Jts5665

Presented with no comment...

 

 

h/t @Russian_Market

I don't have much to add to all the commentary on the Ferguson killing, except to say that many, many examples of police abuse of power are covered by libertarian blogs --but seldom more widely -- so it is nice to see coverage of such an incident hit the mainstream.

Defenders of police will say that police are mostly good people who do a difficult job and they will mostly be right.  But here is the problem:  In part due to our near fetishization of the police (if you think I exaggerate, come live here in Phoenix with our cult of Joe Arpaio), and in part due to the enormous power of public sector unions, we have made the following mistake:

• We give police more power than the average citizen.  They can manhandle other people, drag them into captivity, search and take their stuff, etc.
• We give police less accountability than the average citizen when things go wrong.   It is unusual even to get an investigation of their conduct, such investigations are seldom handled by neutral third parties, and they are given numerous breaks in the process no citizen gets.

The combination of these two can be deadly.

Ken White at Popehat writes to some of this

If you are arrested for shooting someone, the police will use everything in their power — lies, false friendship, fear, coercion — to get you to make a statement immediately. That's because they know that the statement is likely to be useful to the prosecution: either it will incriminate you, or it will lock you into one version of events before you've had an opportunity to speak with an adviser or see the evidence against you. You won't have time to make up a story or conform it to the evidence or get your head straight.

But what if a police officer shoots someone? Oh, that's different. Then police unions and officials push for delays and opportunities to review evidence before any interview of the officer. Last December, after a video showed that a cop lied about his shooting of a suspect, the Dallas Police issued a new policy requiring a 72-hour delay after a shooting before an officer can be interviewed, and an opportunity for the officer to review the videos or witness statements about the incident. Has Dallas changed its policy to offer such courtesies to citizens arrested for crimes? Don't be ridiculous. If you or I shoot someone, the police will not delay our interrogation until it is personally convenient. But if the police shoot someone:

New Mexico State Police, which is investigating the shooting, said such interviews hinge on the schedules of investigators and the police officers they are questioning. Sgt. Damyan Brown, a state police spokesman, said the agency has no set timeline for conducting interviews after officer-involved shootings. The Investigations Bureau schedules the interviews at an “agreeable” time for all parties involved, he said.

Cops and other public servants get special treatment because the whole system connives to let them. Take prosecutorial misconduct. If you are accused of breaking the law, your name will be released. If, on appeal, the court finds that you were wrongfully convicted, your name will still be brandished. But if the prosecutor pursuing you breaks the law and violates your rights, will he or she be named? No, usually not. Even if a United States Supreme Court justice is excoriating you for using race-baiting in your closing, she usually won't name you. Even if the Ninth Circuit — the most liberal federal court in the country — overturns your conviction because the prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence, they usually won't name the prosecutor.

Also see Kevin Williamson.

Michael Munger has one of the most useful articles I have read in a very long time.  As illustrated by the Venn diagram I posted a while back showing the heavy overlap between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, we have much more concurrence in the diagnosis of problems than in the prescriptions for solutions.   Munger gets at the heart of why many people go wrong in these prescriptions

When I am discussing the state with my colleagues at Duke, it's not long before I realize that, for them, almost without exception, the State is a unicorn. I come from the Public Choice tradition, which tends to emphasize consequentialist arguments more than natural rights, and so the distinction is particularly important for me. My friends generally dislike politicians, find democracy messy and distasteful, and object to the brutality and coercive excesses of foreign wars, the war on drugs, and the spying of the NSA. 

But their solution is, without exception, to expand the power of "the State." That seems literally insane to me—a non sequitur of such monstrous proportions that I had trouble taking it seriously.

Then I realized that they want a kind of unicorn, a State that has the properties, motivations, knowledge, and abilities that they can imagine for it. When I finally realized that we were talking past each other, I felt kind of dumb. Because essentially this very realization—that people who favor expansion of government imagine a State different from the one possible in the physical world—has been a core part of the argument made by classical liberals for at least three hundred years....

He follows with this useful test

But they may not immediately see why "the State" that they can imagine is a unicorn. So, to help them, I propose what I (immodestly) call "the Munger test."  

1. Go ahead, make your argument for what you want the State to do, and what you want the State to be in charge of.
2. Then, go back and look at your statement. Everywhere you said "the State" delete that phrase and replace it with "politicians I actually know, running in electoral systems with voters and interest groups that actually exist."
3. If you still believe your statement, then we have something to talk about.

This leads to loads of fun, believe me. When someone says, "The State should be in charge of hundreds of thousands of heavily armed troops, with the authority to use that coercive power," ask them to take out the unicorn ("The State") and replace it with George W. Bush. How do you like it now?

If someone says, "The State should be able to choose subsidies and taxes to change the incentives people face in deciding what energy sources to use," ask them to remove "The State" and replace it with "senators from states that rely on coal, oil, or corn ethanol for income." Still sound like a good idea?

How about, "The State should make rules for regulating sales of high performance electric cars." Now, the switch: "Representatives from Michigan and other states that produce parts for internal combustion engines should be in charge of regulating Tesla Motors."  Gosh, maybe not …

Hat tip:  Don Boudreaux

I spent most of the Bush years asking Conservatives a similar question -- you may be fine when "your guy" has this power, but would you be happy if Al Gore or Nancy Pelosi had it.  And of course I have spent most of the Obama years asking Liberals whether they would be comfortable if George Bush or Rick Perry had similar powers to what Obama has claimed for himself.  Because they will.

I said something similar here, though less elegantly.  I concluded in part:

Technocratic idealists ALWAYS lose control of the game.  It may feel good at first when the trains start running on time, but the technocrats are soon swept away by the thugs, and the patina of idealism is swept away, and only fascism is left.  Interestingly, the technocrats always cry "our only mistake was letting those other guys take control".  No, the mistake was accepting the right to use force on another man.  Everything after that was inevitable.

…. is from Matt Ridley’s article “Renewable energy is not working”:

Over the past ten years the world has invested more than $600 billion in wind power and $700 billion in solar power. Yet the total contribution those two technologies are now making to the world primary energy supply is still less than 2 per cent. Ouch.

If we had spent that sum on research, and steadily replaced coal with gas as a source of electricity, we would have done far more to cut carbon emissions and kept prices low. A new report by Charles Frank of the Brookings Institution has come to the startling conclusion that if you encourage gas to replace coal, you get fewer emissions per dollar spent than if you use wind or solar.

In Mr. Frank’s words: “Solar and wind facilities suffer from a very high capacity cost per megawatt, very low capacity factors and low reliability, which result in low avoided emissions and low avoided energy cost per dollar invested.” In short, we are picking losers.

HT: Warren Smith

We've been debating internally whether or not to cover the mess that is currently going on in Ferguson, Missouri. There has been plenty of attention paid to the protests and the failures by police there -- and we frequently cover problems with police, as well as the militarization of police, which was absolutely on display in Ferguson (if you've been under a rock, police killed an unarmed teenager there last week, leading to protests over the past few days -- and the police have been handling the situation... poorly, to say the least). However, the situation was changing so rapidly, it wasn't entirely clear what to cover. The pictures from Ferguson of a very militarized police force were disturbing, and we've been thinking about writing something on that (and we may still). However, this evening, things got even more ridiculous, as not only did the SWAT team show up, but it then arrested two of the reporters who had been covering the events: Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post. Both had been vital in getting out the story of what was happening on the street.

Here are a few of their tweets (prior to being arrested):

I counted 70+ SWAT officers. Guns trained on crowds. Insanity. pic.twitter.com/stev2G6v4b

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

Overkill in #Ferguson. Officer won't answer my question about why this is needed. pic.twitter.com/iSPsP1Rxa1

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

This exchange-> RT @AntonioFrench: State Senator asks the #Ferguson police chief if she's going to be gassed again. https://t.co/bXTjTbc7kM

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 13, 2014

And then, soon after those and other tweets, another reporter, Jon Swaine from the Guardian, reported that he saw two reporters detained by police in a McDonalds:

Two reporters just cuffed and put in cop can outside Ferguson McDonald's where @WesleyLowery said he and @ryanjreilly were working

— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) August 13, 2014

Lowery and Reilly each had live tweeted the police entering the McDonald's, followed by a long silence from their accounts:

Police come into McD where me and @ryanjreilly working. Try to kick everyone out.

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 13, 2014

SWAT just invade McDonald's where I'm working/recharging. Asked for ID when I took photo. pic.twitter.com/FOIsMnBwHy

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

A fourth reporter on the scene, Matt Pearce of the LA Times, contacted the police chief about the situation, who was apparently surprised at the turn of events and said he'd order them released:

I just called Ferguson police chief to ask about @WesleyLowery and @ryanjreilly, told him what I knew. His response: "Oh, God."

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

I just talked to the Ferguson chief again about Wes and Ryan. "I told them to release them," he said of the riot command.

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

Ferguson chief tells me @WesleyLowery and @ryanjreilly's arresters were "probably somebody who didn't know better."

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

Soon after, both Lowery and Reilly tweeted about their experiences, which were not exactly pleasant.

Officers slammed me into a fountain soda machine because I was confused about which door they were asking me to walk out of

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

Detained, booked, given answers to no questions. Then just let out

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

Also Ryan Reilly of Huff Po. Assaulted and arrested

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

@ryanjreilly and @wesleyLowery have been arrested for "not packing their bags quick enough" at McD's #Ferguson

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014

Unfortunately my last Vine featuring the officer who assaulted me was deleted when other my phone died.

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014

I'm sure that we'll have more on this whole thing, but as GideonsTrumpet notes, Lowery and Reilly were technically detained, not arrested, "which is far more insidious" because there's no accountability. No charges to challenge. Nothing. It's just a way to silence the press who were diligently getting the word out there on what they were doing.

There are all sorts of very questionable activities going on in Ferguson, including intimidation and threats against the protestors exercising their right to assembly and free speech. Detaining reporters in the middle of that is just the latest in a long string of "fuck your constitutional rights" by the (very heavily militarized) police down there.

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REPORT: Thief calls 911 because victim won't leave her alone...


(Second column, 29th story, link)

---

“We are directly responsible” for the ongoing crisis of unaccompanied children illegally entering the U.S., according to former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

“Look the minors that are coming from Central America are not coming for no reason. There is a surge because they are, many of them, if not most of them are refugees from a war. It’s a drug war. It’s a drug war that we are directly implicated in,” Reich told Fusion in an interview published Monday.

Since October more than 62,900 unaccompanied minors have been detained illegally entering the United States. The vast majority of the illegal immigrant minors are from Central America. 

According to the former labor secretary, it is time to consider decriminalization of drugs as a way to confront the drug market.

“What we don’t talk about enough is the connection between that failed policy and all of these kids from Central America who are showing up on our border,” he said in his Fusion interview. “We’ve got to have a   serious discussion in this country about decriminalizing and regulating these drugs rather than making them criminal, creating this black market that is increasingly violent and doing more and more damage in Central America.”

He added that the unaccompanied minors should be allowed to stay in the U.S. if they are found to be “refugees from the Drug War.”

“Those kids who are coming to the United States, if they are refugees from the Drug War, we ought to find out, very quickly have a hearing process to determine whether they are,” he said. “If they are it’s inhumane to sent them back if they’re going to be killed when they go back.” 

(Don Boudreaux)

… is from page 50 of the 2006 Liberty Fund edition of Ludwig von Mises’s 1956 volume, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality:

It was not vain disquisitions about a vague concept of justice that raised the standard of living of the common man in the capitalistic countries to its present height, but the activities of men dubbed as “rugged individualists” and “exploiters.”  The poverty of the backward nations is due to the fact that their policies of expropriation, discriminatory taxation and foreign exchange control prevent the investment of foreign capital while their domestic policies preclude the accumulation of indigenous capital.

All those resisting capitalism on moral grounds as an unfair system are deluded by their failure to comprehend what capital is, how it comes into existence and how it is maintained, and what the benefits are which are derived from its employment in production processes.

FLASHBACK: Promised No Vacations For Himself...


(Second column, 18th story, link)

---

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Anti-gun New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg is dumping gobs of last-minute money into a local sheriff’s race in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s political action committee, Independence USA, has purchased $150,833 in television ads in an effort to defeat Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and support his opponent Milwaukee police lieutenant Chris Moews.

Another liberal advocacy group, the “Greater Wisconsin Committee,” has poured an additional $400,000 to unseat Clarke.

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. is black, tough, Democrat and outspoken in his advocacy of self-defense and the individual right to bear arms.

The progressives of pallor can’t stand him.

The People’s Sheriff needs your support. Ammoland writes:

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke rocked the boat here in SE Wisconsin and nationally when he issued public service announcements in 2013 that encouraged people to take responsibility for their own safety including training to use a firearm in self defense. His public service announcements went viral because while self-defense is only common sense, its extremely rare to get a Law Enforcement official to publicly advocate for the 2nd Amendment and citizens right to carry.

Sheriff Clarke is the first Sheriff to take such a prominent and extremely public stance on the 2nd Amendment. If he wins, other Sheriffs and Law Enforcement around the state AND country will be encouraged to do the same. If he loses, other Sheriffs and Law Enforcement around the state AND country will be afraid to speak out in support of the 2nd Amendment EVEN if they privately support it.

Let’s hope Bloomberg’s gun control-freak meddling goes as well as it did here in my state of Colorado.

The primary is tomorrow. Clarke is standing tall:

“Special interests are spending hundreds of thousands to defeat me,” Clarke said in a statement. “They know when it comes to protecting Milwaukee County residents, I won’t back down. And I won’t let the career politicians in Milwaukee or Madison play games with our budget nor their safety.”

Godspeed, Sheriff Clarke.

Guest post written by: Judah Boulet

 

One day you wake up and you realize your body feels different. Maybe it’s that you cannot do some of the things you used to do anymore, or maybe your body is screaming much louder than it did before while doing the same exact thing. Maybe the nagging aches and pains are more constant than they were in the past. You work hard to eat well and train/exercise to keep your body and mind healthy, but regardless of the steps you take, things are different.

On the interwebs, one can find a countless number of training programs for anybody’s access. Many of these out there are not necessarily written for the common everyday average joe athlete in mind, never mind the common everyday average joe maturing athlete. I get lost with the 40 is the new 30 and such, but adults/athletes in the age range of 35-55 are unique in my mind compared to adults/athletes in their prime. Within this age range, each succinctive step between 35-55, there potentially adds slightly more and more complexities, which may need to be addressed.

As an athlete (or pretend athlete if I want to be realistic about things) over 35, I came to the realization that athletes over 35 need different training focuses than younger athletes. This I feel is regardless of whether training for health and longevity or performance. While performance is an interesting topic, a majority of people choose to train because they find exercise/training fun and rewarding and do so for the fringe benefits of optimal health and hopefully longevity. LIke their lives they also hope to be able to sustain a healthy training regimen as they age. The focus of this article is for those seeking health and longevity in a training program, however, there is much carryover to those seeking performance related goals.

I think it is important to recognize that there is a clear distinction between the actions we may choose to take in order to achieve or maintain some level of performance, and the actions we choose to take which will confer upon us the greatest level of health and longevity. Many master athletes, whether it be Ironmans, CrossFit, Powerlifting, etc.. perform awe inspiring feats of endurance and strength. However, the training they need to do to be competitive may not necessarily be the training one needs to do for optimal health, longevity, and sustainability in a strength and conditioning program, but that is a sacrifice those athletes choose to make. Compared to sitting on the couch eating bonbons and watching Sally Jesse Raphael re-runs (the crowd this article is written for should get that reference), training for a performance related goal is optimal compared to living a sedentary lifestyles, health and longevity wise, however, most of us do not exercise or CrossFIt to be high level performance athletes. Most of us are just looking for a program to get us or keep us in shape, that is fun and exciting. Most of us are just looking for a sustainable program which will help us keep our health. Unfortunately, most of us are average joes and not the outliers of the world who make getting older seem effortless. Those people are my inspiration but not my reality.

Exercise, like medications, is dose dependent, and the ability of the body to deal with the dosage of exercise as one ages, changes. The therapeutic index narrows. Give too little of a drug or exercise, it does not work. Give too much, it’s toxic, give an appropriate dose, and it works great! This is something Dr. James O’Keefe demonstrated by looking at endurance athletes, and his research showed that more was not always better , and exercise and mortality rates correlated to a dose response curve, similar to drugs.

As one ages, there are several key aspects which need to be focused on and maintained.

I believe any strength and conditioning program for an athlete 35 and older should focus on the following. By incorporating these aspects into a sustainable training program now, the progressive benefits seen in the immediate future will also have a lot of carry over to many years down the road, as long as a similar training program is maintained.

 

1. Strength and Power:

Rippetoe said it best, stronger people are harder to kill, and more useful in general. Whichever program you follow or gym that you choose to go to, there should be some type of periodized strength and power program built in. While strength gains may be harder to come by, continuing to build strength as well as maintaining strength is extremely important. The stronger you are, ideally the harder it will be to kill you. The stronger you are the faster you will get yourself out of a hospital bed should you ever find yourself there. The stronger you are the less likely you will hit that medic alert button because you have fallen and cannot get up.

While one should focus on building strength, constantly stressing the body with absolute strength tests may not be necessary and ill advised. The ability of the body to handle max effort lifts week in and week out may be extremely stressful, and recovery could be difficult depending on life variables. It is important to make sure the volume and intensity of any strength program is measured appropriately by someone who understands you, your goals, and your life situation. Undulating periodized strength programs I feel have hit the mark in this regard for the aging athlete. Ashman Strength Systems Protocol or the Cube Method are variations of a cyclical undulating periodized system where the volume of maximal efforts between lifts is considered.

 

2. Hypertrophy:

Along with general strength there should be some focus on building up lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass you have the more metabolically active tissue you have, ideally the less fat you have, and the hardier you are. You lose muscle when you age, when you are diseased (older you get more likely), and if you are inactive (Get old, get diseased, becoming inactive for a period of time is more likely). The more lean muscle you carry at 40 means the more you will carry when you are 50 and 60 given you focus on staying active and eating a nutrient dense diet. The more muscle mass you have at 60, the better the outcome if you are laid up in a hospital bed for a week or two. Strength work alone will give some hypertrophy, but exercises and/or rep ranges to encourage hypertrophy should be included. In many strength and conditioning programs, including the two I previously mentioned above, hypertrophy ranges are found in the accessory work. With CrossFit, many of the metabolic conditioning work, aka WODs, have higher rep ranges which skirt the hypertrophy range and could be useful in this regard, in conjunction with a strength program.

 

3. Kinesthetic Awareness:

While it may not apply yet to a 40 year old athlete, balance is something one loses as they age. The stronger and more powerful you are the more it helps in regard to balance, however, more awareness of our bodies as they travel through time and space is important. It is important to maintain your body’s awareness of the space around it through training. This has a huge carryover in my mind, and the practice of balancing should be incorporated into all training programs for older athletes. Along with the practice of balancing, the incorporation of static holds is something which also should be utilized, as it engages and strengthens the stabilizing muscles of joints, as well as strengthens the connective tissue in our joints. The practice of balancing while walking (on a beam? a fallen tree?), being upside down, getting up from the floor using our hands as well as not using our hands, holding ourselves in a plank, etc, all has tremendous potential to decrease injury, as well as increase longevity in any training program.

 

4. Mobility-:

Not every joint should be mobile. Some joints help to maintain stability, others need to be mobile through a specific range of motion. Mobilization of the joints which are meant to be mobile through their full ranges of motion is important as it helps prevent injury, from which recovery from takes longer the older you are (Connective tissue injuries as they are heal very slowly). Making sure that the joints which are supposed to maintain stability do so, also is important to prevent injury, and static holds are useful for this. Another key piece to the mobility/stability puzzle in my opinion is making sure there are no muscle imbalances between left and right side. Incorporating unilateral exercises into any training program to address and prevent muscle imbalance is also an important piece of the puzzle. I particularly like kettlebell specific exercises like the turkish get up, kb windmills, single leg deadlifts to work on preventing/fixing left/right muscle imbalances. Many of these exercises are great to incorporate into a warm up regimen or as accessory work.

 

5. Aerobic capacity:

Basic aerobic capacity decreases 1% every year after 25. By being physically active you help to slow the age related declines in VO2 max. There are many ways that aerobic capacity can be tackled, and its good to mix up the energy systems being worked. There has been a general trend to focus on interval training at the expense of longer aerobic training, however, I feel it is important to include all modalities of training, and not just focus on glycolytic training for optimal health and longevity. Going for a longer walk, swim, bike ride, etc at an easier pace for a longer period of time (over 30 minutes) is not detrimental but helpful in obtaining optimal health and aerobic capacity, just as incorporating some sprints or HIIT into your training regimen is equally important.

The need for a distinctive training program for older athletes is that these athletes have several variables which younger athletes in their prime do not necessarily need to worry about, or the effects of these variables is in a different light. The first of these variables is physiological. Hormonally, the older one is the more different their natural hormone profiles are from their prime. Hormonal levels are greatly involved with the ability to handle training/exercise as a good stress, and recover from those sessions. While recovery is an important aspect of any training program, regardless of ones age, however, in a Master’s level, it may be even more so. Male hormone (Vitamin T) levels start dropping off after age 30 at a rate of ~1% a year. This drop off, combined with already below normal testosterone levels in the general US population to begin with could be problematic for older male athletes. Females over 35 also have changing hormone levels which could affect their recovery as well.

Another variable as one ages is the number of potential stressors actually changes as you age. Older athletes typically have or are involved in career jobs, have a set number of bills, ie mortgage, car payments, school bills, due each month, marriage concerns, children and concerns revolving around the kids, etc. The more stressors, the greater the effects of these stressors on the ability to handle training as well as the ability to recover. The more stress, the greater effect on hormones, which potentially compounds the effects of age on hormone levels.

 

Enhancing Longevity and sustainability in training

1. Sleep: First and foremost, you want to have more optimal hormone levels, recover faster, achieve optimal health, live longer, etc, you need to sleep uninterrupted for 7-8 hours.
2. Focus on eating a Nutrient Dense Diet of non-processed foods. Perfect place to start is with a Paleo diet, and then use that as a template.
3. Consumption of enough calories to sustain training levels along with consumption of enough individual macronutrients to sustain the type of training/exercise you are performing (This is an individualized thing based on type of training, fitness goals, etc)
4. Adaptability! Listen to your body. If you are feeling tired, beat up, etc, take it easy. If you are feeling full of piss and vinegar, get after it. Be able to adapt your training program (individually or through a coach) from day to day based on how you are feeling. A potentially more accurate way to listen to your body with what is going on physiologically with you is through monitoring your Heart Rate Variability (HRV). You need a heart rate monitor which can easily hook up to an app on your smartphone, such as Joel Jamison’s BioForce HRV or iThlete. If your HRV score is Red, and you have a killer session planned, adjustment of your training program for that day is needed. Utilization of a personal coach, whether remotely or in person, is extremely useful in this regard.
5. Supplement wisely. This also is highly individualized based on training, goals, diet, etc.

 

 

 

Judah Boulet, CSCS, C-ISSN is Owner and Head Coach at No Risk CrossFit/Northern RI Strength and Conditioning, as well as owner of Boulet Health and Performance.  He holds a MS in Pharmacology and Toxicology and spends his days as a High School Science Teacher, evenings as a Strength and Conditioning Coach and moonlights as a college Nutrition Instructor.

Our friends at Amazon requested that those readers and writers who support them write an email to Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch. Amazon has been very good to me over the past few years, both an author and a customer, so I was happy to oblige.

Dear Mr. Pietsch,

As a Hugo-nominated author, a Pocket Books author, and an editor for an independent publishing house in Finland, I would like to encourage you to rethink your position regarding Amazon. I understand that the rapid changes in the industry are affecting your company, often in a negative manner. I also realize that your overhead and your contracts tend to reflect standard industry practices that are no longer in line with the new world of digital publishing.

The fact is, Mr. Pietsch, that the world is changing and Hachette has to change with it. Ebook prices are coming down as per the technology curve. When have you ever known a new technology to come out and gradually become more expensive over time? I don't wish to criticize you or your organization for various attempts to keep the new world at bay, as the important point is not that colluding with other mainstream publishers, trying to protect higher book prices, or using authors as leverage is wrong, or even bad PR, but that such actions are ultimately futile.

The ebook genie will never go back into the bottle. Therefore, the sooner you restructure Hachette to reflect the new realities, which include coming to a reasonable accomodation with Amazon, the more likely it is that your organization will survive these changes.

With regards,
Vox Day

Hachette's position isn't merely economically illiterate, observably hypocritical, and morally wrong, it is untenable. At the moment, Hachette obviously needs Amazon more than Amazon needs Hachette. As for its supporters among the scribbling classes, I think Amazon would do well to teach the authors who are publicly opposed to them a Very Important Lesson by refusing to sell any of their books for six months.

After the initial screeches of outrage died down, I suspect they would all fall in line very quickly. One of the things I like about Amazon is that it is the sort of thing they might actually do; I don't think they'd be afraid to demonstrate to those various loud-mouthed authors just how unimportant they truly are. It's amazing how many writers not only excuse their mainstream publishers for actions that Amazon has not even committed, but fail to realize that selling books is only a small part of Amazon's business these days.

Amazon isn't perfect. What corporation is? But they have been the best thing for authors and the reading public since Mr. Gutenberg first assembled his printing press. And the fact that the dinosaur gatekeepers and their pet authors hate and fear it is a feature, not a bug.

One of the Mad Geniuses, Amanda, adds her two cents on the subject:

[A]ll Amazon did was take a page out of Hatchette’s book and ask its authors to take a stand. Oh the cries of foul that suddenly rose from the interwebs. Within half a hour of reading the email, I was seeing accusations of Amazon acting like a stalker in sending the email to the usual AHDers (Amazon Hater Disorder sufferers) about how evil Amazon was to ask its authors to contact poor, innocent Hatchette. There was even one author claiming that Amazon is not and never will be a friend to authors. All of those had me shaking my head and wondering if these folks had ever really read their contracts with their traditional publisher — several of whom are signed with Hatchette — as well as if they actually knew the meaning of the terms “contract”, “negotiation” and “irony”.

What pushed me over the edge was a post by another author who admitted to not having received or read the email but, based on what they were seeing form their author friends, Amazon was once again resorting to dirty pool and must be stopped because, duh, Amazon is evil.

They really are proper little Manicheans, aren't they.

(Don Boudreaux)

… is from David Boaz’s recent post at Cato@Liberty, “Russia Imposes Embargo on Itself“:

The American economist Henry George wrote, “What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.” In Russia, Vladimir Putin started a war and then, in response to mild American and European sanctions, retaliated by imposing greater sanctions—on his own people.

Yep.

CNN does it again...

 

 

h/t @finansakrobat

Philadelphia single mom Shaneen Allen got a concealed carry permit (CCW) and handgun after being the victim of two separate robberies in the past year. After an "honest mistake" in which she drove into New Jersey with the gun in her car, she also received a court date and faces up to 11.5 years in prison for violating NJ gun and ammunition laws.

Fox News reports that Allen was pulled over on October 1 for an "unsafe lane change" after entering NJ and told the officer she had a CCW and a .380 handgun in the vehicle. The handgun was "loaded with hollow-point bullets."

Allen was charged with "unlawful possession of the weapon and possession of hollow-point bullets." She had only owned the gun for one week prior to her arrest and has no criminal record.

Mediaite.com reports that when Allen appeared in court on August 5 she learned that "she faces a maximum of 11.5 years in prison—ten for the [weapon] possession, 18 months for the bullets." Moreover, the judge in the case "refused Allen the ability to enter into a 'pretrial intervention' program to avoid jail time."

The prosecution offered Allen a "five year... plea bargain with no option for parole for 3.5 years."

Allen is the single mother of two young sons.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

Note that in 2012 women earned a majority of the top 7 most conferred bachelor’s degrees (health, psychology, education, biology, visual/performing arts, communication and English) and a slight minority in business (48%) and social sciences (49%). Men earned a solid majority in only one degree – engineering. And yet which of the gender imbalances gets all of the attention?

The EFF has revealed a very disturbing attempt by the US government to flat out secretly delete portions of a public court transcript over the belief that its lawyers may have slipped up and revealed classified information. This came from the recent hearing in the longstanding EFF case Jewel v. NSA, regarding a challenge to NSA surveillance (which began long before the Snowden revelations). After the hearing ended, apparently things took a turn for the bizarre, in which the government quietly notified the judge that it believed one of its attorneys had accidentally revealed classified information during the (very open) hearing, and hoped to remove that information from the transcript, and pretend that it never happened. The EFF fought it, and eventually the government backed down (perhaps realizing it hadn't really revealed anything):

On June 6, the court held a long hearing in Jewel in a crowded, open courtroom, widely covered by the press. We were even on the local TV news on two stations. At the end, the Judge ordered both sides to request a transcript since he ordered us to do additional briefing. But when it was over, the government secretly, and surprisingly sought permission to “remove” classified information from the transcript, and even indicated that it wanted to do so secretly, so the public could never even know that they had done so.

We rightly considered this an outrageous request and vigorously opposed it. The public has a First Amendment right not only to attend the hearing but to have an accurate transcript of it. Moreover, the federal law governing court reporting requires that “each session of the court” be “recorded verbatim” and that the transcript be certified by the court reporter as “a correct statement of the testimony taken and the proceedings had.” 28 U.S.C. § 753(b).

The Court allowed the government a first look at the transcript and indicated that it was going to hold the government to a very high standard and would not allow the government to manufacture a misleading transcript by hiding the fact of any redactions. Ultimately, the government said that it had *not* revealed classified information at the hearing and removed its request.But the incident speaks volumes about the dangers of allowing the government free rein to claim secrecy in court proceedings and otherwise.

It's great that this ended well, but it seems immensely troubling that the government even sought to do this in the first place. Of course, I would imagine this might lead some to scour the full transcript (embedded below) to see if there's any tidbit of information that the government didn't really mean to claim.

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(Don Boudreaux)

The Russian government wants to punish America for sanctions the U.S. government imposed on Russia over the Russian government’s involvement in the hostilities in Ukraine.  So what does the Russian government do?  Its chosen means for punishing America is to prevent the Russian people from buying food from America.

“We’ll show you, Comrade Uncle Sammy!  We’ll not consume the valuable products that citizens of your country offer to us at attractive prices!  Take that!!!”

The Russian government is upset with Uncle Sam because the latter government had earlier restricted Americans’ abilities to purchase at attractive prices valuable products offered to them by Russian producers.

It’s crazy: governments routinely attempt to punish each other by each harming its own people.

Even crazier: many pundits and professors continue to find government to be a sensible, even magnificent, institution worthy of our loyalty, admiration, and obedience.

…..

“I’ll reduce my consumption to punish you,” says U to R.

“Yeah?!  Well I’ll reduce my consumption, too.  That’ll show you,” responds R in fearsome retaliation to U‘s frightening threat.

“But I can reduce my consumption more than you can reduce yours!” boasts U.

“Just you wait, U!  I’ll outdo you at reducing consumption!” R barks in reply.

….

Of course, the reason such trade sanctions have any hope of working is because producers in each country are special-interest groups.  They get heard; they are politically powerful.  The general public as such, and consumers as such, are largely ignored by politicians.  So because a policy by government U that harms producers in country R might create pressure on politicians in R to adopt policies more to the liking of government U, government U pursues that policy despite the fact that the very nature of the policy is to harm large numbers of citizens of country U.

A new white paper from Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund puts a target on GOP operative Henry Barbour for his role in incendiary racial appeals in the Mississippi GOP Senate primary.

“Henry Barbour was the field general in an unprecedented campaign to smear a fellow Republican, so desperate was his family to cling to power,” Jenny Beth Martin, the chair of TPPCF, said in the statement provided exclusively to Breitbart News. “We’re used to these tactics from Democrats: desperate appeals to emotion, fear-mongering, even playing the ‘Klan’ card. Who would have thought the Barbour machine would finance such despicable race-baiting?”

During the campaign, a super PAC run by Barbour, Mississippi Conservatives, provided funds to Democratic operatives and organizations that put out literature and ran radio ads. These ads said that voting for incumbent Sen. Cochran was a means of stopping the Tea Party and preventing his primary challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, from “roll[ing] back the hand of time,” among other examples.

According to National Review, Barbour, the nephew of former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, vehemently denied to Republican colleagues having any role in the ads, before finally admitting to it in an interview with reporter Eliana Johnson, saying colorful remarks McDaniel made on talk radio a decade ago, and efforts to prevent voter fraud invited the scrutiny from black Democrats.

“Many Mississippians, who were already disgusted by McDaniel’s race-baiting talk-radio-show comments, heard the code words that insinuated that African Americans were not welcome in the Republican primary,” Barbour told National Review.

Monday, however, a Democratic activist said she had funded one particularly vicious ad that raised the specter of the KKK, and Barbour was quoted saying, “I am glad the people really behind this despicable KKK ad have been revealed, because Sen. Cochran’s opponents have falsely accused our group and others of running it. As I have said from the start, I had zero to do with it.”

There are also outstanding questions about the KKK ad, and the Democratic activist’s claims may not necessarily be true, either; the radio station that ran the ads backed up previous allegations against political operatives in Mississippi connected with Barbour. The radio station owner said Democratic operative Greg Brand was behind the ads—something Brand denies. If Brand was involved, it confirms a lot more connections back to the Barbours and Cochran’s allies. Radio station WMGO owner Jerry Lousteau said that if Brand is denying being involved, “he is lying.”

The new white paper from Tea Party Patriots outlines the nexus between the Barbour-run super PAC and the race-baiting ads that proliferated in Mississippi in the waning days of the race, helping drive Democratic turnout that gave Cochran his victory in the GOP primary.

Martin is calling on Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus—who is holding meetings right now in Chicago with all RNC members—to censure Barbour for his conduct in Mississippi.

“Chairman Priebus and members of the Committee, if you do nothing, you sanction Henry Barbour’s conduct,” Martin said, adding:

Is this why he was on the Committee’s hand-picked group to study ‘minority outreach’ after 2012? Well Reince, maybe I didn’t get the memo, but shouldn’t the GOP reach out to minorities with the conservative values in the party platform? Or is Henry’s method of fear-mongering with food stamps and school lunches the way to recruit African-Americans?

“By not repudiating such despicable conduct, you’ll tell 183,000 conservatives in Mississippi, ‘Yes, it’s fine that Democrats chose your nominee, and yes, the Barbour machine had to be preserved at all costs,’” Martin said in her statement, speaking directly to Priebus. “And Reince, never again accuse Harry Reid or Eric Holder of playing the race card. Because by your silence you’ve forfeited the right to complain, and have endorsed the shameful tactic yourself.”

The Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund white paper on Henry Barbour’s role in race-baiting ads is 24 pages long, and it opens with the statement that “Henry Barbour is not telling the truth.”

Before detailing how Henry Barbour’s denials are false, the white paper reads:

Henry Barbour, Republican National Committeeman from Mississippi, repeatedly claims in public that he had nothing to do with the race-baiting flyers and robocalls that were deployed against Republican State Senator Chris McDaniel during the June 3, 2014 Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate primary election and the June 24, 2014 Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate runoff election.

“Henry Barbour directed a PAC that provided the funding that produced and disseminated vile racial slurs against REPUBLICAN state Senator Chris McDaniel and his REPUBLICAN and conservative supporters,” the white paper reads. 

It continues:

The Mississippi Conservatives PAC, under Barbour’s direction, funded (through illegal means) various operatives and organizations of dubious background to implement a deliberate and premeditated strategy of vicious race-baiting and fear mongering over issues of race during the runoff election between incumbent Thad Cochran and challenger Chris McDaniel. Henry Barbour deliberately chose to use well-known Democrat operatives and organizations in a character assassination scheme – the kind that the professional Left has perfected, and which Republicans abhor – in order to destroy the reputation of a loyal, fellow Republican, a current Mississippi state legislator in good standing and a Republican Party member since the age of 13, whose only offense was to announce and run for a Senate seat held by an incumbent Republican. (NOTE: Sen. Chris McDaniel announced for the U.S. Senate seat well before incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran had announced – and at a time when most observers believed that Sen. Cochran was not seeking reelection.)

TPPCF notes that the evidence against Barbour “raises serious and troubling questions” about “his behavior during the primary and the runoff campaign, and his evasions and downright falsehoods to the RNC afterwards.”

TPPCF thinks that the RNC and Republican leaders can’t legitimately demand certain standards of behavior from the Democrats and President Barack Obama if they can’t live by their own rules. “Every day, Republican Party officials demand that President Obama and the Democrats act responsibly and with the consent of the American people,” TPPCF wrote. “We think this is a perfect opportunity for the leaders of the Grand Old Party to demonstrate to their base and to all Americans that they will enthusiastically live up to the same standards that they demand of the President and his Party.”

Specifically, TPPCF is demanding the RNC censure Henry Barbour and issue a public statement condemning the actions he and others took to try to smear Tea Partiers as racists. 

The white paper then walks through how Barbour’s Mississippi Conservatives pro-Cochran super PAC used race-baiting tactics to get Democrats to voted for Cochran on June 24. 

“In the days immediately following the June 3 primary election, pro-Cochran forces inside the Mississippi GOP and its allies scrambled to find a new strategy,” TPPCF wrote, adding:

Given the results of the June 3 primary, it was clear that Cochran could not win a majority of REPUBLICAN votes in the June 24 runoff – so the strategist began to develop a plan NOT to rely only on the votes of Republican primary voters. Henry Barbour and his allies determined to go outside the GOP voters in Mississippi and to rely on a provision of Mississippi law that allows any voter – including Democrats – who do not vote in the Democratic primary to vote in the REPUBLICAN runoff election. Mississippi law does not require voters to state a party preference when they register to vote, so any registered voter who had not cast a ballot in the Democratic primary on June 3 was eligible to vote in the June 24 GOP Senate runoff.

TPPCF noted that Barbour’s goal – which he was very public about – was to “flood” the June 24 runoff with Democrats, and to do so "with Democrats who could be frightened into supporting Thad Cochran ... based on leftist, Democratic race-baiting, rather than time-honored Republican principles. And that is exactly what they did,” TPPCF wrote. 

Furthermore:

Mississippi Conservatives PAC, under the direction of Henry Barbour, raised funds from the national GOP establishment to then fund the efforts of All Citizens for Mississippi PAC – a new PAC established by Bishop Ronnie Crudup Sr. of the New Horizon Church International just before the Mississippi primary on June 3. This new PAC shares its street address and Treasurer with the church. This new PAC violated federal campaign finance law by not filing required FEC reports until well after the close the June 24 runoff election.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show that Crudup’s new PAC raised money from only one source: Henry Barbour’s Mississippi Conservatives super PAC.

TPPCF details how Crudup’s “All Citizens for Mississippi PAC,” quickly “essentially became a cut-out” for Henry Barbour’s shop, and specifically pounded out advertisements into the black community accusing Chris McDaniel and the Tea Party of being racists—so they needed to support Cochran to keep a conservative out of office.

TPPCF cites three major examples of All Citizens for Mississippi’s race-baiting with Henry Barbour’s money. “All Citizens for Mississippi PAC produced and disseminated at least one flyer that claimed that ‘the tea party intends to prevent you from voting.’” 

“All Citizens for Mississippi PAC also produced and aired radio ads,” the white paper continued, asserting: 

One said, "A victory by tea party candidate Chris McDaniel is a loss for the state of Mississippi. It is a loss for public education. ... It is a loss for the citizens of this state in a time of natural disaster, for our public universities and particularly our historically black universities. A victory for Chris McDaniel is a loss for the reputation of this state for race, for race relationships between blacks and whites and other ethnic groups. Mississippi can't afford Chris McDaniel."

“A second radio ad produced and aired by All Citizens for Mississippi PAC said, ‘I'm Pastor Siggers, Pastor of the Mt. Olive Baptist Church. These are some tough times. ... And tough times call for tough decisions. A time when there is an effort to roll back the hand of time.'" The white paper went on to state, "I'm talking about the race for the U.S. Senate between Thad Cochran and tea-party candidate Chris McDaniels [sic]. I know that traditionally we as a community don't vote Republican, but for this special election, we need to turn out in record numbers to push back against this tea party effort."

As you’ll undoubtedly see if you decide to read the entire article (and why wouldn’t you?), some trainees place the cart before the horse and make things more complicated than they have to be. Rocket science is hard. Long division is hard. Figuring out why women love Hugh Grant movies is hard. Lifting weights should not be hard.

I was asked by Stack Magazine to write an article aimed towards guys (but the message applies to women too!) who tend to have a hard time making progress with their exercise routine – namely their resistance training routine.

Or what I affectionally refer to as “lifting heavy stuff.”

To be candid, the message is nothing revolutionary and it’s probably one you’ve read or have been told time and time again. But it’s something that bears repeating, and frankly, despite how often it’s trumpeted, people somehow fail to allow the message to stick

Akin to how people continue to text while behind the wheel of a car or are constantly being told to put the toilet seat back down.

Yeah, kinda like that.

The Weakling’s Guide to Workout Out

NOTE:  as a small favor, if you liked the article on Stack, PLEASE share it through your social media outlets. If you didn’t like it, pffft, whatever….;o)