'd send their entire windfall to the Treasury.
Matthew Willis comments on Sinegal's actions on the WSJ's site:
It's not that the guy is cashing out, before more confiscatory taxes come in; nor is it his groveling to a fool who has never expressed an original thought in his life. No, it's the fact that he stood up and lectured to the rest of us how we should live, and then ducked the consequences of his actions. This is typical of what I call the New Left Aristocrats who behave as if they live in 18th Century France.
Thumbing Their Nose At The Edu-Bubble
Alex Williams writes in the NYT:
BENJAMIN GOERING does not look like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, talk like him or inspire the same controversy. But he does apparently think like him.Two years ago, Mr. Goering was a sophomore at the University of Kansas, studying computer science and philosophy and feeling frustrated in crowded lecture halls where the professors did not even know his name.
"I wanted to make Web experiences," said Mr. Goering, now 22, and create "tools that make the lives of others better."
So in the spring of 2010, Mr. Goering took the same leap as Mr. Zuckerberg: he dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco to make his mark. He got a job as a software engineer at a social-software company, Livefyre, run by a college dropout, where the chief technology officer at the time and a lead engineer were also dropouts. None were sheepish about their lack of a diploma. Rather, they were proud of their real-life lessons on the job.
"Education isn't a four-year program," Mr. Goering said. "It's a mind-set."
The idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Feeling squeezed by a sagging job market and mounting student debt, a groundswell of university-age heretics are pledging allegiance to new groups like UnCollege, dedicated to "hacking" higher education. Inspired by billionaire role models, and empowered by online college courses, they consider themselves a D.I.Y. vanguard, committed to changing the perception of dropping out from a personal failure to a sensible option, at least for a certain breed of risk-embracing maverick.
Risky? Perhaps. But it worked for the founders of Twitter, Tumblr and a little company known as Apple.
Gregg Should Sue The Entire Country Of France
France -- and especially Paris -- is home to the itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie cafe table.
These tables will comfortably seat any slim little girl under the age of 12, or anyone with the body type of one.
Gregg, on the other hand, is, well...our friend Laurent calls him "Beeeg Guy." He's 6'2" and is not built like a paper cut.
Luckily, he isn't a litigious guy, like the guy who sued White Castle over the size of their booths.
Scott Strump writes for Today:
Wedging White Castle burgers into his mouth has admittedly never been a problem for a 290-pound stockbroker from New York.Trying to wedge himself into a seat at his local White Castle, however, has him mad enough to sue.
Martin Kessman, 64, has filed a lawsuit seeking unspecified financial damages against the fast-food chain, claiming that his local White Castle is in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act because the seating cannot accommodate a customer of his size. A federal lawsuit filed last week claims that in April 2009, Kessman smacked his knee into a metal post while trying to wedge himself into the stationary seating at a White Castle in Nanuet, N.Y., near his home.
"I'm not humongous, [but] I'm a big guy,'' Kessman told The New York Post. "I could not wedge myself in."
After limping out of the store in pain, he wrote multiple letters to White Castle's corporate headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, complaining about the inadequate seating situation and his embarrassment in having to try to fit into a chair at the Rockland County location. White Castle's response was a series of "condescending letters'' and three coupons for a total of nine free hamburgers, according to the lawsuit.
"But the cheese was extra!'' he wrote in the lawsuit.
White Castle planned to make alterations for the store, located about 45 minutes from Manhattan, but for more than two years, nothing was done, Kessman claims. A White Castle spokewoman said that the location in Nanuet is being replaced by a new one that will have more room to sit, which Kessman claims is not a problem for him at other fast-food restaurants and on airplanes.
"I just want to sit down like a normal person,'' Kessman told The Post.
And this would be White Castle's responsibility why?
UPDATE: Sorry - this is an old story: Somebody sent it to me and I didn't notice the date. I'm moving it backward to hide it from view. (I originally posted it on Dec. 4.)
via Steamer
Cyber Monday Deals Week Ends Today
Last chance -- at Amazon
Also, my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, makes a fun gift. It's only $11.41, brand new, with Amazon's discount at the link above. (New copies or Kindle books go against my advance, and help me keep writing...and eating, and help fund this site and my answering questions that will never make my column.)
Another book I'm really enjoying -- The Round House
My favorite book by Elmore Leonard, who was this year's top-top honoree by the National Book Association, is Swag
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.
