The Assertiveness Workbook
Really good book by clinical psychologist Randy J. Paterson, The Assertiveness Workbook: How to Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships
A quote about compliments, which many people have a problem accepting:
"A compliment is a gift to be accepted. It is not a bomb needing to defused nor a volleyball needing to be returned."
I'm Not Sure How Huma Abedin's Behavior Is A Setback For Anyone But Huma
Sally Quinn, in the WaPo, writes that it's a setback for women.
I have nothing against Abedin. I like her: She is a lovely, gracious, intelligent woman. I ache for her need to come to the rescue of this man who has betrayed her so often and will likely do it again. I ache for all women who find themselves in this position. And yet, there she stood in front of the cameras, this modern American career woman, by her man, saying she had forgiven him, loved him and believed in him. Just what exactly does she believe in? The only thing she can believe in for sure is that he will continue his infidelity.Though her friends say she is strong and resolute and defiant, sadly she makes all women look like weak and helpless victims. She was not standing there in a position of strength. It was such a setback for women everywhere.
I'm not getting this.
It's somehow a setback for me because some politically scheming, power-hungry wife is willing to let her husband humiliate her repeatedly (as the tradeoff)?
It's prostitution, but less honest.
The Crime Of Giving Somebody A Discount Ride To SF International Airport
Okay, let's forget about the fact that I hate flying now thanks to the government gropers checking my nipples for C-4 every time I take a plane. I used to love to fly places, and would love to go to San Francisco to visit my sister and her husband if I could do it for an affordable price.
Well, there are rideshare services that make it cheaper to get to and from the airport but of course, airport officials have to screw that up by making yes -- love this -- "citizen's arrests" and issuing citations to ride-share drivers who pick up or drop off passengers at SFO. From The Tech Chronicles at SFGate:
Eleven drivers have been arrested on suspicion of unlawful trespassing, a misdemeanor, since the airport began making citizen's arrests July 10, said airport spokesman Doug Yakel.The airport has long maintained that several ride-share services, including UberX, Lyft, Sidecar and InstantCab, do not have the authority to operate at SFO. (Limos and taxis hailed through the Uber app are still allowed, Yakel said, because the vehicles have the proper transportation permits with the state.)
SFO sent the companies cease-and-desist letters in April and have given drivers verbal warnings since. Yakel said the airport also told the companies that they would begin arresting drivers starting July 10.
Ten UberX drivers and one Lyft driver were arrested, Yakel said. A citizen's arrest is initiated by an airport employee, and the driver is cited and released for a misdemeanor and given notice to appear in court, though Yakel said to his knowledge none of the drivers have yet had a court date.
Police officers who patrol the terminals are "monitoring the curbside areas for signs of arranged ride for pay," Yakel said, though he wouldn't specify what officers look for. They alert airport employees, who make the citizen's arrest of the driver.
Okay, so we have adults consentingly engaging in an exchange of money for services but we're going to stop this?
This is not what government in America was supposed to be for.
via @declanm
Obscenity: Court Worker Fired For Helping Man Seek DNA Test That Freed Him
Bill Draper writes for the AP that a 70-year-old Kansas City Courthouse employee, Sharon Snyder, nine months away from her retirement, was fired for helping an inmate get information he needed to get the DNA test that would free him:
Robert Nelson, 49, was convicted in 1984 of a Kansas City rape that he insisted he didn't commit and sentenced to 50 years for forcible rape, five years for forcible sodomy and 15 years for first-degree robbery. The judge ordered the sentence to start after he finished serving time for robbery convictions in two unrelated cases prior to the rape conviction.Those sentences ended in 2006.
In August 2009, Nelson filed a motion seeking DNA testing that had not been available at his trial 25 years earlier, but Jackson County Circuit Judge David Byrn denied the request. Two years later Nelson asked the judge to reconsider, but again Byrn rejected the motion because it fell short of what was required under the statute Nelson had cited.
After the second motion failed in late October 2011, Snyder gave Nelson's sister, Sea Dunnell, a copy of a motion filed in a different case in which the judge sustained a DNA request.
Nelson used that motion - a public document Dunnell could have gotten if she had known its significance and where to find it - as a guide for a motion he filed Feb. 22, 2012, again seeking DNA testing. That August, Byrn sustained the motion, found Nelson to be indigent and appointed Laura O'Sullivan, legal director of the Midwest Innocence Project, to represent him.
The Kansas City Police Department's crime lab concluded last month that DNA tests excluded Nelson as the source of evidence recovered from the 1983 rape scene and he was freed June 12.
Five days later, they went after Snyder. Her pension is intact, she says, and best of all, she says she'd do it again.
A pity she, a person who prioritizes justice and getting an innocent man out of prison, isn't doing the judging about who gets what in the KC courts.
via @instapundit
Deep Discounts On Open-Box Shoes For Women
From Amazon's warehouse
Sometimes The Prowler In Your Backyard Has Short Legs
A friend at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference in Florida took this photo when she (naughty!) skipped the plenary in our hotel and attended the, ahem, plenary on a boat in the Everglades.
Here in California, I sometimes hear a possum under my house in the middle of the night. I find them scary for their sharp little teeth and hissing. Gregg, who's lived in Florida, said these things sometimes end up in people's backyards. In a word: Eeek! 
Historian: The Church Used To Perform Gay Marriages
Yes, before "marriage (was) between a man and a woman," it was sometimes between two men.
Annalee Newitz writes at io9.com about gay marriages in the year 100 A.D.:
John Boswell was a historian and religious Catholic who dedicated much of his scholarly life to studying the late Roman Empire and early Christian Church. Poring over legal and church documents from this era, he discovered something incredible. There were dozens of records of church ceremonies where two men were joined in unions that used the same rituals as heterosexual marriages. (He found almost no records of lesbian unions, which is probably an artifact of a culture which kept more records about the lives of men generally.)...How could these marriages have been forgotten by history? One easy answer is that -- as Boswell argues -- the Church reframed the idea of marriage in the 13th century to be for the purposes of procreation. And this slammed the door on gay marriage. Church scholars and officials worked hard to suppress the history of these marriages in order to justify their new definition.
Of course, history is more complicated than that. Boswell claims that part of the problem is that we define marriage so differently today that it's almost impossible for historians to recognize 1800-year-old gay marriage documents when they see them. Often, these documents refer to uniting "brothers," which at the time would have been a way of describing same-sex partners whose lifestyles were tolerated in Rome. Also, marriages over a millennium ago were not based on procreation, but wealth-sharing. So "marriage" sometimes meant a non-sexual union of two people's or families' wealth. Boswell admits that some of the documents he found may refer simply to non-sexual joining of two men's fortunes -- but many also referred to what today we would call gay marriage.
Legal scholar Richard Ante wrote a law journal article explaining that Boswell's book could even be used as evidence for the legality of gay marriage, since it shows evidence that definitions of marriage have changed over time. He describes some of Boswell's evidence of these same-sex rites in the early first millennium:
The burial rite given for Achilles and Patroclus, both men, was the burial rite for a man and his wife. The relationships of Hadrian and Antinous, of Polyeuct and Nearchos, of Perpetua and Felicitas, and of Saints Serge and Bacchus, all bore resemblance to heterosexual marriages of their times. The iconography of Serge and Bacchus was even used in same-sex nuptial ceremonies by the early Christian Church.
Annalee Newitz comments at the site:
There's one thing I've always wondered about this transitional period between a west dominated by the Roman Empire vs. a west dominated by various flavors of Christianity. Maybe some historians among you can answer. I wonder how much anti-homosexual sentiment in the Bible might be rooted in anti-Greco-Roman sentiment. In other words, was the anti-gay stance a rejection of this imperialist culture where homosexuality was accepted and even celebrated? Basically a political stance against the oppressors, rather than a moral stance against a set of sexual acts?
A response from worldsmiths (much of which corresponds with some of what I know from my mother's studying the Bible as literature for 40 years):
It's a bit more complicated than that: as a historian, we have to look at the Bible as a historical document, or rather a compilation of various historical documents. There's also the problem of translation - what ancient, working-class Greek and Aramaic written 2000 years ago ACTUALLY Meant is somewhat open to interpretation. Here's the breakdown simply put, though:First) The books which make up the Christian Bible's Old Testament condemn certain homosexual acts, but they do so in the context of special rules for the Israelite peoples which were meant to set them aside from their neighbors in the Levant, who were at least nominally accepting of various forms of what we would now call homosexuality. These rules or regulations were never meant to apply to the whole of mankind, but for the specific, 'special' people the books were addressed to at the time. There is, notably, no reference to the practices of people living outside of the Israelites' immediate vicinity: the practices of Greece and Rome do not feature. One more interesting note: due to the problem of translation, Biblical and non-Biblical historians are unable to agree about whether or not the Old Testament rules were meant to prohibit all forms of homosexual behavior, or the specific forms of ritualistic homosexuality and homosexual prostitution associated with the near-by pagan religions of their neighbors. Remember, the Old Testament also endorses the Israelites taking female sex slaves from conquered or defeated enemies - what modern Jews and Christians believe the Old Testament says may not be correct.
Second) There is even more disagreement about what the books of the New Testament mean when they condemn homosexuality. Non-Biblical Historians studying the texts are pretty sure the writings of apostles like Paul were meant to specifically condemn the practice of ritual or temple prostitution by males and females straight or gay. Biblical Historians tend to interperate the text as a blanket condemnation of all forms of homosexuality. In this case, the Jews were definitely aware of and interacting with Imperial Roman Civilization, which completely accepted the discreet practice of some forms of homosexual behavior (as long as it wasn't someone who could be considered a head of state or a father of the people - being on the submissive side of homosexuality was seen as emasculating.) and their rather specific reference to temple prostitution would seem to suggest that the early church fathers were not so much against homosexuality as they were against temple prostitution.
Keeping Prostitution Illegal Gives Pimps For Child Prostitutes Cover
Ari Armstrong is right. His tweet:
@ariarmstrong
If prostitution were legal (for adults), it would be far easier to track down and stop child pimps.
In Denver alone, six (evil) pimps arrested, nine children saved. Sadie Gurman writes in The Denver Post:
The nine children were among 105 recovered in 76 cities throughout the country, the FBI announced Monday. At least 150 pimps nationwide face state and federal charges as a result of Operation Cross Country VII....In an unrelated case in December, eight people, some of whom had connections to the Crips street gang, were indicted after prosecutors said they used online ads to sell sex with underage girls to clients in several Colorado cities and beat the girls when they did not comply.
Link Sandwich
With marshmallow fluff.
Informant Caught On Tape Planting Crack Before Arrest Of Businessman
Jonathan Turley notes about the arrest of smoke shop owner Donald Andrews, Jr., who was lucky he had video cameras:
The arrest of Andrews (shown right in his mugshot) was treated as just another story by the local media until Andrews' lawyer reviewed the security tapes at the business.The video appears to show the informant planting the baggie of crack on the counter. It was enough to secure a seven year sentence for Andrews. The fact that it was placed so obviously would seem to indicate that the informant expected the police to be right behind him.
After the truth was revealed on the tape, the informant fled and remains on the run.
Of course, the sheriff blames the informant and not his officers in using such a person in these operations. Why use some low-life rather than an undercover officer?
What is missing is a video of the arrest or an idea of how fast the police entered the business after the informant's departure. We also do not know if the officers gave him the drugs to use or what he was being offered in return for the sting operation. What is clear is that this informant was acting as an agent for these officers and ultimately for the police department.
Those details will likely come through a wrongful arrest lawsuit, hopefully.
It is a terribly serious thing, taking away another person's freedom, and any police officer who knowingly participated in this should not only be off the force; morally speaking, they should be in jail. (I'm not sure if this would be legally called for, but it sure is morally.)
In Louisiana, If Someone Appears To Be Trying To Rob Your Home, Be Sure You Can Read Their Thoughts
A homeowner with a pregnant wife and baby was arrested for attempted second-degree murder after shooting a teenager who had climbed over his fence in the middle of the night, writes Jacob Sullum at reason:
Merritt Landry, who works as a building inspector for the city's Historic District Landmarks Commission, said he believed Marshall Coulter, a 14-year-old with a history of burglary arrests, was about to break into his home. Awakened by his dog's barking, Landry went outside to see what was going on and saw Coulter in his driveway a few feet from his back door. Landry said that as he approached Coulter the teenager made a "move, as if to reach for something." Landry said he fired at that point, fearing that Coulter had a weapon. But police said Coulter, who was struck in the head and critically wounded, was unarmed and did not pose the sort of "imminent threat" that would justify the use of deadly force. Based on where they found blood and a shell casing, they estimated that Landry shot Coulter from a distance of about 30 feet.Coulter's 23-year-old brother, David Coulter, admitted that Marshall had a history of "stealing stuff," calling him a "professional thief." But he said Marshall "would never pick up a gun, not in a million years." He added:
He's still a little boy. Who pulls a trigger on a 14-year-old? What if it was your little brother or your sister? How would you feel?
I would feel that it is not only wildly unethical to break into people's homes but wildly dangerous. Some of those people don't just lie in bed hoping you won't take too much. They grab a gun and defend themselves, their loved ones and their property.
More from Sullum:
So why was Landry arrested? Det. Nicholas Williams asserted in the arrest warrant that Coulter was not trying to enter Landry's house when he was shot. But this "professional thief" had hopped Landry's fence at 2 a.m. and was a few feet from the back door. If he had closed that distance and put his hand on the door knob before being shot, would that have made Landry's use of force justified?
Toward A More Libertarian, Less Interventionist Foreign Policy
David French writes at NRO:
Multiple constraints are driving America towards less intervention:First, our military infrastructure is shrinking, rapidly. With the drawdown from Afghanistan, the end of the Iraq war, the sequester, and continued budgetary pressures, we may well see an Army of less than 400,000 active-duty troops. Large-scale interventions require large-scale forces, and the smaller size of all the major branches of the military will create its own limitations.
Second, there is little military or civilian appetite for nation-building. Nothing short of a direct attack on our country or a close ally (like South Korea) would currently motivate Americans to put substantial numbers of troops on the ground in harm's way. There's a reason why millions of Americans grew tired of our engagement in Afghanistan (and, before that, Iraq) that had nothing to do with pacifism or even ideology: quite simply, while they wanted to defeat our enemies, they were weary of attempting to transform near-medieval cultures. By late 2006 the Surge may have presented the best chance to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq, but let's not forget that the Surge was made necessary by many of our own military and diplomatic mistakes.
Third, we're no longer naïve. We've spent decades throwing billions of dollars at ungrateful, brutal regimes. We've turned a blind eye to countless human-rights atrocities, and delivered pathetic platitudes about other nations, cultures, and religions -- all in an effort to make sure that hostile nations (to paraphrase Sally Field) like us, really like us. Bill Clinton invited Yasser Arafat to the White House more than any foreign leader and the Second Intifadah was his gift in response. And can someone help me make sense of the administration's bizarre embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt? There are good reasons why Rand Paul's call to cut off most foreign aid strikes a nerve with Americans; most of the aid hasn't worked, doesn't work, won't work, and still costs us billions.
Fourth, we trust the government less. It's not just the corruption (IRS, Fast & Furious) or the political cowardice (Benghazi), it's also the incompetence. Not even the most comprehensive security state in the world can survive incompetence. We have a distressing habit of identifiying and interviewing prospective terrorists -- only to let them walk free and launch attacks. What if we're not trading liberty for security but instead surrending liberty and privacy without getting a corresponding security benefit in return?
Stairway To Nowhere
Beverly Glen Boulevard, Los Angeles. 
LIVE SHOW TONIGHT! Advice Goddess Radio, 7-8pm PT: Dr. Elizabeth Dunn, How Money Really CAN Buy Happiness
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My live radio shows start again tonight with a show filled with science news everyone can use -- the science of how to spend our way to happiness.
My guest tonight is psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Dunn, co-author with Dr. Michael Norton, of a terrific, highly readable little book filled with research-driven wisdom: "Happy Money: The Science Of Smarter Spending."
On tonight's show, she'll lay out the myths we hold about how spending in certain ways will improve our lives and will explain all the ways we can rejigger our spending and thinking, often in small ways, to spend smarter and happier.
Dunn, at age 26, was featured as one of the "rising stars" in academia by the Chronicle of Higher Education, and this should be a very interesting and practical show, so don't miss it!
Listen live at this link at 7 p.m. Pacific, 10 p.m. Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/29/dr-elizabeth-dunn-how-money-really-can-buy-happiness
Don't miss last week's show with sex therapist Dr. Brandy Engler.
Dr. Engler is unique in that she opened a sex therapy practice for women -- expecting to slowly get some clients -- and quickly amassed a full list of clients: all men.
Engler and New York Times best-selling biographer David Rensin have just published a fascinating book about her sessions and her insights, The Men On My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love, and Psychotherapy.
This is your chance to go inside her sessions -- to see into the erotic minds of men. And not pervos or deviants, but regular guys. Men we all know.
Beyond the men, we also see into the minds of the women having sex with these men -- or refusing to -- and find out why, and what it takes to balance love and eroticism in a relationship.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/22/dr-brandy-engler-inside-the-erotic-minds-of-men-women
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
The New York Times Editorial Board On The Pretend Security Of The TSA
They write:
The chance of dying in an airplane is vanishingly small. The chance of being killed by a terrorist in an airplane is smaller still. Mark Stewart, a civil engineer who studies probabilistic risk, has put the odds at one in 90 million a year. Looking at these figures dispassionately, one might wonder if the Transportation Security Administration has found the right balance between safety and convenience with its notoriously burdensome airport screening procedures.The T.S.A. seems to understand that the status quo is barely tolerable for many travelers and is seeking to reduce the hassle.
Translation: Keep their jobs and the money flowing.
More:
The former head of the T.S.A., Kip Hawley, has argued that the agency should allow passengers to carry on all liquids, in any quantity. As a safeguard against explosives, passengers would simply have to put their liters of Evian in gray bins and pass them through scanners. Mr. Hawley sees reasons for keeping footwear checks, but those, too, are of questionable value. Passengers do not remove their shoes in the European Union, or even in Israel, one of the world's most security-conscious countries, with a famously stringent screening process.It is time to stop pretending that annoying protocols like these are all that stand between us and devastation. The most effective security innovation post-9/11 was also the simplest: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, which has made it virtually impossible to hijack an aircraft.
As things stand, the T.S.A. asks its officers to enforce rules of questionable utility while giving them remarkably little discretion; they're more like hall monitors than intelligence personnel. That is a huge waste of human talent and a source of inefficiency. At Heathrow Airport in London, passengers need to remove their shoes only if asked to do so by security officers. Imagine that: a screening agent entrusted with the solemn power to wave through a teenager in flip-flops en route to Honolulu.
Hawley is a sleazebag. He waited until he was off the TSA teat and hawking a book to argue for a tiny bit of sanity in these "security" practices.
As many of us have pointed out and as I very recently blogged, any terrorist who wants to blow some people up has a bunch of sitting ducks at the ready in the TSA "security" line.
We have the best possibility of stopping terrorists by doing targeted intelligence, using trained intelligence officers (as opposed to repurposed hamburger clerks feeling up our sex parts), and rooting out plots long before anybody gets to their destination.
Do we really think some girl who thought feeling under your bangs for explosives was a great career option is a person who's going to figure out whether somebody has something nefarious planned?
The Vitamin Myth And The Reality: Many Supplements Actually Seem To Kill You Faster
I take some vitamins -- first, there's 5,000 iu of D, based on having my levels tested. (For the record, it's better to just go outside.)
And then there's magnesium, which we don't seem to get enough of in our diet, and then there's vitamin K, to help keep calcium in the right places -- bones -- and out of the wrong ones (arteries). And I take a coconut oil capsule once or twice a day when I don't feel like drinking or have time to make a coconut oil tea (brain food that substitutes for coffee at night in terms of energy and mental clarity).
But a sweet young researcher friend told me at a conference recently that he's taking loads of supplements and I was very worried about him. There's a terrific article in The Atlantic, an excerpt from Dr. Paul Offit's book, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine
Offit explains, based on solid studies, how wrong Linus Pauling was about megadoses of various vitamins. Here's a bit from the end of the piece:
In 2007, researchers from the National Cancer Institute examined 11,000 men who did or didn't take multivitamins. Those who took multivitamins were twice as likely to die from advanced prostate cancer.In 2008, a review of all existing studies involving more than 230,000 people who did or did not receive supplemental antioxidants found that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease.
On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota evaluated 39,000 older women and found that those who took supplemental multivitamins, magnesium, zinc, copper, and iron died at rates higher than those who didn't. They concluded, "Based on existing evidence, we see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements."
Two days later, on October 12, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic published the results of a study of 36,000 men who took vitamin E, selenium, both, or neither. They found that those receiving vitamin E had a 17 percent greater risk of prostate cancer. In response to the study, Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, said, "The concept of multivitamins was sold to Americans by an eager nutraceutical industry to generate profits. There was never any scientific data supporting their usage." On October 25, a headline in the Wall Street Journal asked, "Is This the End of Popping Vitamins?" Studies haven't hurt sales. In 2010, the vitamin industry grossed $28 billion, up 4.4 percent from the year before. "The thing to do with [these reports] is just ride them out," said Joseph Fortunato, chief executive of General Nutrition Centers. "We see no impact on our business."
How could this be? Given that free radicals clearly damage cells -- and given that people who eat diets rich in substances that neutralize free radicals are healthier -- why did studies of supplemental antioxidants show they were harmful? The most likely explanation is that free radicals aren't as evil as advertised. Although it's clear that free radicals can damage DNA and disrupt cell membranes, that's not always a bad thing. People need free radicals to kill bacteria and eliminate new cancer cells. But when people take large doses of antioxidants, the balance between free radical production and destruction might tip too much in one direction, causing an unnatural state in which the immune system is less able to kill harmful invaders. Researchers have called this "the antioxidant paradox." Whatever the reason, the data are clear: high doses of vitamins and supplements increase the risk of heart disease and cancer; for this reason, not a single national or international organization responsible for the public's health recommends them.
In May 1980, during an interview at Oregon State University, Linus Pauling was asked, "Does vitamin C have any side effects on long-term use of, let's say, gram quantities?" Pauling's answer was quick and decisive. "No," he replied.
Seven months later, his wife was dead of stomach cancer. In 1994, Linus Pauling died of prostate cancer.
How Detroit Kills Entrepreneurism And How Other Cities Foster It
A 2011 piece by Edward L. Glaeser on City Journal. An excerpt:
Detroit also has much to teach us about how wrongheaded public policy can discourage entrepreneurship. The federal government, to begin with, has repeatedly acted to save the auto industry. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act, which guaranteed $1.2 billion of Chrysler debt. In 1981, the U.S. government pressured the Japanese into accepting "voluntary export restraints" that limited the number of Japanese cars imported into America to 1.7 million per year. (A side effect of the restraints was pushing Japanese manufacturers to open production plants within the United States; needless to say, they typically chose spots far from union-dominated Detroit.) Most recently and spectacularly, the feds bailed out General Motors with $50 billion and Chrysler with $10 billion.It's easy to understand why the government wanted to keep two large companies from collapsing in the middle of a recession. But the Big Three were synonymous with industrial stagnation; for all we know, a dissolution of General Motors would have led to a cluster of smaller, more nimble companies. Some might have failed, but others might have been innovative enough to start adding employment. What we do know is that we haven't produced a world-beating car industry that will be a future jobs machine. These companies will probably keep sputtering along, making money in good years and requiring more bailouts in bad.
...Detroit's People Mover now glides over underused, often empty, streets, a reminder of the mistaken notion held by all three mayors and by the urban-renewal movement generally: that shiny new buildings can make a shiny new city (see "Urban-Development Legends"). Subsidizing new housing never makes sense in a declining city, since the hallmark of declining cities is that they have an abundance of structures relative to the level of population and demand. At the moment, more than 90 percent of Detroit's houses are priced below construction cost, so it hardly makes sense to bribe people to build more of them. As for infrastructure, it can be valuable, especially when it radically reduces the costs of doing business, as the Erie Canal did. But today, America and its cities are already well connected, and new infrastructure investments are likely to have fairly modest effects. They are especially unlikely to bring back declining cities.
What would help is knocking down the barriers that block entrepreneurs from thriving. Here, alas, Detroit is a leader in erecting barriers. Take Pink FlaminGO!, a food truck operated by entrepreneur Kristyn Koth, who sold "Latino-influenced locally-sourced fresh food," as the blog Eat It Detroit put it, out of a Gulf Airstream. Rather than cheering her on, the city gave her so many tickets that she had to close. What Crain's Detroit Business calls "Detroit's archaic ordinances governing all types of vending in the city" block food trucks from locating near existing restaurants or "in the most populated areas of Detroit"; they also tightly limit which foods street vendors may sell, partly to limit competition with restaurants.
Just as it isn't the federal government's job to prop up failing companies, it isn't a city's job to defend the status quo against innovative entrepreneurs. Detroit's heavy regulations are a big reason why there aren't enough new firms rising to offer alternatives to the Big Three.
Declining industrial cities don't have to follow Detroit's path--thanks to entrepreneurs. Forty years ago, as Boeing chopped down its local workforce, two jokers put up a billboard on a Seattle highway that read: WILL THE LAST PERSON LEAVING SEATTLE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS? Today, of course, Seattle looks nothing like Detroit. A stream of innovative companies--Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Costco--has completely transformed the city. Between May 2010 and May 2011, it added more jobs than any metropolitan area except Dallas and Houston.
Linksation
Fill 'er up!
Guess Which Employees Won't Be Getting Healthcare Benefits
Many Obamacare call center employees. Those behind the Concord, California center figured out that they could just make the employees part-time and slink out of the need to health insurance them up.
Of course, health insurance should have been untied from the workplace since few people keep the same job for any length of time, and we should just be paying insurance for big or catastrophic possibilities and paying directly like we do at the dentist for procedures. Or, at least, that should be one of the options.
Dad In A Box
George Bonanno, the psychologist who studies grief, whom I had in my show, writes that people sometimes have grief reactions we find surprising -- and can be able to laugh at the circumstances.
Gregg went to pick up the urn full of Lucy's ashes, because, well, what if the last of your dog gets lost in the mail?
And after I, teary-eyed, opened the box and took out the tiny urn -- about three inches high and a little Chinese jar like my stylish grandma used to have -- Gregg said, "I thought it would be bigger."
I said (about three-pound Lucy), "It would be a little crazy if the urn were bigger than the dog!" And we both laughed. And I felt a little better and Gregg did, too.
This family, bringing back their father's ashes from Israel, also had some laughs, and I wasn't surprised. In the Washington Post, Shira Toeplitz writes about boarding their flight in Tel Aviv:
"Should we stow Dad in the overhead compartment?" I asked."Beats checking him in our luggage," she replied. "What if the airlines lost him?"
...His ashes sat on a conference room table in the cardboard box, inside a purple gift bag, ready for transport. Ilana and I cried for a while, but a few hours later, we were joking that we were transporting chocolate Kinder eggs in that bag. Dad would have preferred the chocolate, anyway.
Unfortunately, the security guards at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport did not share our sense of humor. After all, we were two 20-something foreigners traveling alone with a box of off-white powder.
We repeatedly explained our "Dad-in-a-box" to passport control and luggage inspectors, appropriate paperwork in hand. I grimaced as bags collided with our package on the X-ray conveyor belt.
"Did you watch him get cremated? Please be honest," a particularly stern security guard with a submachine gun strapped to his chest asked at the final checkpoint.
"Uh, no," I replied. For a second, I thought he wouldn't let us go because I hadn't witnessed the all-consuming flames.
"I'm sorry for your loss," the guard said. "Next, please."
By that flight back to the United States, all we could do was laugh at the situation. It was better than sobbing in the middle seat.
I have a darling puppy I've fallen for and hope to have her in my life, but the breeders are, somebody joked, more careful than if we were adopting an orphan. I respect this. They want the dog to not only go to a kind person who will take good care of her but the right home for her.
Gregg and I had a Skype conversation with the husband on Friday morning. I normally don't interrupt my early morning writing hours unless there's an earthquake that throws me out of my desk chair, but this dog already has me wound around its tiny paw.
I need to talk to the husband again on Wednesday, and I hope they will decide I'll give her a good home. Mine is a bit empty without a little doggie to love.
Oh, The Psychological Effects Of Pepper-Spraying A Bunch Of Seated, Non-Violent Protesters
The cop who pepper-sprayed a bunch of Occupy students protesting at UC Davis claims he has some boohoos now as a result, reports NBC Los Angeles, and wants worker's comp:
The former police officer who pepper-sprayed students during an Occupy protest at the University of California, Davis is appealing for worker's compensation, claiming he suffered psychiatric injury from the 2011 confrontation. John Pike has a settlement conference set for Aug. 13 in Sacramento, according to the state Department of Industrial Relations' website. Pike was fired in July 2012, eight months after a task force investigation found that his action was unwarranted.
Dying Man's Last Wish To Be Buried Next To His Husband, But Ohio Attorney General Wants To See That Doesn't Happen
Ian Milhiser writes at The Good Men Project:
John Arthur is dying. He is in the terminal stages of Lou Gehrig's disease and has entered hospice care. Arthur is also gay, and in a 20 year relationship with a man named Jim Obergefell. Because the couple's home state of Ohio will not allow them to marry, Arthur and Obergefell recently flew to Maryland together and were legally married on the tarmac -- just weeks after the Supreme Court's landmark marriage equality decision in United States v. Windsor. Arthur was unable to rise from his hospice bed.In his final days, Arthur wants to honor his commitment to his husband. He wants his own death certificate to list Obergefell as his "surviving spouse." And he wants to die knowing that his partner of 20 years can someday be buried next to him in a family plot bound by a directive that only permits his lawfully wedded spouse to be interred alongside him. And, on Monday, a federal judge ruled that Arthur should indeed have the dignity of dying alongside a man that Ohio will recognize as his husband.
And now, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) wants to take that dignity away from Mr. Arthur. The day after a judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring Ohio to list Arthur's husband as his "surviving spouse" on his death certificate, DeWine announced that he would appeal this decision and try to strip a dying man of his final wish.
There are marriage equality cases with sweeping national implications. This is not one of them. The judge's order is limited exclusively to Arthur and Obergefell. Indeed, as the judge explains, "there is absolutely no evidence that the State of Ohio or its citizens will be harmed by the issuance" of an order requiring Ohio to acknowledge the two men's marriage. "No one beyond Plaintiffs themselves will be affected by such a limited order at all."
There are also marriage equality cases where a great deal of money is at stake. But this is not one of those either. In Windsor, plaintiff Edith Windsor sought $363,053 in estate taxes she was forced to pay because the federal government would not acknowledge her marriage to a woman. Arthur, by contrast, hardly has an estate to tax. He and his husband had to raise donations to cover the cost of their flight to Maryland.
At HuffPo, Tom Bartolomei writes (to DeWine):
Please explain to me how it is in the interest of the state for you to defend Ohio's constitutional amendment that defines "marriage" as a union between one man and one woman. It's not. That is the simple truth. This amendment wasn't driven by a desire for justice, equality, or what's in the best interest of the state. It was driven by fear, intolerance, ignorance, hate, and religious belief. None of these reasons justifies denying rights to a group of citizens.
20 years together? How many married straight people do you know who've broken up long before 20 years? Long before 10? Do you think it was because of teh gayz?
Mostest Linkies
Creamy filling!
Juror B29 Didn't Say Zimmerman "Got Away With Murder"
Saletan writes on Slate:
1. The phrase "got away with murder" was put in her mouth. Nightline shows ABC interviewer Robin Roberts asking Maddy: "Some people have said, 'George Zimmerman got away with murder. How do you respond to those people who say that?' " Maddy appears to reply promptly and confidently: "George Zimmerman got away with murder. But you can't get away from God." But that's not quite how the exchange happened. In the unedited video, Roberts' question is longer, with words that have been trimmed from the Nightline version, and Maddy pauses twice, for several seconds, as she struggles to answer it. "... George Zimmerman ... That's--George Zimmerman got away with murder. But you can't get away from God."You have to watch her, not just read her words, to pick up her meaning. As she struggles to answer, she looks as though she's trying to reconcile the sentiment that's been quoted to her--that Zimmerman "got away with murder"--with her own perspective. So she repeats the quote and adds words of her own, to convey what she thinks: that there's a justice higher than the law, which Zimmerman will have to face. She thinks he's morally culpable, not legally guilty.
Saletan added:
2. She stands by the verdict. ABC's online story about the interview ends with Maddy asking, "Did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?" But that's not the whole quote. In the unedited video, she continues: "I know I went the right way, because by the law and the way it was followed is the way I went. But if I would have used my heart, I probably would have [gone for] a hung jury." In another clip, she draws the same distinction: "I stand by the decision because of the law. If I stand by the decision because of my heart, he would have been guilty." At one point, she says that "the evidence shows he's guilty." Roberts presses her: "He's guilty of?" Maddy answers: "Killing Trayvon Martin. But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can't say he's guilty." That's the distinction she's trying to draw here: Killing is one thing. Murder or manslaughter is another.3. She thinks the case should never have gone to trial. According to ABC News, when Roberts asked "whether the case should have gone to trial," Maddy answered, "I don't think so. ... I felt like this was a publicity stunt."
Vanity Ambassadorships: Caroline Kennedy Is The Latest
President Obama appointed her ambassador to Japan, despite the fact that she does not speak Japanese and has no particular special knowledge about Japan. Paul Richter writes in the LA Times:
WASHINGTON -- Since the beginning of his second term, President Obama has appointed campaign fundraisers, party allies and other political figures as ambassadors at a level that is now almost double what has prevailed in the last few administrations.More than 56% of Obama's 41 second-term ambassadorial nominations have been political, compared with an average of about 30% for recent administrations, according to U.S. government figures compiled by the American Foreign Service Assn. Of the political nominees, at least half have had fundraising roles.
...Kennedy, who swung her family's crucial support to Obama during his 2008 primary fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton, is known as an intelligent, low-key woman who has never held a government post and has shunned the spotlight. She has spent much of her time in recent years promoting the Kennedy legacy as chairwoman of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and writing and editing books, most related to the Kennedy family.
Her advocates say Kennedy, the first woman nominated for the post, will bring close presidential ties and star power to a country with warm memories of her father, who smoothed over some diplomatic conflicts as president.
But Kennedy doesn't speak Japanese and has no special knowledge of Asia. Nor, apparently, does she bring the glad-handing inclinations of many businesspeople and lawyers who move from political roles to diplomatic posts.
...Kennedy has been trying to learn more about Japan and is considering hiring a Japan specialist as a personal advisor if she becomes ambassador, according to Washington experts on Japan.
Yet even with a good staff, "it's not optimal," said Douglas Paal, an Asia specialist and former U.S. official with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
The notion of appointing or electing a star hasn't worked well in California. We had hoped Schwarzenegger, who is a businessman and talked about fiscal sense, would do well as governor. He had no experience in building the support coalitions he would have needed to get things done.
When Men Sabotage Birth Control
It makes perfect evolutionary sense -- trying to get a woman pregnant to pass on one's genes and to maintain control of her. Kay Stoeffel writes at New York Mag:
One of the subject's leading experts, the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh's chief of adolescent medicine Elizabeth E. Miller, M.D., Ph.D., began looking into the phenomenon less than a decade ago, after seeing a 15-year-old patient who said her boyfriend only used condoms some of the time. Rather than asking whether the boyfriend refused her request to use condoms, she assumed the patient needed to be educated about birth control. Two weeks later, the girl was in the emergency room with a severe head injury. "Personally, it was incredibly destabilizing," Miller recalled. "It was like, 'How could I have missed this?" Later, she interviewed girls who were known to have been in violent relationships for a 2007 paper on the topic. "A quarter of them said, 'He was trying to get me pregnant.'"In Miller's 2010 study, one of the largest on reproductive coercion to date, 15 percent of 1,300 women who visited federal- and state-subsidized California family-planning clinics had their birth control sabotaged. One in five had been urged by a boyfriend not to use birth control, or told by a boyfriend he would leave her if she wouldn't get pregnant. A larger portion of respondents, 35 percent, who reported intimate partner violence (IPV) also reported birth-control sabotage.
Because Miller's study examined low-income-friendly clinics -- and because domestic violence disproportionately affects low-income women -- some have conjectured that reproductive coercion is a classed issue. But Dr. Clark's survey, which looked at a general population of patients, with and without private insurance, suggests birth-control sabotage and pregnancy coercion happen at a similar rate across socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. In her study, the single highest risk factor for reproductive coercion was being unmarried and sexually active.
Miller's co-author Rebecca Levenson, a senior policy analyst for Futures Without Violence, said she expects more and diverse women will come forward as information about reproductive coercion spreads and women recognize it as a kind of abuse. "Naming something is powerful," she said. But first, she hopes the research will inform the many doctors who are in a position to directly intervene and reduce the reproductive harm facing IPV victims -- be it an unwanted pregnancy, an expensive abortion, or the unhappy extension of a bad relationship -- but don't know to ask. Harm-reduction strategies range from offering birth control or emergency contraceptives in plain packaging to switching women to a stealthier method, like Depo Provera hormone shots or an IUD with the strings clipped.
Levenson described a 17-year-old she interviewed whose boyfriend claimed the condom broke six times in a row before she sought out Depo Provera for herself. This was before reproductive coercion was widely discussed, she said, but "Imagine how powerful it would be if when she went to the clinic the clinician would say, 'Hey, you've come in for emergency contraceptive three times. Are you at all worried about that?'"
If you are the one who gets pregnant, you should consider it your responsibility to protect yourself against pregnancy. If medically okay for you, a copper IUD has no hormones and is extremely protective.
via lenona
Why The TSA Is A Huge Joke That Endangers Us Rather Than Keeping Us Safe
Doug Newman, who is flying for the third time this year, blogs:
If a terrorist really wanted to kill a lot of people and disrupt aviation, he would not go to all the trouble of smuggling a bomb onto a plane. Rather, he would set off a bomb in a terminal.Terrorists could even orchestrate a coordinated attack at multiple locations. Imagine bombs going off at eight on a Monday morning at, say, ATL, ORD, LAX and DFW. Imagine thousands dead and America's four largest aviation hubs crippled indefinitely.
TSA waits until well after you enter a terminal before commencing with gate rape. Not only have they never caught a terrorist in over a decade, but they leave most parts of airports ... ahem ... "unprotected."
He gets the real danger exactly right:
Likewise, there is a "higher parade of horribles" that applies to TSA. As horrible as terrorism is, there would be something immeasurably more horrible: life under a totalitarian government.And this is exactly what millions of Americans seem willing to accept in the name of "security". How else would you describe a government that will presume its citizens guilty until proven innocent and molest and assault them as a condition of movement? When we forsake the presumption of innocence, we lose America.
And if you will quietly accept TSA's sexual - and scatalogical - humiliation, what will you not accept? Where will you draw the line? If you think TSA is of secondary importance, then don't complain to me about the IRS or Obamacare. You have already told me that you will allow your government to do absolutely anything.
via @AKFTTUSA
Stand By Your Man: Why Do These Political Wives Do It?
There was Huma Abedin, Weiner's wife, sucking it up in public once again, as her repeat-offending humiliator of a husband rubbed her face in his infidelities.
Why?
Why does this woman stand by her man?
Why do other political wives do it?
Murder Your Children, Make A Buck
Via @Overlawyered, Leatrice Brewer, 33, a woman who drowned her three young children in a bathtub in 2008, wants a cut of the $350K obtained by the children's fathers in wrongful death suits.
From the AP/NY Daily News story about the "mentally disturbed" woman:
Leatrice Brewer, 33, was found not guilty because of mental disease or defect in the deaths of her children, so her attorneys say she should not be subject to laws that bar convicts from profiting from their crimes.
This sure smells like lawyers going after a payday. It's times like this that I wish I believed in hell so I could believe these lawyers would soon be burning there.
Hostess Linkies
They last 300 years.
Dogging Instead Of Blogging
Blogging was a bit light today because I spent two and a half hours talking with a breeder today. I think I found the right doggie for me, and the breeders just want to be sure I would give their dog a good home, and the right home.
This kind of breeder, by the way, is the only kind I'm interested in. If a breeder isn't very concerned about who you are, what kind of environment you'd provide, and the level of responsibility you feel, well, they're just merchants, and they might as well be selling screwdrivers.
The woman and I really hit it off -- we would be friends, I think, if she lived closer, and I just need to talk to her husband. I love that they don't give their dogs to just anyone and also, they are registered with the registries for genetic diseases, showing that they have tested their dogs and thus don't breed two dogs that are carriers for any diseases the breed is susceptible to.
My life is missing a substantial chunk of joy that Lucy brought to it, and I'm hoping to have another tiny doggie in my life soon. Hoping this works out!
"Policing For Profit" Allows Municipalities To Seize Your Cash
Law prof Jonathan Turley writes about a disgusting cash seizure by cops -- a stripper carrying more than a million dollars in cash in her car to go buy a nightclub:
We have previously discussed how police are increasingly doing drug stops on pretextual grounds and seizing any money that a driver cannot explain to their satisfaction. It is called "policing for profit" and departments are able to keep much of seized money in these stops. The federal government is being forced to return over $1 million to Tara Mishra, 33, of California, who was taking her life savings as a stripper to buy her own business.That was before it was seized Nebraska state troopers who declared that it must be drug proceeds. Even though no drugs were found and there was no basis for concluding the cash was from drug proceeds, the matter became a federal case and the Obama Administration fought her to deny her even a hearing for demanding the money back.
Now U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon has ordered them to give back the money. However, this is not considered theft because police officers took the money at a traffic stop. The case is United States of America v. $1,074,900.00 in United States Currency, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11544 (D. Neb. 2013).
...I am unclear of why the Justice Department gets away with dragging on such litigation without a factual basis for the allegation of a drug transaction. They put this woman through years of litigation and, even under the exceptionally generous rules and standards for seizure, could not make a case for treating the money as drug money.
Actually, It's Not Beheading Homosexuals Or Jailing Women For Rape That Will Challenge Western Perceptions About Islam
Of course, these practices are part of Islam, as is how a woman has half the rights of a man, so the perception that Islam commands violence and is antithetical to modern human rights is, actually, correct.
From The Blaze, besides funding terrorism and those who support it, Qatar is spending buttloads of money on art -- recently, $70 million on a Rothko. Sharona Schwartz quotes a woman, Qatar's Sheika Al Mayassa, sister to Qatar's emir, is doing the purchasing:
The Sheika - who the Economist recently named "the art world's most powerful woman" - would not give an interview to the New York Times, but in 2010 told the paper that setting up art museums might challenge Western preconceptions about Islam."My father often says, in order to have peace, we need to first respect each other's cultures," she told the paper. "And people in the West don't understand the Middle East. They come with Bin Laden in their heads."
The Qatar Museums Authority has established three high-profile museums in recent years designed by acclaimed architects Jean Nouvel, I. M. Pei and Jean-François Bodin.
Art watchers believe the goal is to make Qatar a destination hub for art aficionados.
Just don't get raped while working for a Qatari billionaire.
Linksploitation
A show-me state...
Apparently, There's A Royal Spawn In Need Of A Name
Baby name I'm betting on: Keshawn.
Don't Think We're Living In A Police State? Wendy McElroy Will Tell You Why You're Wrong
McElroy writes at Mises:
A police state is more commonly described as a totalitarian government that exerts extreme social, political, and economic control. It maintains this control by a pervasive surveillance of its own citizenry, by draconian law enforcement, and by granting or withholding "privileges" such the ability to travel. Typically, there is a special police force, such as a Stasi, that operates with no transparency and few restraints. Unlike traditional policemen, who respond to crime, the purpose of such state police is to monitor and control society.Let me restate my opening question: does America now embody this common description of a police state?
Clearly it does. The American government exerts extreme control over society, down to dictating which foods you may eat. Its economic control borders on the absolute. It politicizes and presides over even the traditional bastion of privacy -- the family. Camera and other surveillance of daily life has soared, with the Supreme Court recently expanding the "right" of police to perform warrantless searches. Enforcement is so draconian that the United States has more prisoners per capita than any other nation; and over the last few years, the police have been self-consciously militarizing their procedures and attitudes. Travel, formerly a right, is now a privilege granted by government agents at their whim. Several huge and tyrannical law-enforcement agencies monitor peaceful behavior rather than respond to crime. These agencies operate largely outside the restrictions of the Constitution; for example, the TSA conducts arbitrary searches in violation of Fourth Amendment guarantees.
via Popehat
Linka Binka Bottle Of Ink...
Cork fell out and...
Why Must The Government Stick Its Grubby Paws Between Me And My Dinner?
A comment I left on my post from Sunday, "Government Regulators Don't Want To Let You Buy Straight From Farmers":
How about this: Nervous nellies who want their meat from inspected, government controlled farms can buy their meat from them, and I'll go meet the farmer and say hello, and buy his eggs, cheese and meat, sans intervention from the federales?Those who wish to keep Uncle Sam out of their transaction should be allowed to do so.
I tweeted this after tweeting the link to this post:
@amyalkon
& by "inspect" food I buy from the farm, I mean pet the cow. If I don't require my food govt-inspected, why should govt be involved at all?
TSA Thuggos At Richmond Int'l Forced To Study First And Fourth Amendment Rights They Rip Away From Us To Earn Money
I just love this. Those who earn money for violating us in the airport in the name of security are getting schooled in the First And Fourth Amendments thanks to one of my heros, Aaron Tobey, the "Fourth Amendment flasher."
Tobey stripped down to his running shorts at a TSA checkpoint, flashing the Fourth Amendment written across his chest. (We need more like Tobey. This shouldn't be a rare occurrence. If you have rights, you should be standing up for them.)
Jacob Gershman writes in The WSJ:
Beforehand, he had used a marker to write part of the Fourth Amendment on his chest: "The right of the people to be secure... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."Police officers then handcuffed Mr. Tobey, questioned him and threatened him with criminal sanctions. He was detained for more than an hour, according to court documents. The charge was ultimately dropped.
Mr. Tobey sued the Richmond airport police and the TSA, claiming they violated his First Amendment rights. A U.S. district judge in 2011 rejected the government's motion to dismiss his claim, a ruling upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
The schooling for the thuggos:
Richmond International Airport officials announced this week that their security officers underwent a special two-hour training course on the First and Fourth Amendment rights of passengers as a part of a settlement with Mr. Tobey...."Frankly, the nation would be better served if all government officials were required to undertake a training course on what it means to respect the constitutional rights of the citizenry," said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute.
Many thanks to Whitehead and the Rutherford Institute for defending Tobey, to Marc J. Randazza for defending me, and to all of those who offer backup for those of us who act up in support of our rights.
Personally, I really don't feel I did much at all, vis a vis the lengths some go to in other countries to defend rights; I think it just seems to some like more than it is because so many Americans aways act like completely compliant sheep.
Obama: The President Who Would Be King
Obama likes your rights best when they're flashing before your eyes as he and his administration yank them away.
In USA Today, George Mason law prof Ilya Somin chronicles some of the truly disgusting overreach:
In Horne v. Department of Agriculture, a decision issued in June, the justices unanimously rejected the Obama administration's argument that raisin farmers did not have the right to go to court to contest the seizure of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of raisins. The Fifth Amendment states that the government must pay "just compensation" whenever the government takes private property for "public use." But the administration claimed that farmers could not even raise the takings issue in court without first enduring lengthy delays and paying a $483,000 fine.Horne was the administration's third unanimous defeat in a property rights case in 18 months. In Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, it claimed that a couple had no right to go to court to seek compensation after the EPA blocked construction of their "dream house."
In Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, it unsuccessfully argued that the Fifth Amendment doesn't require compensation when the federal government repeatedly and deliberately floods property owners' land. Even liberal justices normally skeptical of property rights claims, including one of President Obama's appointees, found these arguments too much to swallow.
The Obama administration has also suffered unanimous defeats in several other important cases.
Last year, the justices rejected the administration's position that the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment does not apply to churches' to hire and fire employees with religious duties, such as teaching theology. Obama appointee Justice Elena Kagan called the administration's position "amazing."
In United States v. Jones, another 2012 case, the justices unanimously rejected the administration's claim that the Fourth Amendment does not restrict the government's authority to attach a GPS tracking device to a car.
Still think we've got a better sort of president?
The Dummies Running Our Government Flunked Math
A CEO's-eye view of ObamaCare in the WSJ from Hardees/Carl's Junior CEO Andrew Puzder, who can do rudimentary math a lot better than the clueless numpties we elect:
On average, our general managers earn $50,000 per year. Should they decline insurance coverage, they will be subject to an initial annual penalty of $500 and a maximum penalty of $1,250. We estimate that their share of paying the health-insurance premium through our company plan will range between $2,000 and $3,000 per year, well in excess of any potential penalty.The lowest-paid employees who qualify for ACA coverage (as opposed to Medicaid) earn about $11,500 per year. They would be subject to an initial penalty of $115 and a maximum penalty of $695. We currently estimate that their share of health insurance premiums will be $1,091.55 per year--again, well in excess of any potential penalty. So, in the first year, our employees' insurance costs likely will be four to 10 times more than the ACA's penalty on the uninsured.
This is why I am concerned that the ACA could actually cause the number of our covered employees to decrease, particularly in the first year. The penalty for declining coverage will be low compared with the cost of coverage; and employees will know that if they happen to get sick, they can get insurance after that. So the economically rational decision for young people, like our crew employees, is to pay the penalty and forego the insurance. Despite what the government may believe, our employees are smart enough to figure this out.
For insurers, it's simple math: Premiums collected must exceed claims paid. If too few young healthy people enroll, insurers will raise premiums on those who do. This could result in a spiral of rising premiums--causing more healthy people to drop coverage, driving premiums even higher.
The rising cost of insurance affects people whether they purchase insurance through their employers or an exchange, since both depend on private insurers. If insurance costs go up, taxpayers also may end up paying more to foot the bill for the higher cost of subsidized insurance. This is particularly concerning since the administration has announced that it will be unable to verify whether applicants for subsidies actually qualify for them. The subsidies are likely to be very popular.
Why I Vacation In Places With Concrete And Buildings
Reuters headline:
Noises in tourist's head were from flesh-eating maggots
When One Becomes As Two
@Popehat tweet:
@Popehat
The Bridge has a specific warning "this program contains nudity." But not a specific one about people cut in half. Because America.
Welcome To Islam: Norwegian Woman In Dubai Sentenced To 16 Months In Jail For Being Raped
People think it's bigoted to say that women under Islam are property and rape victims are treated as criminals. What it is is being knowledgeable about Islam.
Perhaps when they see it happening to a Western woman, they'll be more persuaded.
A Norwegian woman, apparently ignorant of the realities of Islam until they rained down upon her, was, most disgustingly, jailed for 16 months after reporting that she was raped in Dubai. (Oh, and like Islam, those prisons in the United Arab Emirates aren't known for their human rights-respecting conditions.)
Brian Murphy writes for the AP:
"I have to spread the word. ... After my sentence we thought, 'How can it get worse?'" Marte Deborah Dalelv told The Associated Press in an interview Friday at a Norwegian aid compound in Dubai where she is preparing her appeal scheduled for early September.Dalelv, who worked for an interior design firm in Qatar since 2011, claims she was sexually assaulted by a co-worker in March while she was attending a business meeting in Dubai.
She said she fled to the hotel lobby and asked for the police to be called. The hotel staff asked if she was sure she wanted to involve the police, Dalelv said.
"Of course I want to call the police," she said. "That is the natural reaction where I am from."
Dalelv said she was given a medical examination seeking evidence of the alleged rape and underwent a blood test for alcohol. Such tests are commonly given in the UAE for alleged assaults and in other cases. Alcohol is sold widely across Dubai, but public intoxication can bring charges.
The ugly reality of Islam:
Under Islamic law, rape can only be proven if the rapist confesses or if there are four male witnesses. Women who allege rape, without the benefit of the act having been witnessed by four men who subsequently develop a conscience, are actually confessing to having sex. If they or the accused happens to be married, then it is considered to be adultery.
More:
A recent fatwa from a mainstream Islamic site echoes this rule and even chides a victim of incest for complaining when she has no "evidence":However, it is not permissible to accuse the father of rape without evidence. Indeed, the Sharee'ah put some special conditions for proving Zina (fornication or adultery) that are not required in case of other crimes. The crime of Zina is not confirmed except if the fornicator admits it, or with the testimony of four trustworthy men, while the testimony of women is not accepted.Hence, the statement of this girl or the statement of her mother in itself does not Islamically prove anything against the father, especially that the latter denies it.
Therefore, if this daughter has no evidence to prove that her accusations are true, she should not have claimed that she was raped by her father and she should not have taken him to the court. (IslamWeb.net, Image)
Since it is incredibly unlikely that a child molester will violate his victim in front of "four trustworthy men", Islamic law amounts to a free pass for sexual predators.
Islamic law rejects forensic evidence (such as DNA) in favor of testimony. An interesting situation thus sometimes develops in cases where a victim alleges rape and the man denies that sex even took place. In the absence of four male witnesses, rape cannot be proven. The woman's testimony then becomes a "confession" of adultery. She can be stoned, even though the male is unpunished, since he never "confessed" to a sexual act!
Some clerics blame rape on the woman. Australian Sheik Feiz recently said a rape victim "has no one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world... to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature."...Keep in mind that most Muslim countries do not operate under strict Islamic law, but rather under legal codes imported from the West. Therefore rape victims in these countries can and often do receive justice under more reasonable standards of proof.
Related: The MYTH that Mohammed would never approve of rape:
It is against Islam to rape Muslim women, but Muhammad actually encouraged the rape of others captured in battle. This hadith provides the context for the Qur'anic verse (4:24)....Actually, as the hadith indicates, it wasn't Muhammad, but "Allah the Exalted" who told the men to rape the women in front of their husbands - which is all the more reason not to think of Islam as being the same as other religions.
Note also that the husbands of these unfortunate victims were obviously alive after battle. This is important because it flatly contradicts those apologists who like to argue that the women Muhammad enslaved were widowed and thus unable to fend for themselves. (Even if the apologists were right, what sort of a moral code is it that forces a widow to choose between being raped and starving?)
There are several other episodes in which Muhammad is offered the clear opportunity to disavow raping women - yet he instead offers advice on how to proceed.
COEXIST! (In jail -- for being a victim of a crime.)
UPDATE: The Norwegian rape victim has been -- get this -- "pardoned." Yes, instead of being sent to jail as a criminal for being raped, per Islam.
Bring Back Flophouses, SROs, And Microapartments
Some cities are allowing these: forms of housing that aren't ideal for many more established people but make it possible for some -- especially the young -- to have a roof over their head and live in an urban area.
I lived in one of these -- a fixed-up SRO called the George Washington Hotel, at 23rd and Lex, when I first got to New York. It was an 8 x 10 room with no stove and a bathroom so small you couldn't sit down on the toilet and close the door, but it was a roof over my head, which meant I could get on with life in New York until I found a bigger place, which I eventually did. (A 350 square-foot apartment on 36th between 2nd and 3rd.)
Alan Durning writes at Slate that dumb urban policies killed the best types of housing for the poor, young, and single, but in "smart cities," they are making a comeback:
The private housing market could do much more to provide living spaces affordably if we discarded those requirements that merely protect others' property values by outlawing rooming houses and other simple housing options.Historically, the bottom of the scale for inexpensive housing was not the rooming house but the flophouse--essentially a hall of bunks or sleeping slabs. Aside from homeless shelters, North America no longer has flophouses. A century of regulation shut them down. But in Japan, they live on in modern form in "capsule hotels," which rent enclosed sleeping spaces by the hour or the night. In one $30-a-night Tokyo hotel, the sleeping capsules are stacked in pairs and are just big enough for a single mattress. Yet they each offer air conditioning, a radio and mini TV, a reading light, and a privacy screen. Guests share bathrooms, showers, a lounge, restaurant, and bar.
In most American cities, such 21st-century flophouses would be illegal on any number of grounds. The "rooms" are much too small: Habitable rooms may not be smaller than 7 feet by 7 feet in Seattle, for example; sleeping rooms must be bigger still. The hotels do not provide off-street parking for each room, and some do not have enough bathrooms to satisfy codes, which typically require one bathroom per eight units. The "rooms" themselves--the capsules--are code enforcers' nightmares: Among other things, they lack the windows, fire-safe doors, smoke detectors, and closets required of each legal bedroom. If regulated as dormitories (bunkhouses) rather than as separate bedrooms, meanwhile, they would violate other rules: They lack the requisite unencumbered floor space, for example.
Yet Japan has many such hotels, and its fire-safety record is better than that of the United States. Throngs of travelers and city workers stay in the capsule hotels, appreciating the low prices and clean, safe, convenient accommodations. They are cheap, too, at least by Japan's stratospheric real-estate standards. Even in the Northwest, a bed for $30 a night would be cheaper than a taxi home for some Saturday night pub crawlers. And capsule hotels operate at a profit, without public subsidy, filling one of many niches in Japan's housing market.
Imagine a continuum of such choices, extending downward from today's studio apartments. Along this continuum, we'd have complete studios smaller than those currently permitted, followed by tiny units with private baths but without full kitchens, then updated rooming houses with shared baths and kitchens, then capsule hotels. A few brave developers have been trying to reverse a century of policies on a small scale by building neo-SROs and microapartments in cities. They're responding to the strong demand, especially among millennials, for small, inexpensive units in popular, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods such as Seattle's Capitol Hill and Portland's Pearl District.
Durning's just-published e-book: Unlocking Home: Three Keys to Affordable Communities
Linkin Park
Please feed the squirrel.
Boots On The Ground Just Got Cheaper -- For Women And Men
Enter the promo code BOOTSOFF to get the discount at checkout on eligible items -- 20 percent off selected boots for men and women at Amazon
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Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT: Dr. Brandy Engler, Inside The Erotic Minds Of Men (& Women)
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
NOTE: ***This show is a "Best Of" replay because I've been attending the annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference in Miami. New live shows starting again this coming Sunday, July 28!
About tonight's show: What do men want? In bed and out? What do women want? How does this all tie together? (And who's getting tied up?)
These are just a few of the questions I'll be asking and sex therapist Dr. Brandy Engler will be answering on tonight's show.
Dr. Engler is unique in that she opened a sex therapy practice for women -- expecting to slowly get some clients -- and quickly amassed a full list of clients: all men.
Engler and New York Times best-selling biographer David Rensin have just published a fascinating book about her sessions and her insights, The Men On My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love, and Psychotherapy.
This is your chance to go inside her sessions -- to see into the erotic minds of men. And not pervos or deviants, but regular guys. Men we all know.
Beyond the men, we will also see into the minds of the women having sex with these men -- or refusing to -- and find out why, and what it takes to balance love and eroticism in a relationship.
Listen live (on tape) at this link at 7 p.m. Pacific, 10 p.m. Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/22/dr-brandy-engler-inside-the-erotic-minds-of-men-women
Don't miss last week's show on how to parent without paranoia. On it, psychology professor Dr. Gabrielle Principe notes that the panic-stricken parental race to raise tiny geniuses is actually bad parenting -- leading to overcontrolled childhoods that have negative effects on kids' development.
Through looking at solid science on the human brain, Dr. Principe has figured out ways for parents to naturalize childhood again, so a child's environment gels with how the brain was designed to grow.
Her clearly written and dryly witty book: "Your Brain on Childhood: The Unexpected Side Effects of Classrooms, Ballparks, Family Rooms, and the Minivan."
On this show, she busts countless myths about how to raise children and lays out simple, clear advice for how kids can thrive.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/15/dr-gabrielle-principe-parenting-sans-paranoia
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Miami TSA Worker Rosita Soler: "That's Racist!"
TSA workers aren't concerned about violating our civil liberties to earn a buck, which they do every day, but one was quick to use the First Amendment rights that the rest of us are denied at airports to chew me out.
About the denial of free speech to those not working for the TSA: Note the free speech-chilling signs in many airports saying, "Verbal abuse (of TSA workers) will not be tolerated."
Well, is it "verbal abuse" to say, "I object to your violating my Fourth Amendment rights" or just "my fucking Fourth Amendment rights"? We can't know, so those of us who can't afford to be arrested are more likely to keep our mouths shut instead of exercising our free speech rights.
I was too sleepy this morning at Miami International airport to get the name of the woman who groped my breasts, touched my labia as she violated the lower part of my body in the name of security, and felt my slicked back hair (perhaps because there's some reason to believe I have a fake compartment in my head where I hide explosives).
But when I was going to be groped, I refused to let them do what I believe is an intimidation move for people going through the groping -- leaving their belongings out on the belt for anyone to take. I've had this happen to me at every airport I've been through (because I almost always get "randomly" chosen for the groping -- probably because big boobs are seen as a sign that you've been to al Qaeda training camp. And probably because TSA workers like to see the girls with the big'uns getting felt up by latex gloved women).
Anyway, this time, Mr. Quiroz, a rather nice man (despite his disgusting means of earning a living by violating our civil liberties), pulled my bags and computer off the belt and pulled them aside.
He spoke to me as he did this, and I heard he had a Spanish accent. I asked him whether he was from Cuba. I was interested because Cuban emigrés, along with people from Eastern Bloc countries, tend to have a far better appreciation of the value of our civil liberties than do Americans.
Well, the blonde TSA woman, ROSITA SOLER, manning the X-Ray machine in the Delta terminal at Miami International heard me ask Mr. Quiroz, "Are you from Cuba?" and she immediately piped up, "That's RACIST!"
I was amazed. Here's a woman, who gives no thought to how she earns a living violating Americans' Fourth Amendment right to not have our bodies or property searched without reasonable suspicion we've committed a crime, and she has memorized the multi-culti bullshit.
According to the doctrine of the multi-culti nonthink, to even notice that someone is somehow different from you in any way (that involves race, accent, skin color, and maybe even sex), is hateful, evil, and not to be tolerated.
I turned to Rosita Soler and demanded, "So, is it racist if somebody hears my midwestern accent with the long "a"s and asks, 'Are you from the midwest?'"
I told Mr. Quiroz that I asked him whether he was Cuban for the reason I explained above -- that Cubans tend to have more of an appreciation for our rights than so many lazy Americans. I added that I speak French, don't discern well between Spanish accents, and have encountered many Cubans here in Miami.
No, Rosita, don't think about the appalling way you earn money. I would sooner go homeless or work as a street hooker than violate Americans bodies and dignity in the name of the security puppet show -- the absolutely pretend security -- that we have set up at airports.
Again, we protect Americans by going by the Constitution: Having highly trained intelligence officers doing investigative work on people there is reasonable suspicion are involved in terrorist activities.
Also, the notion that we can be perfectly safe, that we will never have another terrorist act here if we just give up everything that makes us America, is dangerous and utter crap. Boston Marathon bombing anyone?
Government Regulators Don't Want To Let You Buy Straight From Farmers
We've sunk so low since the days of the Founding Fathers. This country was founded to be as free as possible, with controls to safeguard us from government. Now, we have too many laws, too much regulation, and government meddling in every area of our lives -- prohibiting consenting adults from engaging in free exchanges of money and goods that they feel is in their best interest.
There's an Alternet article by David E. Gumpert, via a @WestonAPrice tweet, "Should You Be Able to Buy Food Directly From Farmers? Regulators Don't Think So."
The subhead:
Farmers are distributing food via private contracts like herd shares and leasing arrangements, which fall outside the regulatory system of state and local retail licenses and inspections that govern public food sales.
An excerpt from the piece:
Members of these private food groups often buy from local farmers because they want food from animals that are treated humanely, allowed to roam on pasture, and not treated with antibiotics. "I really want food that is full of nutrients and the animals to be happy and content," says Jenny DeLoney, a Madison, WI, mother of three young children who buys from Hershberger.To these individuals, many of whom are parents, safety means not only food free of pathogens, but food free of pesticides, antibiotic residues, and excessive processing. It means food created the old-fashioned way--from animals allowed to eat grass instead of feed made from genetically modified (GMO) grains--and sold the old-fashioned way, privately by the farmer to the consumer, who is free to visit the farm and see the animals. Many of these consumers have viewed the secretly-made videos of downer cows being prodded into slaughterhouses and chickens so crammed into coops they can barely breathe.
These consumers are clearly interpreting "safety" differently than the regulators. Some of these consumers are going further than claiming contract rights--they are pushing their towns and cities to legitimize private farmer-consumer arrangements. In Maine, residents of ten coastal towns have approved so-called "food sovereignty" ordinances that legalize unregulated food sales; towns in other states, including Massachusetts and Vermont, and as far away as Santa Cruz, CA, have passed similar ordinances.
The new legal offensive isn't going over well with regulators anywhere. Aside from the Hershberger action in Wisconsin, and a similar one in Minnesota, Maine's Department of Agriculture filed suit against a two-cow farmer, Dan Brown, in one of the food-sovereignty towns, Blue Hill, seeking fines and, in effect, to invalidate all the Maine ordinances. In April, a state court ruled against the farmer, and in effect against the towns; sentencing is due within several weeks, and the case could well be appealed.
The jury in the criminal misdemeanor case of Minnesota farmer Alvin Schlangen last September acquitted him of all charges after several hours of deliberation. But the regulators' push against privately-distributed food continues unabated. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has moved forward with a local prosecutor in Schlangen's rural county, pressing similar criminal charges as the ones he was acquitted of in Minneapolis. He is scheduled to go on trial again in late June. And in Wisconsin, prosecutors have sought, in the wake of their loss over the licensing issues, to have Vernon Hershberger jailed for allegedly violating his bail terms since charges were filed in late 2011.
Linkies
Put 'em here while they're hot.
Getting on a plane early tomorrow. Will try to blog between my first flight and my connection to LA.
Sometimes We Take The Elevator; Sometimes, We Just Beam Up To Our Room
In Miami for the annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference. 
Tweeting The Human Behavior And Evolution Society Conference: David Buss And Steven Pinker On Crime And Violence
Saturday morning's session here at the conference in Miami with individual presentations by David Buss and Steven Pinker. Some fascinating insights. Read from the bottom up. (Sorry, didn't know how to make it go the other way when I created the widget on Twitter.)
Tweets by @amyalkon
Click "load more" at the bottom and you'll also get my tweets of developmental psychologist Peter Gray's plenary on the evolutionary biology of education.
There are also some others' tweets mixed in with mine, tagged with #HBES2013.
Balanced Thinking About The Rolling Stone Cover From Marc Randazza
Smart, nuanced view that counterbalances all the hysterics from a blog post by Randazza. An excerpt:
I think the problem that some people have with the cover is that it has a tendency to humanize Tsarnev. On that cover, you see him as "normal." Meanwhile, we prefer to see villains as one-dimensional. It is just so comforting to look at someone who did something horrible, and say "I could not even see myself hanging out with this guy, he's just not like us."It makes it easier to deal with if we can look at this guy and say "he's a monster." There, the end. No texture. No substance to our analysis. We are good. He is bad. The end.
...Mayor Menino's call for stories about the victims, and "honoring" them, instead, completely misses the point. Focusing on the dead teaches us nothing. Focusing even on the heroes of that day, unfortunately, teaches us nothing. We already think about that. We already understand that. Hoisting the cops and firemen on our shoulders and mourning the dead does nothing for us.
Learning about the bad guy does. It really does.
The Tsarnevs lose if we are better after what they did. They win even more if we turn this into yet another victim contest and further dumbing down of what is left of real journalism.
You're a citizen in the remnants of a democratic society. You have a responsibility to be smarter every day. Decrying Rolling Stone for trying to help you do that is not the right thing to do. Pressuring stores to take journalism off of their racks because you think you're supposed to be offended, that's not the right thing to do. Sending a warning shot across the bow of every newspaper and magazine with your outcry? You're part of why American journalism is racing toward shlock and celebrity worship every day, and away from Edward R. Murrow.
TSA's Latest: Somewhere, George Orwell Is Waking Up Briefly To Say, "I Told You So!"
The "Some animals are more equal than others" line is here and now at the TSA checkpoint.
Bart Jansen writes at USA Today that those who have the bucks to pay to get into the TSA's "Pre-check" program can do so. Who will pay? Businessmen, wealthy people, people not on a budget. The rest of the people will continue to get their hoohoos grabbed by the hamburger clerks pretending to do security work same as we all have been these past years.
The Transportation Security Administration plans to dramatically expand its program to get travelers through airport checkpoints faster by inviting them to pay a nominal fee for voluntary background checks.TSA's Pre-check program offers travelers separate lines at checkpoints, where they leave on shoes and light coats and keep laptops in their bags. The free program operates at 40 airports and now covers members of frequent-flier programs for Alaska, American, Delta, Hawaiian, United, US Airways and Virgin America airlines. Airlines invite frequent-fliers to apply with little more than the information provided when buying a ticket.
But TSA Administrator John Pistole announced Friday the agency will expand eligibility for the program to include travelers who pay a one-time fee of $85 for five years, to cover an application with identifying information such as address and birthplace, a background check and fingerprinting.
Yes, that's right. Your Fourth Amendment right to not be searched without probable cause will still be taken from you but if you pay a fee, strangers employed by your government will no longer grope your sex parts at the airport.
As for the people who trade money and privacy to avoid being sexually assaulted in the name of security just because they need to take a business trip or want to be there for Granny on her 90th, think about it: You're being treated like a criminal -- being fingerprinted and giving information that is not your government's business unless you have committed a crime.
If you are not speaking up about this, you are part of what's enabled the degradation of our rights.
P.S. If you think government is there to protect you, this little pay-to-avoid-groping dealie was brought to you by the sleazebags occupying the U.S. Senate.
Blogging From The Human Behavior And Evolution Society Conference: Guys, Are You Some Woman's Resource Friend?
Welcome to the costly Friend Zone! (An area occupied by men with open wallets and high hopes that are likely to be dashed.)
University of Portsmouth's Diana Fleischman blogged some interesting work she did with Union College's Carin Perilloux and UT Austin's David Buss.
They looked at "Women's Psychology of Resource-Based Opposite Sex Friendships," which basically means guys who aren't getting sex from a woman and aren't related to her but provide her with meals or gifts.
Of the women surveyed, 26 percent reported having a guy like this in their lives, which, amusingly, Diana and colleagues called a "Resource Friend."
Women who have a resource friend were more likely to have a "short-term sexual strategy," than women without a Resource Friend, which isn't to say the women intend to use their Resource Friend for more than his resources.
Men, not surprisingly, perceive opposite sex friendships as possible mating opportunities, and women with Resource Friends, seem to recognize this -- on an unconscious level as well as a conscious one.
Fleischman and her colleagues' research found that when at high fertility in the menstrual cycle, women were much less likely to have seen their resource friend in the last 24 hours if he tended to make frequent sexual advances toward her.
Again, women probably don't do this consciously, which, for me, is the most interesting part of this -- this dance between suggesting sex is possible (by the women) and, at the same time, staying just out of reach of the men providing food and gifts in hopes of getting some.
Neuroscientist Carl Hart: Science Says We Should Decriminalize Drugs
As Jim P., who sent me this link, wrote, "Basically he breaks down the myths of drug use."
The vast majority of people need neither jail nor rehab, says neuroscientist Carl Hart -- as addiction treatment specialist Stanton Peele also says.
This is 22 minutes but you can even watch just a few minutes of it and get something out of it.
Think It's Only Your Panties The TSA Thugs Are Searching?
In Rochester, they searched a woman's car. Berkeley Brean writes at WHEC:
Rochester, N.Y. -- She says she had no warning that someone was going to search her car after she left to catch her flight. So the woman contacted News10NBC.We found out it happened to her because she valet parked her car. Those are the only cars that get inspected.
So if security feels it is necessary to search some cars in the name of safety, why not search all of them?
Laurie Iacuzza walked to her waiting car at the Greater Rochester International Airport after returning from a trip and that's when she found it -- a notice saying her car was inspected after she left for her flight. She said, "I was furious. They never mentioned it to me when I booked the valet or when I picked up the car or when I dropped it off."
Iacuzza's car was inspected by valet attendants on orders from the TSA. But why only valet parked cars? That's what News10NBC wanted to ask the TSA director about. We reached him by phone.
Berkeley Brean asked, "Are the cars in the short term lots and long term lots getting searched as well?"
John McCaffery, TSA, said, "No, those vehicles that are in the garage, short term long term parking, even if they carry pretty large amounts of explosives, they would not cause damage to the front of the airport. But for those who use the valet, the car could be there for a half hour or an hour so there is a vulnerability."
Morons. If someone wants to blow something up, why go where all the blue-suited hamburger workers are? There are countless places in America where large-scale damage could be caused. Are we going to change our entire way of life because one of them might -- might -- be a target?
Or, does it make sense to do what I have suggested all along: Not treating every single American as a plausible suspect behind a terrorist plot (even if they're 6 and disabled), but using trained intelligence officers to do actually intelligence work using probable cause to find probable suspects and pay attention to them.
Waiting till somebody with a bomb in their trunk shows up at the airport and having a parking valet search the car? This is security? Really? Really?
Valets are probably very, very good at parking cars. But I'm guessing there's a reason they aren't going through intensive training at Quantico.
via Lisa Simeone
Linkyteria
Don't eat the green Jell-O.
The View From My Window
I'm in Miami for the annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference. Unfortunately, I get terribly airsick sometimes, and this was one of those times. Not quite sure how I made it from the airport to the hotel on Wednesday afternoon, but I did.
But then, though I took the red eye so I wouldn't miss Doug Kenrick's plenary on ev psych and behavioral econ and his soon-to-be-published book, The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think
I thought I could come back to life for Napoleon Chagnon's talk on the Yanomami, but no. It's pathetic -- 49 years old and I get motion-sick like an 8-year-old.
Feeling better now and planning on making the most of the rest of this conference!
Women Dressing Like Little Girls: Where's The Dividing Line?
At 22, you're still on the cusp of being a teenager while also being on the cusp of adulthood. So, if you wear Hello Kitty wear and keep your hair in two braids, you can probably get away with it.
But, at 33? Where's the cutoff point (generally speaking, of course)? Some women may have womanly bodies and a womanly look at 22 and a few may still have the body and look of a 12-year-old at 33.
I think some women who've dressed "Little Girl" get in a style rut and maybe forget that they might need to rethink their look.
Or do you disagree with me?
And anybody who dresses "Little Girl" or who knows a woman or women who do, can you explain or give what you think are others' reasons?
Oh, and part B of this: If you did dress a certain way -- say, Little Girl-ishly, and your boyfriend wanted you to dress a little more adult and sophisticated when going out with his boss, would you be offended?
Blogging From The Human Behavior And Evolution Society Conference: Babies Seem To Have Morality
Stanford's Renée Baillargeon gave this morning's plenary, which gives further support to the already-well-supported notion that we have evolved morality; that religion is not necessary for people to be moral.
Here's a New York Times article by a speaker from last year's HBES, Yale's Paul Bloom, on the moral life of babies that mentions Baillargeon and her colleagues' work.
Today, Baillargeon presented a controlled study that suggests that a sense of fairness is present very early in life -- in infants.
In this study, there were two animated giraffes that were shown two duck toys. This is a study that measures babies' gaze time. Babies look much longer in the "unfairness condition," when one giraffe of the two gets both of the duck toys. (Looking longer is meaningful because babies look longer at situations that are unexpected.)
Interestingly, they only seem to look longer (significantly longer) when the giraffes seem to be alive -- when they bounce around and say "Yay!" when they are shown the duck toys.
When the giraffes seem to be inanimate objects -- when they are "like chairs," just sitting there, as Baillargeon put it, the babies don't react very much to the presentation of the ducks (meaning, they don't look particularly long in the fairness versus the unfairness condition).
Later in her talk, she brought up that infants raised in abusive or resources-poor households may find these situations unexpected and this may have ongoing negative effects throughout life.
Some Police Officers Believe We're Living In A Police State
And act that way, too. Detroit cops wrestle the phone away from a Detroit Free Press journalist filming their arrest of a suspect and then arrest her, too. Jim Schaefer and Gina Damron write for the Freep:
Detroit police and the department's internal affairs officers have launched investigations following the arrest of a Free Press photographer who was filming a police action on a public street last week.Police said they are looking into the conduct of photographer Mandi Wright and the actions of an officer who ordered her to stop filming and wrestled her phone away from her. They also are looking into the disappearance of a memory card from her newspaper-issued iPhone and whether she was briefly left alone with the crime suspect whom she had been filming.
Details about that at the link. More from the piece:
Later, police returned the phone, but the SIM card had been removed. Still, the video remained on the phone's internal memory. After the discovery that the card was missing, internal affairs officers were summoned to interview Wright and Gray.Tolbert arrived after the interviews with internal affairs, and he was apologetic to Free Press editors who had gone to the precinct. He said police were embarrassed. Wright was released around 11 p.m.
Tolbert said Monday he expects a department-wide directive will go out soon to remind officers they cannot prevent anyone from videotaping them in public.
Paul Anger, editor and publisher of the Free Press, said the situation should not have escalated as it did.
"First, our photographer was doing what any journalist -- or any citizen -- has a right to do in a public place," he said. "All she knew was that someone had grabbed her and her phone. We understand the difficult job that police officers do, and we understand how tensions can rise. Yet some of the police actions all through this incident need scrutiny -- not the actions of our photographer."
Hershel Fink, Free Press legal counsel, said courts in the U.S. have consistently agreed that "citizens, much less the press, have a right to photograph police officers in public places. The video shows she did not interfere with the police action and the officer had no right to order her to stop filming and to confiscate her camera."
What's happening now is that there's evidence of police misconduct -- in this case, unconstitutionally stopping a citizen from videotaping police in a public place (not only our right but important to do to keep policing fair and constitutional) and the unreasonable seizure of this woman's property.
Think of all the misconduct that has gone on and that goes on that is not videotaped. Think of the cases that don't have a news organization behind them and a very, very good First Amendment attorney.
On a kind of cute side note, I heard Herschel P. Fink, the Freep's attorney, talk about his Dr. Dre First Amendment case at the alt weeklies conference in Detroit last year, and went up afterward to talk to him. I'd thought he looked familiar but brushed the thought aside. Well, he remembered me -- from University of Michigan family camp, Michigania, from when I was 8! (My parents used to go there with us every year. It's nerdcamp for parents -- lectures from professors in the evenings -- and there's horseback riding, archery, a shooting range, canoeing, and other events for kids.)
via Jay J. Hector
Linking For Love
In all the best wrong places.
Didn't Like Him While He Was President But I Do Love His Sock Habit
On the site of a wacky sock subscription service, footcardigan.com, I found this link to a piece about the elder George Bush's late-in-life predilection for wild socks. Love the photos within. His ankles take over every scene. Seems like it might be a way to say, "I'm in a wheelchair? Whatever. But just look at my socks."
The Unions That Supported Obama Crying Foul On "Affordable" Care Act
At Forbes, Avik Roy writes:
Labor unions are among the key institutions responsible for the passage of Obamacare. They spent tons of money electing Democrats to Congress in 2006 and 2008, and fought hard to push the health law through the legislature in 2009 and 2010. But now, unions are waking up to the fact that Obamacare is heavily disruptive to the health benefits of their members.Last Thursday, representatives of three of the nation's largest unions fired off a letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, warning that Obamacare would "shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class."
The letter was penned by James P. Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Joseph Hansen, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union; and Donald "D." Taylor, president of UNITE-HERE, a union representing hotel, airport, food service, gaming, and textile workers.
"When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act," they begin, "you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat...We have been strong supporters of the notion that all Americans should have access to quality, affordable health care. We have also been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision. Now this vision has come back to haunt us."'Unintended consequences' causing 'nightmare scenarios'
The union leaders are concerned that Obamacare's employer mandate incentivizes smaller companies to shift their workers to part-time status, because employers are not required to provide health coverage to part-time workers. "We have a problem," they write, and "you need to fix it."
"The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe," they continue. "Perverse incentives are causing nightmare scenarios. First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees' work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers' hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits."
Stock Up On Foil!
A remark by radio host Joe Wahler:
How freaky is it that the guys in the foil hats who said the government is spying on all of us were the only ones who were right?
The Odd Death Of Reporter Michael Hastings
Very sad, disturbingly puzzling story. Worth reading.
Highland is a street you do not go fast on. 80 would be an utter outrage.
Linking For Mr. Goodbars
I'm off to Miami for the annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference. I'm not getting a strong signal here at LAX, so if I can't post more blog items before I go, feel free to post links here. (And feel free to post them anyway.)
But please just post one link per comment or your comment will go to spam and I will have a nervous breakdown. Or something. Post as many comments as you want, though.
Sad How Wholesome It Gets Later In Life
Photo by a friend taken at an old folks home in San Diego.
P.S. Note to flyer-maker, San Diego: "Popsicle" has an "s."
People In High Visibility Public Sector Jobs Should Be Underpaid
Underpaid, that is, vis a vis what they'd make in the private sector. Good argument by Steven Eide at PublicSectorInc:
At the Federal level, to raise pay packages for presidents, Senators and Representatives up to market-rate status would be to overcompensate them. High public office brings with it more intangible satisfactions (power and honor) than enjoyed by corporate executives. These compensate officeholders for the inconvenience of holding office, and thus should be understood as compensation.
The dimwits on the LA City Council should be given donuts for showing up and enough pay to rent a one-bedroom apartment in an okay part of town.
Instead, via the LA Times' Patrick J. McDonnell:
Los Angeles has the nation's highest average salary -- $178,789 -- for its 15 council members. San Antonio has the lowest, at just $1,400.
They also get a city car and are allowed to ignore their parking tickets. Which is why, hey, no big deal for them if the rate for forgetting to move your car on street cleaning day has gone up to $68. (It was about $25 when I got to LA in the 90s, which is punishment but not so much that it costs some people what might be their entire day's pay, or close to it.)
The Most Balanced Account Of What Happened On That Florida Street And, Subsequently, In Court
William Saletan has a terrific piece up at Slate. An excerpt:
I almost joined the frenzy. Yesterday I was going to write that Zimmerman pursued Martin against police instructions and illustrated the perils of racial profiling. But I hadn't followed the case in detail. So I sat down and watched the closing arguments: nearly seven hours of video in which the prosecution and defense went point by point through the evidence as it had been hashed out at the trial. Based on what I learned from the videos, I did some further reading.It turned out I had been wrong about many things. The initial portrait of Zimmerman as a racist wasn't just exaggerated. It was completely unsubstantiated. It's a case study in how the same kind of bias that causes racism can cause unwarranted allegations of racism. Some of the people Zimmerman had reported as suspicious were black men, so he was a racist. Members of his family seemed racist, so he was a racist. Everybody knew he was a racist, so his recorded words were misheard as racial slurs, proving again that he was a racist.
The 911 dispatcher who spoke to Zimmerman on the fatal night didn't tell him to stay in his car. Zimmerman said he was following a suspicious person, and the dispatcher told him, "We don't need you do to that." Chief prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda conceded in his closing argument that these words were ambiguous. De la Rionda also acknowledged, based on witness and forensic evidence that both men "were scraping and rolling and fighting out there." He pointed out that the wounds, blood evidence, and DNA didn't match Zimmerman's story of being thoroughly restrained and pummeled throughout the fight. But the evidence didn't fit the portrait of Martin as a sweet-tempered child, either. And the notion that Zimmerman hunted down Martin to accost him made no sense. Zimmerman knew the police were on the way. They arrived only a minute or so after the gunshot. The fight happened in a public area surrounded by townhouses at close range. It was hardly the place or time to start shooting.
That doesn't make Zimmerman a hero. It just makes him a reckless fool instead of a murderer. In a post-verdict press conference, his lawyer, Mark O'Mara, claimed that "the evidence supported that George Zimmerman did nothing wrong," that "the jury decided that he acted properly in self-defense," and that Zimmerman "was never guilty of anything except protecting himself in self-defense. I'm glad that the jury saw it that way." That's complete BS. The only thing the jury decided was that there was reasonable doubt as to whether Zimmerman had committed second-degree murder or manslaughter.
Zimmerman is guilty, morally if not legally, of precipitating the confrontation that led to Martin's death. He did many things wrong. Mistake No. 1 was inferring that Martin was a burglar. In his 911 call, Zimmerman cited Martin's behavior. "It's raining, and he's just walking around" looking at houses, Zimmerman said. He warned the dispatcher, "He's got his hand in his waistband." He described Martin's race and clothing only after the dispatcher asked about them. Whatever its basis, the inference was false.
It Isn't "Stealing" To Take Little Soaps And Shampoos From A Hotel
Not if you aren't taking 20 of them off the maid's cart.
But that's how the headline and the beginning of this Hugo Martin LA Times article make it sound. The headline (which is most likely written by a copyeditor at the paper):
Some travelers steal more than just soap from hotel rooms
And Martin writes:
Everyone who has stayed at a hotel has, at some point, walked out with a few soaps or miniature bottles of shampoo stuffed into their luggage.But 35% of global travelers say they make off with even more valuable hotel amenities, such as towels, lamps, robes and bedding, according to a recent survey by the hotel booking site Hotels.com.
Obviously, that is stealing.
A comment in the LAT's comments justifying theft.
Robert Bob at 6:38 PM July 15, 2013
I only take their stuff when they rip me off. Some hotels deserve to have everything taken. Some deserve to have you keep the lights off when not in the room. You can usually tell which are which. I say this being 25% owner of two hotels. Nobody ever steals from us because we make people feel at home. but by all means, if they charge you $25 for a dried up piece of cold meat, get a refund by taking the towels. If they make you wait in the lobby for hours despite having available rooms citing a checkin time policy, while calling themselves an airport hotel, it's worth a blanket, two towels, and even the clock radio. As far as stealing shampoo--that's impossible-- it's an amenity, hotels give that to you.
He's wrong about everything but the shampoo.
Stealing isn't justified, and you should do your homework before going to a hotel, not steal because you haven't.
P.S. If you steal, you're a thief, no matter what justification you make.
Be Very, Very Polite? Try To Distract Him With A Bedtime Story?
LA Times piece by Tina Susman: What to do if a gunman opens fire at work.
Two professor friends of mine have told me that bringing a gun on their campuses, even if they have a permit for it, is a fireable offense. Pun not intended.
From the LA Times piece:
One woman hoisted a chair high over her head. Another stood ready to hurl a juice bottle.
Pssst...honey, Snapple only kills people if they drink enough of it to get diabetes.
Sex On Campus -- Women Hooking Up
There's an article by Kate Taylor in The New York Times about how women on campus are looking to hook up instead of looking to have relationships. An excerpt:
Elizabeth A. Armstrong, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who studies young women's sexuality, said that women at elite universities were choosing hookups because they saw relationships as too demanding and potentially too distracting from their goals.In interviews, "Some of them actually said things like, 'A relationship is like taking a four-credit class,' or 'I could get in a relationship, or I could finish my film,'" Dr. Armstrong said.
Increasingly, she said, many privileged young people see college as a unique life stage in which they don't -- and shouldn't -- have obligations other than their own self-development.
Women say, " 'I need to take this time for myself -- I'm going to have plenty of time to focus on my husband and kids later,' " Dr. Armstrong said. " 'I need to invest in my career, I need to learn how to be independent, I need to travel.' People use this reference to this life stage to claim a lot of space for a lot of different kinds of things."
Some women also want to wait to see how men turn out as they advance through their 20s.
A., for example, said that she did not want to settle down until she could choose a partner knowing that his goals and values were fixed.
"'I've always heard this phrase, 'Oh, marriage is great, or relationships are great -- you get to go on this journey of change together,' " she said. "That sounds terrible.
"I don't want to go through those changes with you. I want you to have changed and become enough of your own person so that when you meet me, we can have a stable life and be very happy."
...In an article on Slate titled "Marry Young," the writer Julia Shaw, who married at 23, said her generation was missing out on the support that young couples could provide each other as they faced the challenges of early adulthood.
"Marriage wasn't something we did after we'd grown up, it was how we have grown up and grown together," she wrote of herself and her husband.
A comment converse to the hysteria on the NYT's site:
I went to a prestigious university in the 90s and married the guy I both dated and hooked up with throughout college. We both went to grad school and have the dreaded professional careers the commenters here despise. We also have two great kids and we're home every night for dinner. I don't think this issue has to be so black and white. Just because you don't have a steady boyfriend during sophomore year and want a career doesn't mean you're destined to be an infertile 40 year old.
This commenter, who met her husband in the dorm at Duke 25 years ago and has a 15-year-old daughter, gives some wise advice:
What will I tell our daughter? Go to the best college that you can get into to, with a clue as to what you might do when you get out. Work hard, have fun, be careful. Don't seek out your future husband, but be open to the possibility that you might just meet him. You can't plan everything in life. Do the best you can to make choices that you will respect when you look back on them later.
A reply to that comment:
Absolutely! Everything is more bearable and meaningful with a partner. But you have to recognize the geography issues that are now at play with this generation. With the poor economy, college students can expect to be torn away geographically from their partners much like high school graduates go to different colleges. With scarcity, the chances of having what you describe with your husband, however rich and rewarding, is not as likely.
Helpful Hints On How To Avoid Being Tased To Death By A Police Officer
Popehat notes that sometimes, people die upon being tased.
He also notes the helpful suggestion of Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa (via Miami New Times), to keep this from happening:
Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa came up with a novel solution to the problem: those with heart conditions just shouldn't break the law in the first place to avoid getting Tased.
Popehat marvels at his thinking:
See? That's why we can count on the Thin Blue Line: because of the serious, contemplative, and principled analysis of public-safety issues we can expect from law enforcement.Chief Orosa is right! Everyone knows that cops never question, arrest, tase, beat, or shoot you unless you committed a crime first. It's just logic. If you weren't a criminal, why would they tase you?
He points out similar adventures in police logic, for example:
If you don't want to be arrested, don't use a cell phone near an officer who is a Star Trek fan.If you don't want to be pepper-sprayed and tased and "trip and fall on the pavement," then ANSWER THE GODDAM QUESTION, is that so hard?
If you don't want your grandmother to go to prison, don't have a cold.
Toss Me A Link Coat, Willya?
No teeth, please.
Actually, I love those fox scarves women used to wear in the movies. There's something about wearing a lot of little sharp-teethed animal heads that says, "Don't fuck with me, boys!" (Or anyone.)
Advice Goddess Radio, Tonight, 7-8pm PT: Dr. Gabrielle Principe, Parenting Sans Paranoia--Why The Overstructured Childhood Is So Bad For Kids
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
NOTE: A word on the "Best of" replays, including tonight's. I'm in the final days of working absolutely insane hours to complete my next book. This is the only reason I haven't been doing live weekly shows, and I will soon be all-live every weekend, featuring some very exciting researchers and their books.
My guest tonight, psychology professor Dr. Gabrielle Principe notes that the panic-stricken parental race to raise tiny geniuses is actually bad parenting -- leading to overcontrolled childhoods that have negative effects on kids' development.
This way of raising children is marketing-driven, not science-driven (though marketers typically claim their toys and learning tools are based in science).
Take Baby Einstein videos. In 2007, UCLA's Department of Health Services chairman Frederick Zimmerman and his colleagues found that kids watching these had a 17 percent decrease in vocabulary acquisition for each hour they spent watching them per day.
Through looking at solid science on the human brain, Dr. Principe has figured out ways for parents to naturalize childhood again, so a child's environment gels with how the brain was designed to grow.
Her clearly written and dryly witty book: "Your Brain on Childhood: The Unexpected Side Effects of Classrooms, Ballparks, Family Rooms, and the Minivan."
Join us tonight as she busts countless myths about how to raise children and lays out simple, clear advice for how kids can thrive.
Listen at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/15/dr-gabrielle-principe-parenting-sans-paranoia
Don't miss last week's show on better sex! My guest was marriage therapist Michele Weiner Davis, author of the extremely helpful book, "The Sex-Starved Marriage," which I've referenced in my advice column.
This is not only a show that explains how to bring the sex back into your relationship but how manage things if one of you wants it more than the other (or if one of you wants it and the other wants it not at all).
Unlike all of those "sexperts" who basically tell you that one of you just has to throw on a nurse's uniform before you have at it, Michele Weiner Davis gives real, practical, pragmatic solutions for this problem -- ones that take into account how people really are and how life actually works.
Listen live (on tape) at this link at 7 p.m. Pacific, 10 p.m. Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/08/michele-weiner-davis-put-the-sex-back-in-your-relationship
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Sullum: Zimmerman Case Has Nothing To Do With "Stand Your Ground"
Jacob Sullum, at reason, takes on all the people trying to gin up protest by using Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law as if it has anything to do with the Zimmerman situation, which it does not:
The story that George Zimmerman told about his fight with Trayvon Martin, the one that yesterday persuaded a jury to acquit him of second-degree murder and manslaughter, never had anything to do with the right to stand your ground when attacked in a public place. Knocked down and pinned to the ground by Martin, Zimmerman would not have had an opportunity to escape as Martin hit him and knocked his head against the concrete. The duty to retreat therefore was irrelevant. The initial decision not to arrest Zimmerman, former Sanford, Florida, Police Chief Bill Lee said last week (as paraphrased by CNN), "had nothing to do with Florida's controversial 'Stand Your Ground' law" because "from an investigative standpoint, it was purely a matter of self-defense." And as The New York Times explained last month, "Florida's Stand Your Ground law...has not been invoked in this case." The only context in which "stand your ground" was mentioned during the trial was as part of the prosecution's attempt to undermine Zimmerman's credibility by arguing that he lied when he told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he had not heard of the law until after the shooting. During his rebuttal on Friday, prosecutor John Guy declared, "This case is not about standing your ground."So how did Benjamin Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, respond to Zimmerman's acquittal last night? By announcing that "we will continue to fight for the removal of Stand Your Ground laws in every state."
...You might think that, given all we now know about Zimmerman's actual defense, critics of "stand your ground" laws would have to find a different, more apposite case to illustrate their concerns. Instead they just barrel along, citing the same phony example again and again, without regard to the facts. It does not inspire confidence in their argument.
Via @jaketapper, bmaz at emptywheel.net from 2012, who goes through the specific of the deficient probable cause. An excerpt from the end:
To be honest, this affidavit, within its "four corners" arguably does not even meet the necessary burden of probable cause for Manslaughter under Florida section 782.07, much less the "depraved mind" necessary under Florida's Second Degree Murder charge under section 782.04(2) as charged in the information. George Zimmerman may have committed a crime, but it is not demonstrated in this affidavit, and certainly is not as to the crime charged, Second Degree Murder. Charles Blow can praise this thing until the cows come home in the august pages of the New York Times, but it is still a pile of junk.But the above discussion is all about what is in the affidavit, let's talk about what is not in the affidavit as well. The affidavit goes out of its way to spin innocuous and perfectly legal activity into some nebulous vignette of implied criminality, yet self servingly there is not a single fleeting reference to Zimmerman's claim of having acted in self defense. To be sure, in charging a case, a prosecutor is going to frame the facts to support her charge. But that does not mean she can blithely ignore patently exculpatory facts known to her and germane to the interests of justice. Angela Corey's affidavit is thusly not just deficient, but dishonest in a very slimy, even if not unethical way. It is patently offensive in that regard.
The case is also patently overcharged. As stated above, I think it is more than arguable that the probable cause affidavit does not even support manslaughter, but it is not remotely close to supporting second degree murder. This is an embarrassment not only for Angela Corey, but the magistrate who signed off on this bunk. It makes the criminal justice system look horrible.
None of this is to say I think George Zimmerman is innocent of any crime for the incident that led to Trayvon Martin's death, nor is it to say that the state may not possess sufficient evidence to convict Zimmerman of some crime at a trial. In fact, I am highly disturbed by Zimmerman's behavior and Martin's death. All I am saying is, is that while there may be probable cause to charge Zimmerman, it has in no way, shape or form demonstrated by the State of Florida's official legal statement that is supposed to be the foundation for charging Zimmerman.
Black On Black Murder Victims: Nobody Cares
John Perazzo makes some good points at FrontPageMag.com:
Spearheaded by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the massive, escalating protests over Trayvon Martin's February 26th death in Florida--protests featuring desperate pleas to "stop the killing of our children"--continue to rivet the nation's collective attention. By contrast, the death of 63-year-old Tommie Lee Caldwell a few weeks earlier created no such stir. One morning this past December, Caldwell, an African American who was caring for his terminally ill wife, was stabbed and then shot in the back of the head by an intruder inside his Detroit home. If you're like most people, you've never heard of Mr. Caldwell prior to this moment. His murderer was black--not a "white Hispanic" like George Zimmerman--so the guardians of "civil rights," like Jackson and Sharpton, were spared the trouble, at least in that instance, of having to gin up a national referendum on America's unyielding, ubiquitous racism.The "civil rights" crowd was likewise silent two months ago when a 19-year-old African American named Joshua Brown--angered over a dispute with a black Detroit woman named Almanda Talton--shot and killed the woman's 12-year old daughter, Kade'jah Davis, a sixth-grade honor student.
...the proverbial elephant in the living room quietly awaits recognition: For at least 35 years, no fewer than 94% of all black victims of homicide have been killed by other blacks. In fact, blacks themselves commit the vast majority of all types of violent crimes against African Americans; whites are responsible for only 12% of such offenses. Given these stark and immensely significant realities, what possible rationale could there be for demanding that an entire nation engage in an orgy of self-examination and self-flagellation--"soul-searching," as President Obama calls it--over an incident of a type that almost never happens? And by the same token, why do the stalwart defenders of "civil rights" invariably turn a blind eye to black-on-black assaults, which, over the past half century, have filled more graveyards and caused more human misery in black communities than all the white racists in America, combined?
By no means, of course, are black victims of black violence the only people about whom the champions of "civil rights" are utterly unconcerned. To be sure, white victims of black offenders are just as uninteresting to this bunch. Scarcely two weeks after Trayvon Martin's death, a black male broke into the Tulsa, Oklahoma home of an 85-year-old white woman named Nancy Strait, sexually assaulting her, battering her to death, and, for good measure, shooting her 90-year-old husband in the face with a BB gun. About a month prior to the Martin killing, a black carjacker in Louisiana shot and killed a white man who tried to come to the aid of the jacker's female victim. Also in January, one black and two Hispanics in Philadelphia attacked Kevin Kless, a 23-year-old white man who was trying to hail a cab, and beat him to death. Last December in Fort Worth, Texas, a black career-criminal sexually assaulted and killed a 59-year-old white woman named Jo Beth Marchand, who was described by those who knew her as a person of "gentleness and unconditional love."
...Because such victims have no racial currency for loudmouthed agitators whose entire careers are dependent upon an ability to portray white racism as a plague that can scarcely be restrained, their deaths are not just quickly forgotten, but in most cases go wholly unnoticed.
Roger Simon writes at PJMedia that the media "enabled" Sharpton by treating him "as if he were a serious person":
The media, as I wrote before, treated this case like pornography, something to be exploited, giving it all sorts of racial import it didn't have. The New York Times, acting like true reactionaries of the Obama era (how can we use the word "liberal" with these people?), even went so far as to invent the term "white Hispanic" to fit the case. The National Enquirer couldn't have done it better. (I take it back. The Enquirer behaves more ethically.)The irony is that the people who suffer most from the media behaving in this manner are black people who are manipulated into acting as an interest group when they have no interest. They are literally victims of the media and of Obama.
Of course, they aren't the only ones. Almost everyone is a victim in in this case that should never have been tried. George Zimmerman will never live a normal life. The American public has been polarized with emotions stirred up for absolutely no reason. Racism is essentially manufactured, as if it were a commodity.
A further irony is that recent polls have shown racism in our culture at all-time lows. You don't hear that from the media or from our administration, however. This knowledge is not to their advantage.
Married Brooklyn Basketball Player's Allowance: One Cheat A Year
What do you think of this basketball wife's pronouncement that her husband can step out one night a year? Good idea? Bad idea? If you were a basketball wife, would you have a rule like this?
Kate Briquelet writes in the New York Post:
For one night a year, he's allowed to say "da!"New Brooklyn Net Andrei Kirilenko is permitted to cheat on his Russian pop-star wife without her crying foul, thanks to a unique "allowance" she grants him.
"What's forbidden is always desirable. And athletes, particularly men, are susceptible to all the things they are offered," Masha Lopatova, 34, told the Salt Lake Tribune in 2006 when the 6-foot-9 forward played for the Utah Jazz.
"It's the same way raising children -- If I tell my child, 'No pizza, no pizza, no pizza,' what does he want more than anything? Pizza!"
Lopatova said the goal of the short-lived free agency is to nip the Russian-born hoopster's temptation to sleep around during the seven months he's on the road.
"Male athletes in this country are extremely attractive," Lopatova once told ESPN.
"They get chased by women. It's hard to resist. It's the way men are by nature. When I'm aware and I let him do it, it's not cheating."
Kirilenko, 32, knows the score -- he can have sex with another woman for one night and one night only. Affairs won't be tolerated.
And the agreement isn't reciprocal, Lopatova has claimed.
The two have been married for 13 years and have two sons, age 11 and age 6.
Why The NSA's Surveillance Is Unconstitutional
Constitutional law prof Randy E. Barnett writes at the WSJ that Congress or the courts should put a stop to the NSA's unreasonable and unconstitutional data seizures. And there's more:
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform, is compiling a massive database of citizens' personal information--including monthly credit-card, mortgage, car and other payments--ostensibly to protect consumers from abuses by financial institutions.All of this dangerously violates the most fundamental principles of our republican form of government. The Fourth Amendment has two parts: First, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." Second, that "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
By banning unreasonable "seizures" of a person's "papers," the Fourth Amendment clearly protects what we today call "informational privacy." Rather than seizing the private papers of individual citizens, the NSA and CFPB programs instead seize the records of the private communications companies with which citizens do business under contractual "terms of service." These contracts do not authorize data-sharing with the government. Indeed, these private companies have insisted that they be compelled by statute and warrant to produce their records so as not to be accused of breaching their contracts and willingly betraying their customers' trust.
...In a republican government based on popular sovereignty, the people are the principals or masters and those in government are merely their agents or servants. For the people to control their servants, however, they must know what their servants are doing.
The secrecy of these programs makes it impossible to hold elected officials and appointed bureaucrats accountable. Relying solely on internal governmental checks violates the fundamental constitutional principle that the sovereign people must be the ultimate external judge of their servants' conduct in office. Yet such judgment and control is impossible without the information that such secret programs conceal. Had it not been for recent leaks, the American public would have no idea of the existence of these programs, and we still cannot be certain of their scope.
Linkspotting
Starring Ewan McLinker.
Hot TV Deals
No, you can't have your own show by clicking this link at Amazon
Super-Smart Farmers Market Shopping Cart
It's the collapsible "Hook and Go Personal Grocery Shopping Cart
Here it is $10 cheaper.
Just bring reusable bags for when somebody sells you something without a bag that won't fit in your other bags.
How groovy!
via the wonderful, neighborhood-bettering Reta Moser
Your Thoughts On The Zimmerman "Not Guilty" Verdict?
As I noted, I'm completing my book this weekend, so I've been a little out of blogland and the news cycle, but I just took a break and went on Twitter and saw the jury had come back.
At USA Today, Yamiche Alcindor wrote:
SANFORD, Fla.--George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, has been found not guilty of second murder and manslaughter.The verdict is the culmination of a case that captured the nation's attention and will undoubtedly be imprinted in America's history. The not guilty verdict means the jury of six women found that Zimmerman justifiably used deadly force and reasonably believed that such force was "necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm" to himself-- Florida's definition of self-defense.
The women decided Zimmerman didn't "intentionally commit an act or acts that caused death" or demonstrate a "depraved mind without regard for human life" --Florida's definitions of manslaughter and second degree murder, respectively.
"Its means there was reasonable doubt," said Susan Constantine, a jury consultant and body language expert who attended Zimmerman's trial regularly. "They just could not put the pieces together."
Any predictions about the impact this will or will not have?
The High Price Of Being Cheap Mofos
I don't believe in "interns."
Yes, I believe they exist -- in unpaid positions by cheapskates who want to get something for nothing.
Sometimes "something for nothing" comes at a high price. For example, when an NTSB intern confirmed names -- prank names -- as those of the pilots of the crashed Asiana flight. From HuffPo/Reuters:
"The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6," the NTSB said in a statement."Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft," the NTSB said.
The crash of the Boeing 777 plane resulted in the deaths of three teenage girls in a group of students from eastern China who were visiting the United States for a summer camp, one of whom died on Friday in the hospital. Over 180 passengers and crew members were injured.
On Friday, an anchor for Oakland, California, station KTVU read a list of the supposed names of the pilots of the South Korean carrier on its noon broadcast after an employee apparently called the NTSB seeking to verify them.
The names appear to mock the events of the crash. The prank names were: Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow.
If someone is doing more for you on the job than standing around absorbing your aura they should be paid something. It's just the right thing to do. It also tends to get those working for you to take their jobs more seriously.
"We Risk A Police State"
Tom Whitehead writes in the Telegraph/UK that the former head of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, has warned that government -- and not just their government -- is exploiting the fear of terrorism to erode civil liberties and risks creating a police state:
Dame Stella accused ministers of interfering with people's privacy and playing straight into the hands of terrorists."Since I have retired I feel more at liberty to be against certain decisions of the Government, especially the attempt to pass laws which interfere with people's privacy," Dame Stella said in an interview with a Spanish newspaper.
"It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state," she said.
Dame Stella, 73, added: "The US has gone too far with Guantánamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that. Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect: there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification." She said the British secret services were "no angels" but insisted they did not kill people.
Dame Stella became the first woman director general of MI5 in 1992 and was head of the security agency until 1996. Since stepping down she has been a fierce critic of some of the Government's counter-terrorism and security measures, especially those affecting civil liberties.
Linksplatation
I am finishing my book this weekend, so blogging might be a little light. Please post links here, but just one per post, because if I have to retrieve spam, I might lose it, run naked down the street, and frighten my neighbors with my Wite-Out white flesh. There are parts of my body that haven't seen sun since I was 13 and skinny-dipped in Algonquin Park while at Camp Tamaqua.
Oh, The Casual Elegance Of Being An Author
Working on the last section of my final chapter. (Those are the little cut-up pieces on the left -- trying to figure out the order.)
I have to turn in the finished manuscript for my next book, "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," to my editor at St. Martin's on Monday morning (which is also the first of my two column deadline days)!
In short: Eeeeeeeeeeeek!
By the way, I can't remember which author tweeted this, but I'm with him: I feel like I live in a used bookstore with an oven.
"Do Your Little Brats Offend Travelers?"
Kari Haugeto, travel writer Christopher Elliott's wife or partner, blogs at awayishome:
When we were young and childless, Chris and I would joke that we loved kids one of two ways: in a cream sauce or slowly roasted over an open flame.We still find that kind of amusing in a macabre way. So it really shouldn't have shocked us when our little snowflake became the fly in someone's soup at a restaurant a few years ago.
The incident happened at an airport restaurant in Detroit after a long flight. We had to let our two-year-old toddle around the restaurant a little. He grabbed a fork and walked around the table.
Seconds later, we heard another patron yelling: "What makes you think I'd want to interact with your son?"
And there was Aren, playfully waving a fork at the offended guest. Oops.
Has this ever happened to you?
As new parents, Chris and I were mortified. We felt like we'd been slapped. The man continued to complain to the server and anybody else within earshot.
"I don't know if that's acceptable where you come from," he hissed, as Aren slowly backed away. "But it isn't here."
Were we being bad parents? Had we broken an unwritten rule ("Don't let you kids make eye contact with strangers"?)
She continues:
Still, if you're in a public area you should expect to have to deal with the public, right?How should you respond when this happens? Do you slink off, tail between your legs? Apologize politely? Or, as I was sorely tempted, do you give the offended patron a piece of your mind?
I was a little shocked by this, as I am a fan of Chris' work, and he is a colleague at TSA News Blog, where a number of us who are journalists cross-post our blog posts about the TSA's violation of our civil liberties. In other words, I respect the guy.
Before I -- hello, clue phone! -- realized it was Chris' wife's post, here's what I was about to post in the comments. I didn't want to directly attack Chris and his wife there. This is what I believe, however:
What happens to some people where they have children and then, go all "Screw you everybody else: anything goes!"?
As for her question, "How should you respond when this happens?", here's my answer:
You apologize. A restaurant is not a giant playpen. If you are not up to the work of being parents, use birth control. If you sometimes fail at being parents, like by letting your child go on safari in a restaurant and annoy the other customers, you apologize profusely to the other customer and maybe send over dessert, which you put on your bill.
Obama Administration: Ambassadorships To The Highest Bidders
Any of you who painted Obama to be a different sort of politician feel in need of about 10 showers about now?
Jonathan Turley blogs:
American diplomats are condemning what they view as President Barack Obama's selling ambassadorships to high donors. This has long been a problem and Obama supporters are likely to return to the refrain that he is just doing what his predecessors did. That is never a very satisfying answer. This is a form of corruption as presidents give high diplomatic posts to people who give them loads of money. Obama has apparently expanded on this sordid practice to a level that is alarming diplomats. The fact is that all ambassadorships should be confined to people selected for their diplomatic skills, preferably from the ranks of our career diplomats or academia.For years, I have been in conversations with people close to the White House and President Obama who openly discuss the amount of money required to secure an ambassadorship. Just last week a ranking democratic operative told me that a friend had put together round $2 million in donations because he was told that "the price had gone up."
Because we have a tendency to try to confirm what we already believe, to tell ourselves the team we're on is the right one, designating yourself a political independent would probably make you more likely to see politicians for who they are: mostly self-interested sleazebags who would sell you and their grandma in a package deal if they thought it would get them a handful of votes.
Gimme Link
Outrageous, please, if you can.
Sign At Airport: "Report Suspicious Activity!"
Photo of sign from @PaulDetrick tweet.
"Suspcious activity" would entail...?
They don't actually say.
Personally, I find you suspect if you wear flip-flops as footgear in any venue that does not have sand, a pool, or shower tiles.
Should I call 911?
Political Correctness Signed Into Law In Washington State
Via Martin, Claudine Zap writes at Yahoo that the language is being twisted to take out all the "men" from all the statutes:
In Washington state, the word "freshman" is out. And "first-year student" is in. In total, 40,000 words have been changed as part of an effort to rid state statutes of gender-biased language.The bill, signed into law earlier in the year by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, went into effect this week.
And it was no small task. "This was a much larger effort than I had envisioned. Mankind means man and woman," Democratic state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles of Seattle told Reuters.
"Fisherman" is now a "fisher." "Penmanship" is called "handwriting." And "manhole cover" is, well, still "manhole cover." Some words don't have an easy replacement.
Others do: "His" is now "his and hers." "Clergyman" is now "clergy." "Journeyman plumber" is now "journey-level plumber," according to the Daily Mail.
According to Reuters, Washington is the fourth state to officially remove gender-biased language from the law. Others are Florida, North Carolina and Illinois. Nine other states are considering similar gender-neutral laws.
"Words matter," Liz Watson, a National Women's Law Center senior adviser, told Reuters. "This is important in changing hearts and minds."
The minds you're changing suspected you were a nitwit previously. Now they have confirmation.
From Reuters:
Nearly 3,500 Washington state code sections, out of a total of about 40,000 have been tediously scrubbed of gender bias, although most involve adding pronouns "she" and "her" to augment the existing "he" and "his," Thiessen said.
Washington State flush with cash and can't manage to use enough for kindling?
Single Motherhood And The Marines
There are times when you just have no business having a kid, like when you're a single woman in the military. Frankly, in that case, getting a dog seems inappropriate.
Old RPM sent this shot and the description below it:
His comment:
I was at Marine Corps Base Quantico for a while this afternoon, and spotted the attached poster outside the bowling alley.It advertises a program called "Boots and Babies/For Single Active Duty Moms," which is designed to help single pregnant and single mother Marines adjust to their new responsibilities.
One thing to keep in mind while looking at the poster is that mothers or not, married or not, all Marines (just like all soldiers, airmen, or sailors) are available for deployment, and are required to make arrangements ahead of time for care of their dependents. I thought the poster made a good conversation piece, anyway.
Police Abuses At DUI Checkpoint Go Viral
Sabrina Gore (who said it was okay to name her first and last name), sent me this and I'm sorry I didn't get to my email that fast (due to my book deadline coming in a few days. Absolutely disgusting:
From a Facebook page where it was posted:
A driver recorded his stop during a DUI checkpoint in Rutherford County, TN and uploaded the video to YouTube. By this evening, just hours after it was posted, it had more than 190,000 views. The driver wrote on his YouTube page that the DUI checkpoint happened in Murfreesboro and the deputy told him "it is okay to take away my freedom." The Rutherford County Sheriff's Office said it is investigating the video. "The Rutherford County Sheriff's Office is reviewing this incident," spokeswoman Lisa Marchesoni wrote in an email. "We are looking into the matter to determine if there are any policy or procedure violations." Our sister station, WKRN, attempted to contact the driver who uploaded the video to YouTube. He did not immediately respond.
Notice how they play it with "check here!" to get the dog to "alert" so they can search the car.
Linkton Abbey
Carson...Oh, Carson...!
Savings For Shoe Freaks
Spend $100 and receive 20 percent off various shoes and handbags at Amazon
Public Health Care In Sweden Is Actually A Big, Expensive Mess
At Mises, Klaus Bernpaintner chastises economist Dr. Robert H. Frank about his June 15 article in the New York Times, titled "What Sweden Can Teach Us About Obamacare":
First it was understood in Sweden that free healthcare was only for the poor. It would not affect those who were happy with their existing provider. But when government suddenly offers a free alternative, many will leave their private practitioner in favor of the free goods. The public system will have to be expanded, while the private doctors will lose patients. The private doctors are then forced to either take employment within the public system or leave the profession. The result is one single public healthcare monolith. Can one find economies of scale within its operations, as professor Frank claims? Maybe. But if they exist, they will be dwarfed by the costs and inefficiencies of the bureaucracy that inevitably grows to manage the system.These results are clearly visible in Sweden. There are very few private practices left. Of the few that are left, most are part of the national insurance system. A huge bureaucracy has been erected to take on all the necessary central planning of public and pseudo-private healthcare.
When Swedes go to the polls every four years, they vote on three levels of government: national, landsting, and kommun. A landsting is a regional mid-level type of government and there are 20 of them. The landstings are almost entirely devoted to managing public healthcare. They are always short on funding and regularly make losses.
The advantage of a free market system, as I am sure the venerable professor Frank knows, is that supply and demand meet to form prices. These prices are signals to the practitioners and tell them what their patients need and value most. If there were a sudden surge in demand for open-heart surgery, the price of that service would, ceteris paribus, rise. The practitioners would be motivated by the rising price to move into fields where they can make higher profits. More doctors would move to provide open-heart surgery, the capacity for open-heart surgery would increase, the increased demand satisfied and the price would drop again. Some people protest and think that it is immoral for doctors to maximize profit and live well on other people's medical problems. But why is it any more immoral than farmers profiting from peoples' hunger?
Thus, free-market systems systematically allocate capacity ("supply") and reallocate it quickly to satisfy patients' needs ("demand"). Due to competition it has the added advantage of always striving for lower prices and higher quality. This principle is as true for medical services as it is for cell phones or gardening services.
The bureaucracy of a public healthcare system cannot use market prices to allocate resources. It must use some other means. First it will try to plan according to estimated demand. It will try to guess the number of bone fractures, open-heart surgeries and kidney transplants in the coming year. The estimates will invariably be wrong, causing shortages in some places and overcapacity in others -- at the same -- which translates into human suffering and economic waste.
Without the profit motive, there is no incentive to adapt to reality, to utilize expensive equipment to the optimum capacity, to improve the level of service, or treat patients with dignity. All change will have to be pushed down from the planners above by decree. Doctors and nurses will be frustrated because they are not free to exercise their art to the best of their ability and help people as much as they would like to. Many of the best leave for other fields.
I appreciate a good deal of Frank's work, and he has been a friend to me, helping me find the research I needed for the last chapter of my book I'm completing. (I reference his work on predicting defectors and cooperators, as I did in the last one.) But Bernpaintner is right on in his criticism here.
Wanting to believe Obamacare will end up rosy is not the same thing as a realistic view of what happens when you take away incentives that free market-based healthcare provides.
My healthcare will go up, probably astronomically, under Obamacare, in part, so I can pay for a lot of people who haven't valued health care enough to be paying for it monthly like I have since my early 20s, and I'm terrified about that.
It Is Ridiculous That Prostitution Is Illegal
Charles C. W. Cooke, at NRO, makes an remark about sex and selling sex that I've heard before, and appreciate:
Sex remains one of the few things that a free person may give away gratis but which he is forbidden from selling. It is perfectly legal to sleep around in the United States -- subsidized and panegyrized, even -- and, as the growing parade of octogenarian billionaires' wives demonstrates, it is both permissible and socially acceptable to sleep with someone in pursuit of regular material comfort. Yet it is strictly felonious to have sex with someone else in direct exchange for cash.At least that is illegal unless you film and distribute yourself doing it, in which case it is not only legal but profitable too. It is logic of this questionable quality that has led to the perverse state of affairs in which, under English law, prostitution itself is not a crime, but "soliciting" a prostitute or living off earnings gained through prostitution are. While the laws surrounding the issue remain such a dizzy and irrational mess, drawing a clear moral line through the morass remains nigh on impossible.
Nevertheless, people try vigorously. To broach this topic in polite company is to invite someone, invariably under the mistaken impression that this constitutes a hammer blow, witlessly to parrot the banal old line that "nobody grows up wanting to be a prostitute." At best, this is a red herring. Certainly, few people grow up wishing to be prostitutes. But there are an awful lot of careers that escape the dreams of children. Many vegetarians mature with no intention whatsoever of becoming butchers and Christians rarely spend their childhoods wishing devoutly for a vocation as an imam. The material question here is not whether one could foresee oneself ending up in an undesirable line of work, but whether or not that line of work is so undesirable that it should be prohibited by law.
On this, I am with Cornell's Sherry F. Colb, who has argued for legalization on the following grounds:
Prostitutes are not committing an inherently harmful act. While the spread of disease and other detriments are possible in the practice of prostitution, criminalization is a sure way of exacerbating rather than addressing such effects. We saw this quite clearly in the time of alcohol prohibition in this country.
He also makes the point that you can disapprove of prostitution -- which he does -- and still not demand it (or condone it) being banned.
via @walterolson
Amtrak's Fat, Expensive, And Slow New Trains For The Northeast Corridor
Love this quote by Stephen Jacob Smith in the New York Observer, and the piece he wrote it in:
The Federal Railroad Administration likes to think that America is special, and so our trains have to be special too.
More from the piece:
Like all of Amtrak's trains, the Amtrak Cities Sprinter will be fatter, slower, more expensive and more difficult to maintain than the models that Siemens sells to other countries.The ACS-64, as the new model is known, is based on Siemens' EuroSprinter, but has been modified to meet American regulators' globally-unique crash safety standards. Many railroads across the world order changes to their trains, but the special requirements of the Federal Railroad Administration go far beyond what others ask.
Other countries use high-quality signaling to prevent collisions from happening in the first place, and crumple zones to protect light trains in case it does happen. The FRA, on the other hand, insists that American trains be bulked up to survive crashes with minimal deformation, with all of the inefficiencies that heavier trains that must be specially ordered entail.
The ACS-64 will weigh in at 98 metric tons, while other versions of the EuroSpriner, from Korea to Belgium, clock in at 80 to 88 metric tons. The Belgians paid around $4.6 million per locomotive and the Italians paid around $5.1 million; Amtrak is paying $6.7 million for each loco, despite putting in a much larger order. (Protectionist rules requiring Siemens to build the locomotives in America--the ACS-64 is mostly manufactured in Sacramento--certainly didn't help keep the price tag down.) The ACS-64 can travel 135 miles per hour, but will be limited to 125 in everyday operation. The standard EuroSprinter model, by contrast, does 140, despite having a less powerful engine.
The locomotives will also in all likelihood also be more difficult to maintain than off-the-shelf models, as customized products are by their very nature relatively untested. Amtrak's Acela Express was infamous for its defects and weight. "They decided they wanted to make this the safest train in the world," former Amtrak Chairman Thomas Downs said about the high-speed train. "All my engineers thought the rules were nuts," he said, calling the Acela a "high-velocity bank vault."
Barack Obama: The President Who Would Be King
Michael McConnell writes in the WSJ:
President Obama's decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.
This matter--the limits of executive power--has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II's use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689--the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution--declared that "the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal."
To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on legal and constitutional issues, has repeatedly opined that the president may decline to enforce laws he believes are unconstitutional. But these opinions have always insisted that the president has no authority, as one such memo put it in 1990, to "refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons."
Attorneys general under Presidents Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Clinton all agreed on this point. With the exception of Richard Nixon, whose refusals to spend money appropriated by Congress were struck down by the courts, no prior president has claimed the power to negate a law that is concededly constitutional.
Don't Want The NSA To Read Your Email? Use This Font
Katherine Mangu-Ward has it at reason.
We're From The Government And We're Here To Help People Steal Your Identity
The headline on the Brian Fung article in National Journal:
The IRS Mistakenly Exposed Thousands of Social Security Numbers
An excerpt from the piece:
Another day, another slipup by the Internal Revenue Service.The incident involves the unwitting exposure of "tens of thousands" of Social Security numbers, according to a recent audit by the independent transparency and public-domain group Public.Resource.org. The identifying numbers were on the Internet for less than 24 hours after being discovered, but the damage was done.
Court Rules You Can Be Too Smart To Be A Cop
Cognitive scientist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman emphasizes that IQ tests alone shouldn't be used to make decisions about potential and behavior.
A pity he doesn't consult for police departments. From ABCNews.com:
A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court's decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.
...Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.
Most Cops Just Above Normal The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average.
...But the U.S. District Court found that New London had "shown a rational basis for the policy." In a ruling dated Aug. 23, the 2nd Circuit agreed. The court said the policy might be unwise but was a rational way to reduce job turnover.
Jordan has worked as a prison guard since he took the test.
Hmm, seems he hasn't gotten so "bored" with that job that he's left.
And Gregg and I have a friend who's the head of an important unit in the LAPD who formerly taught behavioral science for 20 years. He's an extremely smart guy, probably has a high IQ (I'm guessing, from talking with him at length), and comes to my occasional "science dinners" with various researchers and Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades and fits right in.
Maybe a cop with high intelligence doesn't stay a beat cop -- or maybe he does. Because somebody has other options doesn't mean they'll necessarily take them.
Imagine If The War On Drugs Were A War On Dogs
I woke up Monday morning at what I call "guilt o'clock," 4:27 a.m., worried about my deadlines -- book and column. This makes for bleary eyes when reading, and at reason.com, I thought the little link at the top of the page to "War on Drugs" said "War on Dogs."
At first, I laughed, and and then I realized...
Dogs can be beneficial, but they can also sometimes bite the mailman or the baby. Shouldn't we ask the government to ban them?
People will just have to open up "dog-easies," underground dog parks where their illegal pets romp until the cops come and arrest them and impound their dogs.
Fascinating: A Fizzy Chocolate Drink For Your Tumor
From WIRED/UK, Kadhim Shubber writes about sugar-based imaging technology to detect tumors. Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades first told me about Otto Warburg, mentioned in the piece. Mike blogged this about him:
In pre-WWII days, a German scientist, Otto Warburg, received a Nobel Prize for his work in sussing out the fact that cancer cells don't generate energy the same way that normal cells do. Cancer cells get their energy, not like normal cells, from the mitochondrial oxidation of fat, but from glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose withing the cytoplasm (the liquid part of the cell). This different metabolism of cancer cells that sets them apart from normal cells is called the Warburg effect. Warburg thought until his dying day that this difference is what causes cancer, and although it is true that people with elevated levels of insulin and glucose do develop more cancers, most scientists in the field don't believe that the Warburg effect is the driving force behind the development of cancer.But it stands to reason that it can be used to treat cancer that is already growing. Since cancers can't really get nourishment from anything but glucose, it stands to reason that cutting off this supply would, at the very least, slow down tumor growth, especially in aggressive, fast-growing cancers requiring a lot of glucose to fuel their rapid growth.
The WIRED excerpt is below:
Researchers at University College London have invented a new MRI technique for imaging cancerous tumours that uses glucose from a fizzy drink or chocolate bar.Called glucoCEST, the technique could replace the current practice of using radioactively-labelled artificial glucose, which can be hazardous as it involves introducing radioactive particles into the human body.
"We've started to [...] lay patients down in a MRI scanner and ask them to drink a bottle of Lucozade," says Simon Walker-Samuel, lead author of the study published in Nature Medicine on 7 July. "Then we see the accumulation of the glucose from the Lucozade in the tumour."
Tumours typically consume glucose ravenously. Described by the Warburg effect, cancerous cells use glucose at up to 200 times the rate of normal cells. Glucose, therefore, is a good marker for tumours and cancerous cells.
Why Middle Eastern Governments Might Not Be Islamicized
Tarek Osman, author of the best-selling book, Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak
But this Islamization will not succeed. First, despite the piousness of the vast majority of Muslim Arabs, themselves the commanding majorities of the region, the Islamization efforts inherently challenge the national identities of each country. Despite clever rhetoric, Islamization means the domination of one component of Egyptianism, Tunisianity, Syrianism, etc, over other components that had shaped these entrenched identities. This is especially true in the old countries of the Arab world, the ones whose borders, social compositions, and crucially identities had been carved over long, rich centuries. And the more the Islamist movements continue to thrust their worldviews and social values, the more they will disturb these national identities, and the more agitated--and antagonized--the middle classes of these societies will become.Second, these efforts at Islamization take place when almost all of these societies are undergoing difficult--and for many social classes, painful--economic transitions. And there is no way out. The ruling Islamist executives are compelled to confront the severe structural challenges inherent in the economies they inherited. Some are able to buy time and postpone crucial reforms through foreign grants (which come at a political price). But sooner or later, they will have to make the tough socio-economic decisions that these structural reforms require. Islamists in office will be blamed for the pains that will ensue. Rapidly, some of the constituencies that had voted them into power will seek other alternatives.
Third, demographics will work against these efforts at Islamization. Close to 200 million of the Arab world's 340 million people are under 30-years old. As a result of the many failures it has inherited, this generation faces a myriad of socio-economic challenges on a daily basis. A culture of protest and rejection has already been established amongst its ranks, and young people will not accept indoctrination--even if it was presented in the name of religion. Almost by default, the swelling numbers of young Arabs, especially in the culturally vibrant centers of the Arab world (Cairo, Tunis, Beirut, Damascus, Casablanca, Kuwait, Manama), will create plurality--in social views, political positions, economic approaches, and in social identities and frames of reference.
Finally, this Islamization project, in its various parts, will suffer at the hand of its strategists and managers. The leaderships of the largest Islamist groups in the Arab world have immense experiences in developing and managing services and charity infrastructures, operating underground political networks, fund-raising, and electoral campaigning, especially in rural and interior regions. But they suffer an acute lack of experience in tackling serious political-economy challenges or administering grand socio-political narratives. Lack of experience will result in incompetence.
via @MargRev
Linkin Donuts
That crumbly kind.
Even Without The Government To Punish Me...
A tweet:
@peterfrost
If your employer doesn't offer health insurance, you still have to buy it, and other answers about biz mandate delay.
My tweet in response:
@amyalkon
.@peterfrost @phil_rosenthal Haven't had an "employer" for 25-plus yrs & I've always had to buy health ins--bc it's what you do as a grownup
Day Care Sucks But Don't Expect Government To Fix It
I was surprised to read such reasonable sentiments and then noticed the piece (at Zocalo) was by Katherine Mangu-Ward, whose work I've read in the libertarian mag reason for years.
Mangu-Ward, managing editor at reason, is the mother of a two-year-old and writes about the problems of day care that people -- naturally -- call for government intervention in, because people (who don't think too hard about government) always think that is the answer:
The latest round of reformist chatter has been sparked by Jonathan Cohn's story in The New Republic "The Hell of American Day Care," which opens with the grisly story of in-home day care proprietor Jessica Tata, who left several infants and toddlers alone in her home while she went shopping. She also left something cooking on the stove. The house burned down and several children were killed. Cohn draws a bunch of policy conclusions from this sad story and the limited amount of academic research available on the industry, including the need for more oversight, more regulation, and more money.Washington tends to treat that trifecta as a no-brainer, but more spending, regulation, and oversight are not unambiguous goods. In an industry that is already failing to attract enough good providers, more regulations are unlikely to nudge the supply in the right direction. And when the government provides services--especially entitlements that creep into the middle class--it has a way of squelching promising private competitors.
Full disclosure: I am the product of two great in-home day cares. The second setup is the one I remember best: Every day after school I roamed the smallish house of a Virginia blueblood nicknamed Newbie, who lived a couple of blocks from my elementary school. She ran a day care, at least in part so that her hearing-impaired daughter would have an easier time making friends.
...But what about better regulation, licensing, and other oversight measures? Who could object to that?
My first in-home day care, of which I have spotty memories, provides at least a partial answer to that question. A woman named Millie, whom I recall primarily as a blurry face surrounded by a wild mane of dark hair, ran the place out of her basement. One of her specialties was homemade Play-Doh and she had a sandbox in her backyard. Millie was a godsend for my mom, who was heading back to work part-time after staying home with her young kids for a few years, in part because Millie was willing to accommodate non-standard schedules. The only flies in the ointment were Millie's neighbors. Perhaps they didn't like the hustle and bustle of a house full of kids. Maybe early morning drop-off was disruptive on their quiet street. So they waited and they watched. On occasion, Millie would cut one of her maxed-out clients some slack, allowing a kid to come earlier or stay later than the formal schedule dictated. This meant that she was over her allowed quota of kids when an inspector, called in by the irate neighbors, showed up. Millie's day care was unceremoniously shut down, leaving my parents scrambling for coverage and (very likely) leaving Millie's family financially in the lurch.
Regulations, even the most well-intentioned, are not without cost. The same rules that try (and sometime fail) to keep unscrupulous players from storing stacks of babies in a utility closet can be used by grumpy neighbors (or competitors) to force a useful and beloved community institute to shut down without warning.
We're All Just Pre-Criminals Now
In a UTSanDiego article by Lee Ann O'Neal about the massive amount of license plate data captured by San Diego government's cameras, San Diego Sheriff's Department Commander David Meyers had this chilling thing to say to defend storing the plates of people not accused of a crime:
Asked why not quickly delete the information of people not accused of a crime, Myers said the notion is impractical. Besides, he said, how do police know someone won't commit a crime in the future?
Maybe we should just imprison everyone on the off chance they'll do something criminal.
An Armed School May Be An Uninsured School
Steven Yaccino writes in The New York Times that schools seeking to arm employees are hitting a hurdle on insurance:
As more schools consider arming their employees, some districts are encountering a daunting economic hurdle: insurance carriers threatening to raise their premiums or revoke coverage entirely.During legislative sessions this year, seven states enacted laws permitting teachers or administrators to carry guns in schools. Three of the measures -- in Kansas, South Dakota and Tennessee -- took effect last week.
But already, EMC Insurance Companies, the liability insurance provider for about 90 percent of Kansas school districts, has sent a letter to its agents saying that schools permitting employees to carry concealed handguns would be declined coverage.
"We are making this underwriting decision simply to protect the financial security of our company," the letter said.
In northeast Indiana, Douglas A. Harp, the sheriff of Noble County, offered to deputize teachers to carry handguns in their classrooms less than a week after 26 children and educators were killed in a school shooting in Newtown, Conn. A community member donated $27,000 in firearms to the effort. School officials from three districts seemed ready to sign off. But the plan fell apart after an insurer refused to provide workers' compensation to schools with gun-carrying staff members.
The Oregon School Boards Association, which manages liability coverage for all but a handful of the state's school districts, recently announced a new pricing structure that would make districts pay an extra $2,500 annual premium for every staff member carrying a weapon on the job.
One Oregon school admin said every bit of their money is already budgeted, and that could be a big impediment to putting this forward.
via @margrev
Cufflinks
Few men wear them anymore, but I wish they would.
In lieu of cufflinks, post witty, shocking, newsworthy links here.
Advice Goddess Radio -- Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Michele Weiner Davis -- How To Put The Sex Back In Your Relationship
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
NOTE: A word on the "Best of" replays, including tonight's. I'm in the final weeks of working absolutely insane hours to complete my next book. This is the only reason I haven't been doing live weekly shows, and I will soon be all-live every weekend, featuring some very exciting researchers and their books.
This week, better sex! My guest is marriage therapist Michele Weiner Davis, author of the extremely helpful book, "The Sex-Starved Marriage," which I've referenced in my advice column.
This is not only a show that explains how to bring the sex back into your relationship but how manage things if one of you wants it more than the other (or if one of you wants it and the other wants it not at all).
Unlike all of those "sexperts" who basically tell you that one of you just has to throw on a nurse's uniform before you have at it, Michele Weiner Davis gives real, practical, pragmatic solutions for this problem -- ones that take into account how people really are and how life actually works.
Listen live (on tape) at this link at 7 p.m. Pacific, 10 p.m. Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/08/michele-weiner-davis-put-the-sex-back-in-your-relationship
Don't miss last week's show with social psychologist Dr. Roy Baumeister, busting all sorts of myths we believe -- to our detriment -- about willpower, which is key to success in numerous facets of life, from relationships to one's career.
An example of one of these myths is the notion that it makes sense to have New Year's resolutions, plural. In fact, willpower is easily depleted, and Baumeister, based on the research, explains that you should have ONE resolution and explains how to eliminate cognitive stress that decreases your chances of sticking to it.
One of the most practical and helpful self-help books I've read recently is the one featured on this show, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Baumeister and John Tierney -- on an issue we all have issues with: Improving our self-control.
Many of the studies in the book are from Baumeister's own lab, and he is fascinating guest. I've already improved my life with insights from the book, and I can't imagine that anyone who listens to this show will come away without tips for how they can improve their life -- and be a little more relaxed about the stuff they anguish over related to self-control.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/01/dr-roy-baumeister-the-science-on-increasing-your-willpower
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
We Now Have A Secret "Parallel Supreme Court"
A Facebook friend writes:
The US now has a secret "parallel Supreme Court" issuing 100-page Constitutional rulings after proceedings where only one side (the government) is represented. The rulings, carrying the weight of legal precedent and also secret, "reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny."
Here's the article by Eric Lichtblau that he linked to in the New York Times:
WASHINGTON -- In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court's classified decisions.
The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.
...Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case -- the government -- and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court's history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.
Created by Congress in 1978 as a check against wiretapping abuses by the government, the court meets in a secure, nondescript room in the federal courthouse in Washington. All of the current 11 judges, who serve seven-year terms, were appointed to the special court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and 10 of them were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Most hail from districts outside the capital and come in rotating shifts to hear surveillance applications; a single judge signs most surveillance orders, which totaled nearly 1,800 last year. None of the requests from the intelligence agencies was denied, according to the court.
...The FISA judges have bristled at criticism that they are a rubber stamp for the government, occasionally speaking out to say they apply rigor in their scrutiny of government requests. Most of the surveillance operations involve the N.S.A., an eavesdropping behemoth that has listening posts around the world. Its role in gathering intelligence within the United States has grown enormously since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Soon after, President George W. Bush, under a secret wiretapping program that circumvented the FISA court, authorized the N.S.A. to collect metadata and in some cases listen in on foreign calls to or from the United States. After a heated debate, the essential elements of the Bush program were put into law by Congress in 2007, but with greater involvement by the FISA court.
Amy's Got A Book To Turn In Blog Day
Can you all post some links here to talk about today? Funny stuff, political stuff, other stuff that interests you. One link per comment so your comment won't go to spam. I have to keep cracking away on the book, which is officially due Monday.
I'll try to post more blog items later.
To start you out, here's a funny one from Drew Carey:
@DrewFromTV Worst name for restrooms ever...
Unhappy Fourth Of July
It's what you had if you were awake.
Andrew Napolitano writes for reason that our freedom has diminished, not just in recent years, but a great deal just in the past year -- since 2012:
In the past year, all branches of the federal government have combined to diminish personal freedoms, in obvious and in subtle ways. In the case of privacy, we now know that the federal government has the ability to read all of our texts and emails and listen to all of our telephone calls -- mobile and landline -- and can do so without complying with the Constitution's requirements for a search warrant. We now know that President Obama authorized this, federal judges signed off on this, and select members of Congress knew of this, but all were sworn to secrecy, and so none could discuss it. And we only learned of this because a young former spy risked his life, liberty and property to reveal it.In the past year, Obama admitted that he ordered the CIA in Virginia to use a drone to kill two Americans in Yemen, one of whom was a 16-year-old boy. He did so because the boy's father, who was with him at the time of the murders, was encouraging militants to wage war against the U.S.
He wasn't waging war, according to the president; he was encouraging it.Simultaneously with this, the president claimed he can use a drone to kill whomever he wants, so long as the person is posing an active threat to the U.S., is difficult to arrest and fits within guidelines that the president himself has secretly written to govern himself.
In the past year, the Supreme Court has ruled that if you are in police custody and fail to assert your right to remain silent, the police at the time of trial can ask the jury to infer that you are guilty. This may seem like a technical ruling about who can say what to whom in a courtroom, but it is in truth a radical break from the past.
Everyone knows that we all have the natural and constitutionally guaranteed right to silence. And anyone in the legal community knows that judges for generations have told jurors that they may construe nothing with respect to guilt or innocence from the exercise of that right. No longer. Today, you remain silent at your peril.
In the past year, the same Supreme Court has ruled that not only can you be punished for silence, but you can literally be forced to open your mouth. The court held that upon arrest -- not conviction, but arrest -- the police can force you to open your mouth so they can swab the inside of it and gather DNA material from you.
Put aside the legal truism that an arrest is evidence of nothing and can and does come about for flimsy reasons; DNA is the gateway to personal data about us all. Its involuntary extraction has been insulated by the Fourth Amendment's requirements of relevance and probable cause of crime. No longer. Today, if you cross the street outside of a crosswalk, get ready to open your mouth for the police.
He calls the "litany of the loss of freedom" "sad and unconstitutional and irreversible."
And still, so many are asleep.
What will it take for people to wake up?
Couponing Doubletime
Coupons on loads of stuff at Amazon
Message From Book Jail: Would You Mind Slipping Me A File?
I jokingly call it "Book Jail" -- not leaving the house so I can put everything I have into this book I'm completing -- but it's a place I'm grateful to be.
I could use your help. I need an example of an action with good intentions behind it that didn't turn out so well.
Here's one from my life. While we were at the LA Press Club Awards, sweet Gregg had to log in to BlogTalk Radio to start my radio show (which he'd set up to play a rerun).
He could have just hung up, but he kept an earphone on to monitor it throughout the hour to make sure no audio dropped out, etc.
Unfortunately, this meant that our previously clean audio went out on the air with the LA Press Club Awards sounds mixed in!
When a listener clued me in about this, Gregg replaced the audio, chop-chop, with the previously-aired clean audio, but he felt terrible about what had happened.
I told him that what really mattered to me was that he was so sweet, caring enough to listen to the entire show to make sure it went off okay.
Stories you've heard or examples you can think of?
"Delaying The Employer Mandate Requires Delaying All Of Obamacare"
Michael F. Cannon blogs at Cato that Congress mandated that Obamacare take effect in 2014. There is no out on this. But about the President and the IRS's acting as if there is:
First, the IRS's unilateral decision to delay the employer mandate is the latest indication that we do not live under a Rule of Law, but under a Rule of Rulers who write and rewrite laws at whim, without legitimate authority, and otherwise compel behavior to suit their ends. Congress gave neither the IRS nor the president any authority to delay the imposition of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's employer mandate. In the section of the law creating that mandate, Congress included several provisions indicating the mandate will take effect in 2014. In case those provisions were not clear enough, Section 4980H further clarifies:(d) EFFECTIVE DATE.--The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.It is hard to see how the will of the people's elected representatives - including President Obama, who signed that effective date into law - could have been expressed more clearly, or how it could be clearer that the IRS has no legitimate power to delay the mandate. Again, Ezra Klein: "This is a regulatory end-run of the legislative process. The law says the mandate goes into effect in 2014, but the administration has decided to give it until 2015 by simply refusing to enforce the penalties."
This matters because the Obama administration has abused nearly every power it possesses-and asserted powers it clearly does not possess-to protect Obamacare. A partial list of abuses:
•Shortly after its enactment, Obamacare began increasing health insurance premiums. To prevent a(n even greater) backlash, Obama's HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius started waiving select mandates for select companies and unions. Congress gave her no authority to issue such waivers.•When health insurers began to inform customers how much Obamacare was increasing their premiums, Sebelius threatened to use her powers under the law to bankrupt any insurer that conveyed an unapproved message about the law. All insurers quickly complied.
...Second, the employer mandate is so intimately tied to the rest of the law that the IRS cannot delay it without delaying the rest of Obamacare.
In addition to penalizing employers that fail to offer acceptable coverage, Obamacare offers tax credits and subsidies to certain workers who don't receive an offer of acceptable coverage from an employer. The law requires employers to report information to the IRS on their coverage offerings, both to determine whether the employer will be subject to penalties and whether its employees will be eligible for credits and subsidies.
More at the link. Very, very disturbing. We got out from under the yoke of the king -- only to have a short honeymoon and then fall back under it, while kidding ourselves that we have a better sort of government.
Taking On The Serious Problem Of Novelty Coffee Mugs
22 state attorneys general have written a letter to Urban Outfitters to get them to stop selling a "Prescription: Coffee" mug. Walter Olson explains on his Cato blog that the "AGs argued that prescription drug abuse is a very serious matter and not something to be joked about."
One of the idiot AGs was from my state, the People's Republic of California. The other 22 are listed on Walter's blog item.
Walter congratulates the 28 AGs who resisted the temptation to go all monkey see/monkey do, and notes:
Aside from a few core functions such as defending their states in litigation and issuing legal opinions to guide state agencies, state attorneys general have far too much discretionary authority to butt into whatever controversial areas may suit their taste for popularity and political advancement, even when, as here, there is no evident basis to think that Urban Outfitters had violated any actual law. It seems highly unlikely that the novelty mugs send any particular message that undermines public respect for prescription drug laws, but if for some reason they did, they would be entitled to more protection against AG bullying, not less, since expressive objects that send a symbolic message of disrespect for government policy will often qualify for First Amendment protection.
Special Interests Acquiring Control Of Government Agencies
From the WSJ, a quote from from James Q. Wilson's The Politics of Regulation
As government regulates more aspects of our lives, a greater variety of interests--occupations, professions, institutions, associations--acquire a stake in influencing the behavior of the regulatory agencies.If we assume that the airline companies will try to capture the Civil Aeronautics Board, it makes sense to assume that professors will try to capture the National Science Foundation, teachers to capture the Department of Education, environmentalists to capture the Council on Environmental Quality, and civil rights activists to capture the Office for Civil Rights.
The plausibility of this assumption is sometimes obscured by calling agency-interest relations of which we approve "citizen participation" and agency-interest relations of which we disapprove "capture," but the issue is very much the same whatever rhetorical label we choose to employ.
Linkomat
It's like an automat, but with links.
Your Home Is The Cops' Tactical Base -- Whether You Like It Or Not
First Amendment bulldog, lawyer Marc J. Randazza, posts about a rather amazing case (and not in a good way) out of Nevada. Due to a domestic violence investigation at a man's neighbors', the Henderson cops wanted a man to let them use his house to surveil the subject of of their investigation, saying it would give them a "tactical advantage."
Well, the man, Anthony Mitchell, said he didn't want that happening, and explained that he didn't intend to leave his house or to allow the police to occupy it.
And then, as Randazza says, "it gets really hinky." From the complaint:
"Defendant Officer David Cawthorn outlined the defendants' plan in his official report: 'It was determined to move to 367 Evening Side and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.'" (Complaint at Para. 19)
Randazza writes:
So what happened next? Allegedly the cops came to the house, beat on the door, and when Mitchell did not open up, they bashed the door down with a battering ram. They aimed their guns at him, screamed at him, shot him with "pepperball" rounds, searched the house, moved his furniture, and set up a lookout point in the house, and restrained him.They then went to his father's house, a few doors away, and made a similar "request." They brought him to the Henderson police station, and when he tried to leave, they arrested him. (Complaint at Para. 39). They then intimidated his wife, Linda, into opening the door to the house and did just as they damn well pleased there as well. (Complaint at Paras 42-44)
The cops took Mitchell and his father to jail and booked them for obstructing an officer. They spent 9 hours in lockup. (complaint at Para 47). The Mitchells seek damages for violations of the Third and Fourth Amendments,assault and battery, conspiracy, defamation, abuse of process, malicious prosecution, negligence and emotional distress. How exciting that there might be a Third Amendment claim!
If the allegations are true, then this is a horrendous case that should result in a hell of a lot worse than mere civil damages. However, I think that the defamation count is a really bad idea. The rest of the complaint is so strong that throwing that in there seems gratuitous, and doesn't get the plaintiff much mileage. However, given the strength of Nevada's new Anti-SLAPP statute, it could expose the Plaintiff to (at the least) some serious procedural hassles.
More on the potential for Third Amendment grounds at the bottom of Randazza's post.
For those of you a little rusty on Amendment number three:
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Three Children On $7.75 An Hour
This woman's employer is breaking the law in shorting her on time worked on her checks, if her claim is true.
There's a story in The New York Times by Michael Powell about workers making low wages at fast food restaurants.
Tales of breaking the law in paying workers abound in this piece.
What struck me about the bit about Shenita Simon is that she and her husband, living in New York, which is costly, even in bad neighborhoods, have three children and a need to help her mother with the rent:
Shenita Simon watches a twilight rain wash across Brownsville. Softly, from her apartment in a public housing tower, she begins to talk of her life's impossible mathematics.
This 25-year-old woman with striking black eyes and hair pulled back in a bun is a shift manager at KFC -- her title is good for 50 cents an hour above minimum wage. From this, she and her husband, Jude Toussaint, an unemployed antenna installer, buy clothes for their three children and food, and help her mother with the rent.Her wages erode on all sides. Often, she said, she finds her check is hours short. And when she works overtime, she receives two checks, each at straight time, as if she worked for two different employers rather than a single KFC across from Bargain Land on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn.
Last year boiling oil spilled over and scalded her hands; she received $58 a week in workers' compensation, she said. Nearly every day her manager called and demanded: When are you returning to work?
She looks you square in the eyes.
"I'm beyond not satisfied," she says. "This isn't the life I want for my children. This isn't the life I want for myself."
What I don't understand is people having children they cannot support. Do they just have accident after accident, as in, failures of birth control?
My dad waited until he was in his 30s, which was very late back when he got married, so he could be sure he could support a wife and family.
Is there anything that can be done to stop people from popping out children they raise in poverty? (And no, I'm not talking any sick, civil liberties-denying interventions or forcing others to subsidize them.) Or will people just continue to pop out children they can't afford, which truly isn't fair to the children?
Bagels And Links
Schmeary 'em here.
Laptopping Out
Save up to $200 on select laptops at Amazon
In related savings, up to 40 percent off on external hard drives
Something More Of Us Need To Get In Touch With: Why We Fought The American Revolution In The First Place
Juan Cole posts on warrantless searches and how unreasonable searches of private documents caused the American Revolution:
At one time, Americans minded when the government usurped their rights and made over-reaching claims to be able to invade their privacy. No more.Most Americans have become little more than bleating sheep, perfectly happy to be sheared by faceless bureaucrats. They are willing to surrender to the state their most private information, the contemporary electronic records of everywhere they go, who they talk to and for how long, who they email, and even the contents of their communications.
With the rise of datamining software, this information can be extremely revealing, and government and contractors with access to it can engage in all sorts of blackmail, insider trading, and corruption. Since the surveillance apparatus is "classified" and top secret, there is no effective oversight to ensure against public harm.
The Founding generation of Americans was particularly exercised by the privacy of their papers, the equivalent of today's email and electronic records. They put the Fourth Amendment into the Constitution, which says:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
He continues:
We need a privacy law in the United States that would settle these issues for electronic papers and reinforce the plain language of the Fourth Amendment, which is by now almost a dead letter.The argument that we have to give away the 4th amendment because of "terrorism" is equally stupid. (King George III set aside the need for warrants and specific searches on the grounds of fighting "smuggling," the precedent for our current use of "terrorism" for this purpose). Charles Kurzman points out that there have only been 100 terrorist plots on US soil since 2008 and that the NSA only claims to have disrupted 10 of them through electronic surveillance. There have in those 5 years been 25,000 terrorist attacks worldwide, of which the NSA claims to have foiled 50 through electronic surveillance. So they are not actually so effective that we should be eager just to abrogate a whole amendment to the Constitution over it. And, moreover, there were 70,000 violent fatalities in the United States during this period since 2008, and 20 of those were owing to terrorism.
This is why I say those willing to kick the constitution to the curb over fear of "terrorism" are sheep, not bravehearts. And the government officials who issue thousands of 'national security letters' for warrantless searches every year and requisition Verizon business records on millions of customers, are frankly betraying the Constitution.
via @jhagel via @ATabarrok
Music Therapy: Old Man In Nursing Home Reacts To Hearing Music From His Era
Loved seeing this -- from Music Therapy (which Oliver Sacks talks about).
Sacks notes that the positive effect of this doesn't stop when the music does.
"It gives me the feeling of love," the man says.
We need more of this.
Music makes life -- including a that's been diminished -- worth living.
I'm Tempted To Mail Letters To "Mr. Yellowcake" And My Elderly Aunt In The Name Of Some Wanted Terrorist
Since nobody in government is making it hard to violate our privacy and other civil liberties, I think the answer might be that a lot of us lead them off track.
Got an aunt with dementia? Write and mail a letter to Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri c/o that aunt and include a brownie recipe.
It seems the U.S. Post Office is also looking up every citizen's butt. From The New York Times, Ron Nixon writes about the "Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States -- about 160 billion pieces last year":
It is not known how long the government saves the images.Together, the two programs show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail.
Probable cause? Pffft! Nobody complained when they got searched at the airport.
Okay, not many people.
More from the piece:
The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retrace the path of mail at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping."In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime," said Mark D. Rasch, who started a computer crimes unit in the fraud section of the criminal division of the Justice Department and worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. "Now it seems to be, 'Let's record everyone's mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.' Essentially you've added mail covers on millions of Americans."
Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and an author, said whether it was a postal worker taking down information or a computer taking images, the program was still an invasion of privacy.
"Basically they are doing the same thing as the other programs, collecting the information on the outside of your mail, the metadata, if you will, of names, addresses, return addresses and postmark locations, which gives the government a pretty good map of your contacts, even if they aren't reading the contents," he said.
But law enforcement officials said mail covers and the automatic mail tracking program are invaluable, even in an era of smartphones and e-mail.
Not an excuse to do it. Catching a few perps is not worth it. Our civil liberties are extremely precious and today -- July 4 -- is a day maybe we should spend a little more time reflecting on that and what we should do to stop them all being yanked from us without any suspicion we've done anything more than, say, write Granny a thank you note for the ugly tie.
Errant Linkage
Those errant links can wander here, in the amber waves of blog.
Get Fryed For Less
Deal of the Day -- 40 percent of Frye boots and shoes for women and men -- at Amazon
Love this FRYE Men's James Inside Zip Boot
Everything Is Better With...No, Not A Big Slab Of Tofu
Those who are bored with foods are eating wrong ones. I eat three greasy, crispy strips of bacon every morning and never complain, "Yawn, delicious smoked pork again?"
Misconception About The Advice I Give And The Shape It Comes In
I emailed a long response yesterday to a woman I really felt for -- a woman with some substantial self-esteem issues who wrote me for advice. I got a response back from her this morning:
Though your advice is often harsh, I found your advice to me very helpful. Thank you for taking time to focus on my petty problems & I shall indeed seek out the above mentioned book. All the best to you as well.
I wrote back to her, telling her that her problems actually weren't "petty," but the essential bit is in this excerpt from my response, in italics:
Thanks for your response. I write humor in the column, and will be harsh with people who behave terribly (meaning unethically) to others, but you didn't do anything wrong.In fact, I feel for you, having been in a similar position in my early 20s. Many women are.
Nathaniel Branden's work is exceptionally helpful because it isn't just about thinking happy thoughts and nonsense like that but about reshaping your thinking and behavior.
Doctorow On TSA: The Proof Is In The Lack Of Grand Jury Indictments
Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow makes exactly the right point about the bullshit, rights-violating "security theater" that is the TSA and its legion of repurposed hamburger clerks searching our bags, frying American commercial airplane travelers in porno scanners, and groping our genitals.
Regarding the TSA's new Instagram account where they brag about all the "dangerous items" they, as Doctorow puts it, "steal confiscate from air travelers," the message is clear: they're keeping us safe from danger in flight.
But Doctorow notes:
What they don't show is all the grand-jury indictments for conspiracy to commit air terrorism that they secured after catching people with these items -- even the people who were packing guns.
That's because no one -- not the TSA, not the DAs, not the DHS -- believe that anyone who tries to board a plane with a dangerous item is actually planning on doing anything bad with them. After all, as New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler said (quoting Tom Wolfe), "a grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted." So if there was any question about someone thinking of hurting a plane, you'd expect to see indictments.
Why I Buy Everything On A Credit Card And Why That Doesn't Cause Me To Go Into Debt
Dr. Art Markman, professor of psychology and marketing at UT, posts about research that suggests that credit cards lead you to pay attention to benefits of a product:
A paper by Promothesh Chatterjee and Randall Rose in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research suggests another reason. People pay more attention to the benefits of a product when paying with credit cards than with cash, but they pay more attention to the costs associated with the product when paying with cash than with credit cards.
He posts some advice:
When making any large purchase, you should think about whether you would be just as willing to buy the product if you were paying cash as if you were paying with credit. This can be particularly important for purchases like cars and electronics where salespeople like to add on expensive warranties. In the context of spending thousands of dollars on a purchase, a few extra hundred dollars may not feel like very much. It is worth thinking about all that you could do with those extra hundreds. Thinking about paying with cash may help you to do that.
This is essentially what I do: I think of my credit card as a debit card with a delay. Around the 27th of the month, the money I'm spending gets sucked out; it just doesn't happen right there in the moment as I'm buying something.
Meanwhile, I get airline miles and thanks to the logs I can create on my particular card's site, I have a substantially less time-consuming task in adding up my expenses at tax time.
Officer Doesn't Care That There's Such A Thing As The First Amendment
Cop seizes a woman's iPad and threatens to arrest her after she videotapes in public.
Law prof Jonathan Turley writes:
What I found the most interesting about this video is that the officer is citing the fact that this is a public area as the basis for threatening arrest for the woman yelling and disturbing the peace. It is the very fact that it is public that gives her the right to film so long as she is not physically interfering with the stop or arrest.
You Pay The Taxes; 23,994 "Unauthorized" Aliens Supposedly Living At One Atlanta Address Get $46,378,040 In Refunds
Via Jay J. Hector, Terrence P. Jeffrey writes at CNSNews.com:
The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to "unauthorized" alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically used by thousands of "unauthorized" alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to "unauthorized" aliens were in Atlanta.
The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.
Other locations on the IG's Top Ten list for singular addresses that were theoretically used simultaneously by thousands of unauthorized alien workers, included an address in Oxnard, Calif, where the IRS sent 2,507 refunds worth $10,395,874; an address in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the IRS sent 2,408 refunds worth $7,284,212; an address in Phoenix, Ariz., where the IRS sent 2,047 refunds worth $5,558,608; an address in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where the IRS sent 1,972 refunds worth $2,256,302; an address in San Jose, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,942 refunds worth $5,091,027; and an address in Arvin, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,846 refunds worth $3,298,877.
Since 1996, the IRS has issued what it calls Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to two classes of persons: 1) non-resident aliens who have a tax liability in the United States, and 2) aliens living in the United States who are "not authorized to work in the United States."
The IRS has long known it was giving these numbers to illegal aliens, and thus facilitating their ability to work illegally in the United States. For example, the Treasury Inspector General's Semiannual Report to Congress published on Oct. 29, 1999--nearly fourteen years ago--specifically drew attention to this problem.
You Can Keep Your Healthcare -- Unless The Company Determines Obamacare's Going to Kill Its Business
A friend who's survived breast cancer now needs to find a new health insurer, thanks to Aetna leaving the individual insurance market in California. The country's biggest insurer, UnitedHealth Group, has followed Aetna's lead.
Chad Terhune writes in the LA Times:
UnitedHealth said it had notified state regulators that it would leave the state's individual market at year-end and force about 8,000 customers to find new coverage. Last month, Aetna Inc., the nation's third-largest health insurer, made a similar move affecting about 50,000 existing policyholders.Both companies will keep a major presence in California, focusing instead on large and small employers.
What's most idiotic about the way this is working out is that more and more people today change jobs with frequency and a vast number of people are freelancers altogether.
The "Affordable" Care Act is an exceptionally ill-conceived mess.
The Insurance Commissioner gets it:
The departure of another big-name insurer raised concerns about the effect of reduced competition on California consumers."I don't think this is a good result for consumers," said California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. "It means less choice, less competition and even more consolidation of the individual market with three big carriers."
Anthem Blue Cross, Kaiser Permanente and Blue Shield of California dominate the state's individual health market with a collective 87% market share, according to Citigroup data from 2011. UnitedHealth was a small player among individual policyholders with a 2% share. Aetna was slightly larger with a 5% market share.
Anthem is a unit of WellPoint Inc., the nation's second-largest health insurer.
UnitedHealth and Aetna cannot reenter California's individual market for five years after they leave, according to regulators.
OMG! State Department Dropped $630,000 on Facebook "Likes"
I stole the headline from the FP piece because I couldn't do better. Horrifying story of spending of our tax dollars by government-employed morons, written by John Hudson at Foreign Policy:
Ostensibly web-savvy State Department employees spent $630,000 to earn more Facebook "likes," in a effort that struggled to reach its target audience, according to a searing Inspector General's report from May.Between 2011 and March 2013, the department's Bureau of the International Information Programs, tried to boost the seeming popularity of the department's Facebook properties by advertising and page improvements. But the results weren't so good, leaving the Inspector General with no choice but to send a frank message to the bureau's Facebook gurus: You're doing it wrong.
"Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as 'buying fans' who may have once clicked on an ad or 'liked' a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further," reads the Inspector General report.
Ultimately, the spending was successful in artificially increasing apparent popularity of the bureau's English-language Facebook page from 100,000 likes to 2 million. But the IG said the bureau's target audience is older, more influential individuals; not the kind of people who spend hours online liking government Facebook pages, in other words. "What is the proper balance between engaging young people and marginalized groups versus elites and opinion leaders?" asks the IG report. It also didn't help that in 2012 Facebook tweaked the mechanics of its News Feed, making static fan pages less prominent in users' feeds.
via @SarahFenske, @TinaDaunt
Are You Linking At Me?
You big HTML-based flirt.
Where The Toys Are
Up to 50% off select outdoor toys at Amazon
Dieters Lining Up For Sample Sale, New York City 
Canny Capitalists Get Rich Making Guy Fawkes Masks For Protesters
Hilarious. Michael Kelley writes at Business Insider:
Guy Fawkes masks, immortalized in the movie "V for Vendetta", have become a global symbol of protest and anonymity through the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab Spring."The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny -- and I'm happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way," British graphic novel artist David Lloyd, the man who created the original image of the mask for a comic strip written by Alan Moore, told BBC.
At the top of Reddit today is somewhat ironic image of this icon of rebellion being mass-produced in a factory in Sao Goncalo near Rio de Janeiro.
...An interesting note is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world and parent of Warner Brothers, owns the rights to the image and is paid a licensing fee with the sale of each mask.
In 2011 purported members of Anonymous told CNN that activists were ordering masks mass-produced and shipped in from Asia so that Time Warner didn't receive the loyalties.
via @radleybalko
How Easy It Is To Be Exempted From The Individual Mandate For Health Insurance
Dr. Aaron Carroll lists reasons that constitute a hardship that would allow a person to be exempt. I went to the original document here.
HardshipIn the Exemptions/MEC final rule, HHS specified at 45 CFR 155.605(g)(1) that a Marketplace must grant a hardship exemption to an applicant if the Marketplace determines that:
1. He or she experienced financial or domestic circumstances, including an unexpected natural or human-caused event, such that he or she had a significant, unexpected increase in essential expenses that prevented him or her from obtaining coverage under a qualified health plan;
2. The expense of purchasing a qualified health plan would have caused him or her to experience serious deprivation of food, shelter, clothing, or other necessities;

3. He or she experienced other circumstances that prevented him or her from obtaining coverage under a qualified health plan.
Number two describes a whole lot of people in this economy. I went without a bunch of "necessities" to pay for health insurance in my 20s, including food other than beans and a bed.
Now that the "Affordable" Care Act is coming, my health insurance, which I've already downgraded to bring the cost down, will surely go up a great deal. Gee, thanks.
There's more:
We clarify that Marketplaces may consider the following circumstances in determining what constitutes a hardship under 45 CFR 155.605(g)(1) if they prevent an individual from obtaining coverage under a QHP, which include an individual who-- becomes homeless;
has been evicted in the past six months, or is facing eviction or foreclosure;
has received a shut-off notice from a utility company;
recently experienced domestic violence;
recently experienced the death of a close family member;
recently experienced a fire, flood, or other natural or human-caused disaster that resulted in substantial damage to the individual's property;
filed for bankruptcy in the last 6 months;
incurred unreimbursed medical expenses in the last 24 months that resulted in substantial debt;
experienced unexpected increases in essential expenses due to caring for an ill, disabled, or aging family member;
is a child who has been determined ineligible for Medicaid and CHIP, and for whom a party
other than the party who expects to claim him or her as a tax dependent is required by court order to provide medical support. We note that this exemption should only be provided for the months during which the medical support order is in effect; or
as a result of an eligibility appeals decision, is determined eligible for enrollment in a QHP through the Marketplace, advance payments of the premium tax credit, or cost-sharing reductions for a period of time during which he or she was not enrolled in a QHP through the Marketplace, noting that this exemption should only be provided for the period of time affected by the appeals decision.
There are a few months this year that I let the electric bill, which is just exorbitant in LA, go to the shut-off notice stage, at which point I pay the bill before the due date. Simply getting a shut-off notice is a calculation on my part that allows me a little more float on it.
And as for the "recently experienced domestic violence," there are already false accusations of that (along with the actual ones, yes) used as ploys in custody battles and other disputes. I can see it being used similarly here.
This isn't to say it shouldn't be a reason one is exempt, just that it's ripe for abuse. But the easiest one to go with is the electric bill. Let it go to shut-off notice stage, pay the bill. Groovy!
Childbearing Years? Might Have Baby? Pay For That In Your Insurance
Big boohoos from a woman who became pregnant and, most irresponsibly, didn't have health insurance that covered that. In other words, she got a discount on what she paid, surely, for excluding mommy and baby care. I wish I could do that -- get a discount for excluding that stuff -- because there's no way I'm having a baby. Nooooo wayyyyyy! Everrrrrr!
Some of us are quite, quite sure of that.
Others of us...needed to give that a little more thought.
Elizabeth Rosenthal writes in The New York Times:
LACONIA, N.H. -- Seven months pregnant, at a time when most expectant couples are stockpiling diapers and choosing car seats, Renée Martin was struggling with bigger purchases.At a prenatal class in March, she was told about epidural anesthesia and was given the option of using a birthing tub during labor. To each offer, she had one gnawing question: "How much is that going to cost?"
Though Ms. Martin, 31, and her husband, Mark Willett, are both professionals with health insurance, her current policy does not cover maternity care. So the couple had to approach the nine months that led to the birth of their daughter in May like an extended shopping trip though the American health care bazaar, sorting through an array of maternity services that most often have no clear price and -- with no insurer to haggle on their behalf -- trying to negotiate discounts from hospitals and doctors.
When she became pregnant, Ms. Martin called her local hospital inquiring about the price of maternity care; the finance office at first said it did not know, and then gave her a range of $4,000 to $45,000. "It was unreal," Ms. Martin said. "I was like, How could you not know this? You're a hospital."
Midway through her pregnancy, she fought for a deep discount on a $935 bill for an ultrasound, arguing that she had already paid a radiologist $256 to read the scan, which took only 20 minutes of a technician's time using a machine that had been bought years ago. She ended up paying $655. "I feel like I'm in a used-car lot," said Ms. Martin, a former art gallery manager who is starting graduate school in the fall.
One wonders what happens to the baby when she's off at school.
Another Problem With The Health Care Law: You Can't Choose To Have Less To Make It Cheaper
Louise Radnofsky writes in the WSJ:
For a 40-year-old single nonsmoker--in the middle of the age range eligible for exchanges--a "bronze" plan covering about 60% of medical costs will be available for about $200 a month in most places, the proposals show.Though less generous than "silver" and "gold" plans on the exchanges, a bronze plan would still include fuller benefits than many policies available on the individual market today.
The challenge for the law is that healthy 40-year-olds can typically get coverage for less today, especially if they are willing to accept fewer benefits or take on more costs themselves. Supporters of the law say tighter regulation on insurance practices gives consumers more protection and is worth the extra cost, but they have to persuade people who don't have an immediate need for health care of that. If only sick people buy into the new insurance pools, prices could shoot up.
Bob Laszewski, a Virginia health-care consultant and former insurance executive, said the new offerings were likely to anger people who had preferred lower-cost products that were no longer available.
"If a person in 2013 has a choice of buying a Chevrolet or a Cadillac health plan, and in 2014, they can only buy a Cadillac...are they going to be upset? I think the answer is, yes," he said.
Virginia is one of the eight states examined by the Journal and offers a fairly typical picture.
In Richmond, a 40-year-old male nonsmoker logging on to the eHealthInsurance comparison-shopping website today would see a plan that costs $63 a month from Anthem, a unit of WellPoint Inc. WLP -0.23% That plan has a $5,000 deductible and covers half of medical costs.
By comparison, the least-expensive plan on the exchange for a 40-year-old nonsmoker in Richmond, also from Anthem, will likely cost $193 a month, according to filings submitted by carriers.
The law is likely to offer a benefit to those who have difficulty getting insurance now or are pushed out of the market because they have had illnesses.
The rest of us -- who've been paying into the system for years -- get screwed.
Who's Afraid Of The Big, Bad Saturated Fat? Dr. Michael Eades On Inflammation And Diet
Dr. Michael Eades tweeted a link to one of his 2007 blog posts on the hysteria over saturated fat and his views of the inflammatory basis of heart disease. An excerpt:
If you read enough in the medical literature you will perceive a change in outlook on the underlying cause of many of the so-called diseases of civilization, especially heart disease. Most authors - mainly, I suspect, out of desire to keep their academic positions and reputation with their peers - throw a bone to the lipid hypothesis before admitting that it probably isn't the only cause of coronary artery disease. Over the last decade or so the progression has been thus: elevated cholesterol causes heart disease - elevated cholesterol and maybe a little inflammation cause heart disease - elevated cholesterol and inflammation cause heart disease - inflammation along with elevated cholesterol cause heart disease - and now, among the more enlightened - inflammation causes heart disease. In my opinion, it probably is inflammation by itself that is the driving force behind the development and progression of most cardiovascular disease.When the cholesterol-causes-heart-theory was in its infancy the question became 'what causes cholesterol levels to go up? Of course this question led to the anti-saturated-fat hysteria that pretty much still has us by the throat. But the same question needs to be asked of anyone who claims inflammation to be the cause of heart disease: What causes inflammation?
Before we address that issue, let me add that in much the same way saturated fat has been demonized as a cause of almost everything, inflammation is thought to be the catalyst for much more than simply heart disease. There has grown up a theory called the 'common soil' theory that implicates inflammation as the underlying problem, or the 'common soil' from which spring heart disease, diabetes, obesity and the other diseases common to modern man.
No one much talks about the cause of inflammation - most seem to think it is a natural part of the aging process. As we all get older, we become more inflamed. As we become more inflamed, we tend to develop heart disease, diabetes, etc., all of which are diseases that usually strike later in life.
I have a little different opinion.
He explains the inflammation and the "innate immune system" -- be sure you read this at the link -- and then writes:
Over the past couple of decades just two of dietary changes - eating more and eating more often--have led to a state of chronic inflammation. The changes in diet composition have had an additive effect as well. Numerous studies have shown that while carbohydrates in general cause more of an inflammatory response than other macronutrients, fructose specifically causes the most rapid and intense inflammatory response of all. Polyunsaturated vegetable oils of the omega-6 variety (the majority) are inflammatory, trans fats (all of which start out as vegetable oils) are the worst, and most of the fat of animal, fish and dairy origin are actually anti-inflammatory. Sadly, we've been busy replacing the latter with the former. We find ourselves as a nation in the situation where most of our population is overfed the wrong kinds of food all too often with resulting high rates of obesity and chronic inflammation.
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Prices Have Dropped Like Reality Stars' Panties
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Moronic Idea of The Day: Why We Should Get Rid Of The Internet
Mike Masnick at TechDirt posts what should be a piece from The Onion but is actually columnist Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post with, as Masnick puts it, "what might be the silliest, most lacking-in-thought argument for why we should get rid of the internet."
A quote from Samuelson's piece:
If I could, I would repeal the Internet. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not -- as most people imagine -- a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. I grant its astonishing capabilities: the instant access to vast amounts of information, the pleasures of YouTube and iTunes, the convenience of GPS and much more. But the Internet's benefits are relatively modest compared with previous transformative technologies, and it brings with it a terrifying danger: cyberwar. Amid the controversy over leaks from the National Security Agency, this looms as an even bigger downside.
Masnick writes:
Leaving aside the anachronism of GPS (er, that's not the internet, Robert), this makes no sense. Samuelson brushes aside the vast benefits of the internet, and the fact that "instant access to vast amounts of information" leads to all sorts of opportunities for positive change in the world, including social and cultural enrichment, as well as economic growth. But none of that matters, because of the threat of an undefined "cyberwar." Samuelson, later in the piece, even seems to admit two things: that there's no evidence that "cyberwar" has done any real damage to date, and that many people think that it never will.No matter, just because it might possibly happen and might possibly cause some problems, we should ditch the entire internet and everything that came with it.
Adam Thierer's response. David Weinberger's brilliant rewrite of the Samuelson's opening paragraph, replacing "the Internet" with "the First Amendment."
via @veryjackie
Why I Live In California And Not Florida
I like Florida except for the humidity, the alligators, and how the cockroaches are only distinguishable from compact cars because they don't come in cute colors.
Of course, the truth is, I LOVE CALIFORNIA! Even if it is run by thieves and idiots.
So Wrong On So Many Levels: Arrested For Bottled Water-Buying
First of all, the woman is 20. We are paying cops to hassle people 20 years old for having a drink? My parents allowed us alcohol pretty much my entire lives. Since it wasn't forbidden, we didn't much care. Also, my dad drinks stuff that tastes like drain cleaner.
So, to get to the story, some college women went off and bought sparkling water in a case and some cookie-dough ice cream for a fundraiser and were spooked by ridiculous cops with no real crime to go after who instead are hellbent on stopping students who get a buzz on.
They suspected the case of water was -- gasp! -- a case of beer!
Problem was, the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission narcs weren't in uniform and the women had just been to one of those "Take Back The Night" rallies, where they learned the very good advice to just run your ass off if threatened.
A confluence of events led to the women hitting the "scram!" button. As the Daily Progress article puts it:
Daly said she and her roommates were "terrified" after being approached while carrying a blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water along with cookie dough and ice cream purchased for a fundraiser.Authorities charged Daly with two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer and one count of eluding police, all Class 6 felonies carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and $2,500 in fines per offense.
"She was not arrested for possessing bottled water, but for running from police and striking two of them with a vehicle," ABC's statement said.
A friend in the front seat of the SUV recently had heard stories from dozens of sexual assault survivors at an annual Take Back the Night vigil on UVa Grounds and was on edge, Daly's defense attorney, Francis McQ. Lawrence, said Thursday. The friend urged Daly to "go, go, go," court records state.
"They were not in anything close to a uniform," Daly said in her written account.
"I couldn't put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were ... terrified," Daly stated.
The women dialed 911 while pulling out of the parking lot to report what was happening and to ask whether the agents were officers, Daly said. She said she was planning to drive to a police station.
Daly wrote that the incident "is not just forgotten by [Thursday's] results."
"This has been an extremely trying experience and one that has called into question what I value most: my integrity, honor and character," she said. "Cookie dough and ice cream for a fundraiser should not put you through an extremely degrading night and afternoon in jail, appearing in court, posting bond, having to pay an attorney ... not allowed to leave the state, causing you endless nights of no sleep, [a]ffecting your school work and final exams, wondering if you would be dismissed from school, wondering how this would damage your reputation and ability to get a job, all while waiting on pins and needles to see what the Commonwealth is going to offer you."
Daly wrote that she never has consumed alcohol.
Sosij, who sent me this link, wrote:
How did they even know she was underage? Also, don't the authorities realize that no one who's smart enough to go to college is dumb enough to attempt to buy alcohol while underage? You just let your upperclassmen friends buy it for you.
Why Your Kids Should Become Janitors In Brockton, Massachusetts
It used to be public sector jobs were low-paying. Now it's the private-sector ones that are by comparison -- especially those where they work out some ridiculous sweetheart deal, like in this case. From EnterpriseNews.com, the headline: "Don't waste money on college; be a Brockton school custodian."
Check out the pay:
The average pay for those custodians last year was an astonishing $64,489. Five school custodians made more than $100,000 in 2012. Nice money if you can get it. But you can't. It's just for members of the Brockton school custodian union.We don't doubt that the custodians work hard. But the pay is more than twice the annual average wage of Boston-area custodians. The median hourly wage across the country is $10.73. Brockton's custodians make between $19.43 and $33 per hour.
But here's the most troubling part: The primary reason the custodians make so much money is that, about 20 years ago, they negotiated a contract which allows them to be school-crossing guards - at an overtime rate that ranges between $29 and about $50 per hour. Let's see your kid make that much money after four years of college at a cost of about $200,000.
Crossing guards for $50 per hour? It must be a misprint. After all, no other school district we surveyed in the area pays their crossing guards even $20 per hour. Fall River pays crossing guards $10 per hour. In Bridgewater-Raynham, the pay is $14.50 per hour.
...Union President John Talbot defended the custodians' exorbitant crossing-guard pay, saying they were reliable, already have had criminal background checks and - our favorite - are willing to brave the elements to step into the city's busiest streets.
Who wouldn't for $50 per hour?
via @Jeff_Jacoby
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