Jts5665

Chris Edwards

The government says that America’s poverty rate is 11.8 percent. It also says that the poverty rate has hovered around 11 to 15 percent since 1970 suggesting little or no progress against poverty in decades.

But the Census Bureau’s official poverty rate is biased upwards and kind of meaningless. In terms of material well-being, families near the bottom are much better off today than in past decades because of general economic growth and larger government hand-outs.

In a Cato study, John Early recalculated the U.S. poverty rate using more complete data and found that it fell from 19.5 percent in 1963 to just 2.2 percent in 2017. (The study’s charts are updated here.) Early is a former Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Bruce Meyer and James Sullivan perform a similar exercise in this new study. They find that the poverty rate fell from 13.0 percent in 1980 to 2.8 percent in 2018. Meyer-Sullivan calculate their figure based on consumption rather than income, but the general idea is the same. Meyer is at the University of Chicago and Sullivan is at the University of Notre Dame.

The Early and Meyer-Sullivan estimates are charted below. Both estimates reflect a large reduction in material deprivation for less fortunate Americans. Unfortunately, this great news about the American economy is usually ignored in media reports and political discussions.

Both Early and Meyer-Sullivan use a more accurate inflation measure than the one used for adjusting the official poverty rate each year. And they both correct for the fact that the Census—in its main poverty series—excludes numerous government benefits including Medicaid, food stamps, and earned income tax credits. Both studies make a number of further adjustments.

The charts below show the Early and Meyer-Sullivan poverty rates compared to the official Census series. Note that all poverty rate calculations stem from essentially arbitrary poverty thresholds measured in relation to a chosen base year. John Early anchors his series to the official rate in 1963. Meyer-Sullivan anchor their series to the official rate in 1980.

The important thing is not the calculated poverty rate in any particular year but the trend over time. The official series shows no sustained improvement in poverty in recent decades, while the better estimates from Early and Meyer-Sullivan suggest large gains for households near the bottom.

In sum, using somewhat different methods, Early and Meyer-Sullivan both show that the official poverty data is far too pessimistic.

I interpolated the value for 1982 in Meyer-Sullivan.

According to numbers updated today, 1,888 cases of vaping-related lung injuries, including 37 deaths, have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as of October 29. The CDC is now referring to these acute respiratory illnesses as cases of "e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI)," which is not only cumbersome but also misleading. While the term
e-cigarette typically refers to legal vaping devices, such as Juul, that deliver nicotine, the vast majority of the lung injuries have been linked to black-market cannabis products.

In cases where the information was available, according to a new CDC study, just 11 percent of patients said they had vaped only nicotine. The study notes that "data on substances used…were self-reported or reported by proxies and might be subject to recall bias, as well as social desirability bias because nonmedical marijuana is illegal in many states." In other words, since patients or their relatives may be reluctant to report illegal drug use, the role of black-market THC vapes could be even greater than the numbers suggest. The CDC also notes that patients may not actually know what was in the products they consumed, especially if they bought them online or off the street from illegal distributors.

"Use of THC-containing products was reported for 86% of patients who survived and 84% of patients who died," the study says. "Reports from Illinois, Utah, and Wisconsin suggest that patients have typically obtained their THC-containing e-cigarette, or vaping, products through informal sources, such as friends or illicit in-person and online dealers."

The CDC does not discuss the sources of nicotine products used by patients. But assuming that such products are in fact implicated in some cases, it seems likely that they also came from "informal sources" offering e-liquids of unknown provenance and composition. As psychiatrist Sally Satel, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted in her congressional testimony this month, "Consumers have been using commercially available vaping devices and nicotine products for 10 years without a single recorded death or any surge of illnesses…until this summer." The timing, she said, "is consistent with a relatively acute contamination" by additives or byproducts in illicit vapes. "The lung injury problem is a story of the dangers of the black market, not of vaping," Satel observed.

The CDC has gradually adjusted its advice to reflect the conspicuous role of black-market cannabis products in the lung disease outbreak. "Because most patients reported using THC-containing products before symptom onset, CDC recommends that persons should not use e-cigarette, or vaping, products that contain THC," it now says. "Persons should not buy any type of e-cigarette, or vaping, products, particularly those containing THC, off the street and should not modify or add any substances to e-cigarette, or vaping, products that are not intended by the manufacturer."

But the CDC still adds that "because the specific compound or ingredient causing lung injury is not yet known, and while the investigation continues, persons should consider refraining from the use of all e-cigarette, or vaping, products." That is not a sound recommendation for people who have switched to vaping from smoking, a far more hazardous source of nicotine.

The CDC implicitly acknowledges as much. "If you are an adult using e-cigarettes, or vaping, products, to quit smoking," it says, "do not return to smoking cigarettes." Yet the CDC's muddled messaging, including the unfounded insinuation that legal e-cigarettes might be deadly, continues to obscure the crucial point that they are much less dangerous than the conventional combustible kind.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, TITLE IX EDITION: ‘They treat my autistic son like a caged animal’: student takes university to court over Title IX ruling.

Marcus Knight—a student with autism and cerebral palsy—will face in court the Title IX officer who found him guilty of two Title IX sexual misconduct violations later this month.

Knight first came to my attention in 2018 after his attempts to make friends landed him in the school’s Title IX office, not just once but twice. According to the lawsuit, Marcus Knight asked one female student for a fist-bump, and another for a selfie.

While these may seem trivial, two female students at Saddleback College were so uncomfortable with Knight’s attempts to make friends that they reported him to the Title IX office, with one student claiming Knight made her “uncomfortable.”

But what’s caused two years of “absolute heartbreak,” according to Knight’s mother, is how the Title IX officer handled the accusations.

Considering Knight’s disability, both students decided not to follow-through with any charges. . . .

At the time, 2018, Juan Avalos was the school’s Title IX counsellor. Though Avalos does not seem to have formal as a Title IX law training, Avalos nonetheless investigated and adjudicated Knight’s case.

Despite that no students formally testified against Knight, he was still found guilty.

I like that names are being named.

How do you catch a predator in Sarasota, Florida? You create one.

The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office (SCSO) is going to "outrageous lengths" to make law-abiding lonely guys into sex offenders. That's according to Noah Pransky, a fearless journalist who has been covering Florida's addiction to entrapment for years.

In September, SCSO arrested 23 men for allegedly soliciting underage girls for sex. Pransky's most recent piece in Florida Politics chronicles the elaborate back and forth between one of those men and a police officer pretending to be a young female. Pransky writes:

In one example from a 2017 operation, SCSO spent two days trying to seduce a 20-year-old man who showed no interest in having sex with a child. Detectives, who posted an ad for an 18-year-old woman on Tinder, matched with the young man and proceeded to swap "getting-to-know-you" texts for more than an hour; only then did detectives tell the man he was chatting with a 14-year-old girl, not an 18-year-old.

Undercover detectives continued to try and talk about sex with the man the next day; he again rebuffed the attempts, but continued the small talk because he indicated he was bored. Detectives then sent unsolicited, flirty photos to the man; a tactic that violates best practices and ethical standards for this type of stings.

The terrible thing about this case is that the sheriff's office is not trying to save any actual kids. It is just trying to get an easy win.

Most parents who worry about predators online are picturing a creepy guy lurking on some kiddie site where he lures unsuspecting youngsters away to a sordid encounter at the Dairy Queen.

But the SCSO folks flip that scenario entirely. They log onto adult sites, claiming to be adult age. It's only once they establish some kind of bond with an adult who went online hoping to find a legal-age companion that they then confess that they are underage.

Normally, the SCSO destroys the records of these stings, preventing the public from understanding the sordid process that produced the arrest of the supposed sex offender. But in the case highlighted above, the 20-year-old man was actually a civilian employee of the SCSO, and he preserved the chat log:

Even though the man never suggested meeting up with an underage child, never brought up sex during their two full days of online chats, and appeared to be a model employee, he was suspended by the sheriff's office following the exchange. He said he was then pressured to resign to keep the episode private.

I would pressure him to keep it private, too, if I'd been as duplicitous as the SCSO:

The chat log reveals detectives willing to dedicate hours trying to build the trust — and romantic interest — of a man who thinks he is talking to another adult, before informing the man that the woman showing him affection is actually four years younger than she had led him to believe.

Detectives "swiped right" on the Tinder profile of the 20-year-old sheriff's office employee, whose profile read, "literally just want to hang with someone and be able to eat and not feel judged." On Sunday morning, May 20, he introduced himself to 18-year-old "Stephanie," told her he was bored at work, and the two spent the rest of the day texting back and forth.

Their small talk covered the weather, life in Sarasota, and dirt track racing. When "Stephanie" said she would liven up the man's slow workday ("I'll stir up trouble for you"), he steered the conversation back to their mutual hobbies.  When detectives suggested talk about drugs, the man steered the conversation back to Sarasota life.

But detectives kept pressing, suggesting they meet up. "Just lookin for a friend to chill with," they wrote the man, then telling him "Stephanie" was only 14 years old.

The pace of the conversation slowed down, but the two continued to talk about work, where they grew up, and a coffee table the man was planning on buying.

Then they sent a fake photo and asked the guy to send one in return. He didn't.

Eventually, they tried to steer the conversation toward sex. "I like older guys … I've never had sex before … I waant," wrote 'Stephanie.'

The mark responded: "You're 14 just relax growing up is not all the hype."

After another day of this aggressive flirting on the detective's part, the 20-year-old cut off the conversation. Had he taken the bait, he could be facing years in prison and registration as a sex offender. Instead, he merely lost his job.

In another article, Pransky profiled a 62-year-old man who did take the bait: Hamid Keshmirian, who went to a site that purported to provide adult escorts. He began talking with someone who claimed to be an adult female, but once a friendship was established, she revealed herself to be 14-year-old prostitute eager to have sex with old men.

The girl was actually a cop. "Deputies went as far as to put a man on the phone with Keshmirian, claiming to be the girl's father, giving permission for the encounter," Pransky writes.

Keshmirian's daughters say their dad had battled depression for eight years. When he went to meet the "girl" on his birthday, September 19, he was immediately arrested and thrown in jail. Two days later a friend bailed him out.

He killed himself that night.

Sarasota Sheriff Tom Knight posted about his team's recent successes at catching predators, writing, "I wish I could say these operations were no longer needed but time and time again, even after we make dozens of arrests, these men keep coming back for more."

Someone keeps coming back for more. But is it "these men," or the cops?

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Debate professor: Science is a projection of whiteness.

“Our argument will be that space is not real. It’s not real. Science, technology, it’s all fake. It’s a projection of white fantasies that has worked to control our interpretation of how the world works.” That’s the statement of a college debate professor talking with his class. He added, “None of us have had the privilege of going to f**king space to verify that there’s these stars and these galaxies and these planets.”

Read the whole thing, which is apparently based on up a recording a student made of Ryan Wash, an instructor at Utah’s Weber State University, who sounds like he’s unintentionally or otherwise, channeling a page from 1984, where O’Brien is interrogating Winston Smith:

‘Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.’

‘But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals — mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.’

‘Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.’

‘But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever.’

‘What are the stars?’ said O’Brien indifferently. ‘They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.’

Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did not say anything. O’Brien continued as though answering a spoken objection:

‘For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?’

It’s apparently alive and well at Weber State.

HEH: Motorcyclist Who Identifies As Bicyclist Sets Cycling World Record.

WHAT? NOT SWEDEN????  HOW DARE YOU?  We’re Number One!

SCENES FROM A FAILING STATE: They’re not avocados, they’re ‘green gold,’ and hyperviolent drug cartels have sights set on them.

Small-scale avocado growers armed with AR-15 rifles take turns manning a vigilante checkpoint to guard against thieves and drug cartel extortionists in this town in the Michoacan state, the heartland of world production of the fruit locals call “green gold.”

The region’s avocado boom, fueled by soaring U.S. consumption, has raised parts of western Mexico out of poverty in just 10 years. But the scent of money has drawn gangs and hyperviolent cartels that have hung bodies from bridges and cowed police forces, and the rising violence is threatening the newfound prosperity. A recent U.S. warning that it could withdraw orchard inspectors sent a shiver through the $2.4 billion-a-year export industry.

Some growers are taking up arms. At the checkpoint in San Juan Parangaricutiro, the vigilantes are calm but attentive. They say their crop is worth fighting for.

I wish all the luck in the world to these farmers, but the cartels have the big battalions.

OUT ON A LIMB: Texas Judge Rules Father Has a Say in Seven-Year-Old Son’s Gender Transition.

Earlier: Texas Jury Rules Seven-Year-Old Boy Can Undergo ‘Gender Transitioning.’

UPDATE: “But the judge is simultaneously slapping a gag order on the father, forbidding him from speaking publicly about the case. That means that she might have granted the father ‘equal’ voice in whether or not the boy is castrated and further encouraged to “socially transition” into a girl boy who wears lipstick, false eyelashes, and other drag-queen accoutrements, but that she’ll also side with the mother on every point of dispute, and the father now will be forbidden, upon pain of contempt and jail, to say so in public.”

Older people (and those headed in that direction, which is everyone else) are really sold a bill of goods when it comes to health and longevity advice. I’m not a young man anymore, and for decades I’ve been hearing all sorts of input about aging that’s proving to be not just misguided, but downright incorrect. Blatant myths about healthy longevity continue to circulate and misinform millions. Older adults at this very moment are enacting routines detrimental to living long that they think are achieving the opposite. A major impetus for creating the Primal Blueprint was to counter these longevity myths. That mission has never felt more personal.

So today, I’m going to explore and refute a few of these top myths, some of which contain kernels of truth that have been overblown and exaggerated. I’ll explain why.

1) “Don’t Lift Heavy: You’ll Throw Out Your Back”

Obviously, a frail grandfather pushing 100 shouldn’t do Starting Strength right off the bat (or maybe ever, depending on how frail he is). That’s not my contention here. My contention:

Lifting as heavy as you can as safely as you can is essential for healthy longevity. That’s why I put it first in the list today. It’s that important.

For one, lean muscle mass is one of the strongest predictors of resistance to mortality. The more muscle a person has (and the stronger they are), the longer they’ll live—all else being equal. That’s true in both men and women.

One reason is that the stronger you are, the more capable you are. You’re better at taking care of yourself, standing up from chairs, ascending stairs, and maintaining basic functionality as you age.

Another reason is that increased lean mass means greater tissue reserve—you have more organ and muscle to lose as you age, so that when aging-related muscle loss sets in, you have longer to go before it gets serious. And that’s not even a guarantee that you’ll lose any. As long as you’re still lifting heavy things, you probably won’t lose much muscle, if any. Remember: the average old person studied in these papers isn’t doing any kind of strength training at all.

It doesn’t have to be barbells and Olympic lifts and CrossFit. It can be machines (see Body By Science, for example) and bodyweight and hikes. What matters is that you lift intensely (and intense is relative) and safely, with good technique and control.

2) “Avoid Animal Protein To Lower IGF-1”

Animal protein has all sorts of evil stuff, they say.

Methionine—linked to reduced longevity in animal models.

Increased IGF-1—a growth promoter that might promote unwanted growth, like cancer.

Yet, a huge study showed that in older people, those 65 or older, increased animal protein intake actually protected against mortality. The older they were and the more protein they ate, the longer they lived.

Meanwhile, low-protein diets have been shown to have all sorts of effects that spell danger for older people hoping to live long and live well:

• Slow the metabolism, increase insulin resistance, and cause body fat gain.
• Impair the immune system and make infections more severe.
• Reduce muscle function, cellular mass (yes, the actual mass of the cell itself), and immune response in elderly women.
• Impair nitrogen balance in athletes.
• Increase the risk of osteoporosis.
• Increase the risk of sarcopenia (muscle wasting).

And about that “excess methionine” and “increased IGF-1”?

You can easily (and should) balance your methionine intake with glycine from collagen, gelatin, or bone broth. In animals, doing so protects against early mortality.

In both human and animal studies, there’s a U-shaped relationship between IGF-1 levels and lifespan. Animal studies show an inverse relationship between IGF-1 and diabetes, heart disease, and heart disease deaths (higher IGF-1, less diabetes/heart disease) and a positive association between IGF-1 and cancer (higher IGF-1, more cancer). A recent review of the animal and human evidence found that while a couple human studies show an inverse relationship between IGF-1 and longevity, several more show a positive relationship—higher IGF-1, longer lifespan—and the majority show no clear relationship at all.

3) “You’re Never Getting Back That Cartilage—Once It’s Gone, It’s Gone”

Almost every doctor says this. It’s become an axiom in the world of orthopedics.

But then we see this study showing that people have the same microRNAs that control tissue and limb regeneration in lizards and amphibians. They’re most strongly expressed in the ankle joints, less so in the knees, and even less so at the hip—but they’re there, and they’re active.

I’ve seen some impressive things, have been able to personally verify some stunning “anecdotes” from friends and colleagues who were able to regrow cartilage or at least regain all their joint function after major damage to it. Most doctors and studies never capture these people. If you look at the average older person showing up with worn-down joints and degraded or damaged cartilage, how active are they? What’s their diet?

They are mostly inactive. They are often obese or overweight.

They generally aren’t making bone broth and drinking collagen powder. They aren’t avoiding grains and exposing their nether regions to daily sun. They aren’t doing 200 knee circles a day, performing single leg deadlifts, and hiking up mountains. These are the things that, if anything can, will retain and regrow cartilage. Activity. Letting your body know that you still have need of your ankles, knees, and hips. That you’re still an engaged, active human interacting with the physical world.

4) “Retire Early”

This isn’t always bad advice, but retiring and then ceasing all engagement with the outside world will reduce longevity, not increase it. Having a life purpose is essential for living long and living well; not having one is actually an established risk factor for early mortality. And at least when you’re getting up in the morning to go to work, you have a built-in purpose. That purpose may not fulfill your heart and spirit, but it’s a purpose just the same: a reason to get up and keep moving.

Retiring can work. Don’t get me wrong. But the people who retire early and make it work for their health and longevity are staying active. They’re pursuing side projects or even big visions. They have hobbies, friends, and loved ones who they hang out with all the time.

The ones who don’t? Well, they are at at increased risk of dying early.

You don’t have to keep working a job you hate, or even a job you enjoy. You can retire. Just maintain your mission.

5) “Take It Easy As You Get Older”

As older people, we’re told that sex might be “too strenuous for the heart” (Truth: It’s good for it). We’re told to “take the elevator to save our knees.” They tell us “Oh, don’t get up, I’ll get it for you.”

They don’t tell me that because, well, I’m already up and doing the thing. I’m active and obviously so. I don’t take it easy.

Stay vigorous, friends. Stay vivacious. Don’t be foolhardy, mind you. Be engaged.

“Take it easy” quickly becomes “sit in the easy chair all day long watching the news.” Don’t let it happen.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t rest. Rest is everything. Sleep is important. But you must earn your rest, and when you have the energy, take advantage of it. Don’t rest on your laurels.

As you can see, there are tiny kernels of truth in many of these myths. We should all be careful lifting heavy things and pay close attention to technique and form. Everyone should care for their cartilage and avoid damage to it. No one should continue working a job that sucks their soul and depletes their will to live if they can move on from it. And so on.

What we all need to avoid is sending the message to our brain, body, and cells that we’re done. That we’ve given up and our active, engaged life is effectively over. Because when that happens, it truly is over.

Someone asked me when aging begins. How old is “old”?

I think I know now. Aging begins when you start listening to conventional longevity advice. As I said on Twitter earlier today, healthy aging begins when you do the opposite.

Want more on building a life that will allow you to live well into later decades? I definitely have more on that coming up. A perceptive reader shared the news in one of the Facebook groups already, so let me mention it here. My new book, Keto For Life: Reset Your Biological Clock In 21 Days and Optimize Your Diet For Longevity, is coming out December 31, 2019. I’ll have more info, including a special bonus package for those who preorder, in just a few weeks. In the meantime, you can read more about it here on our publisher’s page.

That’s it for today, friends. Chime in down below about longevity or any other health topics you’re thinking about these days. What are the most egregious aging myths you’ve heard? What do you do instead? Take care.

References:

Karlsen T, Nauman J, Dalen H, Langhammer A, Wisløff U. The Combined Association of Skeletal Muscle Strength and Physical Activity on Mortality in Older Women: The HUNT2 Study. Mayo Clin Proc. 2017;92(5):710-718.

Malta A, De oliveira JC, Ribeiro TA, et al. Low-protein diet in adult male rats has long-term effects on metabolism. J Endocrinol. 2014;221(2):285-95.

Carrillo E, Jimenez MA, Sanchez C, et al. Protein malnutrition impairs the immune response and influences the severity of infection in a hamster model of chronic visceral leishmaniasis. PLoS ONE. 2014;9(2):e89412.

Castaneda C, Charnley JM, Evans WJ, Crim MC. Elderly women accommodate to a low-protein diet with losses of body cell mass, muscle function, and immune response. Am J Clin Nutr. 1995;62(1):30-9.

Gaine PC, Pikosky MA, Martin WF, Bolster DR, Maresh CM, Rodriguez NR. Level of dietary protein impacts whole body protein turnover in trained males at rest. Metab Clin Exp. 2006;55(4):501-7.

Wu C, Odden MC, Fisher GG, Stawski RS. Association of retirement age with mortality: a population-based longitudinal study among older adults in the USA. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2016;70(9):917-23.

The post 5 Biggest Longevity Myths appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

HE’S NOT WRONG: Trump aide Stephen Miller pushes back: ‘Permanent bureaucracy a mortal threat to America.’

In an interview, Miller called inside attacks a “very grave threat,” and he explained it this way:

“It is best understood as career federal employees that believe they are under no obligation to honor, respect, or abide by the results of a democratic election. Their view is, ‘If I agree with what voters choose, then I’ll do what they choose. If I disagree with what voters choose, then I won’t, and I’ll continue doing my own thing. So basically it’s heads I win, tails you lose.

“‘If you elect Hillary Clinton, then I’ll implement all of her policies very faithfully, and if I see massive evidence of corruption on Hillary Clinton’s part, then I’ll keep it all a secret. If you elect a candidate I disagree with, then I’ll lie, I’ll leak, I’ll cheat, I’ll smear, I’ll attack, I’ll persecute, and I will refuse to implement, and I will obstruct at every single step of the way.’”

But, said Miller, Trump’s most loyal nonfamily staffer who also worked on the 2016 election, said that the president isn’t “cowed” by the attacks. In fact, he said the criticisms steel the president.

“We’ve made clear that your leaks will backfire and your sabotage will fail, and we’ll simply implement the policy doubly,” he said. “Not only will you not change the outcome, but the more that you try to leak and disrupt, the more determined the president will be in his course to accomplish that which he was sent here to do,” said Miller.

The top aide, interviewed in his second-floor West Wing office, also mocked insider critics who have been responsible for failed policies, especially in the intelligence, foreign policy, and defense arenas.

“The same people who made wrong judgment calls in Iraq, with respect to strategy in Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, too … the people who made all these decisions now are so utterly convinced that they alone know what the right policy is,” Miller said.

Related: Hawley to Introduce Bill Moving Federal Agencies out of Washington D.C. to Economically Stagnant Areas.

21ST CENTURY STORIES: Man Uses His Heat-Seeking Drone to Find Missing Child.

STAR CHAMBER:

HEH:

(Bumped).

POLITICS NOW NATION’S FASTEST GROWING RELIGION.

I’m so old, I can remember when the Babylon Bee was still satire, before its transformation into America’s Paper of Record.

I KNEW IT ALL ALONG: There are few articles I have ever read that I wanted so badly to be true. “Pork Fat is Officially One of the World’s Most Nutritious Foods.”

“Pork fat was given the nutritional score of 73. It bested other healthy food items like squash, salmon, and walnuts.”

Lest we forget Hitch’s brilliant expose of the bad rap endured by our planet’s most tasty animal.

CLAIRE BERLINSKI PRESENTS: On Mexican State Collapse: a Guest Post by El Anti-Pozolero.

You may have read the news just a few days back: the Mexican military captured not one but two of El Chapo’s sons in the heart of Culiacán, the Sinaloan capital. One son freed himself—which is to say his entourage and retainers at hand overpowered and killed the soldiers at hand—and then, in a decisive riposte, seized the entire city center of Culiacán to compel the liberation of his brother.

The forces that emerged were in the literal sense awesome and awful. Heavy weaponry that would be familiar on any Iraqi, Syrian, or Yemeni battlefield was brought to bear. More and worse: custom-built armored vehicles, designed and built to make a Sahel-warfare technical look like an amateur’s weekend kit job, were rolled out for their combat debut. Most critically, all this hardware was manned by men with qualities the Mexican Army largely lacks: training, tactical proficiency, and motivation.

Then the coup de grace: as the Chapo sons’ forces engaged in direct combat with their own national military, kill squads went into action across Culiacán, slaughtering the families of soldiers engaged in the streets.

Cowed and overmatched—most crucially in the moral arena—the hapless band of soldiers still holding the second son finally received word from Mexico City, direct from President AMLO himself: surrender. Surrender and release the prisoner.

It’s an absolutely extraordinary episode even by the grim and bizarre annals of what we mistakenly call the post-2006 Mexican Drug War. The Battle of Culiacán stands on a level above, say, the Ayotzinapa massacre, or the Zetas’ expulsion of the entire population of Ciudad Mier. Killing scores of innocents and brutalizing small towns is one thing: seizing regional capital cities and crushing the national armed forces in open fighting in broad daylight is something else.

This is getting very little coverage in the US, so do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Gut microbiota may ‘prevent and cure’ rotavirus. “This discovery was serendipitous. We were breeding mice and realized that some of them were completely resistant to rotavirus, whereas others were highly susceptible. We investigated why and found that the resistant mice carried distinct microbiota. Fecal microbiota transplant transferred rotavirus resistance to new hosts.”

WE LIVE IN SOFT TIMES: Mental health days for students: An increasingly accepted reason to stay home from school.

GRANDMA’S OFF HER MEDS AGAIN: Hillary Clinton Claims Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein Are Russian Tools.

Chris Edwards

Democrats running for president are condemning wealth inequality while calling for an increase in social spending. But expanding social spending would magnify wealth inequality, not reduce it, because it would displace private wealth accumulation by lower- and middle-income households.

Evidence comes from a study by Pirmin Fessler and Martin Schurz for the European Central Bank. The authors explore the relationship between government social spending and wealth distribution in 13 European countries using a survey database of 62,000 households. The database contains household balance sheet information.

Regression analyses by the authors confirm that “the degree of welfare state spending across countries is negatively correlated with household net wealth. These findings suggest that social services provided by the state are substitutes for private wealth accumulation and partly explain observed differences in levels of household net wealth across European countries.”

The authors found that the “measured inequality of wealth is higher in countries with a relatively more developed welfare state.” Why is this the case?

The substitution effect of welfare state expenditures with regard to private wealth holdings is significant along the full net wealth distribution, but is relatively lower at higher levels of net wealth. Given an increase in welfare state expenditure, the percentage decrease in net wealth of poorer households is relatively stronger than for households in the upper part of the wealth distribution. This finding implies that given an increase of welfare state expenditure, wealth inequality measured by standard relative inequality measures, such as the Gini coefficient, will increase.

Fessler and Schurz found, for example, that Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands have high social spending and low private wealth holdings by less well-off households. But other countries such as Luxembourg and Spain have lower social spending and higher private wealth holdings by less well-off households.

The relationship can be seen in this figure, which is their plot of social spending compared to the wealth of households at the 25th percentile (from the bottom) of each nation’s wealth distribution.

The authors note that their results are in line with the displacement, or crowding out, effects found in other statistical studies, such as economist Martin Feldstein’s work showing that Social Security substantially displaces private saving for retirement in the United States.

Data from Credit Suisse confirm that some nations with large welfare states have high wealth inequality. The bank points to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden:

strong social security programs—good public pensions, free higher education or generous student loans, unemployment and health insurance—can greatly reduce the need for personal financial assets, as Domeij and Klein (2002) found for public pensions in Sweden. Public housing programs can do the same for real assets. This is one explanation for the high level of wealth inequality we identify in Denmark, Norway and Sweden: the top groups continue to accumulate for business and investment purposes, while the middle and lower classes have a less pressing need for personal saving than in many other countries.

The bottom line for America is that expanding programs such as Social Security and Medicare will increase wealth inequality—the opposite effect Warren and Sanders may hope for. A better approach would be to cut the size of government and transition the nation to a leaner array of social programs based on personal savings accounts.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Public university tells professors not to grade based on merit. That’s at the University of Texas, but this is troubling: “BSU’s event has the exact same name as a previous University of Tennessee-Knoxville faculty workshop.”

BIDEN IN DECLINE: “Joe Biden didn’t do anything wrong? A time-honored method of taking bribes is having them paid to a family member, usually in exchange for nominal or nonexistent services. It is comical to watch ‘reporters’ pretend not to understand this.”

The Department of Justice claims to support "strong encryption, which is used by billions of people every day for services such as banking, commerce, and communications." Yet the department is actively working to weaken encryption, lest fully secure communications frustrate law enforcement agencies seeking access to possibly incriminating messages—a problem it calls "going dark."

Long before the government faced the "going dark" challenge, it faced the "going mobile" challenge posed by gasoline-powered vehicles, which Attorney General William Barr thinks offers an instructive analogy. He is right, but not for the reasons he suggests. The legal treatment of automobiles actually casts doubt on the Justice Department's insistence that the world be arranged to facilitate criminal investigations.

In a 1925 case involving enforcement of alcohol prohibition, the Supreme Court announced an exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Because illicit booze transported by motorized vehicles might be whisked away and hidden or destroyed before police could obtain judicial approval for a search, the Court said, the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless searches of automobiles as long as there is "probable cause" to believe they contain contraband.

Justice James Clark McReynolds dissented. "If an officer, upon mere suspicion of a misdemeanor, may stop one on the public highway, take articles away from him and thereafter use them as evidence to convict him of crime," he wondered, "what becomes of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments?"

Nowadays, when electronic warrants can be readily obtained in a matter of minutes, McReynolds' objection is stronger than ever. Although police can no longer plausibly claim that they do not have time to get a warrant before searching a lawfully stopped vehicle, the automobile exception that the Court carved out nearly a century ago continues to relieve them of that requirement.

In any case, notwithstanding the fact that automobiles facilitate all manner of crimes, the government has never tried to ban them for that reason. Yet that is what Barr and his allies are threatening to do with "end-to-end" encryption, which makes electronic messages indecipherable to anyone but the sender and the recipient.

Such technology is obviously useful to people who value their privacy, including journalists, lawyers, dissidents, and ordinary citizens discussing sensitive matters. It provides protection not only against the prying eyes of governments, many of which are unconstrained by concerns about civil liberties and the rule of law, but against hackers, con men, blackmailers, and other private-sector malefactors.

But because end-to-end encryption also is useful to criminals, Barr argues, it cannot be tolerated. Barr recently urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reconsider plans to include end-to-end encryption, which is already incorporated into the company's highly popular WhatsApp platform, in its other messaging services.

"Companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content, even for preventing or investigating the most serious crimes," Barr wrote in an open letter to Zuckerberg. Such privacy-protecting innovation, he said, "puts our citizens and societies at risk."

For the time being, Barr is limiting his anti-privacy efforts to exhortation. But in a speech last July, he warned that "legislative and regulatory solutions" may be necessary if tech companies are not sufficiently cooperative.

Technically savvy privacy advocates have long argued that "back doors" allowing government access to encrypted communications inevitably create vulnerabilities that bad actors can exploit. Barr disputes that claim without proposing any specific solutions to the problem, merely suggesting that it can be licked if only companies like Facebook think hard enough about the challenge.

Even if you share Barr's vague confidence, it's undeniable that the access he demands for the U.S. government will also be demanded by governments with far worse human rights records, jeopardizing people who dare to think for themselves in countries that do not respect such freedom. The compromises he seeks in the name of "security," on behalf of "the public," would make the public less secure by denying them the privacy-protecting tools they manifestly want.

© Copyright 2019 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

THE BABYLON BEE IS SAVAGE: LeBron James Says Rosa Parks’s Bus Protest ‘Could Have Waited A Week.’

James, an expert in geopolitical relations as well as the game of basketball, went on to explain that people in power stand to lose a lot of money when protesters challenge the status quo. “Civil rights demonstrations should really be limited to times that are convenient to everyone,” James told sources. “When Rosa Parks started the bus boycott by refusing to give up her seat, I guess there were some sporting events scheduled that week in downtown Montgomery that lost a lot of revenue. It wasn’t fair to them. I can’t really blame Ms. Parks though. She was just misinformed.”

“In the future, I hope people will think about how voicing their support for civil rights and freedom might impact rich and powerful people, like me,” James added.

Ouch.

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Kamala Harris’s Offices Fought Payments to Wrongly Convicted.

HARSH, BUT FAIR:

KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Whistleblowers And The Real Deep State.

The “deep state”—if we are to use the term—is better defined as consisting of career civil servants, who have growing power in the administrative state but work in the shadows. As government grows, so do the challenges of supervising a bureaucracy swelling in both size and power. Emboldened by employment rules that make it all but impossible to fire career employees, this internal civil “resistance” has proved willing to take ever more outrageous actions against the president and his policies, using the tools of both traditional and social media.

Government-employed resisters received a call to action within weeks of the new administration. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates became acting attorney general on Mr. Trump’s inauguration and Loretta Lynch’s resignation. A week later, the president signed an executive order restricting travel from seven Middle Eastern and African countries. Ms. Yates instructed Justice Department lawyers not to defend the order in court on the grounds that she was not convinced it was “consistent” with the department’s “responsibilities” or even “lawful.” She decreed: “For as long as I am Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order.”

Mr. Trump fired her that day, but he shouldn’t have had to. Her obligation was to defend the executive order, or to resign if she felt she couldn’t. Nobody elected Sally Yates.

The Yates memo was the first official act of the internal resistance—not only a precedent but a rallying cry. Subordinates fawningly praised her in emails obtained by Judicial Watch. “You are my new hero,” wrote one federal prosecutor. Another department colleague emailed: “Thank you AG Yates. I’ve been in civil/appellate for 30 years and have never seen an administration with such contempt for democratic values and the rule of law.” Andrew Weissmann—a career department lawyer, then head of the Criminal Fraud Division and later on the staff of special counsel Robert Mueller—wrote: “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much.” Ms. Yates set an example to rebels throughout the government: If she can defy the president, why can’t I?

That mentality fed the stream of leaks that has flowed ever since.

The civil service laws aren’t working. Time to return to the spoils system, where “bureaucratic diffusion of responsibility” was less of a thing.

Partly because they've created a society where they have most of it by their flawed definition.

Privilege comes from the Latin meaning "Private Law." So in a literal sense, unless there are laws to some effect, favoring or harming others, there is no privilege. For example, if there was a dedicated driving lane for those of a certain class, that would be privilege. I'd also be part of it and sneer at you inferior drivers, because honestly, that really should be a thing.

Actor, Action, Patient, Agent:

The ACTOR acts out.  The ACTION affects the PATIENT, for positive or negative. An AGENT is anyone capable of acting.  In a hypothetical extreme privilege society, the PATIENT has no AGENCY and cannot fight the ACTION.  Slavery in the antebellum South is a good example of this. Slaves had very little agency whatsoever, and when they did, it was usually through their owner by proxy with no personal say in the matter.

But that's not the world we live in now.  The law officially applies to everyone equally. Now, enforcement varies, and it usually works to the advantage of the wealthy and celebrities of ANY DEMOGRAPHIC.

But if, let's say, a cop and a judge decide to charge and sentence two people differently, based on race, religion, political affiliation.  The PATIENTS of these ACTIONS don't have much AGENCY to change the ACTORS' intentions. Possibly a better lawyer or publicity can change things, but there's no official strata, no, "Hey, you can't do that to me, I have this card that says ___" (Well, sometimes politicians and cops have such a card. Foreign diplomats do to an extent.  But it's exceptionally rare for anyone else.)

"They treated you better, YOU HAVE PRIVILEGE!"

No, I fucking don't. And by claiming so, YOU have just diverted the ACT from the ACTOR to me, one of the PATIENTS.  "You got treated better! You are evil!" Wrong. The ACTORS did the wrongdoing. You and I are both PATIENTS.  You are literally arguing that if you get punched in the face and I don't, that it's because I'm the bad guy, not the asshole who's punching people.

Stop with the bullshit claims of PRIVILEGE for the patients of the action, and go after the fucking ACTORS. Because every time you accuse someone else of "privilege" for actions totally beyond their control, you piss them off and make it even harder to go after the ACTORS who cause the problems.

OH, THIS’LL WORK: Blizzard accused of disabling authentication to stop users deleting accounts during boycott. “Over the weekend, video game publisher Blizzard banned professional Hearthstone player Ng Wai ‘blitzchung’ Chung from the 2019 Hearthstone Grandmasters Official Competition after he showed support for the Hong Kong protests in an interview. The move was seen as an example of yet another US company bending the knee to China and led to heavy criticism and a mass boycott. Now Blizzard users who are attempting to participate in the boycott by closing their accounts are reporting that Blizzard has disabled all authentication and is preventing them from deleting their accounts.”