Jts5665

Back in June, I wrote a post about Sam Feltham’s n=1 experiment in which he consumed more than 5,000 calories per day of low-carb/high-fat foods for 21 days.  In a post on his Smash The Fat blog introducing that experiment, he spelled out exactly what he would eating:  lots of meats, eggs, greens and nuts.  The macronutrient breakdown on a typical day looked like this:

Calories:  5,794
Protein:  333.2
Fat:  461.42
Carbohydrates:  85.2g

Feltham estimated his daily calorie expenditure to be around 3,128.  (He’s an active cyclist.)  So according to the simple calories-in/calories-out theory, he should have gained nearly 13 pounds in 21 days.  But he didn’t.  As he reported at the end of the 21 days, he gained less than three pounds – while losing an inch around his waist.  In other words, he gained a bit of lean mass but apparently didn’t get any fatter.

I wouldn’t suggest people who’ve battled a weight problem repeat that experiment, of course.  If you check the pictures on his blog, you’ll see that Feltham looks like a naturally lean guy.  His body probably resists gaining fat.

Ahhh, but what if he consumed more than 5,000 calories per day on a diet high in refined carbohydrates?  Would the hormonal effects of all those excess carbohydrates overcome his natural resistance to getting fatter?

In a word:  Yup.

Feltham recently completed yet another n=1 experiment that lasted 21 days.  This time the diet looked like something Morgan Spurlock would try (assuming he could eat all these foods at McDonald’s while pretending to only consume three meals per day) … cereals, breads, jam, pasta, desserts and sodas.  Here’s the breakdown:

Calories:  5,793
Protein:  188.65
Fat:  140.8
Carbohydrates:  892.7

Wow.  My glucose is rising just looking at those figures.   Let’s look at Feltham’s results from his blog:

As it was the last day I also weighed myself this evening at 97.3kg, giving me a mean for day 21 at 96.8kg, which is a massive +7.1kg up from the start and +0.1kg above the calorie formula on a 53,872 k/cal surplus.

So he gained almost 16 pounds.  And it wasn’t lean tissue this time, either.  He also gained three inches around his waist.  (He had small waist to begin with, so nobody will be asking him to wear the Santa suit at this year’s holiday party.)

What’s interesting to me is that on the high-carb overeating experiment, the calorie equation held up.  Unlike with his LCHF diet, Feltham did, in fact, gain a fraction more than one pound for every 3,500 extra calories he consumed.

I’d say the same about Morgan Spurlock’s sugar-fest month at McDonald’s.  Spurlock gained 24 pounds in 30 days, which means he was probably overeating by around 2,800 calories per day.  (We of course don’t know for sure, since he won’t show anyone his food log.  But his nutritionist cautioned him twice in Super Size Me that he was eating more than 5,000 calories per day.  And unlike Feltham, who continued his exercise routine during his experiment, Spurlock intentionally moved as little as possible.)

As I mentioned in my post about Feltham’s first experiment, the calorie freaks immediately tried to explain away his inability to gain more than a few pounds on 5,200 daily calories of LCHF foods by insisting he must have a super-fast metabolism.  Funny how that super-fast metabolism didn’t help him when he switched to a diet full of refined carbohydrates.

By the way, Feltham has already gone back to a LCHF diet (which he’s calling his rehab diet) to undo the damage.  He’s 10 days into a diet consisting of meats, greens, butter and nuts.  His average daily intake is 3,622 calories, 313 grams of fat, 170 grams of protein and 34.38 grams of carbohydrates.

He’s lost just over nine pounds as a result.  A good chunk of that is likely water weight, but I suspect he’ll be back to his original weight and body-fat percentage soon enough.

CRUZ, McCONNELL SPAR OVER SENATE STRATEGY...


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Doug Bandow

Attention in Washington remains focused on the government shutdown.  But a far more important issue confronts America: rising chocolate prices. When will the government address this terrifying global crisis?

Cocoa trees have been cultivated for thousands of years. The early Mesoamericans, including the Aztecs and Mayans, turned the beans into cocoa solids, liquid, and butter. These peoples offered cocoa beans as gifts for the gods and using cocoa drinks in sacred ceremonies.

The Europeans became acquainted with chocolate after the Spanish conquistadors came and conquered. The Europeans sent cocoa beans and added sugar and milk. 

Hard chocolate finally arrived in the 18th century, apparently first in Italy. But it was the Industrial Revolution that delivered chocolate to the rest of us. A German company created the first chocolate bar in 1839. Is there another invention that benefited mankind so greatly?

But perhaps the most important innovation was yet to come. In 1867 a Swiss chocolatier, recently removed from candle-making added milk. And then America’s Milton Hershey created a mass market with cheap chocolate bars. 

For all of the genius of Thomas Jefferson, he failed to capture this aspect of humanity. What is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” without chocolate?

Truly access to chocolate is a vital national, even global interest.

Now that access is threatened. The cost of one kilogram of chocolate has hit $12.25, up 45 percent in 2007, the highest ever. It turns out cocoa beans are in short supply.

Even America’s weak recovery has sparked a consumer return to the chocolate market, with consumption rising for the first time since the economic and financial crashes of 2008. The problem is worldwide. In Europe the cost of making a milk chocolate bar is up 31 percent. In Asia chocolate prices are up 30 to 40 percent this year. “Most of our customers are not happy about it” said Richard Lee of Singapore-based Aalst Chocolate.  Neither am I.

As I point out in my latest Forbes online column:

This is a crisis.  A real crisis.  No nonsense about world peace, international poverty, income inequality, environmental degradation, runaway inflation, overwhelming debt, or other minor problems.  Chocolate is going to cost more!

This will be bad enough for casual consumers. It is far worse for chocolate addicts. After all, chocoholics can’t help themselves.

It’s time for the government to act. After all, for what do we have the government if not to act in a crisis like this? Vital national interests are at stake.

First, we need a Department of Chocolate. Second, we need to create a new welfare program to ensure that everyone has access to chocolate. 

Third, we need price controls on chocolate. Why should greedy profiteers be able to take advantage of helpless chocoholics? We have a RIGHT to reasonably-priced chocolate.

Fourth, we need price supports for cocoa production. So what if that creates a surplus, like for cheese? It is impossible to have too much chocolate. 

Fifth, we need to guarantee access to foreign cocoa. Some 70 percent of cocoa is produced in West Africa; 43 percent comes from Ivory Coast alone. Forget access to foreign oil and the Persian Gulf.  We remain hopelessly dependent on foreign sources of cocoa. 

Sixth, we need a new federal chocolate “czar” to coordinate a truly effective federal chocolate policy.

Indeed, neoconservatives long have suggested that Uncle Sam concoct some new grand crusade as a means of promoting national greatness. How about guaranteed chocolate for all? A world-beating American chocolate industry? Promoting a new advanced chocolate civilization? 

America’s political leaders are being laughed at around the world. But for the wrong reasons. Their worst political crime is failing to deal with the looming chocolate crisis.  If they fail to act, future generations will never forgive them.

I love the headline. Yale Professor’s “Surprising” Discovery.

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/10/87474-yale-professors-surprising-discovery-tea-party-supporters-scientifically-literate/

 

So a study has discovered that people who identify as Tea Party tend to be more scientifically literate than average. Having just spent the last few days in Huntsville “Rocket City” Alabama, where most of the people I talked to were overwhelmingly conservative and also rocket scientists, well, duh.

 

The only part of this that is surprising to me is that the professor went ahead and released results that went against the established groupthink narrative. A proper groupthinking professor would have just rerun the study using the dumbest backwoods morons he could find until he got the results he wanted. So way to go, Prof.

 

I did love this part:

 

I’ve got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension.

 

But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party. All my impressions come from watching cable tv — & I don’t watch Fox News very often — and reading the “paper” (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).

 

I’m a little embarrassed, but mainly I’m just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.

 

Wow…

 

You mean that the media portrayal of a group who they are diametrically philosophically opposed to might not be totally accurate? This is my shocked face.

 

The anti-science dumb Tea Party narrative comes from a few places. First off, in proper Liberal Internet Arguing Checklist fashion, they will take the dumbest son of a bitch on our side and use him as our poster child. So that crazy guy down the street at the Man Will Never Fly ‘Cause it Ain’t God’s Will clubhouse next door to the Flat Earth Society sign proclaiming Dinosaurs is Satan’s Lie… Yeah, congratulations, the New York Times just declared he speaks for half the country. And the big city dwellers who think Honey Boo Boo is a documentary about red state America believe it. Meanwhile, left wingers aren’t getting their kid’s vaccinations because Jim Carrey said so, and fire has never melted steel, but the right hates science. Keep your Jesus out of my uterus!

 

Of course the right’s supposed hatred of light and truth hinges on exactly two topics, global warming and abortion.

 

On global warming (pardon, me that’s climate change now) why yes, in fact we do realize that the temperature changes on planet Earth, we just don’t think mankind has much if anything to do with it, and even if we did, how come your super scientific answer to this issue always somehow boils down to “more socialism”?

 

The second reason we’re anti-science is that people on my side overwhelmingly tend to dislike abortion. Of course you can’t hold a belief that goes against proper liberal groupthink and not be a moron! The only possible reason you could be against abortion is that you’re stupid. So of course, if you think a human fetus is human, and thus should qualify for the same legal protections as other humans, then you’re going to get a bunch of weird ass strawmen thrown at you, like how we must think masturbation is murder… Wow. Obviously! I just forgot the part where raw genetic material or unfertilized eggs are human beings. Then some lady will scream about parasites, but we’re the ones that don’t like science? I love when libs on Facebook tell me that there is no scientifically agreed upon definition of life (uh… what?) and human fetuses totally don’t count, because science!

 

But don’t worry… Remember the dude from the Flat Earth Society? He thinks birth control is a Reptoid plot and should be illegal, and he speaks for half of America, don’tcha know? He’ll be all over the totally unbiased news, while the rest of us are scratching our heads wondering where this whole War on Women thing came from.   

 

Meanwhile, every other topic in the universe doesn’t count. So you’re a literal rocket scientist but you think government spending is out of control? Then you’re obviously a moron. Brain surgeon that listens to Rush Limbaugh? Racist. That’s the default setting, and heaven forbid there is any actual thought applied, because if you disagree with big government, then you have to be dumb.  

 

Now here’s the interesting thing. What if they were to modify that study and differentiate between hard science and the mushy soft social sciences? So let’s put our physics, mathematics, and crunchy engineering types and separate them out from the psychology and sociology and gendernormative cismale theory of cultural basket weaving science majors. My guess is that the numbers would be even more skewed.

 

Because the Tea Party is made up of people who can do math.

 

VIDEO: DC Residents Blame 'Shutdown' -- on Bush!


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“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” – Barack Obama March 27, 2009

The president was speaking to the heads of America’s largest banks in the White House shortly after his election. At this extraordinary meeting, Obama and his administration made it very clear that the big banks would play ball or have problems.

The CEOs of the big banks genuflected, as was wise. Jamie Dimon, Ken Lewis, and others knew what was expected of them. The play for these men was to roll over, which they did. And to write checks to Democrats, which they did.

They had already written big checks to Obama in the 2008 campaign. Wall Street piled onto the Obama bandwagon when things began to look obvious. Goldman Sachs employees for instance were Obama’s largest contributor after the University of California system. JP Morgan and Citi were not far behind.

They all got protection from the “pitchforks,” courtesy of President Obama. In particular, they got protection from legal actions connected to the Crash.

Little more than midway through the first Obama term, Wall Street began to wonder if the play was no longer to roll over, but to back the Republican candidate. Here was a candidate who came from their ranks who likely would not exact a political toll for protection, but would do it as a matter of natural disposition. Wall Street had more faith in Mitt Romney than Main Street did and Wall Street went in whole hog.

Compare the top donors for Obama in 2012 versus the top donors for Mitt Romney. Then compare the top donors for Obama in 2012 with the top donors in 2008.

For all the “protection” Obama had given Wall Street, they had abandoned him in the second election. All fat and happy on TARP money and the extraordinary actions of the Federal Reserve, the banks were feeling their oats again. Problem is, Wall Street threw in with the wrong guy.

Even Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, the head of Obama’s job council, which was not really about jobs but rather an Obama campaign fundraising vehicle, got squishy about his support for Obama. Despite GE’s reliance on its relationship with the Obama administration, there was an unconfirmed rumor in 2012 that Immelt would vote for Romney.

Check out this picture of Obama and Immelt’s first meeting after Obama won his second term.

Immelt got away with an uncomfortable handshake. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan would not get away so easily.

On Friday of last week, JP Morgan announced that it would take a quarterly loss for the first time since 2004 thanks to legal costs and a $7.2 billion fine handed down from the Justice Department. Eric Holder, who earlier this year threw up his hands and said he couldn’t prosecute HSBC because if he did the world banking system might collapse (the too big to jail doctrine), decided along with New York State prosecutors that it was time for Dimon to pay. He hadn’t played the game as agreed.

There is something decidedly curious about the charges. They largely stem from activities of Bear Sterns, a firm that Morgan acquired at the request of the government. This proves the old saying: there is no honor among cronies. Do the government a favor and get slapped whenever the government chooses.

And why the move right now? It seems to have to do with the statute of limitations. With time running out on many of the banks violations during the run-up to the Crash, the decision was probably made by the White House to make a move before absolutely no flesh could be carved away.

Additionally the fine is a good reminder to all the big banks that the midterm elections are coming and that throwing money at Democratic candidates is a lot less expensive than scrutiny from the Justice Department.

Get the check book out boys and send some of that newly printed cash our way. All will be forgiven. 

This article originally appeared at AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.

Jason Bedrick

Schools work very hard to curb drunk driving, so when a sober student offers to drive an inebriated friend home from a party rather than let her attempt to drive home herself, no doubt any school would hold her up as worthy of emulation, right? Wrong, sadly, at least at North Andover High School in Massachusetts:

Two weeks ago, Erin [Cox] received a call from a friend at a party who was too drunk to drive. Erin drove to Boxford after work to pick up her friend. Moments after she arrived, the cops arrived too and busted several kids for underage possession of alcohol.

A North Andover High School honor student, Erin was cleared by police, who agreed she had not been drinking and was not in possession of alcohol. But Andover High told Erin she was in violation of the district’s zero tolerance policy against alcohol and drug use. In the middle of her senior year, Erin was demoted from captain of the volleyball team and told she would be suspended from playing for five games.

One of the central purposes of education is to teach students to consider the consequences of their actions. In this sense, Cox and her friend demonstrated greater wisdom than school officials. While the students clearly considered the potentially lethal consequences of attempting to drive drunk, school officials apparently haven’t considered how their “zero tolerance” policy might discourage sobers students from aiding inebriated colleagues in the future. As Alexander Abad-Santos notes at the Atlantic, “Cox did not break any laws; she did not drink, did not party — yet was still punished by the school. By reprimanding Cox, North Andover High is likely sending out a confusing and contradictory message to teens about drinking, designated drivers, and asking for help.” The Cox family lawyer agrees:

“If a kid asks for help from a friend, you don’t want that kid to say ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you. I might end up in trouble at school,’” said attorney Wendy Murphy, who is trying to help the Cox family get the school’s decision reversed.

These “zero tolerance” policies are too often applied with zero logic. They encourage bureaucrats to harshly punish students without considering extenuating circumstances, the student’s intent, or even common sense. They are the reason we see schools that suspend 6-year-olds for eating a breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun or innocently using a camping tool to eat lunch, expel a student for taking Tylenol, suspend a student for wearing rosary beads (potentially a “gang symbol”) in memory of her grandmother, and even pressure a hearing-impaired 3-year-old named “Hunter” into changing the way he signs his name because it resembles a gun. Sadly, there are dozens of other examples. It’s long past time that schools abandon “zero tolerance” in favor of a more reasonable and proportional approach.

GOP lawmaker says that if his party's leadership gives in to Obama, they will have forever altered the checks and balances of the U.S. federal government.

On the House floor on Monday, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) argued that President Barack Obama’s activities during the government shutdown over Obamacare are a sign to him that Obama would act nefariously to attack the full faith and credit of the United States of America by taking the country into a default in a debt ceiling crisis if the president does not get everything he wants in negotiations.

“Given the ruthless and vindictive way the shutdown has been handled, I now believe that this president would willfully act to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States unless the Congress acquiesces to all of his demands, at least as long as he sees political advantage in doing so,” McClintock said in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. “If the Republicans acquiesce, immediate crisis will quickly vanish, credit markets will calm and public life will return to other matters. But a fundamental element of our Constitution will have been destroyed. The power of the purse will have shifted from the representatives of the people to the executive. The executive bureaucracies will be freed to churn out ever more outlandish regulations with no effective congressional review or check through the purse. A perilous era will have begun in which the president sets spending levels and vetoes any bill falling short of his demands. Whenever a deadline approaches, one house can simply refuse to negotiate with the other until Congress is faced with the Hobson’s choice of a shutdown or a default. The nation’s spending will again dangerously accelerate. The deficit will rapidly widen. And the economic prosperity of the nation will continue to slowly bleed away.”

McClintock said that while the current impasse began “over a collapsing health program,” Obamacare, “it’s now taken on the dimensions of a constitutional crisis.”

“Yesterday in Washington, a group of America’s veterans rose up to take a stand against these unconstitutional usurpations,” McClintock added. “I believe the salvation of our nation now ultimately depends on the American people joining them.”

McClintock argued that the debt ceiling “exists” for a “simple reason.” He said it is there “to ensure that public debt isn’t recklessly piled up without Congress periodically acknowledging it and addressing the spending patterns that are causing it,”

“If the debt limit increase is supposed to be automatic as the president suggests, then there’s really no purpose to it,” he said.

McClintock explained that unlike any of Obama’s predecessors, if Congress does not “unconditionally” raise the debt ceiling, the United States will default on its debt obligations. But McClintock pointed to how the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has “consistently held” that the Secretary of the Treasury, who currently is Jack Lew, a position that reports to the president, has “’the authority to choose the order in which to pay obligations of the United States’ and to protect the nation’s credit. Such authority is inherent in the 1789 act that established the Treasury Department and entrusted it with ‘the management of the revenue’ and ‘the support of the public credit.’”

McClintock said that given that the nation’s revenues are “more than 10 times our debt payments,” for the Treasury Department and Obama White House to pay “the debt first to prevent a sovereign default is well within the financial ability of the federal government.”

“Indeed, it is a fiscal imperative,” he said, before noting House-passed legislation that would require the payment of the national debt in the case of the lack of a deal over raising the debt ceiling. That measure, McClintock said, “languishes” in the Democratic-controlled Senate under the threat of a veto from President Obama.

“Protecting the sovereign credit by prioritizing payments would mean delaying paying other bills,” McClintock said. “That is also untenable, unthinkable and something much-to-be-avoided. But it would not imperil the nation’s sovereign credit. Only the president can do that.”

McClintock noted how House GOP leadership offered to President Obama a no-strings-attached “clean” 60-day debt ceiling increase, and how Obama refused the offer. He also noted how Senate Republicans offered a six-month clean debt ceiling increase, and how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused that.

“What the president threatens to do would be catastrophic and unprecedented,” McClintock said. “The full faith and credit of the United States is what gives markets the confidence to loan money to the federal government. Even the threat of default, exactly the kind the president is now making, could have dire consequences to a nation that now owes more than its entire economy produces in a year.”

McClintock said that, moving forward, establishment Republicans need to fix their “miscalculations on two key assumptions.”

“First, that the Democrats would negotiate the issues that divide our country; they have not,” McClintock said of such GOP establishment’s false assumptions in these negotiations. “Second, the Democrats would seek to minimize the suffering caused by the impasse; they have not.”

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO OF REP. TOM McCLINTOCK'S SPEECH:

How many articles have you read on "American's Crumbling Infrastructure"?  If you are like me, you are frequently left with the impression that deferred maintenance on infrastructure is increasing over time.  As is often the case in the media, a trend is implied but no actual trend data is presented.  Instead you will get scary single data points (e.g. 66,749 of the nation’s 607,380 bridges were structurally deficient).

It turns out, according to Chris Edwards at Cato, this is yet another implied trend that is not actually a trend.  The data is easily available, but never makes it into the article

This was posted by the US Forest Service outside of a privately-funded, privately-operated campground:

 

All the maintenance at this site, as well as all cleaning, utilities, security monitoring, staffing, customer service, etc. are provided and paid for by a private concessionaire that does not take one dime of government money.   The "our ability to perform maintenance" is incredibly disingenuous, because over the course of a year likely no US Forest Service maintenance person even steps on the property.   The last half of the message therefore has absolutely nothing to do with the first half.  The campground is closed and not being maintained because the US Forest Service has arbitrarily suspended the concessionaires contract in an apparent attempt to make the shutdown more painful for the public.

By now, readers will know that our company operates public parks and campgrounds in the National Forest without taking one dime of Federal money.  We pay for the cleaning, maintenance, utilities, and staffing of the facilities entirely from the user fees paid by visitors at the gate.  Because we take no government money(we actually make lease payments to the government) we have never been closed in past shutdowns, but we were closed last week as the White House overruled an early Forest Service decision and ordered us closed.

Well, here is a photo from yesterday of the parking lot of one of the recreation areas we operate and were forced to closed.  Doesn't look very closed, does it?

As it turns out, yesterday the local Sheriff was concerned with traffic jams on the highway near here as people tried to park and walk in.  It is a danger I warned the US Forest Service about way back on October 2 in a letter to Cal Joyner, the Regional Forester for Arizona and New Mexico (and was promptly ignored).  The Sheriff forced the gate open and let everyone in.

The amazing thing I found out today, and confirmed through pictures and news reports, is that the Sheriff was accompanied by US Forest Service personnel who apparently accepted this action.  This means in effect that the US Forest Service believes this site is safe to occupy by visitors without our company present to clean the bathrooms, take out the trash, monitor security, watch for fires, stop vandalism, etc.  but is not safe, somehow, with us present and actively staffing the site.  This obviously makes no sense and just points out how arbitrary the decision-making has been.

Starting yesterday morning I begged the US Forest Service to let us return to staffing the site (which should be an easy decision since, unlike opening National Parks, this would require zero dollars from the government) but I got no response.

We have also found numerous other sites operated by third parties like ourselves on US Forest Service land in Arizona still open.  For example, the Oak Flats campground in the Tonto National Forest is still open for business.  In addition, we know of at least three Arizona State Parks, including Slide Rock SP, that operate on US Forest Service land just as we do but who have not been ordered to close.  I know that Fool Hollow SP operates with a special use permit very similar to ours, but unlike us, its permit has not been temporarily suspended and it is open for business.

In fact, I cannot find a single third party who operates on the National Forests in Arizona who have had their operations suspended except for the private campground concessionaires.   The powerful ski associations got their operations on Forest Service lands exempted from the get-go, probably because they have a full-time lobbying staff in DC and I do not.  The same goes true for BLM lands, where the BLM has not closed its campgrounds or parks to the public.  And the same goes true now for the Grand Canyon NP, which has been reopened by the state of Arizona.  In fact, we may be the only recreation operations on Federal land in this state that are still required to close.

Update:  The Forest Service made us cease operations at the Locket Meadow campground near Flagstaff.  After kicking us out, they have reopened the campground to the public (without any staff or services on site).  It is absolutely outrageous that the US Forest Service believes that the campground is fine for public visitation but that our company must be banned from operating it.  Clearly, the resource and the visitors are safer and better protected and better served with us there, so this can only mean that the Forest Service is for some reason arbitrarily targeting our business, rather than use of the land, for shutdown.  I cannot think of any possible justification for this action.  If the campground is safe for public visitation during the shutdown, it is safer for us to operate and keep clean and protected.

PS-  I should say targeting private SMALL companies.  Large companies with political pull seem to be getting the National Parks open where they have operations.  Just like with Obamacare and nearly everything else in modern government, restrictions are passed on private enterprises but exceptions are granted to those large enough to have staff lawyers, full-time lobbyists, and who can bundle a lot of donations.

The last remaining justification that anyone has given me for the need to close privately-funded concession-run parks in the US Forest Service is that the Forest Service must close to all uses on its lands.  But this justification is now in total tatters, making it all the more clear that closure of private concessionaires was an arbitrary and unjustified action.  Here is why:

• As reported earlier, the US Forest Service is still allowing many recreation uses on its lands.  Individuals can still camp and hike in non-developed areas.  Many US Forest Service campgrounds till seem to be open (example Oak Flats near Globe, AZ).  And many state parks, such as Fool Hollow and Slide Rock in AZ and Burney Falls in CA that operate on US Forest Service land have been allowed to remain open and still use Forest Service land for recreation.  In fact, the only groups that seem to be closed in the US Forest Service are private concessionaires, which increasingly appear to have been singled out for rough treatment by the Administration.
• We have received emails from the US Forest Service that these closures are required to be consistent with the NPS, but the NPS is allowing its parks to be reopened if they are funded by outside agencies.  Both Arizona and Utah have reached agreements to reopen National Parks in their states through use of state funding.  So why can't private parks on Federal lands be reopened through the use of private funding, which is how we operate anyway?  Its almost as if this Administration has some sort of bias against private activity.

Jason Bedrick

In an epic case of unintended consequences, government-mandated anti-bullying programs are actually increasing bullying by teaching kids how to bully, according to a new study published in the Journal of Criminology:

The study concluded that students at schools with anti-bullying programs might actually be more likely to become a victim of bullying. It also found that students at schools with no bullying programs were less likely to become victims.

The results were stunning for Jeong [the author]. “Usually people expect an anti-bullying program to have some impact—some positive impact.”

The student videos used in many campaigns show examples of bullying and how to intervene. But Jeong says they may actually teach students different bullying techniques—and even educate about new ways to bully through social media and texting.

Jeong said students with ill intentions “…are able to learn, there are new techniques [and gain] new skills.” He says students might see examples in videos and then want to try it.

According to Jeong, some programs even teach students how to bully without leaving evidence behind. “This study raises an alarm,” he said. “There is a possibility of negative impact from anti-bullying programs.”

So under the pretense of helping, the government essentially created a “How To Bully and Get Away With It” program that has made the lives of tens of thousands of schoolchildren more miserable. 

Postal Service to Destroy Michelle O. 'Just Move' Stamp Series Over Safety Concerns...


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The world divided into seven regions, each with a population of one billion people, from Amazing_Maps.

I’ve featured both of these cartoons before on CD, but because they’re so good and because there’s still so much economic amnesia/illiteracy about the minimum wage law government practice of forcing unskilled and low-skilled workers to remain unemployed (copying Don Boudreaux), I’m posting them again.

Both are from my favorite editorial cartoonist Henry Payne (reprinted with permission).

…. is from a great comment about the minimum wage law government’s practice of forcing low-skilled workers to remain unemployed (copying Don Boudreaux) by CD reader Thomas Boyle responding to this post:

The biggest thing an increase in the minimum wage would do, is to show just how arrogant and insensitive are those who would deny a person the right to make an exchange that improves his or her life, just because the person imposing the rule can’t imagine ever wanting to make that exchange.

The law has no place in telling us who we may love, who we may befriend, or what peaceful activities we may pursue with consenting others. Telling low-income people that because they cannot earn enough, they may not earn at all, is cruel.

We saw Nova Scotia deliver the worst in cyberbullying laws (Canadian edition) earlier this year. Like most bad cyberbullying legislation, this one was prompted by the suicide of a teen. It's too tempting for legislators to rush into action with no real idea on how to solve the problem, much less mitigate it, and the attendant public uproar contributes nothing in terms of clear thinking or common sense.

As a result, laws like Nova Scotia's get passed -- laws that rely on purely subjective measures. If someone feels offended, they can press charges, utilizing a non-adversarial process that allows the accuser to present his or her case directly to a judge, who then decides whether or not it's actually cyberbullying. This opens the accused up to civil proceedings, criminal charges and a chance of being banned not just from social media but from the internet entirely, along with being banned from using electronic devices -- like a phone.

Maryland's anti-cyberbullying law ("Grace's Law") is also the byproduct of the charged reaction to a teen's (Grace McComas) post-bullying suicide. Grace's Law attempts to outlaw being a jerk while still pretending it doesn't tread all over the public's First Amendment rights. It grants exceptions for "expressing political views" and "conveying information" but that's it. And if it's a teen on the receiving end of "electronic annoyance" (whether or not the "annoyer" knows the target is a teen), expect the hammer to fall swiftly and crushingly.

Grace's Law is now in effect and the state of Maryland has gone even farther, partnering with Facebook to help it censor the output of Maryland citizens, as Walter Olson details at Cato.

On Tuesday, the new law took effect, and this morning Maryland attorney general Douglas Gansler unveiled a joint initiative with Facebook and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) in which Facebook will create a new program for school officials, the Educator Escalation Channel — initially limited to use in the state of Maryland, presumably pending similar enactments elsewhere — allowing the officials to object to Facebook users’ content. Per local radio station WTOP, Maryland school officials will be offered the chance to flag “questionable or prohibited” language. That is to say, they will flag speech that isn’t prohibited by the new law but which they deem “questionable.”

The targets of the new program, according to Gansler as quoted by WTOP, include persons who are “not committing a crime… We’re not going to go after you, but we are going to take down the language off of Facebook, because there’s no redeeming societal value and it’s clearly hurting somebody.” That is to say, Gansler believes he has negotiated power for school officials to go after speech that is not unlawful even under the decidedly speech-unfriendly definitions of the new Maryland law, but which they consider hurtful and lacking in “redeeming societal value.”

Once again, the subjective standard is being applied. What's offensive to Maryland officials is deemed to be offensive to everyone. Maryland will now start censoring users' posts and comments, all with Facebook's approval. Here's Scott Greenfield with Facebook's public statement on its partnership in free speech neutering.

“Facebook continues to look for ways to help parents, teens and educators better understand the safety features built into our service,” Facebook’s Brooke Oberwetter said in a statement, thanking Gansler “for his national leadership on the issue of online safety and for working with us to create this pilot program in Maryland.”

Oberwetter's statement appears to have been pre-written by an official at the Ministry of Love. It contains the sort of Big Brother-embracing faux cheeriness Oberwtter, who once sued the DC Park Police after being arrested for dancing at the Jefferson Memorial (and lost but still returned to dance again), wouldn't make on her own. Nope, this is a corporate canned speech, one that gives a glassy-eyed nod as it awaits orders from its new "partner." As Greenfield points out, this is a dangerous precedent Facebook is setting.

While Facebook may be a private enterprise, fully entitled to decide what content is acceptable on its platform and similarly entitled to decide that its users will no longer be allowed to write “Suzy is a poo poo head” on the wall, it’s not that simple when the censor is a state actor and the content at issue is deemed offensive not because it violates any law, but because someone is empowered to stifle speech that doesn’t comport with their vision of redeeming societal value, whatever that means. By doing the bidding of teachers, Facebook becomes the agent of the state.

Even the new statement issued by Facebook, where it claims it won't be changing its content policy "one iota" rings a little hollow. The response, given to the WSJ's Law Blog, claims Facebook will show no greater preference to reports via Maryland's direct line than those arriving via the "report" buttons deployed by everyday, non-Escalating non-Educators.

But the foot's in the door.

But this is Maryland? Who cares? And Facebook is so MySpace, right? Except it’s a pilot program, and it comes with the support of the National Association of Attorneys Generals, who would like nothing better than to make sure that no speech that doesn’t meet its approval is ever seen. This is how it starts, in one god-forsaken state on one declining platform.

Maryland is the only state in the nation currently working with (or adjacent to) Facebook to make preemptive strikes against posts "without societal value." It's very unlikely it will be the last. There are plenty of opportunistic politicians, administrators and attorneys general more than happy to point out how SERIOUS they are about tackling the cyberbullying menace.

Maryland's anti-bullying law sets its own dangerous precedents, as does Facebook's willingness to (at least publicly) ingratiate itself to censorious state bodies. It won't just be one state or one social network before it's all said and done. With the NSA peeking in the back door and Maryland's NAAG squad peering through the windows, the world's largest social network has placed one foot on a slope that descends rapidly to Facebook.gov.

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As readers will know, the US Forest Service has issued and unprecedented and unnecessary order to close over a thousand privately-funded campgrounds that don't take one dime of Federal money (example here).  All the 100+ parks we operate in the US Forest Service have been ordered closed.

But there appears to be more to this story.  There are several groups that operate parks on National Forest lands under agreements nearly identical to ours who appear to have been exempted from the closure order.

• Large corporations that run ski resorts and certain other large resort properties on National Forest lands have been exempted.  It should be noted that ski resorts operators, unlike campground operators, have full-time lobbyists stationed in Washington and can afford in-house staff lawyers to fight these kinds of orders.  My guess is that knowing they would immediately get sued if they ordered larger private firms to close, the USFS focused only on smaller and more helpless private firms.
• Many state parks, including at least 3 in Arizona and many in California, are actually on US Forest Service land and operate through special use permits almost identical to those we have with the USFS, yet none of these parks have been asked to close  (Slide Rock and Fool Hollow State Park in Arizona and Burney Falls SP in California are just a few examples of state parks that operate on US Forest Service land).

In other words, the US Forest Service seems to be issuing closure orders inconsistently, targeting only private operators who are too small to fight back.  The USFS has not been especially clear how they are justifying this order (perhaps since it can't be justified) but they have hinted that it is either because a) they can no longer "administer" these contracts, whatever that means since they have no day-to-day administration responsibilities or b) they are removing everyone from Federal lands.  Note, though, that both explanation "a" or "b" would apply equally to ski resorts and state parks operating on Federal land leases which are not being closed.

I will also add that the USFS is continuing to allow individuals to hike and camp in non-developed areas of the forests.  I have no problem with this -- there is no reason for the USFS to halt public access to public land just because their employees are getting a paid vacation.  But this just highlights how crazy and inconsistent their policies are.  People can camp in the National Forest everywhere except in developed campgrounds where private companies who take no Federal money normally have employees on site to clean up trash and provide security and prevent fires.  Many campers take good care of the land but some do not, and driving these campers out of privately-operated developed sites into dispersed areas where their impact cannot be mitigated is just another way these actions increase rather than decrease costs.

 

The protectionist taxi cartel in Paris doesn’t like competition from a new breed of upstart minicabs, which are challenging the cartel with better, faster and more friendly service. And the cartel wants to use the coercive power of the government to thwart competition, here’s the story:

Rally for Illegal Aliens on 'Closed' National Mall...


(Third column, 10th story, link)

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Related stories:

Lawmakers ride in on golf carts...
Unpaid Capitol Police forced to pick up protesters' trash...

I apologize for the lengthy delay between posts.  I was (as I’m sure some of you suspected) busy all last week packing up our survival gear.  We sneaked out of town a couple of days ago, leaving at 2:30 AM and staying off the main roads to avoid bands of marauding anarachists.  We’re now living in a hidden cabin at a remote location. (Don’t ask where.  I’m not telling.)  We’ll stay here until the government shutdown is over and we feel it’s safe to rejoin society.

I’ve been monitoring newscasts on my short-wave radio and reading the news online, so I’m not optimistic that we’ll be able to return home anytime soon.  According to the last report I saw, the shutdown is so severe, only 83 percent of the federal government is still up and running.  I’m not going to expose my young daughters to that kind of chaos.  They could be psychologically scarred for life.

None of this was necessary, of course.  The current crisis is the result of obstructionism by conservative legislators who refuse to accept the will of the majority on ObamaCare.  The obstructionists claim they’re responding to thousands of constituents who are upset over some of ObamaCare’s minor inconveniences, such as having their existing insurance policies canceled by the federal government and being ordered to buy policies costing three to four times as much.

I don’t doubt that a handful of constituents objected to some of the law’s specific language, but as Rep. Nancy Pelosi correctly pointed out, they’re nothing more than anti-government extremists.  Good citizens understand that they exist to fulfill the needs of the government.  Good citizens understand that the Constitution guarantees the right of the majority to take whatever it deems necessary from the minority.  Good citizens understand that our long tradition of prohibiting people from making their own economic decisions is the reason the United States became a great country in the first place.  Unfortunately, some people aren’t good citizens, which is why we’re now expected to somehow survive as a society with only 83 percent of the federal government in operation.

Not knowing exactly what the impact of a government shutdown would be, I turned to CNN for an unbiased explanation.  I quickly learned that gun permits won’t be processed, thus depriving citizens of the opportunity to obtain federal permission to exercise a right guaranteed by the Constitution.  New passports might not be issued, which (as CNN pointed out) could force people planning their first-ever trip to Paris to cancel.  Businesses won’t be able to obtain government loans, thus depriving the government of the ability to invest in promising companies like Solyndra.  Garbage may not be collected in Washington, D.C. – a city known for producing extraordinary amounts of garbage.  But according to CNN, perhaps the biggest impact will be a hit on our collective psyche as Americans.

A hit our collective psyche?  That’s the worst CNN could imagine?  Apparently CNN didn’t anticipate the anarchy that would follow a shutdown of 17% of the federal government.

I knew it was time to pack the van and head for the hills when I turned on the news and was shocked by the lawless antics of a gang of World War Two veterans.  To make sure the public fully grasped that the shutdown had left the government bereft of funds and unable to perform crucial tasks, the government paid government workers to place government barriers in front of the open-air government monument to WWII veterans.  As the government explained, government workers had to erect the government barriers to protect the public.  I applauded the government’s decision and wished our local government were as prudent.  There’s an open-air Civil War monument in downtown Franklin, but we never visit it because there are no government supervisors on duty.

Like most Americans, I expected the World War Two veterans to see the government barriers erected by the government workers to warn the public that there’s no functioning government in place and respond by mumbling to themselves, “I could deal with the Nazi mortars and tanks and grenades and machine guns during D-Day and Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge, but a wooden barrier? Every man has a limit.”  But then the veterans pushed the barriers aside, walked over to the open-air monument and began looking at it — without government supervision.  Anarchy had come to the United States of America.

By now, you may be asking yourself, “What does all this have to do with health and nutrition?”

Plenty.  According to chatter coming in over my shortwave radio, there’s much more at stake here than just passports and garbage collection in Washington D.C.  If the shutdown continues, it will only be a matter of time before the USDA is no longer on active duty.  Once the USDA is incapable of handing out subsidies, the price of corn syrup will skyrocket — depriving all but the wealthiest Americans of a primary source of calories.  Then, like dominoes falling, the same thing will happen with wheat and soybeans.  Farmers might even respond to the lack of subsidies by refusing to continue producing vast surpluses.  Vegans on the West Coast are reportedly hoarding soy-based meat substitutes in anticipation of a shortage.

Even if grains remain cheap and readily available for awhile, there’s a real threat that Americans will forget how many of them they’re supposed to eat.  Stores and schools have enjoyed a steady supply of USDA MyPlate replicas for a couple of years now, but the plates don’t last forever.  Without proper funding, the USDA won’t be able to produce replacements.  Eventually, parents and kids will find themselves sitting down for a meal and staring at old-fashioned (read: no guidelines) plates, having no idea what to put on them.  Officials in at least one city in the Northeast are preparing to distribute leftover posters of The Food Pyramid as a temporary emergency measure.

The science revolving around health and nutrition could also face an irreversible decline. As the shutdown drags on, fewer and fewer researchers will have access to the government grants that made it possible for them to conclude that Monsanto’s grain products are health food.  Many will likely find real jobs during the shutdown, never to return.  The generation of researchers still in training can hardly be expected to take their place after seeing how easily a career in government-sponsored nutrition research can be wiped out.

The effects on research are, in fact, already being felt.  The next edition of the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines was due to be released in 2015 – just two years away.   To meet that deadline, the Dietary Guidelines Committee ought to be hard at work already.  But with only 83 percent of the federal government in operation and no end to the shutdown in sight, it’s possible the nation will be deprived of another set of guidelines telling them to eat less fat and more grains.

As the World War Two veterans demonstrated, without a fully-funded federal government, there’s also the possibility of outright disobedience, regardless of what guidelines are available.  Realizing that the USDA school-lunch inspectors won’t be visiting anytime soon, rebellious school officials in some Southern states have reportedly begun allowing children to drink whole milk – the type that’s full of arterycloggingsaturatedfat -- instead of USDA-approved skim milk flavored with chocolate and high-fructose corn syrup.  There are even reports of kids eating entire meals at lunch that don’t include any grain products.

Those are just a few of the grim scenarios we’re facing, and that’s why Chareva, the girls and I will remain hunkered down in our undisclosed location until the federal government is fully operational again.  We miss our home, but the risks of living in a partially-regulated society are too great.

I hope you are all surviving this crisis.

**Written by Doug Powers

The prescient Mark Steyn recently wrote: “One would not be altogether surprised to find the feds stringing yellow police tape along the Rio Grande, the 49th parallel, and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, if only to keep Americans in rather than anybody else out.”

With that in mind, there’s this the Miami Herald via Breitbart.com:

Charter guides received a message from the National Park Service this week informing them that they are not permitted to take clients fishing in Florida Bay until the feds get back to work. That means that more than 1,100 square miles of prime fishing is off limits between the southern tip of the mainland to the Keys until further notice.

The closing affects not only fishing guides, but anyone with a license to conduct business in the park, including tour operators and paddling guides — anyone with a Commercial Use Authorization permit, said Dan Kimball, superintendent of Everglades and Dry Tortugas national parks.

Biscayne National Park is also off limits. Enforcement rangers will be on duty, Kimball said.

What a joke. More workers are required to enforce the shutdown in order to make the public feel the burn than are required when the government is running normally, and private businesses pay the price. But that’s the intent.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe