Nintendo's never-ending desire to control how YouTubers review its games or do "let's plays" has been laughable from the start. From the trust-destroying agreement YouTubers had to enter into in order to get access to visual content to the beauracratic nightmare individuals had to wade through just to get a video approved for monetization, the whole thing started off on messy footing. And the biggest issue in all of this: Nintendo still can't seem to grasp that these YouTubers are giving the company free advertising. Gamers love the kinds of videos these YouTubers produce. They use them to make purchasing decisions, to become interested in new games, and to fuel word-of-mouth advertising that no trumped up ad campaign could ever possibly hope to achieve. Why make any of that more complicated by creating an approval system for the videos? And, more importantly, why take away the incentive for fans to promote your games by demanding a share of their YouTube revenue?

Well, the program that's a mere few months old has already resulted in the first major YouTuber proclaiming that Nintendo games will no longer be covered. Angry Joe (Joe Vargas) has one hell of an online following in the gaming YouTuber community and, following a spat over his Mario Party 10 video, Nintendo is dead to him.

Joe “Angry Joe” Vargas, who commands nearly two million subscribers on YouTube, has decided to stop covering Nintendo games, following a dispute over a Mario Party 10 video. Angry Joe’s Mario Party 10 video was flagged by YouTube, and while it’s possible for him to keep the video online, he can’t make money off it. It’s easy to imagine why he’s upset.

He tweeted about the decision a few days ago:

I hope @NintendoAmerica enjoyed the free ad revenue & coverage I generated for em. It will be my last Nintendo video. pic.twitter.com/07797eA7W4 — Joe Vargas (@AngryJoeShow) April 4, 2015

That sort of says it all, doesn't it? Millions of gamers who went to Angry Joe for help in where to spend their gaming dollar will no longer be directed by Joe to Nintendo games via reviews and gameplay footage. For Angry Joe followers, Nintendo might as well not exist. What's particularly insane about this is that the YouTuber Nintendo affiliate program described above wouldn't even have applied to this particular video, since some Nintendo games, Mario Party 10 among them, don't even qualify for coverage under the program. Why Nintendo would seek to piss off a popular YouTuber over a video for a game that wouldn't have been granted the okay under the affiliate program is beyond me.

Here's a case where Nintendo has locked up 100% of the ad revenue on Angry Joe's video, despite the fact that it's not Nintendo's copyright-covered content viewers are coming to watch. That's not only unfair, it's biting the very hand feeding Nintendo's coffers and sending the company new customers. This is the first major YouTuber to jump off the Nintendo ship, but it almost certainly won't be the last.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Top Spy: Hillary's Emails 'Likely' Hacked by China, Russia, Iran...


(Second column, 8th story, link)

---

I featured a series of posts about profits last week here and here, (the first post was mentioned and discussed at other blogs and websites here, here, here and here), and this is another post on profits.

According to this database at Yahoo!Finance for 212 US industries, the median profit margin (net income / sales) for American companies was 6.5% during the most recent quarter. Assuming that a company operates 365 days a year, here’s a question about profits: How many days of sales in a calendar year does it take to cover all of a company’s annual expenses (labor, rent, cost of goods, utilities, property taxes, income taxes, interest payments, advertising, etc.), and then how many days of sales would represent the company’s profits?

As the table above shows (click to enlarge), for the typical US company with a 6.5% profit margin, all of the company’s sales revenue from January 1 to December 7 would go to cover the firm’s expenses for the year, and its sales on roughly the last 24 days of December from December 8 to December 31 would represent its profits. For the other industries displayed in the table above that operate on thin profit margins of less than 4%, companies in those industries have to operate until the middle of December (airlines for example at December 18), or even until the last week (department stores), or in the case of grocery stores until the middle of the last week of December. Think about it — a grocery chain like Safeway or Kroger has to operate from January 1 to December 26 until it breaks even for the year, and only then will its sales revenue from the the last 4.4 days starting on December 27 represent the profits for the entire year! And that’s only if everything goes exactly right, and nothing goes wrong — like a sales slump from a recessionary slowdown or from increased competition from a new competitor like Walmart and Target (now in the grocery business); or like an unexpected increase in costs that can’t be passed along in the form of higher prices, etc.

Using a different data source for the restaurant industry, the average profit margin over the 7-year period from 2007 to 2013 was 2.1% according to this report from Sage Works, and was less than 2% in five of those years. That means a typical restaurant that is open seven days a week has to operate until December 23 to cover its costs and break even, and would only earn its profits from the sales revenue generated from the last 8 days of the year from December 24-31. And again, that’s only if everything goes perfectly and there are no unexpected increases in costs/expenses and if there are no unexpected decreases in sales revenue. Those are big ifs in the hyper-competitive restaurant business, as demonstrated by the fact that 25% of restaurants close or change ownership in the first year of business, and that percentage rises to 60% after three years. Those thin margins in the restaurant business also demonstrate how vulnerable those establishments are to the whimsical and fanciful actions from politicians who routinely pass legislation that artificially and significantly raises the labor costs of restaurants in the form of minimum wage laws government-mandated wage floors that guarantee some small businesses and restaurants will be forced to close down. 

Bottom Line: The analysis above of profit margins for firms based on the “first day of profit” in the calendar year is another way to help illustrate that most of the money a firm takes in from its sales goes to pay expenses and costs of operation, and only a very small fraction of those sales (6.7% for a typical firm and only 1-4% for many retail industries) turns into profits that allow the company to survive. It’s a lesson about profits that politicians and the general public should keep in mind when they support proposals like a $15 minimum/living wage that can often mean the difference between a small business’s survival on a razor-thin profit margin and bankruptcy.

Update: As Jon Murphy aptly points out in his comment below the post, “many of the industries (restaurants, grocery stores and discount retailers) with low profit margins are also major employers of minimum wage workers. The simple fact is they cannot absorb wage hikes, their razor-thin profit margins simply won’t allow it.”

BONUS: In the Prager University video below, Professor Walter E. Williams of George Mason University answers some basic questions about profits: Is profit a dirty word? Would the world be better off without profits? Or are profits progressive — the only thing that can move potatoes from Idaho to Manhattan and medicine from America to Africa?

The post The typical US firm doesn’t earn a profit until sometime in December, and often it’s the end of the month appeared first on AEI.

carry-on-my-otp:

If Stuntmen from the old movies don’t have your full respect then I just don’t know what to say to you

fencehopping: Giant balloon popping in slow motion.

In 2009, Canadian economist Ross McKitrick was asked by a journalist for his thoughts on the importance of the annual one-hour event in energy self-flagellation and green nitwitery known as Earth Hour, which takes place today, March 28, at 8:30 p.m. Here is his excellent response (my emphasis):

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.

Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.

Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.

Many of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases. Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that’s how the west developed.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.

Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply.

If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations.

No thanks. I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.

MP: The winner for Earth Hour every year since 2003 has been North Korea (see photo below of the Korean peninsula at night). Odds favor them to be the winner again this year.

The post Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty, and backwardness appeared first on AEI.

If your firewall is blocking the image, see it on Twitter here.

Humor Dimensions: Recognition, mean, clever, bizarre

Brevity: Good (could lose the word “have” in first panel)

Inappropriateness: High (bathroom humor)

Predicted Twitter Response: Expect lots of retweets despite bathroom humor because the message about nutrition is important to folks and the naughtiness is softened by the silliness of it.

[Update: Typo in last frame corrected]

Update 3/29/15: I predicted lots of retweets despite the naughtiness of this comic because I assumed folks would agree with the message about nutrition. No one is on the other side of that issue. As predicted, this was a strong performer. Only a few of my tweets have had this many retweets.

Key Learning: You can get away with naughtiness if you don’t use actual naughty words and the message is otherwise positive.

If your firewall is blocking the image, see it on Twitter here.

Scott

@ScottAdamsSays

Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger

Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”

—

On Sunday, in anticipation of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) announcement that he intends to run for president, California governor Jerry Brown (D), declared to NBC’s Meet the Press Cruz was “absolutely unfit to be running for office.” Why? Because of Cruz’s stance on climate change—some of which Cruz laid out on late night TV last week.

But comparing Cruz’s comments on Late Night with Seth Meyers and Brown’s remarks on Meet the Press, it is pretty clear that it is Gov. Brown who needs to spend more time familiarizing himself with the scientific literature on climate change and especially its associations with extreme weather events.

Apparently Gov. Brown is convinced that climate change, or rather the apparently scarier-sounding “climate disruption” Brown prefers, is behind the ongoing drought in California, not to mention the East Coast’s cold and snowy winter.

Cruz, on the other hand, told a more restrained story—that data doesn’t support many alarmist claims and that satellites show no warming during the past 17 years while climate models expected warming—one which comports better with the science that he portrayed.

While there is certainly more to the story than Cruz went into in his brief appearance with Seth Meyers, he is right, that according to satellite observations of the earth’s lower atmosphere as compiled by researchers at Remote Sensing Systems, there has been no overall temperature increase during the past 17 years.

Gov. Brown, meanwhile, decided to elaborate on the climate change issue. Under general questioning from Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, Brown admitted that is was difficult to link specific events, like the California drought, to human-caused climate change. But then Todd played a snippet of Cruz’s Late Night interview where Cruz said:

And my view actually is simple. Debates on this should follow science and should follow data and many of the alarmists on global warming, they have a problem because the science doesn’t back them up.

Brown’s assertions then got much bolder:

What [Cruz] said is absolutely false. Over 90% of the scientists who deal with climate are absolutely convinced that the human activity, the industrial activity, the generation of CO2, methane, oxides of nitrogen and all the rest of those greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere, they are heat-trapping, and they are causing warming, not just drought in California, but severe storms and cold in the East Coast. So it’s climate disruption of many different kinds. And that man betokens such a level of ignorance and a direct falsification of existing scientific data. It is shocking, and I think that man has rendered himself absolutely unfit to be running for office.

Unfortunately for Brown, it is he that is speaking against “existing scientific data.”

Consider this new study by a team led by Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory’s (GFDL) Thomas Delworth that examined the association between the global warming hiatus and drought in western North America (including California). Turns out, according to these scientists, both stemmed from a similar cause—a change in the patterns of winds across the tropical Pacific Ocean. Further, they suggest this pattern was not overly consistent with expectations from human-caused climate change. Here is an excerpt from that paper:

The strong connection between the intensification of Pacific trades and the drying in western North America observed over the past decade suggests that this drying cannot be connected in a straightforward fashion to greenhouse gas increases. In most coupled [climate model] simulations anthropogenic forcing produces a long-term weakening of the Walker circulation and tropical Pacific trade winds, but with substantial intrinsically-generated variability on decadal scales (Vecchi et al. 2006). Therefore, unless it can be shown that the strengthened trade winds are a result of either natural or human-induced radiative forcing changes, the model results suggest that the observed drying over the western U.S. over the last decade may be primarily due to natural variability, and therefore not necessarily a harbinger of a secular drying trend (Hoerling et al. 2010; Seager and Naik 2012). These results highlight how vulnerable western North America is to severe decadal swings in hydroclimate arising from internal variations of the climate system.

Clearly, Gov. Brown is out of touch with these findings, just as he is with many findings on East Coast cold and snow (for example, here, here, and here). But this is typical of those who are intent on attacking those folks (politicians, scientists, writers, etc.) who take a dimmer view than themselves on the necessity for policy action aimed to combat climate change—policies which too often seek to limit energy choice.

If anyone is keeping score, this round of political squabbling over climate change should go to Sen. Cruz.

Reference:

Delworth, T.L., et al., 2015. A link between the hiatus in global warming and North American drought. Journal of Climate, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00616.1, in press.

Written by: Kevin Cann

Most people reading this have heard of the term insulin resistance. For those of you that are new to the paleo diet and the site, insulin resistance is when our muscle, liver, and fat cells become desensitized to the hormone insulin. This leads the pancreas to have to produce more insulin and shovel the majority of glucose into our fat cells for storage.

Type 2 diabetes is a result of prolonged insulin resistance. The pancreas becomes tired from being overworked trying to produce extra insulin and eventually we cannot manage our blood sugar levels. Type 2 diabetes is an epidemic that the world is currently facing. It is estimated by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that nearly 30 million Americans suffer from diabetes.

What if I said that type 3 diabetes is likely to be the next major epidemic that we face? You might be thinking “Type 3 diabetes? Is that such a thing?” You may know type 3 diabetes by another name, Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Yes, AD is a form of diabetes.

I am not just making this up. Research published in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology concluded by stating:

“ We conclude that the term “type 3 diabetes” accurately reflects the fact that AD represents a form of diabetes that selectively involves the brain and has molecular and biochemical features that overlap with both type 1 diabetes mellitus and T2DM” (1). This same research also showed that AD was treatable with insulin sensitizing agents.

Instead of having insulin resistance in the muscle, liver, and fat cells, we can develop insulin resistance in the brain. This is not hard to see once we realize that the brain uses about 25% of the body’s glucose supply. Type 3 diabetes does differ from type 2 in one scary way. We do not have to have dysfunctional blood sugar to develop it.

Some fascinating research is being conducted out of the University of Penn. For the first time they were able to prove that insulin resistance actually occurs in the brain. They also showed that this change can occur in the brain in non-diabetics and without any presence of hyperglycemia (2). This makes sense as insulin plays a critical role to glucose uptake and the health of brain cells. If something in this system becomes dysfunctional, cognitive decline would be a logical outcome. Glucose oxidizes easily in the blood and that oxidation can lead to DNA damage in the cells. Also, if we have insulin resistance in the brain our cells cannot get the glucose that they need to function.

According to the researchers at the University of Penn, people with diabetes are 50% more likely to develop AD. With this type of increase seen in this population it makes sense that insulin resistance plays a role in the development of AD. The theory is that the insulin resistance in the brain causes the formation of plaques and tangles in the neurons associated with cognitive impairment.

Insulin resistance in the brain also alters dopamine function. Dopamine is our neurotransmitter responsible for memory, focus, and energy (3). Dysfunctional dopamine levels have been linked to depression, ADD, ADHD, gambling addiction, drug addiction, and schizophrenia. Ironically sugar addiction has been linked to low dopamine levels as well.

This insulin resistance link to dopamine may explain why ketogenic diets are a useful therapeutic tool when treating diseases of cognitive decline and schizophrenia (4,5). Theoretically speaking, maybe the ketogenic diet reverses insulin resistance in the brain and brings the system back to normal.

Now that we know what causes AD how do we avoid it? Do we need to run as far away from carbohydrates as possible? In my opinion, no. There are a number of things that may lead to one developing AD such as food, stress, environmental toxins, gut health, and genetics.

In order to decrease our risk of developing AD we need to maximize each of those specified areas. Eating a healthy diet rich in nutrient dense foods is a start. I would not get so hung up on carbohydrate quantity as much as I would on quality. Most people that develop insulin resistance develop it from overeating highly refined and processed carbohydrates. I think we can still minimize our risk of developing AD eating a high carbohydrate diet that consists of fruits and sweet potatoes. If it was just the high carbohydrate intake leading to insulin resistance we would see more type 2 diabetes and AD in groups such as the Kitavans that consume a diet consisting of roughly 70% carbohydrates.

We need to manage our stress. If you are not doing something to actively manage your stress, you need to. Try adding in some daily meditation to your routine. Exercise is important to preventing AD, but it is not a stress management activity. Exercise increases insulin sensitivity and helps us recover from the stress response, but is a stressor in and of itself. Lift some weights 2-4 days per week and remain physically active throughout the week by walking more and standing up at your desk.

Limit the amount of environmental toxins in your home. Use cleaning products that are made from natural sources. Filtering your tap water is also a way to limit environmental toxins in your life. Some of us cannot control our work environment and may be surrounded by toxins there. Do the best you can to limit exposure and make sure you’re eating a nutrient dense diet. In a lot of cases nutrients in our food help protect us from environmental toxins.

We need to attempt to maximize our gut health. Our gut bugs are the gatekeepers of our immune system. They keep all unwanted things out. If they get out of balance things begin to slip through the cracks leading to a chronic inflammatory response. When this happens inflammatory cytokines are released and these cytokines cause DNA damage and inhibit cellular DNA repair (6).

Genetics may be a piece that is out of our control. However, our genes are not just locked into place. They respond to internal and external stimuli and express themselves accordingly (epigenetics). If we take more of the steps listed above I truly believe we can alter our genome for a favorable outcome.

AD, or type 3 diabetes, does not need to be the world’s next epidemic. We can take a proactive stance and eat a healthier diet consisting of nutrient dense real foods, manage our stress, optimize gut health, and limit environmental toxin exposure. If we do this we can age gracefully and enjoy a full life

It appears that Amazon is very serious about walling off its garden. Late last year, it pushed out a firmware update for its Amazon Fire TV devices that not only made rooted devices unusable, but prevented Fire TV owners from rolling back firmware to previous, more root-friendly versions. Apparently, Kindle users were also included in this lockdown.

A recent post at Good Reader notes that the latest firmware for Kindles is pretty much identical to its Fire TV firmware, right down to the destruction of functionality.

The new firmware was pushed out to all modern Kindle devices in late November of last year. Anything after version 5.60 will not allow you to hack the firmware and do interesting things like change the screensaver system or install custom apps.

And, like its firmware for the Fire TV, rollback to less hack-resistant firmware is nearly impossible. You can force it back, provided you have a soldering iron (and the willingness to apply it to your device) or you can follow a few not-so-simple steps to take your root access back from Amazon. But once again, it's the company removing functionality for the sole purpose of making devices perform the way Amazon wants them to, rather than leaving these sorts of decisions to those who have purchased the devices.

And it's not as though Kindle owners are receiving any heads up from Amazon about the firmware's plans for their jailbroken devices. No mention of it is made in the firmware's specifications, which only tells you about the (supposedly) good things the update will bring: vague "bug fixes and improvements." Softpedia's hosting page for the latest version (5.6.1) goes into a little more detail, but it only contains a list of slightly-upgraded Amazon features, rather than the limitations the firmware will impose on paying customers.

If you like Amazon's walled garden, the company is more than happy to ensure you never find the gate. If you don't, Amazon is more than happy to step in and brick over any openings. The latter does a huge disservice to paying customers who are looking to get the most out of something they purchased and own, but seems to still somehow "belong" to Amazon.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

(Don Boudreaux)

Here’s a letter to the editor of Alternet:

In what is a prime candidate for the most economically mistaken essay ever penned, Robert Reich calls a future in which technology makes ever-more high-quality goods and services widely available at virtually zero cost “horrifying” (“In Our Horrifying Future, Very Few People Will Have Work or Make Money,” March 17).

Where to start?  Perhaps with the fact that the history of such Luddite fear-mongering is as long (at least 200 years) as its batting record is low (.000%).  Or maybe with the illogical worry about the unemployment created by an imaginary device that Dr. Reich uses to scare your readers - a device “capable of producing everything you could possibly desire, a modern day Aladdin’s lamp.”  In fact, in a future filled with such devices unemployment wouldn’t be a problem because no one would have to work in order to acquire the means to consume lavishly.  (Indeed, in such a future there would technically be no unemployment because no one would want to work.)

But Dr. Reich’s most wrongheaded claim is this one: “when more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, the profits go to an ever-smaller circle of executives and owners-investors.”  This claim is exactly backwards.  By far the greatest part of the gains from entrepreneurial-driven advances in technology are, as they have always been, widely dispersed to the masses in the form of more and better consumption options available at lower and lower prices.  Examples include the factory production of textiles that clothed the masses, the mechanization of agriculture that saved the masses from famine, the assembly line that brought the likes of automobiles, kitchen appliances, telephony, and air travel to even the modern-world’s ‘poor,’ and the technology revolution that enables those yearning to read Dr. Reich’s economically uninformed commentary to satisfy their demands 24/7/365 by using their smartphones while sipping lattes and attending protests against the predations of the one percent.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA  22030

Reich himself, in listing some modern devices (that he uses as evidence of the coming calamity of abundance), unwittingly gives examples against his proposition that all of the gains of labor-saving technological advances are captured by ‘the few.’

Indeed, even if one focuses exclusively and literally on the profits from entrepreneur-driven technological advances (rather than, more broadly, on the gains from such advances), they, too, are not destined to go to fewer and fewer people.  Higher profits spark competition which, in turn, drives profits down to ‘normal’ rates.  It’s this very process of competition that causes the gains from technological advances to be shared with the masses: the entrepreneurs might all like to keep their profits without sharing them, but competition obliges them to share those profits with the public, in the form of lower prices and improved product quality.  And with technology advancing as fast as Reich fears (and I applaud), the ability of entrepreneurs to compete against each other will only intensify.  If technology makes the production of the likes of clothes and cups of coffee cheap, easy, and fast, so, too, does technology make the production of other machines for use in competing in the production and sale of consumer goods cheap, easy, and fast.

UPDATE: Regular Cafe patron W.E. Heasley sent the following note to me by e-mail:

Is it not poetic justice that Reich managed to post his argument on a platform that uses little manpower, plenty of technology, and is distributed on mass? Shouldn’t Robert have had his essay hand delivered to each and everyone interested?

Bubbles Under The Ice of Abraham Lake by Emmanuel Coupe.


Bubbles in The Ice of Abraham Lake by Phillips Chip.


Frozen Pond by Adam Rifkin.


Ice Rider in Siberia by Matthieu Paley.


Baikal Lake in Russia by Daniel Kordan.


Lake Druzhby in Antarctica by Stu Shaw.


Blue Pond in Japan by Kent Shiraishi.


Frost Flowers in the Arctic Ocean by Matthias Wietz.


Frost Flowers in the Arctic Ocean by Matthias Wietz.


Pond in Switzerland by Dartai.

jedavu:

Frozen Lakes Patterns

With the fall of temperatures, we have gathered for you the most beautiful photographs of frozen lakes and ponds from all around the world : Russia, Switzerland, Japan or also in Canada, their frozen surfaces are full of aesthetic and graphic patterns.

Adam Bates

Over at Forbes, the Institute for Justice’s Nick Sibilla details a new report from the Department of Justice concerning the Drug Enforcement Administration’s practice of cold-stopping travelers at airports, bus stations, and train stations and asking to search their property looking for forfeitable assets.

Federal drug agents may be racially profiling and unjustly seizing cash from travelers in the nation’s airports, bus stations and train stations. A new report released by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Justice examined the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)’s controversial use of “cold consent.

In a cold consent encounter, a person is stopped if an agent thinks that person’s behavior fits a drug courier profile. Or an agent can stop a person cold “based on no particular behavior,” according to the Inspector General report. The agent then asks the people they have stopped for consent to question them and sometimes to search their possessions as well. By gaining consent, law enforcement officers can bypass the need for a warrant.

While many people who believe they have nothing to hide may–inadvisably–consent to a police search, they may not be familiar with federal civil asset forfeiture laws, which give federal agents wide latitude to seize property, especially cash, without charging anyone with any crime. Sibilla notes that the DEA agents even go so far as to carry affidavits for search targets to sign disclaiming any rights to the property being seized. 

Disturbingly, the Inspector General found that DEA interdiction task force groups have been seizing cash from travelers and then urging them to sign forms disclaiming their own cash and “waiving their rights.” In one cold consent encounter, DEA agents stopped another African-American woman in part because she was “pacing nervously” before boarding her flight. After gaining her consent, the agents searched her luggage and found $8,000.

The extortive waiver maneuver is not an isolated practice in civil forfeiture jurisdictions. In exchange for signing away your money, the agents agree not to seize other property (for instance, your car or home) or arrest you on criminal charges. Many interstate travelers (the primary targets of drug interdiction forfeiture efforts) rationally decide it’s better to get on with their journey than fight the government for their property. It’s not hard to imagine the practical and financial vulnerability of people getting ready to step on an airplane being threatened with arrest if they refuse to hand over their cash. 

The Department of Justice report also raises troubling questions concerning the criteria used to make the stops. There is an obvious risk that allowing DEA agents to stop travelers cold and question them invites the possibility of racial profiling. This federal policy bears a striking resemblance to the NYPD’s controversial Stop-and-Frisk program, which received withering criticism for the constitutional and racial dynamics involved in allowing officers to stop people cold.

In short, this is another on a long list of areas where the pernicious incentives of the drug war and civil asset forfeiture combine to create an institution of abuse and disregard for individual liberty. 

At a time when predatory, revenue-centered law enforcement is being rightly condemned-–with the ostensible imprimatur of the federal government-– it would be nice for the federal government to set an example by ending its own abusive law enforcement practices.

AMTRAK loses $214m in '14, gets $11.2m in bonuses...


(Second column, 6th story, link)

---

SJWs are against more than mere fun. They also oppose science as well as math in the form of probability. Mike Cernovich drops relevant statistics on those who have attempted to attack him over daring to mention scientific hate facts.

In a post about HIV I observed, “Straight men do not contract HIV.” I did not push a narrative. I did not share what I heard on some news channel or learned from a nit-wit teacher.

Rather, I analyzed data from the United States Center for Disease Control. When you look at CDC data, you notice something.

Where are all of the straight white male HIV infections?

Relying on CDC data is considered racist and homophobic, as morons believe a scientific judgment is a moral one. Zealots are simply unable to look at scientific questions with a scientific lens and moral questions with a moral lens.

Cernovich points out that even in the impossible event that every single man with HIV is honestly reporting his sexual activity (impossible because we already know it is not true), "According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, men almost never get HIV from women. A healthy man who has unprotected sex with a non drug-using woman has a one in 5 million chance of getting HIV. If he wears a condom, the odds drop to one in 50 million."

To put it in perspective:

• Killed by a Dog:     1 in 103,798
• Killed by Lightning: 1 in 136,011
• Contracting HIV: 1 in 5,000,000

The point isn't that this means straight men should run around freely fornicating, it is that one can NEVER, EVER trust anything an SJW says about ANYTHING. They are all about the narrative, not the truth, not the science, not the statistics, not the probabilities and most certainly not the history.

From bbc.com:

Fantasy author Terry Pratchett has died aged 66 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

"The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds," said Transworld Publishers' Larry Finlay.

Sir Terry, best known for the Discworld series, wrote more than 70 books over his lengthy career.

He was first diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2007, but continued writing, completing his final book last summer.

The author died at home, surrounded by his family.

Mr Finlay said he was "deeply saddened" by the news of Sir Terry's death.

"In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him. As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirize this world: He did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention.

"Terry faced his Alzheimer's disease (an 'embuggerance', as he called it) publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.

"My sympathies go out to Terry's wife Lyn, their daughter Rhianna, to his close friend Rob Wilkins, and to all closest to him."

Kat Murti

Somewhere between 30 and 40 million Americans hold libertarian views. Are you one of them? Take this quiz — excerpted from David Boaz’s new book The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom — and find out just how libertarian you really are! 

The quiz launched just over a week ago and almost 30,000 people have already taken it. Have you? Use #LibertarianMind to share your results on social media, tag your friends, and see how they measure up!

Of course, the quiz represents a very simplified version of libertarian principles and very few people will have “perfect scores” in any one direction, but it’s a great way to open up a discussion with friends and family.  If that discussion leads to more curiosity about libertarianism and its principles, point them in our direction…or give them a their very own copy of The Libertarian Mind!

Haven’t had a chance to read The Libertarian Mind yet? We have a limited number of copies to give away. Take the quiz to learn the details! You can also follow The Libertarian Mind on Facebook for news on the book, media appearances, and more. 

Depending on which article you read, somewhere between 30% and 55% of people in the U.S. and Canada are cutting back on grains, especially wheat.  That’s no small threat to what has long been the most profitable sector of the food industry.  (Those government grain subsidies sure help.)

So the grain industry is fighting back with I’ve decided to call the Save The Grain Campaign.  The campaign employs three main tactics I’ve noticed so far:

1. Promote grains as a necessary health food.
2. Attack people who say grains are bad for us.
3. Attack diets like low-carb or paleo that limit or eliminate grains.

Back in January, I wrote a post about an incredibly stupid article in Shape Magazine that featured the headline Low Carb Diet Linked to Shorter Life Expectancy.  The article was about a Harvard observational study in which people who ate whole grains had longer lifespans than people who ate white flour.  From that study, the dunce reporter at Shape Magazine concluded that 1) whole grains are health food, and 2) a low-carb diet will shorten your lifespan.

Riiiight.  And if people who smoke filtered cigarettes live longer than people who smoke unfiltered cigarettes, that means unfiltered cigarettes are good for you … so people who don’t smoke will die prematurely.  Same twisted logic.  Leaders of the Save The Grain Campaign must have been proud.

The grain promoters know they can’t claim that grains are good for everyone without looking foolish.  After all, there’s that little problem known as celiac disease.  So they’re quick to point out that only one percent of the population has been diagnosed with celiac disease.  Grains are great for the other 99 percent, ya see.

Riiiiight.  That’s roughly equivalent to pointing out that only seven percent of cigarette smokers develop lung cancer, so cigarettes are fine for the other 93 percent.  Celiac disease may be the most severe form of grain intolerance, but it’s hardly the only one.  As I’ve mentioned before, when I stopped eating wheat and other grains, I waved goodbye to psoriasis on my scalp and arthritis in my shoulder, to name just two benefits of many.  And guess what?  I don’t have celiac disease.  I had the test done to be sure.

If my daughter Sara eats wheat, she gets red blotches on her arms she calls da bumps – and I doubt she has celiac disease.  I’ve heard from people who gave up grains and stopped getting migraines, or restless legs at night, or cold sores, or mood swings, or … well, heck, name it.  Most of them, like me, didn’t give up grains because they have celiac disease or were worried about gluten or the gliadin protein.  They gave up grains because they adopted a low-carb diet to lose weight, then noticed all those lovely side benefits.

That’s why I believe some studies and articles discouraging people from adopting a low-carb diet are part of the Save The Grain Campaign.  When people go low-carb, bread, pasta and cereal are usually among the first foods swept from the menu.  So with that in mind, let’s look at a couple more articles I’d consider part of the campaign.

We’ll start with an article on the Med Page Today site with the headline OmniCarb Study: Cutting Carbs No Silver Bullet.

Overweight and obese people who followed a low glycemic index diet in the context of an overall DASH-type diet had no greater improvements in insulin sensitivity, lipid levels or systolic blood pressure compared with study subjects who ate high glycemic index foods, in a randomized, controlled feeding study.

Low glycemic?  I though the headline was about low-carb.

Following a low-glycemic index, low-carbohydrate diet, compared with a high-glycemic index, high-carbohydrate diet did not affect insulin sensitivity, systolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol or HDL cholesterol, but it did lower triglycerides during the from 111 to 86 mg/dL, researcher Frank M. Sacks, MD, of Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues wrote in the Dec. 17 issue of JAMA.

Ah, there was a low-carb arm of the study.  So they must have limited carb intake to somewhere between 20 and 50 grams per day.

Among the two study diets with a high carbohydrate composition (58% of daily energy), one had a high glycemic index (≥65 on the glucose scale) and the other had a low glycemic index (≤45 on the glucose scale).

The two other diets had a low carbohydrate composition (40% of daily energy), with one having a high (≥65%) and the other having a low (≤45%) glycemic index.

Um … 40% of daily energy as carbohydrate is a low-carb diet?  Say what?  If I consume 2500 calories per day, 40% as carbohydrate works out to 250 grams per day.  I’m pretty sure that’s nothing like what Dr. Atkins recommended.

As I read the article, I realized I’ve written about Dr. Frank Sacks and his research before.  In fact, my first-ever blog post (nearly six years ago) was titled Create Your Very Own Biased Study.  It was about a study conducted by … wait for it … Dr. Frank Sacks, who declared that low-carb diets aren’t particularly good for inducing weight loss.  He showed as much by putting people on a (ahem) low-carb diet.  Except his definition of low-carb was … wait for it … 35 percent of calories.  Again, that’s nowhere close to the degree of carbohydrate restriction recommended by Dr. Atkins, Drs. Eades & Eades, etc.  Heck, even Paul Jaminet’s Perfect Health Diet, with the safe starches and all, tops out at 30% of calories from carbohydrates.

Dr. Sacks has to know that low-carb diet plans start at 50 grams max, then gradually raise the carb intake to perhaps 100 grams.  So I can’t help but wonder why he keeps studying “low-carb” diets that allow well over 200 grams per day, then uses those results to declare that cutting carbs doesn’t make much of a difference.  Why not try an actual low-carb diet in one of these studies?  Because to me, his studies look like reducing an alcoholic’s intake from 10 drinks per day to seven, then declaring that the poor S.O.B. still isn’t sober, so there’s no point in cutting back on alcohol.

If Dr. Sacks wants to steer people away from low-carb diets, at least he’s subtle about it.  This article in Consumer Reports isn’t:

Widely publicized diets, such as high protein and low carbohydrates, seem so promising. It’s no wonder so many of us have tried—or considered—them. But does science support the claims? We spoke with doctors and dietitians, and read the research.

They may have spoken with doctors and dieticians – which is roughly as useful as asking for dietary advice from a plumber – but based on what follows, I can guarantee they didn’t read the research.

Remember the Scarsdale diet and the Stillman diet? Those high-protein, low-carb plans may have gone out of fashion, but Atkins, first published in 1972, is still hot. Protein-packed products are flooding stores, and the list of popular protein-rich diets—Paleo, Zone, and more—continues to grow. All claim that you’ll lose pounds, feel peppier, and reduce your risk of heart disease.

People lose weight on high-protein plans because they take in fewer calories, not because they focus on protein. “Diets only work by lowering calories,” says David Seres, M.D., director of medical nutrition at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York and a member of Consumer Reports’ medical advisory board. “Where the calories come from doesn’t matter.”

Yes, when you lose weight, you take in fewer calories than you burn.  That’s HOW you lose weight, but not WHY you lose weight.  In several studies, people on a low-carb diet spontaneously ate less despite not being told to restrict calories.  That means something positive happened with their metabolisms.  Eating less is the result, not the cause.  Dr. Seres’ statement is akin to saying that Alcoholics Anonymous may work, but only because people stop drinking.

In addition to pushing protein, many of these plans recommend cutting back on—or completely eliminating—carbohydrates. Get less than 50 grams of carbs per day (the amount in two apples) for three to four days in a row, and your body will start tapping its own fat and muscle for fuel instead of its usual source: glucose derived from carbohydrates. That may sound like a way to shed pounds, but it can have serious health consequences. “You’re altering your metabolism away from what’s normal and into a starved state,” Seres says. “People in starved states experience problems with brain function.”

Holy crap, I’d better load up on carbs and then check that highly complex program I spent all those overtime hours coding last month – with everyone from the president of IT on down waiting for results.  I’m told it worked quite well.  On the other hand, my brain function is impaired, so I might have heard “This sucks — you’re fired” and interpreted it as “I really appreciate all your hard work in getting this done” … from the president of IT.

A high-protein diet also overworks the kidneys. That’s especially worrisome for people with kidney disease and can predispose those with healthy kidneys to kidney stones.

If your kidneys are damaged, they can leak protein.  In that case, you need to restrict protein.  But protein doesn’t cause the damage in the first place.  Here’s a quote from a journal article on the supposed dangers of high-protein diets:

The purpose of this review is to evaluate the scientific validity of AHA Nutrition Committee’s statement on dietary protein and weight reduction, which states: “Individuals who follow these [high-protein] diets are risk for … potential cardiac, renal, bone, and liver abnormalities overall.

Simply stated, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that high-protein intake has adverse effects on liver function. Relative to renal function, there are no data in the scientific literature demonstrating that healthy kidneys are damaged by the increased demands of protein consumed in quantities 2–3 times above the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA).

In contrast with the earlier hypothesis that high-protein intake promotes osteoporosis, some epidemiological studies found a positive association between protein intake and bone mineral density. Further, recent studies suggest, at least in the short term, that RDA for protein (0.8 g/kg) does not support normal calcium homeostasis. Finally, a negative correlation has been shown between protein intake and systolic and diastolic blood pressures in several epidemiological surveys.

In conclusion, there is little if any scientific evidence supporting the above mentioned statement.

So I guess the anonymous Consumer Reports reporter didn’t actually slog through the research before repeating what a few doctors and dieticians believe.

When it comes to heart disease, the saturated-fat-laden red meat that’s part of many high-protein diets may actually boost your risk. According to a Harvard study of more than 120,000 people followed for more than 20 years, a meat-based low-carb diet increased the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 14 percent.

Denise Minger sliced and diced that observational study in a guest post on Mark Sisson’s blog.  It’s worth reading in its entirety, but here’s the money quote:

If you secretly suspected that this was a “people who eat red meat do a lot of unhealthy things that make them die sooner” study, you can now gloat.

As you can see, the folks eating the most red meat were also the least physically active, the most likely to smoke, and the least likely to take a multivitamin (among many other things you can spot directly in the table, including higher BMIs, higher alcohol intake, and a trend towards less healthy non-red-meat food choices).

Same old, same old … in a society where people are told meat is bad for them, it’s mostly the I don’t give a @#$% people who eat more meat – well, except for us LCHF and paleo types.  I don’t give a @#$% types have worse health outcomes for all kinds of reasons – including not giving a @#$%.

By the way, I realize some of you are probably expecting me to jump up and down and insist that a low-carb diet is a high-fat diet, not a high-protein diet.  Truth is, unless you aim for a constant state of ketosis – which I don’t – a low-carb diet probably will be high in protein.  And for most of us, I think that’s good.  I’ll explain why in a future post.

In the meantime, we can all sit back and chuckle at the Save The Grain Campaign.  I give them kudos for effort, but it’s not going to work.  You can’t easily convince people to dismiss their own experiences.

Lives there a parent who hasn’t, at some point, lost track of his or her kid? That’s just the way life is — imperfect! 

Until the authorities deem it a crime.

In this case, CPS gets it TOTALLY RIGHT…but not the prosecutor. So don’t read this letter if you were hoping to have a good day. Do read it if you think you have any idea how to help or crusade for change. Speaking of which, the National Association of Parents is trying to create a fund to help parents dealing with crazy CPS issues. Here’s the link. – L (who has, at the letter writer’s request, changed the names of the kids)

Lenore here: I am sharing this story not to scare parents, but only because I believe that as we grow aware of how corrupt or crazed authorities can ruin a family, our voices will crescendo, demanding change. This is our creed: Parents do not have to be perfect. The government cannot demand it. The state should only intervene when children are in obvious and indisputable danger.  If you’d like to contact this writer of this letter, her email is: canyonhomestead@gmail.com .

Michael F. Cannon

This week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, one of four legal challenges to an IRS regulation that purports to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but in fact vastly expands the IRS’s powers beyond the limits imposed by the Act. Just in time for oral arguments before the Court, Vox’s Sarah Kliff has produced what I think may be the best history of King v. Burwell and related cases I’ve seen. Still, there are a few important errors and omissions, listed here in rough order of importance.

1. Kliff refers to the birth of my “twin daughters.”

My wife indeed gave birth to twins, but only one of them was a girl.

2. The twins’ birth did not cut into my efforts to dissuade states from establishing Exchanges.

They were born after the deadline for states setting up Exchanges had passed.

3. “As anyone who covered it at the time…remembers, the law’s passage was an absolute mess,” Kliff reports, and the “messy language and loose ends that legislators expected to get ironed out simply became part of the law.”

Nevertheless, Kliff reports that all congressional staff involved with the drafting of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act swear they meant to authorize the disputed taxes and subsidies in states with federal Exchanges. She also reports that all journalists who reported on the drafting process swear that every time the topic arose, Democratic staffers always said these provisions would be authorized in states with federal Exchanges.  (Well, except these members of Congress and this journalist.)

Kliff neglects to mention that there is absolutely zero contemporaneous evidence of any kind that supports those recollections. Or that contemporaneous discussions of that issue, like this one by Jonathan Cohn, show (A) that even the sharpest journalists weren’t paying attention to this issue, and (B) to the extent they did, their impressions were consistent with the subsidies being conditional.

Thus, the only contemporaneous evidence that speaks directly to the question presented to the Court is the explicit statutory text clearly limiting subsidies to Exchanges “established by the State.” That’s probably something Kliff should have mentioned. You know, so readers can decide whether to take the “if you like your health plan, you can keep it” crowd at their word.

4. According to Kliff, in August 2011, Jonathan Adler suggested to me that the ACA only authorizes subsidies through state-established Exchanges and suggested I fold that into the case I was making to state officials that they not implement the ACA.

Hey, wait a minute. The first part is true, but the second part is not. I didn’t need that Adler guy to tell me how to do my job. I needed him to tell me how to do his job.

5. Kliff commits the same rookie (or Freudian?) error every other reporter does by claiming the disputed taxes and subsidies are part of ObamaCare, that a victory for the government is a victory for the ACA, and to rule for the plaintiffs would be “to rule against the Affordable Care Act.”

That is the government’s argument, which Kliff treats as fact. The plaintiffs argument is that they are trying to uphold the law. The two lower court opinions that went against the government said they were upholding the ACA.

By framing the case the way the Obama administration does, Kliff is essentially winking at her readers as if to say, ‘Natch, the government is right.

6. Kliff quotes former Democratic staff director of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee John McDonough as saying, “There is not a scintilla of evidence that the Democratic lawmakers who designed the law intended to deny subsidies to any state.”

That is flatly untrue.

As even the government concedes, the Democratic senators on the HELP Committee—which McDonough ran—approved a bill that withheld Exchange subsidies in states that did not implement that bill. Kliff has quoted McDonough in the past making the same invalid point, and I have corrected her, to no avail.

Kliff should have informed readers that McDonough himself helped the authors of the ACA do what he now says they never considered doing. Instead, she once again allowed McDonough to misrepresent the legislative history and what the ACA’s authors were considering.

7. Kliff leaves the reader with the impression that the statutory requirement that subsidy recipients must enroll “through an Exchange established by the State”—the only language in the statute that speaks directly to the question presented in King v. Burwell—was a “drafting error.”

Not even the government makes that claim.

That said, the government’s claim that “[t]he phrase ‘Exchange established by the State under Section [1311]’ is a term of art that includes an Exchange established for the State by HHS” is scarcely more defensible.

8. Kliff reports that Adler told me in August 2011 that the ACA offered Exchange subsidies only in state-established Exchanges, but: “There wasn’t much that Cannon and Adler could do with their discovery at that point. The federal government still hadn’t published the rules governing how the insurance subsidies would work; it was still possible that the Obama administration might come out and agree with them, saying state exchanges were the only bodies authorized to dole out funds. The Obama administration eliminated that possibility in May 2012.”

Actually, the Obama administration announced its plan to issue subsidies in federal Exchanges almost immediately after Adler told me they couldn’t. The IRS issued its proposed tax-credit rule in mid-August 2011.

9. Kliff reports that “everyone expected” the IRS to offer tax credits in federal Exchanges.

Having read the law, that was not what I expected. Call me naïve, but I was surprised the IRS was violating clear statutory text.

10. Kliff writes, “The whole point of the federal exchanges, after all, was to make sure Obamacare worked in states that wouldn’t or couldn’t build an exchange of their own.”

How does Kliff know that? This is an assumption, which she appears to make without any contemporaneous support.

I don’t know how Kliff rules out Vanderbilt law professor Jim Blumstein’s alternative theory that the federal Exchanges were nothing more than an “oops” provision to protect the ACA against charges that Congress was commandeering the states. I hope she has more to go on than assurances from the “if you like your health plan, you can keep it” crowd.

Between Kliff’s theory and Blumstein’s theory, the latter is more compatible with the ACA, which explicitly authorized unlimited funds for the establishment of state-run Exchanges but zero funds for the establishment of federal Exchanges.

11. Kliff writes: “Congress always meant for residents of all 50 states to have access to financial help. It was never a question, during the five years I’ve spent writing about Obamacare, whether this would be the case.”

Regarding the first claim, Congress also meant for residents of all 50 states to have access to the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. That doesn’t mean Congress didn’t intend to condition Medicaid subsidies on state cooperation.

Regarding the second claim, all that tells us is that journalists should ask more questions and/or members of Congress and congressional staff should read bills more closely.

12. Kliff writes, “For about two years, [Adler, Cannon,] and other challengers made a purely textualist argument.”

Actually, it was less than one year before we learned the plain text of the statute reflected Congress’ intent. We wrote in July 2012: “We were both surprised to discover this flaw in the law, and characterized it as a ‘glitch.’ Yet our further research demonstrates this feature of the law was intentional and purposeful, and that the IRS’s rule has no basis in law. This supposed fix is actually an effort to rewrite the law and provide for something Congress never enacted, and indeed that PPACA’s authors intentionally chose not to include in the law.”

13. Kliff misrepresents Adler’s and my argument that Congress intended to condition subsidies on states establishing Exchanges.

Fortunately, to her and Vox’s credit, she let me make that case in my own words in a previously published interview (read the whole thing):

Sarah Kliff: Are you 100 percent convinced it was Congress’s intent to withhold subsidies in the federal exchange?

Michael Cannon: There are two ways to interpret that question. Did the people who wrote this language mean to withhold subsidies in federal exchanges? My answer to that is, I’m 100 percent convinced that they meant to do that.

The other way to think about it is, “Did the people who voted for this law intend to withhold subsidies in federal exchanges?” That’s a different question, but the answer is the same. I’m 100 percent convinced that’s what the members of Congress who enacted this law meant to do, just the same way I’m 100 percent convinced they meant to throw people off of their existing health plans even though they said, “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.”

What members of Congress might have ideally wanted is different from congressional intent, which is determined by what they actually vote on. If the language of a statute is clear, then that constitutes congressional intent.

14. Kliff writes that when Oklahoma became the first plaintiff to challenge the IRS rule, it “couldn’t scrounge up additional plaintiffs before the deadline to amend its case and ultimately went it alone.”

In fact, Oklahoma had additional plaintiffs lined up, but the court wouldn’t allow those plaintiffs to join the suit.

15. Kliff writes, “And on July 22, the subsidies argument got its first positive news. In the span of two hours — and by pure coincidence — the appeals courts for the District of Columbia and the Fourth Circuit issued conflicting rulings.” (Emphasis added.)

If Kliff can substantiate the claim that this was a coincidence, she should share it.

16. Kliff writes, “[Jonathan] Gruber has disavowed the remarks [in which he told audiences that the law conditions subsidies on states establishing Exchanges], saying that he spoke ‘off the cuff’ and made a mistake. There’s reason to believe him: Gruber spoke regularly to dozens of reporters during this period and never mentioned this idea to any of them.”

Kliff should have mentioned there is also reason not to believe Gruber’s disavowals. Gruber made that claim multiple times, and his attempts to explain those comments away reveal, um, inconsistencies.

17. Finally, Kliff writes that the government’s argument “has remained consistent throughout the process.”

No, it hasn’t. When King v. Burwell reached the Supreme Court, the government unveiled a new argument: “The phrase “Exchange established by the State under Section [1311] is a term of art that includes an Exchange established for the State by HHS.” The government also called the phrase a “technical term” that “reflects style and grammar—not a substantive limitation” on the IRS’s power.

The government had never previously called that phrase a “term of art.” The only statutory provision it had described as a term of art was the term “Exchange,” and the government described that as a “defined term of art” (emphasis added) because, unlike “Exchange established by the State,” the ACA actually bears a definition that gives the word “Exchange” a meaning other than its ordinary meaning.

–

I meant what I said at the beginning. This really was the best history of King v. Burwell and related litigation that I’ve seen.

Because they are totally "tested". By scientists doing science:

Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, is facing a slew of controversies over its Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine following numerous allegations of wrongdoing from different parties in the medical field, including two former Merck scientists-turned-whistleblowers. A third whistleblower, this one a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, also promises to bring Merck grief following his confession of misconduct involving the same MMR vaccine.

The controversies will find Merck defending itself and its vaccine in at least two federal court cases after a U.S. District judge earlier this month threw out Merck's attempts at dismissal. Merck now faces federal charges of fraud from the whistleblowers, a vaccine competitor and doctors in New Jersey and New York. Merck could also need to defend itself in Congress: The staff of representative Bill Posey (R-Fla) -- a longstanding critic of the CDC interested in an alleged link between vaccines and autism -- is now reviewing some 1,000 documents that the CDC whistleblower turned over to them.

The first court case, United States v. Merck & Co., stems from claims by two former Merck scientists that Merck "fraudulently misled the government and omitted, concealed, and adulterated material information regarding the efficacy of its mumps vaccine in violation of the FCA [False Claims Act]."

According to the whistleblowers' court documents, Merck's misconduct was far-ranging: It "failed to disclose that its mumps vaccine was not as effective as Merck represented, (ii) used improper testing techniques, (iii) manipulated testing methodology, (iv) abandoned undesirable test results, (v) falsified test data, (vi) failed to adequately investigate and report the diminished efficacy of its mumps vaccine, (vii) falsely verified that each manufacturing lot of mumps vaccine would be as effective as identified in the labeling, (viii) falsely certified the accuracy of applications filed with the FDA, (ix) falsely certified compliance with the terms of the CDC purchase contract, (x) engaged in the fraud and concealment describe herein for the purpose of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for mumps vaccine, (xi) mislabeled, misbranded, and falsely certified its mumps vaccine, and (xii) engaged in the other acts described herein to conceal the diminished efficacy of the vaccine the government was purchasing."

These fraudulent activities, say the whistleblowers, were designed to produce test results that would meet the FDA's requirement that the mumps vaccine was 95 per cent effective. To the whistleblowers' delight, the judge dismissed Merck's objections to the case proceeding, finding the whistleblowers had plausible grounds on all of the claims lodged against Merck.

Vaccine advocates, are you starting to find even a glimmering of understanding why some intelligent and well-informed people just might harbor the occasional doubt about the safety and efficacity of vaccines? If not yet, what more will it take? And do you not understand that once this level of fraud is established, it casts at least a modicum of doubt on EVERY SINGLE CLAIM that has been made about vaccine safety in the past?

Perhaps you'll even be able to understand why doctors have been hesitant to come forward with their doubts about vaccines if you consider the sort of response they can be expected to encounter from the vaccine manufacturers, who are legally protected against being held liable for the deficiencies of their products:

Merck made a "hit list" of doctors who criticized Vioxx, according to testimony in a Vioxx class action case in Australia. The list, emailed between Merck employees, contained doctors' names with the labels "neutralise," "neutralised" or "discredit" next to them. 

Do you find that confidence-inspiring?

(Don Boudreaux)

Here’s a letter to the D.C.-based WTOP Radio:

You report that the IRS is cutting back on “customer service.”  Pleading poverty because of the budget cuts it must endure as a result of Congressional displeasure with its recent mistreatment of many of its ‘customers,’ the IRS moans that it simply has too few resources now to adequately man its customer-service phone lines.  The IRS’s message to its ‘customers’ is clear: tell your representatives to increase our funding or we’ll make your lives even more miserable than we already do.

There’s a key, if familiar, lesson here: when private firms in competitive markets seek more revenue they considerately offer customers the carrot of better service; in contrast, when government agencies seek more revenue they angrily whack ‘customers’ with the stick of worsened service.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA  22030

Of course, there’s a real upside to this particular instance of bureaucratic greed: also predicted to fall in number are IRS audits.

Presented with no comment...

 

 

Source: Investors.com