Jts5665

This is a depressing but all too familiar story of crony protections for incumbent operators

Only one company is competing for Tempe’s lucrative contract for ambulance services to support the Fire Department.

The Tempe City Council chose to allow only Professional Medical Transport to compete for the contract because city officials believe that the state’s approval last year of Rural/Metro Corp.’s purchase of that company effectively ended competitiveness in the market.

Indeed, the Ambulance market used to be competitive. State law makes it nearly impossible to start an ambulance company, or for an existing company to get access to the Arizona market. However, this used to be ok, because there once were a handful of companies competing in the market. That meant that having a statute that artificially blocked new entrants wasn't a huge problem.

Then a strange thing happened...Rural Metro bought all the other companies. Then they hired a team of the best lobbyists in the state in order to prevent the law from being changed. Frankly, it's a brilliant move.

This session, I worked with a client that wants to break into the inter-facility transfer market. Inter-facility transfers are scheduled transports of stable patients who aren't able to ride in cabs, private cars or stretcher vans. They are by definition, non-emergency transfers, but they still require an ambulance. And that ambulance has to be licensed as an "ambulance". The problem is that it is statutorily impossible to break into the market...which like I said, was fine until Rural Metro bought the other companies.

Our bill to open up the market to competition didn't even get a hearing.

The one disagreement I have is that it was somehow "OK" to prevent competition when there were three competitors but not when there is one.  This reminds me of why Republicans can't be trusted to make a case for free market capitalism.  New competitors can bring just as much to the table in already crowded markets as they can to monopolies.  Were we "OK" when there were just 3 major networks, or are we better off with competition from 600 cable channels?  Were we "OK" with just the big 3 auto makers or are we better off with Toyotas and Kias as choices?

One of the great under-reported stories of the health care field has been the certificate of need process for hospitals which, in most communities, has prevented construction of competing hospitals.  So then, like in this example, all the hospitals in a local community buy each other, and an instant monopoly is created.  Capitalism is blamed, but in fact the resulting high prices are a result of government action.

I can't help but notice the difference between the way fatalities are treated depending upon whether the children killed are being educated at home or at public school.  If seven children were killed by a demented homeschool mother, this would spark a national media outcry and demands for more restrictions on homeschooling.

And yet, in the past four months, we have seen multiple incidences of multiple fatalities due to acts of Man and Nature, but the thought that perhaps it is not wise to congregate large numbers of vulnerable children together never seems to enter the national discourse.

According to Wikipedia, there have been 278 tornado-related deaths at school since 1885.  That is nearly 2.2 deaths per year, which is a trivial percentage of the 48 million or so children attending the public schools.  And yet, they are entirely avoidable deaths; under the oft-cited "if just one life can be saved" metric, it cannot be denied that children who are not forced to congregate en masse at school cannot be killed by tornadoes there.

Two tornado-inflicted deaths per year isn't much, but add to them the 26 schoolbus deaths per year, the 600 school-automotive deaths per year, and the 34 violence-related deaths, and it soon becomes readily apparent that school cannot reasonably be considered a safe place for children.

Forget the superior education received by homeschooled children.  Doesn't saving the lives of more than 662 children every year make banning school a moral imperative?

Especially in light of the fact that 119 children under the age of twelve, (and 565 under the age of 18), were killed by guns.  School is literally more lethally dangerous than guns; something you might want to remind your average pro-public school, pro-gun control left-liberal.

Guns secure freedom at a lower cost in children's lives than the public schools manage to deliver inferior educations. We don't need gun control, we need school control.

For millennia, the best teachers have used stories, analogies, and parables to break down complicated concepts into understandable bits that everyone can grasp. Aesop’s fables, the greatest religious texts throughout history, and Plato’s allegory of the cave are some of the most famous, showing us how to live morally, contemplate our existence, and make our way through the dilemmas that comprise everyday life. Today, I’m going to discuss five simple analogies that can help you understand five complex health topics a bit better, or perhaps be able to introduce them to the people (often skeptical or less-than-scientifically-inclined friends and relatives) around you who could use the lesson.

Let’s get right to it:

Insulin as Doorman at a Fat Cell Nightclub

From Kurt Harris’ “Insulin is a doorman at the fat cell nightclub, not a lock on the door“:

The hormones that are influenced by what you eat don’t work by locking the door or closing the nightclub and kicking everyone out. It’s not all or nothing. It’s not a switch. They work by changing the relative ease of entering or leaving the building. So think of fat storage in fat cells the same way. The same way patrons can leave and enter a nightclub simultaneously in opposite directions, fat is constantly being stored and released at the same time – the question is not “on or off” but what is the ratio of the two processes. Insulin is like a bouncer at the door – maybe he lets the prettier young women in, and maybe he tosses some obnoxious drunks. Maybe he is neutral when not many patrons are in the bar, maybe he turns you away if the joint is at capacity. But the door is not ever locked, and people come and go even as the number of drinkers grows and shrinks throughout the evening. And as you can see, other factors besides the doorman or bouncer affect the rate of patrons coming or going (time of day, the band is no good tonight, etc.) just as insulin’s action to promote fat storage is always in the context of other factors.

Although Kurt Harris no longer blogs much (if at all), he’s left a mark on the paleosphere. One post that always stuck with me was “Insulin is a doorman at the fat cell nightclub, not a lock on the door.” In it, he described the nuanced role of insulin in fat loss and deposition, using the analogy of insulin as discerning doorman to a fat cell nightclub. Like a doorman, insulin influences the flow of fat into and from a cell. Like a night club, the fat cell exists in a state of constant flux, with fat – or patrons – leaving and arriving all the time, at the same time. It’s not an on-off switch, where fat is either coming or going – it’s both at once with varying ratios. The doorman is a powerful influence on who goes in and out of the club, but he’s not responsible for all the reasons why patrons might be arriving or leaving. Maybe it’s morning and there’s not much of a demand for drinking. Point is, it’s not all up to the doorman. Insulin’s the same way. It’s a big determinant but not the only factor in fat deposition and loss.

The Crowded Restaurant

From Gary Taubes’ “The Inanity of Overeating”:

Say instead of talking about why fat tissue accumulates too much energy, we want to know why a particular restaurant gets so crowded. Now the energy we’re talking about is contained in entire people rather than just the fat in their fat tissue. Ten people contain so much energy; eleven people contain more, etc.. So what we want to know is why this restaurant is crowded and so over-stuffed with energy (i.e., people) and maybe why some other restaurant down the block has remained relatively empty — lean. If you asked me this question — why did this restaurant get crowded? — and I said, well, the restaurant got crowded (it got overstuffed with energy) because more people entered the restaurant than left it, you’d probably think I was being a wise guy or an idiot. (If I worked for the World Health Organization, I’d tell you that “the fundamental cause of the crowded restaurant is an energy imbalance between people entering on one hand, and people exiting on the other hand.”) Of course, more people entered than left, you’d say. That’s obvious. But why?

Much of the opposition to a Primal/paleo way of eating lies in the misguided assumption that we think calories are immaterial. That you can cram as much food into your mouth, as long as it’s Primal, without gaining weight. I said as much in a recent post, but I still see this misconception pop up, time and time again. At the same time, I see way too many people – even supposed health “experts” – claim that “it’s all about calories,” that “you need to burn more calories than you take in,” that people are fat because “they eat too many calories.” All those statements are technically true. Weight gain and loss does come down to caloric balance. If you want to lose weight, you have to expend more calories than you take in. And eating more calories than you expend can increase body weight. But so what? Who doesn’t agree with those statements? They aren’t telling us anything new. They’re just restating the problem.

To use Taubes’ analogy, a more helpful question is ”Why are a lot of people entering that restaurant as opposed to this restaurant?”, or “Why are a lot of people staying in that crowded restaurant?” And you can’t just say “well, they just are, so there,” because that’s saying the same thing a different way. It’s about as helpful as saying a restaurant is crowded because there are lots of customers, or a kid got taller because he grew several inches, or you got a divorce because you signed the papers. Sure, if you want to be a smug jerk about it, you could say those things and “be right,” but what’s the point? It explains nothing.

I’ve found that using this analogy helps people understand why “eat less” is shoddy, incomplete advice. It’s not “wrong.” It’s just mostly useless. I encourage you to read the full article linked to above if you haven’t already.

LDL: Cars and Passengers

From “How to Interpret Cholesterol Results“:

Measuring the LDL/HDL-C and then making potentially life-changing health decisions based on the number is like counting the number of people riding in vehicles on a freeway to determine the severity of traffic. It’s data, and it might give you a rough approximation of the situation, but it’s not as useful as actually counting the number of vehicles. A reading of 100 could mean you’re dealing with a hundred compact cars, each carrying a single driver, or it could mean you’ve got four buses carrying 25 passengers each. Or it could be a couple buses and the rest cars. You simply don’t know how bad (or good) traffic is until you get a direct measurement of LDL and HDL particle number.

Cholesterol test results are confusing and often troubling. You’ve got a white coated doctor rattling off lifestyle and pharmaceutical prescriptions and scary triple digit numbers foretelling your impending vascular doom, all based on some numbers and acronyms that you don’t actually understand. LDL = bad, HDL = good, according to the lab, but what do they really mean? But isn’t there more to it? I mean, those aren’t just numbers and letters. They represent physiological processes occurring inside your body at this very moment. We vaguely think of cholesterol as a sort-of-fat that just kinda chills out in our blood and every so often gets stuck on or in the arterial walls, or something. You don’t really know. I doubt the doctor really does. What is LDL-C actually measuring? Who knows, most probably think.

The cars and passengers analogy lets those numbers and acronyms mean something. You don’t have to get the biochemistry of it. All you have to do is think of the basic traffic law that more vehicles (LDL particles) means more traffic jams and accidents (hardening of the arteries), all else being equal, and you get the gist of LDL-C versus LDL-P. A reading of 100 could mean you’re dealing with a hundred compact cars, each carrying a single driver, or it could mean you’ve got four buses carrying 25 passengers each. Or it could be a couple buses and the rest cars. You simply don’t know how bad (or good) traffic is until you get a direct measurement of LDL and HDL particle number.

Digging a Hole to Install a Ladder to Fix the Basement Windows

From the post of the same name:

Picture a house with absolutely filthy exterior basement windows, the kind that just barely peek out above ground level. The owner can’t see through the things, and they need a thorough washing. He could grab the bucket and a rag and squat or kneel down to commence cleaning. He could make it easy on himself, but for some bizarre reason, he doesn’t.

Instead, he spends the entire day slaving away with a shovel and a pick axe, hacking at the earth to loosen it and shoveling the loose dirt out. A deep hole appears, about eight feet in depth and wide enough to accommodate him and a ladder. In goes the ladder, and he follows with the wash bucket and rag. Dirty, grimy, sweaty, and disheveled, he ascends the ladder to finally reach the basement windows. He manages to clean them, but his alternate self in a parallel universe – that guy who decided to just kneel down to wash the windows – has clean windows, a killer tan from spending hours at the beach doing pushups and sprints, a couple racks of ribs on the barbecue, and a nice glass of Cab paired with a wedge of French brie. He enjoyed his day, while the ladder enthusiast had to work for hours just to arrive at the same point.

This encapsulates the ultimate goal of Primal living: to do things efficiently, to take shortcuts that don’t shortchange your results. This will give you more free time to do the stuff you truly enjoy, and make you healthier, happier, and more productive. It’s a nice way of saying don’t think you have to engage in hours of miserable cardio every week to get fitter (unless you enjoy it) when you can lift some weights, sprint a bit, and walk a lot and end up just as fit with more free time and less negative health effects. Or, don’t assume you have to agonize over counting calories, weighing yourself every day, and hiring a dietitian to get healthy when focusing on food quality, how you feel and look in a mirror, and trying the basic Primal laws will work better and save you time and effort.

Everyone’s trying to get to the same place, give or take a few details. We all want to be healthy and happy. Why not do it the more efficient way?

What Would You Feed a Lion?

From the PB Fundamentals:

What do you feed a lion?

Meat.

Meat is the obviously correct answer. You would feed the lion raw meat. I think even the most ardent vegan would admit that lions are supposed to eat meat.

Lions hunt and eat animals, and they and their feline ancestors have been doing so for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions, even. That’s the key.

The hunting, killing, and raw meat-eating informed the evolution of the lion over many millions of years. The lion’s genetic makeup was shaped by meat-eating.

Humans are animals, too. We may be relative newcomers to this planet, but we’ve been around for a good 200,000 years, and our ancestors have been around for millions of years. And for a good 190,000 years of that, we were hunter-gatherers, living off the land, big game hunters who feasted on plant and animal alike. If you accept that the biology of animals, like lions, functions best on ancestral, evolutionary diets, wouldn’t the same likely be true for humans?

This is a quick, easy way to get people to understand what this Primal thing is all about, on a gut level. People tend to think of animals as, well, animals. Natural beings subject to the objective laws of nature, passive creatures whisked along a path determined by outside forces. Meanwhile, humans are different. We’re animals, sure, but people don’t think of themselves as animals. We’re people. We’re above nature. We impose ourselves on nature. We create and shape our reality.

The lion analogy bridges that gap. People intellectually know that humans are animals, they just never think in those terms. If you get them to start thinking in those terms, you almost see thought bubbles form, lightbulbs go off. “Huh, that’s true. We technically are animals. If lions do best eating the types of foods they evolved eating, why not humans? Hey, what did humans evolve eating, anyway? And what about other stuff – I mean, I bet lions don’t like being cooped up in a tiny cage at the zoo. They’re probably happier out on the African plains…” You can pretty much set them up and let them go and watch the evolution of their notion of a healthy human environment unfold right before you. It’s pretty cool to watch.

That’s it for today. Do you find these analogies helpful? Do you have any to add to the list? If so, hit me up in the comment board!

Grab a Copy of Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo and Claim Your FREE Gifts While the Limited-Time Offer Lasts!

IRS internal investigation ended 6 months before '12 election, was hidden from Congress...


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**Written by Doug Powers

CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson has been doing a lot of digging. It would appear that somebody might be curious about her sources — either that or they were trying to steal her Angry Birds password:

“I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months but I’m not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today as I’ve been patient and methodical about this matter,” Attkisson told POLITICO on Tuesday. “I need to check with my attorney and CBS to get their recommendations on info we make public.”
[...]
Attkisson told WPHT that irregular activity on her computer was first identified in Feb. 2011, when she was reporting on the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal and on the Obama administration’s green energy spending, which she said “the administration was very sensitive about.” Attkisson has also been a persistent investigator of the events surrounding last year’s attack in Benghazi, and its aftermath.

Though there’s still no final determination on who compromised Attkisson’s computers or in what way, it comes hot on the heels of news that the Justice Department spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen, as well as two of Rosen’s colleagues.

As much as the DOJ has been in the news for seizing electronic records of reporters, I won’t assume they had any direct hand in this. The brother of Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor is the president of CBS News. If the Obama administration wanted something from Attkisson, maybe they could have just asked the network to get it for them.

Just to be safe though, investigative journalists might want to switch to using only pencils, notepads and Selectric typewriters until the dust settles.

Audio of Attkisson discussing this on the Chris Stigall show:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

My new column is up at Forbes.com.  A sample:

The most frequent argument I hear is that "its wrong to make a profit on public lands."  Most recently, I heard this from a manager of a large campground and lakefront day use area who works for a federal agency.  I was not normally in my usual diplomatic mood, and I snapped "so you work for free?"

If my company operated that park for the federal agency, a park that nets about $300,000 a year in visitor revenue, my company would probably make $15,000 or $20,000 a year in profit doing so, if all goes well, which it seldom does (this is a very low margin business).  I have no idea what that park manager makes in salary and benefits, but I would be surprised if it were less than $55,000 plus benefits, and probably more.  Why is his $55,000  "clean" but my $15,000 for the same task "dirty"?  Particularly when the increase in his and his staff's salaries and their increases in benefits has left the park financially tottering and on the brink of closure?

Go read it all.

Update:  I have added some comments on privatization design on the Privatization blog

Well, I have zero desire to score political points off the tragedy in Oklahoma, but unfortunately others are more than eager to do so.  As a result, it is necessary to put a few facts on the table to refute the absurd claim that this tornado is somehow attributable to CO2.

1. I really should not have to say this, but there is no mechanism by which CO2 has ever been accused of causing tornadoes except via the intervening step of warming.  Without warming, CO2 can't be the cause (even with warming, the evidence is weak, since tornadoes are cause more by temperature differentials, than by temperature per se).  So it is worth noting that there have been no unusually warm temperatures in the area of late, and in fact the US has had one of its coolest springs in several decades.
2. I should also not have to say this, but major tornadoes occurred in Oklahoma at much lower CO2 levels.

   

3. In fact, if anything the trend in major tornadoes in the US over the last several decades is down
4. And, this is actually a really, really low tornado year so far.  So its hard to figure an argument that says that global warming reduced tornadoes in general but caused this one in particular

 

Much more at this link

Update:  In 1975, tornado outbreaks blamed in Newsweek on global cooling

Roger Pilon

Peter Beinart has a piece at the Daily Beast today – “Don’t Throw the IRS Under the Bus” – that has to be read to be believed. Drawing from a similar page-one story in yesterday’s New York Times, it’s one long apology for the IRS, an effort to explain away the scandal now before the nation as the product of a single, hopelessly overburdened “backwater” IRS unit.

Along the way, Beinart flags the usual suspects, especially the Supreme Court for its Citizens United decision. But his main aim is to encourage the president and his allies to hold firm:

if Obama and his fellow Democrats don’t rebut that narrative and defend the IRS, they’ll be surrendering crucial ground in the battle that has roiled American politics since the financial crisis: the battle over whether Washington regulates too much or too little.

Granting that the situation at the moment is a mess, Beinart avers that “it was a mess born less of overregulation than underregulation.” Indeed,

A right-wing Supreme Court has made it virtually impossible to regulate money in elections. And now Republicans are casting the Tea Party—a movement founded in part by robber barons like the Koch Brothers—as the victim of a mythic, all-powerful IRS in order to further neuter an actually existing IRS that is already too weak to make the rich pay their taxes or respect the rules of democratic fair play. With any luck, the GOP will render it unable to help competently implement Obamacare as well.

One only hopes. But it’s Beinart’s conclusion that brings it all home:

It might seem shrewd for Obama to sit out the IRS scandal while he focuses on bigger fights. But this scandal is about government’s capacity to make private wealth serve the public interest, and for a progressive president, there’s no bigger fight than that.

He’s got that right: for a progressive president, there is indeed no bigger fight than that. But focus on what that says. For the progressive, government’s purpose is “to make private wealth serve the public interest.” Make no mistake, “private wealth” means “private people,” people who must be made to serve not their own but “the public interest” – and not by acts that enrich the lives of others through voluntary association, but through forced association, as with Obamacare, designed by those very progressives.

That is the Obama vision. The president himself made it clear a fortnight ago in his Ohio State commencement address, telling the graduates that “this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition.” People must be “harnessed” – his word – and what better agency to do it than the IRS.

Roger Pilon

In red-state America, the free market is king, right? Progressivism, socialism, the nanny state – those are fightin’ words. And what state could be redder than Texas? Well perhaps it’s still true that liquor’s for drinking and water’s for fighting in Texas, but water isn’t the only thing some Texans think worth fighting for. Legally-protected – read “unfree” – markets are another.

It seems that the folks who make these new-fangled electric cars – Tesla Motors, in particular – have a different sales and service model than traditional manufactures have had since the days of the Model T. As CNN Money explains, under the conventional model, manufacturers

sell cars to independently owned and operated dealers or distributors who, in turn, sell them to the public, usually after some negotiation over the final price.

By contrast, Tesla’s showrooms, of which there are already 37 around the country, are owned and operated by Tesla Motors. Most of the showrooms are in shopping malls with only enough cars kept in inventory for display and for test drives. Also, there’s no haggling. Every Tesla car sells at full sticker price. Service on the cars is performed at separate garages, also owned by Tesla.

Now I hold no brief for these cars or that sales and service model. In fact, I rather like my gas-guzzler, to say nothing of haggling. But I also like the free market, and that’s precisely what Bill Wolters, president of the Texas Automobile Dealers Association, seems not to like. If Tesla chief executive Elon Musk “wants to have a showroom in a mall, that’s fine,” Wolters said, “but he can’t own it.” Fearing that the Tesla sales and service model might encourage other automakers to try it, Wolters is fighting to keep in place the Texas law that prohibits automaker-owned dealerships. Under that law, Tesla can’t sell cars in Texas.

Tesla has showrooms there, but employees can only show off and explain the car. They can’t give test drives or take orders. They can’t mention the price at all, even if customers ask. The current law doesn’t stop anyone in Texas from ordering a Tesla Model S online if they want to. Tesla just can’t deliver it to the customer. The buyer has to arrange for delivery through a third-party shipping company.

And if you think Texas is bad, in North Carolina – another traditionally red state, despite the close presidential race in 2012 – dealers are pressing for a law that would make it illegal even to sell cars online in the state, something that’s currently legal in all 50 states.

We’ve seen this movie before, of course, with occupational licensure, consumer products, and so much more. And invariably it comes down to the same thing: the folks in place don’t like competition from the new kids on the block, so they run to the legislature for protection. Come on Texas (and North Carolina), practice what you preach. You’re making the blue states look good, and no self-respecting Texan wants that.

Senior W.H. staff knew of IRS investigation, 'did not tell' Obama...


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Anonymous IRS official -- everything comes from top...


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IN CHARGE DURING 'TEA PARTY' TARGETING, NOW RUNS IRS OBAMACARE OFFICE...


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There won't be any direct order found telling the IRS to go hassle Conservative groups.  That's not the way it works.  Obama's style is to "other" groups he does not like, to impugn their motives, and to cast them as pariahs beyond the bounds of civil society.  Such and such group, he will say, opposes me not because they have reasonable differences of opinion but because they have nefarious motives.  Once a group is labelled and accepted (at least by your political followers) as such, you don't have to order people to harass them. They just do it, because they see it as the right thing to do to harass evil people.  When Joe Nocera writes this in support of Obama in no less a platform as the NY Times, orders are superfluous

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took...

He concludes by saying

For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.

There are probably some deeply confused people in the IRS right now -- after all they were denying tax exempt status to terrorists, to enemies of America.  They should be treated like heroes, and now they are getting all this criticism.  So unfair.

Postscript:  And they are racists.  Racist terrorists.

But Obama, in his most candid moments, acknowledged that race was still a problem. In May 2010, he told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent "Tea Party" movement that was then surging across the country.

This is totally the Obama way of fighting a political battle.  He is saying, "forget their stated reasons for opposing me, such as opposition to the health care law, to Wall Street bailouts, and to rising government debt.  They really oppose me because they are racists and I am black."  Obama's opposition are absolutely never, ever people of good will who simply disagree.

PS#2:  It's pretty hilarious the NY Times published Nocera's "Tea Partiers are Terrorists" editorial just 6 months after they editorialized against incivility in the context of the Giffords shooting, which by the way had as much to do with civility in public discourse as the Benghazi attacks had to do with a YouTube video.  In fact, it sure seems like this administration has a history of falsely blaming tragedies on their political opposition's speech.

Via ABC

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

What Obama most needed in the IRS ACA office was someone willing to ignore the clear language of the PPACA legislation and ram through IRS tax subsidies for insurance policies in the Federal (vs. state) exchanges -- subsidies that were purposefully and explicitly denied in the plain language of the law.

DOJ 'TAPPED HOUSE CLOAK ROOM'


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Employees at center of scandal: 'We were simply doing what our bosses ordered'...


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Here’s a letter to Salon:

In your interview of Jaron Lanier you quote a passage from his book Who Owns the Future? – a book in which Mr. Lanier laments the modern economy’s facility at making available at very low cost many goods and services whose production in the past required a great deal of human labor: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion.  They even invented the first digital camera.  But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram.  When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people.  Where did all those jobs disappear?  And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?”  (“The Internet destroyed the middle class,” May 12).

Mr. Lanier sounds profound, I suppose, to people unfamiliar with history.  So let’s re-write Mr. Lanier’s prose just a bit in order to put his fears in historical context:

“At the height of its power, agriculture employed 90 percent of the population and produced output worth vastly more than half of U.S. GDP.  It even invented countless plant hybrids and animal breeds.  But today nearly all farms of the past have gone bankrupt (or, seeing the economic writing on the wall, were transformed to other uses).  Agriculture today employs only about one percent of the workforce.  Where did all those jobs disappear?  And what happened to the wealth that all those good agricultural jobs created?”

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

(For the pointer to the Salon piece on Lanier, I thank Steven McDuffie.)

By Mr. Lanier’s logic – and, to be fair, he’s hardly the only person who sees the world as he does – we’d all be made much wealthier if, suddenly, each gallon of water for human consumption had to be manufactured using many workers.

Raymond Rodden was arrested and dragged to the police station for interrogation for a) taking pictures of the Sandra Day O'Connor Federal Court Building (not a crime) and b) walking down an alley (also not a crime).  The police followed him for an hour on foot (how creepy would that be), tore his car apart, have impounded and will not return his phone and computer, and contacted the man's boss to make sure Rodden would get fired from his job.  Eventually they released him, because he had done nothing illegal.  They kept repeating this to him in the interrogation:

“I told them I was not doing anything illegal by taking photos and they kept saying, ‘we’re not disputing that it’s illegal, we just find it odd,’” he said.

Sorry, but people cannot be arrested, detained, and have their property searched and seized for being odd.

This seems to be a typical police state reaction after a terrorist incident or public crime.  If we had just hassled that guy earlier for being odd, this may never have happened.  The problem is that for every one person who does odd things in the runup to a horrendous crime, another hundred thousand people do odd things because either they are odd or because we simply do not understand their motives.

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog,

Whenever discussion over North Korea arises in Western circles, it always seems to be accompanied by a strange mixture of sensationalism and indifference. The mainstream media consistently presents the communist nation as an immediate threat to U.S. national security, conjuring an endless number of hypothetical scenarios as to how they could join forces with Al-Qaeda and attack with a terroristic strategy. At the same time, the chest puffing of the late Kim Jong-iL and the standard fare of hyper-militant rhetoric on the part of the North Korean government in general seem to have lulled the American public into a trance of non-concern.

In the midst of the latest tensions with the North Koreans, I have found that most people are barely tracking developments and that, when confronted by the idea of war, they shrug it off as if it is a laughable concept. “Surely” they claim, “The North is just posturing as they always have.”

The high-focus propaganda attacking North Korea on our side and the puffer fish methodology on their side have created a social and political atmosphere surrounding our relations with the Asian nation that I believe places both sides of the Pacific in great danger. North Korea has the potential to become a trigger point for multiple economic catastrophes, and there are people in this world who would be happy to use such crises to serve their own interests.

The mainstream view being espoused by globalist-minded politicians and corporate oligarchs with an agenda is that North Korea is a nuclear armed monstrosity ready to use any subversive means necessary to strike the United States. The idea that the North is working closely with Al-Qaeda has been suggested in everything from White House briefings to cable news to movies and television. The concept of pan-global terrorist collusion and the cartoon-land “axis of evil” has been prominent in our culture since the Administration of George W. Bush. It has even been making a resurgence lately in the MSM, which presented countries like Iran, Syria And North Korea as the primary culprits interfering with the success of the U.N. Small Arms Treaty.

Of course, what remains less talked about in the mainstream is the fact that these nations refuse to adhere to the treaty because carefully placed loopholes still allow major powers like the United States to feed arms into engineered insurgencies. Why would Syria or any other targeted nation sign a treaty that restricts its own sovereign ability to trade while giving teeth to internal enemies trained and funded by foreign intelligence agencies?

The establishment brushes aside such facts and consistently admonishes these countries as the last holdouts standing in the way of a new world order, a worldwide socioeconomic cooperative and pseudo-Utopia. The path to this wonderful global village is always presented as a battle against stubborn isolationists, non-progressives who lack vision and cling desperately to the archaic past. The values of personal and national sovereignty are painted as outdated, decrepit and even threatening to the newly born world structure. The image of North Korea is used by globalists as a kind of straw man argument against sovereignty. North Koreans’ vices and imbalances as a culture are many; but this is due in far larger part to their communist insanity, rather than any values of national independence. It is their domestic hive-mind collectivism we should disdain, not their wish to maintain a comfortable distance as a society from the global game.

As far as being an imminent physical threat to the United States, it really depends on the scenario. The North Koreans have almost no logistical capability to support an invasion of any kind. The nation has been suffering from epidemic famine for well more than a decade.

To initiate a war outright has never been in the best interests of the North Koreans, simply because their domestic infrastructure would not be able to handle the strain. However, there is indeed a scenario in which North Korea could be influenced to use military force despite apprehension.

With the ever looming threat of famine comes the ever looming threat of citizen revolution.  When any government is faced with the possibility of being supplanted, it will almost always lash out viciously in order to maintain power and control, no matter the cost. Sanctions like those being implemented by the West against North Korea today, at the very edge of national famine, could destabilize the country entirely. I believe the North would do anything to avoid an internal insurgency scenario, including attacking South Korea to acquire food stores and energy reserves, as well as other tangible modes of wealth.

North Korea’s standing army, obtained through mandatory two year conscription, is estimated at about 1.1 million active personnel; very close to the numbers active in the U.S. armed forces. But North Korean reserves are estimated at more than 8 million, compared to only 800,000 in the United States. If made desperate by economic sanctions, the North Koreans could field a massive army that would wreak havoc in the South and be very difficult to root out on their home turf. Asian cultures have centuries of experience using asymmetric warfare (the kryptonite of the U.S. military), and I do not believe it is wise to take such a possible conflict lightly, as many Americans seem to do. It is easy to forget that the last Korean War did not work out so well for us. At best, we would be mired in on-ground operations for years (just like Iraq and Afghanistan) or perhaps even decades. Like North Korea, we also do not have the logistical economic means to enter into another such war.

The skeptics argue that we will never get to this point, though, because North Korea has brandished and blustered many times before, all resulting in nothing. I see recent events being far different and more urgent than in the past, and here’s why:

1) The West needs to realize that North Korea is under new leadership. The blowhard days of Kim Jung Il are over, and little is known about his son, Kim Jong Un. So far, the young dictator has followed through on everything he said he would do, including the multiple nuclear tests that the West is using as an excuse to exert sanctions. To assume that the son will be exactly like the father is folly.

2) Many people claimed that North Korean threats to abandon the Armistice in place since 1953 were empty, yet they dropped it exactly as they said they would at the beginning of March.

3) The North has begun cutting off direct communication channels to the South, including a cross-border hotline meant to help alleviate tensions through diplomatic means.

4) The North has officially declared a state of war against the South. This has been called mere “tough talk” by the U.S. government, but the speed at which these multiple developments have occurred should be taken into consideration.

5) North Korea has just announced the reopening of a shuttered nuclear reactor used to render weapons grade materials.

6) The DPRK has suddenly locked down the Kaesong Industrial Zone; a region which holds manufacturing centers for both North and South Korea. Southern manufacturers operating there employ nearly 50,000 Northern workers. Nearly 1000 Southerners also work there. The arrangement generates approximately $2 billion a year for the North. The joint industrial zone has existed since 2000, and the North has never locked down access until this past week.  The fact that the DPRK is willing to restrict this area and possibly lose a sizable income signals that the situation is not as “mild” as some would like to believe.

7) At the beginning of this year, silver purchases by the North from China surged. For the entire year of 2012, the government purchased $77,000 worth of precious metals. In the first few months of 2013, North Korea has already purchased $600,000 in silver. The exact size of the North’s precious metals stockpile is unknown. Though seemingly small in comparison to many purported metal holdings by major powers, this sudden investment expansion would indicate a government move to protect internal finances from an exceedingly frail economic environment.  Metals are also historically accumulated at a high rate by nations preparing for war or invasion in the near term.

Again, all that is needed to instigate an event on the Korean Peninsula are tightened sanctions. The establishment knows this, though another Gulf of Tonkin incident (an openly admitted false flag event) may be on the menu as well.

Given that the chances of a shooting war are high if sanctions continue, it might be wise to consider the consequences of conflagration in Korea.

Dealing with a large army steeped in asymmetric and mountain warfare will be difficult enough.  In fact, an invasion of North Korea would be far more deadly than Afghanistan, if only because of the sheer number of maneuver elements (guerilla-style units) on the ground. But let’s set aside North Korea for a moment and consider the greatest threat of all: dollar collapse.

As I have discussed in numerous articles, China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, has positioned itself to decouple from the American consumer and the dollar. This is no longer a theoretical process as it was in 2008, but a very real and nearly completed one. Mainstream analysts often claim China would never break from the dollar because it would damage their export markets and their investment holdings. The problem is, China is already dumping the dollar using bilateral trade agreements with numerous developing nations, Australia being the latest to abandon the greenback.

China isn’t just talking about it; China is doing it.

The development of a decoupled China is part of a larger push by international banks to remove the dollar as the world reserve currency and replace it with a new global currency. This currency already exists. The International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) is a mechanism backed by a basket of currencies as well as gold. The introduction of the SDR on a wide scale is dependent on only two things:

• First, China has been designated the replacement consumer engine in the wake of a U.S. collapse. They have already surpassed the United States as the No. 1 trading power in the world. However, they must spread their own currency, the Yuan, throughout global markets in order to aid the IMF in removing the dollar. China has recently announced a program to sell more than $6 trillion in Yuan denominated bonds to foreign investors, easily fulfilling this need.
• Second, China and the IMF need a scapegoat event, a rationale for dumping the dollar that the masses would accept as logical. A U.S. invasion of North Korea could easily offer that rationale.

While China has been playing the good Samaritan in relations with the United States in dealing with North Korea and has supported (at least on paper) certain measures including sanctions, China will never be in support of Western combat actions in the Pacific so close to their territory. The kind of U.S. or NATO presence a war with North Korea would generate would be entirely unacceptable to the Chinese, who do not need to respond using arms. Rather, all they have to do to get rid of us would be to fully dump the dollar and threaten to cut off trade relations with any other country that won’t do the same. The domino effect would be devastating, causing U.S. costs to skyrocket and forcing us to pull troops out of the region. At the same time, the dollar would be labeled a “casualty of war” rather than a casualty of conspiratorial global banking designs, and the financial elites would be removed from blame.

Ultimately, we should take the North Korean situation seriously not because of the wild-eyed propaganda of the mainstream media and not because they are “doing business with terrorists” or because they are a “violent and barbaric relic of nationalism,” but because a war in North Korea serves the more malicious interests of globalization. No matter what happens in the near future, it is important for Americans to always question the true motives behind any event and ask ourselves who, in the end, truly benefited.

In early March, an Ohio father wrote to parenting site Free-Range Kids to describe the harassment he had received from police for teaching his 6-year-old daughter how navigate their quiet suburban neighborhood and then having the temerity to decide on his own when she may do so unsupervised. After letting her walk to a nearby store, he discovered when she failed to return that the police had taken her:

Once I got to the police station they would not release her to me for over 20 minutes, though she was sitting behind bullet-proof glass just 20 feet away.  When the police finally came to talk to me, I was told that they had responded to a call of a young child being unsupervised.  They refused to identify a reasonable cause for her detention, or even what law had been broken.  They insisted that they were waiting for CPS to respond before they would let me see my daughter, but then they later came back and said that they were releasing me to her because CPS had told them to give her to me, since I was waiting for her.  

That sounds like resolution of sorts, right? Child Protective Services told the police to give her back to her parent. But the story took a turn for the worse, detailed again on Free-Range Kids today:

”Emily” and I are both walking back from the library.  She wants to do it herself, so I let her walk separate from me some of the time.  The cops get a phone call from a concerned citizen who says there’s a strange guy talking to a little girl.  Three officers respond and cite a concern for Emily’s safety in crossing the street.  I confirm that I am her father and give my name, as is required by law.  They refuse to state any reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed or say what law has been broken, and so, in accordance with my 5th amendment rights, I refuse to answer any questions.  We are detained for over half an hour before being released.  (I asked many times over the course of the detention whether I was “free to go” and I was told that I was not. We were told that we were being held for an “investigative detention.”)  The sergeant who responded to the scene stated over the radio that he wanted to “hook this guy” for child endangerment. (The recording of radio traffic during the encounter was later received through a public records request that I made.)

They were again reported to CPS, even though police say they haven’t broken any laws. Later he deals with CPS directly:

I talk with the supervisor at CPS on a recorded phone call.  I refuse to answer any questions or make any statements.  Though he did relay that he was concerned about a child “roaming the streets of [Our City, OH],” he refuses to tell me what law has been broken.  We go around and around for about 25 minutes.  I find out through my employer shortly after the phone call that if I do not “cooperate” CPS is threatening to seek an ex parte order, which would allow CPS to take custody without a hearing, to separate us that Friday (and then keep Emily all weekend since a hearing would not have to be held until close of business on Monday).  Note that I have cooperated to the full extent required by law.  The Home School Legal Defense Assn. is very helpful in getting CPS to agree not to seek an ex parte order so long as Emily does not go outside again by herself.

Since then CPS has knocked on the door many times.  I did answer the door when the CPS supervisor came by–I thought that he was a delivery guy or what not since he didn’t have a uniformed police officer with him–but otherwise we have simply ignored them.  There is no law requiring someone to answer their door, and since I had no interest in talking to them or getting detained by the cops simply ignoring them seemed the best course of action.

CPS has responded by filing a complaint alleging neglect and attempting to take the child into protective custody. They are also attempting to try to force the family to allow CPS officials into their home, search the house and interview their children.

Free-Range Kids is asking for pro bono legal help in Ohio to assist the family.

Our Reason TV interview with Free-Range Kids founder Lenore Skenazy is here.

(Hat tip to Popehat)

A caller from Willowbrook, New York identifying himself as a Muslim on the New York 1 program "The Call," stated that gays in the United States should be beheaded because sharia law should be implemented. The heated conversation went like this:

Host: Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hi. My opinion is something you’re not going to agree with.

Host: That’s okay.

Chris: I'm Muslim and I believe 110 percent in Sharia law. Sharia law needs to be implemented in the United States because that's the only way this deviant lifestyle will be corrected. You know what happens in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries to the gay people, correct?

Host: Mm-hmm. I don’t agree with it

Chris: They are beheaded, and that I believe --I'm going to fight as hard as I can with all of my brothers and sisters to make Sharia law in the United States.

Host: So people should be beheaded for being gay? I mean, c’mon, this is America!

Chris: This is a sin! No, you don’t like --you’re anti-Muslims?

Host: I’m not anti-Muslims, but—

Chris: You are anti-Muslims if you’re saying that about my religion.

Host: I didn’t say that. I’m saying about America.

Chris: About my religion? No. In America? We’re Americans too.

Host: You really believe people should be beheaded?

Chris: Yes, of course. Government should do that.

Host: So you have no friends that are gay, Chris?

Chris: No, I don’t.

Host: Okay, And if you did—

Chris: I don’t choose to associate with those people. No, no. That lifestyle is deviant, and it’s against Islam.

Host: That’s fine –

Chris: And sharia should come to the United States, obviously --

Host: --to feel that way but to believe that they should be beheaded is a little extreme, don’t you think?

Chris: --but you’re going to call the whole kingdom of Saudi Arabia extreme?

Host: I’m just saying beheading people for their sexual preference is extreme. Those are my words.

Chris: No, but you’re against Muslim countries then. You’re against Islam.

Host: I’m not against Islam. There are people who are Islam—Islamic in America

Chris: Do you know the law? Do you know sharia law?

Host: Do I? No, I was raised Catholic.

Chris: Maybe you should look into sharia and look into the countries that have sharia and what the penalty is for being gay.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) continues simultaneously climbing up the GOP totem pole and assaulting the traditional (and traditionally unsatisfactory) left-right spectrum on issues ranging from civil liberties to foreign policy to immigration to criminal justice to industrial hemp. This is both a reflection of libertarianism's genre-defying principles, and of Paul's own canny sense of political possibilities. As he told Fox News this Sunday,

[T]his left-right spectrum doesn't always work for people, but I think because of some of that confusion, it shows that someone like myself, I think, could appeal to young people, independents and moderates, because many of them do think it's a mistake to put people in jail for marijuana use and throw away the key. So, I think there are people who would like a less aggressive foreign policy. There are all kinds of issues that don't neatly fit in the left-right paradigm that I think would help, because we're not doing very well in a lot of these states, these purple and blue states. So, we do need a candidate that would appeal across the left-right paradigm.

All of this has put left-of-center commentators in a pickle: Do you 1) applaud Paul for fighting some good fights, 2) dismiss him as a kook, or 3) both? Door #3 appears to be an increasingly popular–and occasionally delicious–choice. Some examples:

* Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, "Rand Paul Is Right On Marijuana, And That Should Scare Democrats Into Action":

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is one of America's most radical ideologues. He endorsed a discredited, century-old Supreme Court decision that would give employers nearly limitless power to exploit their workers. He opposes bans on employment discrimination and on whites-only lunch counters. He backs nationwide anti-union legislation that would reduce both union and non-union wages by $1,500 a year. And he backs a dangerous constitutional amendment that would have doubled unemployment and caused the economy to shrink by 17 percent. Few, if any, politicians would do more harm to more people if given the opportunity to turn their preferences into law.

Which is why Democrats need to take his effort to outflank them on drug policy very, very seriously. [...]

[I]f Democrats cede this issue to the likes of Rand Paul, they will give up a powerful opportunity to engage with young voters — and potentially empower one of America’s most dangerous politicians in the process.

* Kelli Goff, The Root, "Tea Partier Shows Up Obama on Drug Policy":

To the extent that he is known to minority audiences at all, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is likely best known for his controversial criticism of the Civil Rights Act. But he may soon emerge with a much higher profile among black Americans, and a much more positive one, thanks in large part to his equally controversial comments on another issue: drug policy. [...]

The question now becomes whether or not President Obama has the courage to become a voice for those young men in his second term or if he is going to continue to allow a Tea Partier who questions the Civil Rights Act to become a more credible voice for young men of color than the first black president.

* John Cole, Balloon Juice, "This is Just Plain Common Sense":

I know that by writing this I am going to be accused of being a fan bois and told I am being duped by an insane crazy person, but you know what? Rand Paul is right [...]

I'd love a better spokesman, but at least some people were exposed to this opinion who might not otherwise agree with it.

Much less grudgingly complimentary is Frank Bruni in The New York Times, "Rand Paul's Loopy Ascent"

[H]e has managed, with remarkable speed, to migrate to the foreground of Republican politics. You could almost lose sight of what an albatross he really is. [...]

Paul's greatest hits include a denunciation of Medicare as socialism, a recommendation of stopping foreign aid to a few key allies, and the insistent introduction of Patriot Act amendments so loopy that one of them netted all of 10 votes from the 95 senators present while another garnered a whopping total of 4. [...]

He'd be a skunk in a presidential primary and a quixotic, doomed nominee.

He has railed erroneously about the Clean Water Act's effect on his toilets, indelicately quibbled with aspects of the Civil Rights and Americans With Disabilities Acts, and carped about the "nanny state" in relation to seat-belt laws. Yes, seat-belt laws. [...]

It's a crazy salad he's serving, no matter how it's currently dressed.

Conor Friedersdorf dispatches with Bruni's looneyisms here. Reason has pointed out Bruni's freedom-harshin' bonafides in the past.

In fact, isn't Rand Paul a valuable litmus test? I'm not saying that disagreeing with any given politician proves one thing or another about a person, but if you look at the bipartisan list of people who have been screaming themselves purple about the junior senator from Kentucky–Bruni, John McCain, Lawrence O'Donnell, William Kristol, Garrett Epps, Michael Gerson, John Yoo–you quickly detect one important trait in common: They are all reliable apologists for the government exercise of power. While the particular power being championed may vary, and the tenor of the argument will change depending on which political party is exercising it this season, the truism remains that Rand Paul poses a direct challenge to people who get irritated when there's any obstruction between their goals and government's ability to pursue them.

For that and other reasons, Paul is not only the most interesting man in the Senate, but I think the most interesting player in American politics today.

this is being claimed as an unofficial world record.


Pretty impressive!