Reason Magazine
Ron Paul's Pahrump Security Volunteers
Pahrump, Nev. - This is the only county Rep. Ron
Paul (R-Texas) won in the 2008 Nevada Caucus, and Paul's
campaign event at the Skate Zone today made it
pretty clear why
. The entirely volunteer-run event
had all the trappings of a professional campaign: people providing
information on
where to caucus, merchandise hawkers, audio and visual people, and
a massive map for people just to make sure, again, that they
knew where they were going tomorrow.
Even before arriving at the event I had to drive by several massive "Ron Paul for President" signs that dotted the main roads into town. Paul's event in Elko was well run but this was on a whole different level.
"Like all the grassroots Ron Paul things, there's nobody really in charge. Somebody says something needs to get done somebody steps up and does it," said, Pat Kerby, one of the main Paul organizers in Nye County.
Sources in the Paul campaign said the candidate relied on the local organizers to select the venue and do the rest. All the campaign did was put up the money to rent the facility and cover incidentals.
"We learned all about this process in 2008 and we're ready to repeat our victory again by a much bigger margin," said Kerby, a retired project manager with the Clark County School system.
There was even a local security team comprised of several men openly carrying handguns, uniformly dressed in black "Ron Paul 2012 Freedom Tour" shirts. In addition to these volunteers, Paul has his own security.
Sam Jones, one of the local security volunteers, was carrying .45 Long Colt on his side. Jones said that he’s been volunteering with the campaign since he heard Paul was running.
“All the signs you see around the valley, we build and put ‘em up,” he said.
Jones said he will not vote for another candidate if Ron Paul is not the Republican Party nominee, but he said he was open to Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.
Paul’s Nevada campaign chairman, Carl Bunce expects Paul to win Nevada tomorrow as long as his campaign turns out its identified supporters. Bunce said the campaign did not have a problem with people openly carrying guns at campaign events. “Ron Paul is strong on the Second Amendment. We have the right to bear arms,” he said.
Leak Complaints End Federal Witch Hunt Against Lance Armstrong
Months after Lance Armstrong’s
attorney sought an investigation of federal government leaks to the
establishment media,
U.S. attorneys have ended their investigation of the cycling
champion.
United States Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. capitulated in a press conference today, announcing that his office "is closing an investigation into allegations of federal criminal conduct by members and associates of a professional bicycle racing team owned in part by Lance Armstrong."
Birotte failed to specify his reasons for closing down the investigation into claims of blood doping. Since July, Armstrong attorney Mark Fabiani has been demanding an investigation to find whether prosecutors were actively leaking damaging details to reporters.
Armstrong, who survived advanced testicular cancer at age 25 but went on to win the Tour de France seven times and date Sheryl Crow, was targeted not only by the federal government but by 60 Minutes. Anchorman Scott Pelley devoted nearly an hour of broadcast time and several "Overtimes" to hawking an anti-Armstrong interview with cyclist Tyler Hamilton, an admitted serial doper whose Olympic gold medal has been revoked. (Armstrong during his career passed 24 unannounced tests for performance-enhancement violations.)
"Blood doping" is a process of concentrating red blood cells so that your blood will somehow be more vigorous than that of other cyclists, who presumably must make do with whatever hemotherapeutic benefits can be derived from eating liver and oysters. Although doping once required an uncomfortable process of blood extraction and transfusion, advances since the 1980s have made it easier and more convenient.
I have never met Lance Armstrong and have no particular feelings about him. Although I find his public persona more agreeable than those of the only other cyclists I can name – Floyd Landis and Greg LeMond – Armstrong was sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service, a legally protected monopoly that should not require any advertising. As far as I’m concerned, the only Tour de France winner who matters is Pee Wee Herman.
But I do wonder why the squares went after him with such a vengeance. U.S. attorneys have broad discretion to pick their targets. So does 60 Minutes. What possible upside did they see in tearing down a beloved athlete and cancer activist?
Sheldon Richman on Why the U.S. Is Not a Free Market
According to GOP presidential candidate Mitt
Romney, thanks to Barack Obama, “we are only inches away from
ceasing to be a free market economy.” Actually, writes Sheldon
Richman, the U.S. stopped having a free market a long time ago.
What we have is a corporatist system, and the sooner we get rid of
it the better.
Why Stephen Colbert's Super PAC Joke Falls Flat
Institute for Justice lawyer Paul Sherman makes
some incisive points regarding Stephen Colbert's supposedly
satirical super PAC,
noting that Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow is not
the indictment of Citizens United that the comedian
and fans such as Slate's Dahlia Lithwick think
it is:
Virtually everything Stephen Colbert is doing was legal before Citizens United.
Although Colbert has often used the phrase “unlimited corporate money” in reference to his Super PAC, last Tuesday's disclosures paint a very different picture. Colbert’s PAC, which raised more than $825,000 through the end of the year, has raised almost no corporate money. Indeed, the only two corporate donations he reported to the Federal Election Commission amount to $714, total. In addition to barely raising any corporate money, Colbert's Super PAC accepted only one contribution from an individual (of $9,600) in excess of the $5,000 limit that applies to regular PACs.
In other words, more than 99% of the money Colbert has raised to mock Citizens United and Super PACs is money that has been legal under the campaign finance laws for decades.
While people with easy access to mass media have never had a problem getting their messages out, the restrictions overturned in Citizen United were a real impediment for people who were neither rich nor famous but still wanted to exercise their First Amendment rights. Yet Colbert and Lithwick apparently think we were better off when a political activists could be imprisoned for pooling their resources to criticize a politician on TV:
There will always be those who use their free speech rights to advocate that others' be restricted. And it is surely their right to do so. But such people aren't—as Colbert and Lithwick seem to believe—cleverly using the tools of the Machine to attack the Machine. They're simply advocating censorship for speech they disagree with, and weakening the basis of their own rights in the process.
For more on misguided criticism of Citizens United, see my story in the December 2010 issue of Reason. I considered the rap against super PACs in a column last month. Last year I questioned Lithwick's take on the constitutional challenge to Arizona's subsidies for political candidates, which she claimed was all about protecting "America's defenseless bajillionaires."
Plainclothes NYPD Officers Chase, Fatally Shoot Unarmed 18-Year-Old Over Drug Deal
An 18-year-old in the Bronx was
shot to death in his own home by the NYPD because he ran from
police and because an itchy-fingered cop says the suspect/victim
reached towards his waistband, meaning he was reaching for a
weapon.
According the Huffington Post:
18-year-old Ramarley Graham was gunned down Thursday inside the bathroom of his Bronx home following a foot pursuit by a team of plainsclothes cops. He was unarmed.
Investigators say police spotted Graham--who's had 8 prior arrests on charges including robbery, marijuana possession and resisting arrest-- on White Plains Road when he started to run.
The always-repulsive NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly first said that Graham struggled with cops, now he's admitting that's not the case.
On Thursday afternoon, Graham was spotted engaged in a drug deal and cops radioed that in, including the fact that Graham appeared to have a weapon. A witness, according to The New York Post, heard police identify themselves, which is good, but the fact that they were apparently in plainclothes makes reasonable doubt in identification something worth raising. It sounds like Graham was trying to flush the drugs down the toilet while he was shot by police who "burst into the apartment" after a foot chase. Officers yelled "show me your hands!" according to Kelly, and then "gun!" and then it was over. Gramam's mother was there, his six-year-old brother.
If Graham was indeed trying to flush drugs, that implies that he knew his pursuers were cops. But it also further clarifies that the penalty for disobeying police orders is occasionally death. There are lots of words for this kind of incident, but somehow "unnecessary" sums it up perfectly
Reason on cops and the drug war and the general awfulness of the NYPD
Does the NYPD Have a Strategy to Infiltrate and Dominate Muslims in New York?
If you look closely at the picture to the right, you'll see the flag of Saudi Arabia, the United States' closest Muslim ally and home to some of the terrorists behind the attacks on September 11th, including Osama bin Laden. The picture is a screen-cap from a documentary that has drawn the New York City Police Department considerable scrutiny, following the revelation that at least 1,400 officers were shown the propagandist, anti-Muslim film on a continuous loop during counter-terrorism training in 2010. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who appears in interviews for the film, has tried pretty hard to cover his tail. From Human Rights Watch:
The police department’s spokesman also told the media last year that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s appearance in the film came from old video clips and that Kelly had no direct participation in the film’s production. However, after the New York Times recently obtained information from the filmmaker confirming that Kelly was specifically interviewed for the film, the spokesman conceded that this was the case.
The documentary, called The Third Jihad, claims that Muslims in America are implementing "a strategy to infiltrate and dominate America, and that "this is the war you don’t know about." It was made by the Clarion Fund, "an independently-funded non-profit organization that produces and distributes documentaries on the threats of Radical Islam."
I'm sure the Muslims (yes, all of them) prefer the term "kinetic military action."
Between the NYPD's illicit spying on Shiite Muslims and its repeated screenings of The Third Jihad, it's worth wondering who has the intention of infiltrating and dominating: The NYPD or Muslims in the United States? Though sensationalist, there's much truth to this Huffington Post op-ed on the story, including:
What we have is a rogue police department that is completely out of control with no sense or obligation of transparency or accountability to anyone but themselves. This police department is engaging in a long list of highly inappropriate activity from extensively spying on mosques, entrapping into terrorism plots, stop and frisks, corruption scandals, fudging crime statistics, the Schoolcraft scandal, racial profiling, and brutalizing people engaged in expressions of free speech and dissent such as Jazz Hayden, journalists, and the Occupy movement.
The trailer for The Third Jihad is available for viewing on YouTube and is pretty terrifying on a number of fronts:
Read more on the noble efforts of Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the Muslim takeover of American society, and counter-terrorism.
Does Stupidity Cause Conservatism?
A new study in the journal Psychological
Science by two Canadian researchers suggests that the answer
is yes. And worse yet it causes racism and homophobia too. The
abstract from the article, "Bright Minds and Dark
Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice
Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact."
reports:
Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.
IQ actually exists? I thought IQ was a fiction imposed by the patriarchy as yet another way to exclude women and minorities. Who knew?
That being said, it is probably true that less intelligent people are more fearful people which likely inclines them toward sticking with what they know and avoiding social, economic, and technological novelty. Interestingly, the Huffington Post does note:
"Reality is complicated and messy," [University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek] told The Huffington Post in an email. "Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies."
But Nosek said less intelligent types might be attracted to liberal "simplifying ideologies" as well as conservative ones.
Simplifying liberal ideologies? You think? Maybe something along the lines of a simplistic ideology based on the belief that "fairness" is the same as "equality"?
In any case, my fellow libertarians need not fret. Research shows that libertarians - out of the major socio-political groups - score highest on "need for cognition" and "openness to new experiences." However, it must be said that many of my fellow libertarians do tend exhibit just a bit of "prejudice" against rigid liberals and conservatives.
For further background, see my 2004 column, Pathologizing Conservatism: Is it an unfortunate evolutionary holdover, or the product of a bad upbringing.
Thanks to Mark Sletten for the tip.
The Supreme Court Has Been Getting Along Nicely. What's that Mean for ObamaCare?
At The Huffington Post, Supreme Court reporter Mike Sacks has a very interesting take on what the Court's recent decisions may reveal about the upcoming vote on the constitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate. After first noting that the justices have achieved “unanimity in major cases that pit religious liberty against civil rights, Republicans against Democrats, and law enforcement efficiency against personal privacy,” which might portend at least some similar agreement on the health care law, Sacks wonders if maybe this is all just the calm before the storm:
There remains the chance that Roberts' work this term has simply served to collect enough good will to spend on an explosive second half headlined by the demise of the individual mandate. Supreme Court history is heavy on early-term unanimity and late-term divisiveness.
I remain unconvinced that there are five Supreme Court votes against the individual mandate, but I have no doubt that we're in for some serious divisiveness.
Roseanne Barr is Planning to "Fix Everything that is Wrong with the World" Herself
The actress, comedian, and mother is calling for a divine matriarchy, as part of her campaign for the "Green Tea Party's" presidential nomination (and the Prime Minister position of Israel, simultaneously, she says).
According to ABC, she has actually legally filed seeking the actually existing Green Party's nomination, but she says "Green Tea Party" in the clip below.
Israel and U.S. Publicly Argue Over Iran Strike, Komen Caves to Planned Parenthood, GOP Teeming in Nevada: P.M. Links
"There’s a growing concern...that the
Israelis...might launch a strike without
approval, warning or even foreknowledge."- Susan G. Komen tries to make nice with Planned Parenthood.
- Nevada is full of GOP candidates.
- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will have to pay $1.5 billion in taxes if Facebook goes public.
- FBI and Scotland Yard got hacked by Anonymous today.
- Nasdaq at 11-year high.
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Anthony Randazzo on Obama’s Next Bailout
Under a new revision to the Obama
administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program, second (and
third) homes—whether owned as a rental property investment, as a
vacation home, or just as an extra mortgage from a house-flipping
project gone array—are now eligible for taxpayer subsidies to
reduce the principal on the underlying mortgage. As Reason
Foundation Director of Economic Research Anthony Randazzo explains,
this means that even though those investors made a poor economic
decision, taxpayers will still be forced to help foot the bill.
Mitt Romney, Hollow Man
It’s hard to imagine Mitt Romney’s inner life.
Even if you presume that he has one (which is not entirely
obvious), guessing as to what form it might take seems like the
sort of challenge better suited to, say, science fiction writers
who specialize in telling stories about alien cultures than it does
magazine profile writers or literary novelists.
Getting inside his head is a job that no one has yet been able to accomplish; it’s easier to imagine Romney as some sort of administrative system made flesh, or perhaps living software, with code and programming instructions rather than recognizably human thoughts and personality.
Yes, there is ample evidence that Romney is in many ways an individual worthy of respect, perhaps even admiration, at least for his private sector accomplishments. By all accounts, he is dedicated and hard working, intelligent and rational, deeply devoted to his family and religious community. People I’ve spoken to who have known Romney personally or studied his career all praise his work ethic and his value as a business partner. But there is little to suggest what, if anything, lies underneath that perfectly polished exterior.
But that isn’t stopping publications with the words “New York” in their titles from attempting to crack Romney’s code. In New York Magazine and The New York Review of Books, Frank Rich and Michael Tomasky respectively attempt to solve the mystery of the man who will probably be the Republican party’s next presidential nominee. What is Mitt Romney’s dark secret? It turns out he’s a Mormon...with a father.
In a piece titled “Who in God’s name is Mitt Romney?,” Rich argues that the key to the man must be his murky background as a Mormon lay minister:
He seems to have no cultural passions beyond his and his wife’s first-date movie,The Sound of Music. He is not a sportsman or conspicuous sports fan. His only real, nonnumerical passions seem to be his photogenic, intact family, which he wields like a weapon whenever an opponent with multiple marriages like John McCain or Gingrich looms into view—and, of course, his faith.That faith is key to the Romney mystery. Had the 2002 Winter Olympics not been held in Salt Lake City, and not been a major civic project of Mormon leaders there, it’s unlikely Romney would have gotten involved. (Whether his involvement actually prompted a turnaround of that initially troubled enterprise, as he claims, is a subject of debate.) But Romney is even less forthcoming about his religion than he is about his tax returns.
When the Evangelical view of Mormonism as a non-Christian cult threatened his 2008 run, Romney delivered what his campaign hyped as a JFK-inspired speech on “Faith in America.” This otherwise forgotten oration was memorable only for the number of times it named Romney’s own faith: once.In the current campaign, Romney makes frequent reference to faith, God, and his fierce loyalty to “the same church.” But whether in debates, or in the acres of official material on his campaign website, or in a flyer pitched at religious voters in South Carolina, he never names what that faith or church is. In Romneyland, Mormonism is the religion that dare not speak its name. Which leaves him unable to talk about the very subject he seems to care about most, a lifelong source of spiritual, familial, and intellectual sustenance. We’re used to politicians who camouflage their real views about issues, or who practice fraud in their backroom financial and political deal-making, but this is something else. Romney’s very public persona feels like a hoax because it has been so elaborately contrived to keep his core identity under wraps.
And in the New York Review of Books, Michael Tomasky takes the Darth Vader route and pins Romney’s emptiness on his determination to learn from his father’s mistakes:
For men like Romney, everything comes back in one way or another to father. Mitt was the “miracle baby,” the fourth child born nearly six years after the last of the other three, and named in part after J. Willard Marriott—like George, a nationally prominent and respected Mormon. He “grew up idolizing” his father, write Kranish and Helman. He walked the factory floor with him at the American Motors Corporation, which the elder Romney made profitable; he listened closely to his father’s religious and civic lectures; he wanted to become his father.
His pursuit of the presidency surely has much to do with the fact that his father didn’t make it there, torpedoed by his famous comment about having been “brainwashed” about American progress in the war by generals on a visit to Vietnam.George Romney didn’t back down from that remark, made to a Detroit television interviewer in 1967. He never backed down, not even to Nixon, with whom, asHUD secretary, he had numerous skirmishes. The son—unable even to view the “brainwashed” clip, Kranish and Helman write, until thirty-nine years later—seems to have decided that backing down is often a pretty good idea.
Commentators have spent countless hours speculating whether Romney is “really” moderate or conservative. The answer is that he is neither, and both. The lessons he learned from watching his father fail to make it to the White House are: don’t stick to your guns; be flexible; suit the needs of the moment. And so, in order to complete his father’s unfulfilled destiny, he has decided to become his father’s opposite.
I find Tomasky’s explanation more convincing in part because it reaches essentially the same conclusion about Romney that I did in my March cover feature: Romney’s path to success has always benefited from flexibility over ideology, narrow problem-solving acumen over larger principle. And while pinning Romney’s pandering on his father’s daddy issues might smack of psychological gimmickry, it’s also probably true to some extent: His father may have been a moderate, but he was a deeply committed moderate, and he lost his shot at the presidency in part because of that commitment. No doubt this served for young Mitt as a powerful early illustration of the dangers of stubborn commitment. In response, Mitt Romney has spent his life committed only to avoiding any kind of ideological commitment.
In the end, however, both Rich and Tomasky recognize that there’s no solving the Romney riddle. Whoever he is, or isn’t, we’ll probably never know, and even the most intriguing Theories of Romney tell us little about what’s actually important, namely: how he might govern. In fact, as I argue in my story, at this point, the best way to view Romney’s long-running campaign for president is not as a window into who Romney is, but as a reflection of the divided and uncertain party he’s trying to please. It may be impossible to truly understand Mitt Romney, but his campaign tells us an awful lot about the conflicted inner life of the GOP.
Pick up a copy of Reason’s March issue on a newsstand near you, or catch a special early online preview of the story. And if you’re not a subscriber, well, why not?
*Post updated to make a few edits and clarifications.
It's Not What You Owe, It's Who You Owe
Both are important, of course, but this Yahoo! Finance account of who holds U.S. debt is still interesting:
About 40 percent is held by public entities, including parts of the government. Here's who owns the most. Foreign countries listed include private and public investors, according to monthly U.S. Treasury data.
1. Federal Reserve and Intragovernmental Holdings
U.S. debt holdings: $6.328 trillion
That’s right, the biggest single holder of U.S. government debt is inside the United States and includes the Federal Reserve system and other intragovernmental holdings. Of this number, The Fed's system of banks owns approximately $1.65 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities (as of January 2012), while other U.S. intragovernmental holdings - which include large funds such as the Medicare Trust Fund and the Social Security Trust Fund - hold the rest.
In the monthly Treasury bulletin, both are combined into one category and the total accounts for a stunning $6.328 trillion in holdings as of September 2011 (the most recent number available). The amount is an all-time high as the Federal Reserve continues to expand its balance sheet, partially to purchase U.S. government debt securities....
Presidential candidate Ron Paul has introduced a bill to cancel that debt owed to Fed. Back to the top 10 debt-holders....
2. China
U.S. debt holdings: $1.132 trillion
The largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities, China currently has $1.132 trillion in American debt, although it is down from all time highs of $1.173 trillion in July 2011. ...
3. Other Investors/Savings Bonds
U.S. debt holdings $1.107 trillion
With the most recent numbers from June 2011, this extremely diverse group includes individuals, government-sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts, estates, savings bonds, corporate and noncorporate businesses for a total of $1.107 trillion....
4. Japan
U.S. debt holdings: $1.038 trillion....
5. Pension Funds
U.S. debt holdings: $842.2 billion
Pension funds control large amounts of money, reserved for personal retirements, and thus are obligated to make relatively safe investments. This group, which includes private and local government pension funds, holds $842.2 billion in U.S. debt. The private pension fund category also includes U.S. Treasury securities held by the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan G Fund.
6. Mutual Funds
U.S. debt holdings: $653.5 billion
According to the Federal Reserve, mutual funds hold the sixth-largest amount of U.S. debt compared to any other group, although mutual fund holdings have diminished by more than $105 billion since December 2008....
7. State and Local Governments
U.S. debt holdings: $484.4 billion
U.S. state and local governments have nearly a half-trillion dollars invested in American debt, according to the Federal Reserve. The level of investment has remained stable since 2006, moving within the range of $484 billion and $576 billion....
8. The United Kingdom
U.S. debt holdings: $429.4 billion
The U.K. currently holds $429.4 billion in U.S. debt, but the country's investment has fluctuated dramatically during the past two years. Now at its all-time high (and rapidly increasing), British holdings were as low as $55 billion in June 2008.
9. Depository Institutions
U.S. debt holdings: $284.5 billion
As of June 2011 (the most recent numbers available), the Federal Reserve Board of Governors lists depository institutions as holding about $284.5 billion in U.S. debt.
This group includes commercial banks, savings banks and credit unions. In 2011, its holdings more than tripled from the 2008 low of $105 billion....
10. Insurance Companies
U.S. debt holdings: $250.1 billion
According to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, insurance companies hold $250.1 billion in Treasury securities. This group includes property-casualty and life insurance firms.
Woman Required to Show I.D. to Buy a Six-Pack...of Teaspoons
Apparently British people sometimes buy six-packs
of teaspoons at the grocery store. Who knew? Perhaps their spoons
get worn out from stirring all that tea?
Anyway, a gal who happens to be a reporter for a grocery store trade publication called (unsurprisingly) The Grocer was innocently buying some teaspoons at Sainsbury's when beep, an I.D. check alert went off at the self-checkout scanner.
When she asked why the purchase had to be verified, she was told the spoons “could be used as drug paraphernalia”.
Sainsbury's later changed its story, saying that the alert calling for age verification had been an error. Whew. Sanity restored, right? Wrong.
“The self-scan system recognised the spoon’s SKU as one for a knife,” said a spokeswoman. This had now been rectified.
Of course you have to be 18 to buy cheap cutlery with a dull blade. That makes perfect sense.
Read more Reason on the United Kingdom's crusade against knives.
Via BoingBoing
Oklahoma Legislator: Let's Tax "Violent" Video Games
An Oklahoma state representative wants to tax gamers. Introduced by the ironically named William Fourkiller, the bill would impose a 1 percent tax on "violent video games." Half of the revenue raised would go to an anti-obesity fund (the "Childhood Outdoor Education Revolving Fund"), and the other half would go to a bullying prevention fund. Taxing video games to stop childhood obesity and bullying—it's a nanny state trifecta!
In addition to the obvious libertarian outrages (it's a tax hike that could violate the First Amendment!) there are other flaws with the bill (SB 2696). First, it's far too broad:
As used in this section, “violent video game” means a video or computer game that has received a rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board of Teen, Mature or Adult Only.
In other words, Teen-rated games like The Sims, Dance Central, or Guitar Hero would be included in the tax, even though they're non-violent. Brilliant.
Second, Fourkiller claims, “Violent video games contribute to some of our societal problems like obesity and bullying."
That's not actually true. A Michigan State University study tracked almost 500 kids' media habits and weight. Their results:
The team found that while video games were used more than the internet and cellphones, none of these activities predicted a child's weight or BMI. Instead they found that race, age and socioeconomic status were the strongest predictors.
In addition, Fourkiller assumes video games are for kids. But in fact, according to the Entertainment Software Association, the average age of a gamer is 37. So taxing adult gamers to fight childhood obesity is not exactly the most rational course of action.
Meanwhile for minors, the ESA points out, "Parents are present when games are purchased or rented 91 percent of the time." If parents truly objected to video games, then they shouldn't buy them for their kids. Children are the responsibility of their parents, not the state.
Reason on video games. Me on Oklahoma and the nanny state.
FDR, The New Deal, and The Expansion of Federal Power
During his first presidential press conference, Barack Obama defended federal economic intervention, stating "there are several who have suggested that FDR was wrong to intervene back in the New Deal. They are fighting battles that I thought were resolved a pretty long time ago." "We were just amazed to hear him say that," says historian Anita Folsom. While this "idea is taught in colleges all over the country, we have to come to the realization that these big government ideas do not lead to prosperity."
In his 2008 book, New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, historian Burton Folsom took on the idea that the New Deal "worked." Now he's collaborated on a new book with his wife Anita, FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America, which tackles the idea that Roosevelt was a great wartime leader. During the war, the book argues, the Roosevelt Administration stomped on civil liberties, fixed prices throughout the economy, ballooned the national debt, and brought the top income tax rate up to 94%.
The Folsoms see Roosevelt's big government approach as instrumental in shaping the modern world. From ObamaCare to the Community Reinvestment Act, they draw a direct line from FDR's actions to the worst public policies of today, along with the general view that "government programs are the solution to economic and political problems."
Bert and Anita Folsom sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to discuss their new book and the enduring myths of FDR's presidency.
About 9:30 minutes. Shot by Meredith Bragg, Jim Epstein, and Joshua Swain and edited by Bragg.
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"Cheap natural gas jumbles energy markets, stirs fears it could inhibit renewables"
The above is an
actual headline from the Washington Post today. First,
I told you so - see my column, Natural
Gas Flip Flop. From the Post here's some of the fear
provoked by cheap abundant natural gas:
Rachel Cleetus, a senior climate economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that “the problem is [natural gas] can take over the entire pie and crowd out renewables. Part of the reason this is happening is there’s a boom and there’s a sense that natural gas resources will be around forever.”
...the economic issue is disruptive, too. The rush to produce shale gas “is forcing all of us to seriously address what it means for us,” said Ralph Izzo, chief executive of Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), a New Jersey-based utility that relies on nuclear energy for half of its power supply. Izzo said it would mean “the delay of the nuclear renaissance for years to come.”
Can an energy source be all that bad if it scares the two most heavily subsidized sectors of the electric power generation industry?
Iranian Court Upholds Death Sentence for Software Designer
Last week, I blogged about
protests in Geneva against
the Iranian government's expanding program of Internet and
satellite censorship. Taking place outside of Iran (and
consisting of what appears to be a fairly small crowd from the
pictures in this
post), the protest was a mostly symbolic act—but we're likely
to see more and stronger reactions to what Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Khamenei calls his country's
soft war against Western cultural influence in the months to
come.
This week the Iranian supreme court upheld the death sentence handed down to an Iranian-born Canadian resident named Saeid Malekpour, who was arrested while he was inside Iran visiting his ailing father. Malekpour is charged with "insulting the sanctity of Islam" and "corruption on earth," two regularly invoked grounds for execution in Iran, because of photo-uploading software he designed that was then "used by a porn website without his knowledge," reports The Guardian.
This is equivalent to Mark Zuckerberg being put on trial because someone uploaded a nudie pic to his or her Facebook profile.
According to the Amnesty International report, there were at least 600 executions in Iran last year, compared with 43 in the United States. Last year Iranian-Dutch citizen Zahra Bahrami was executed before Dutch officials could move for her release from Iranian custody, and recently, American citizen and former U.S. Marine Amir Mirza Hekmati was sentenced to death in Iran on highly questionable espionage charges.
Confessions from both Hekmati and Malekpour were broadcast on national television, but the letter Malekpour wrote after more than a year in solitary confinement in the notorious Evin Prison sheds serious doubt on his and any other political prisoner's confession:
Some of the confessions they forced me to make were so ridiculous and far-fetched that they are not even possible. For example, they asked me to falsely confess to purchasing software from the UK and then posting it on my website for sale. I was forced to add that when somebody visited my website, the software would be, without his/her knowledge, installed on their computer and would take control of their webcam, even when their webcam is turned off. Although I told them that what they were suggesting was impossible from a technological point of view, they responded that I should not concern myself with such things.
He also elaborated on the conditions under which his confession was extracted:
While I remained blindfolded and handcuffed, several individuals armed with their fists, cables, and batons struck and punched me. At times, they would flog my head and neck. Such mistreatment was aimed at forcing me to write what the interrogators were dictating...Sometimes, they used extremely painful electrical shock that would paralyze me temporarily. Once in October 2008, the interrogators stripped me while I was blindfolded and threatened to rape me with a bottle of water.
Read Malekpour's full letter here (Persian and English).
The recent increase in Internet censorship, arrests, and intimidation are widely viewed as an effort by the government to preemptively suppress protests during the country's upcoming parliamentary elections in March. Considering the massive protests following the highly disputed 2009 presidential election, the results of which were apparently counted at miraculous speed and announced only two hours after ballots were cast, it's not hard to understand why the ruling powers might be a little nervous.
Ron Paul Visits Elko Gymnasium
Elko, Nev. – Ron Paul delivered his typical stump speech during his only northern Nevada appearance last night before a crowd of over 300 inside the Elko Indian Colony Gymnasium. While touching on subjects like the Federal Reserve, eliminating the income tax, slashing the federal budget, restoring civil liberties, and scaling back America’s intervention in foreign affairs, Paul often sounded, and appeared, like a professor giving a Libertarianism 101 lecture. The crowd did not treat it as a lecture, though, and frequently cheered and applauded. At one point late in the speech the crowd even broke into a “President Paul!” chant.
“Believe me, if you defer to the government and think that they should tell you how to run your life and how you should spend your money, then, I’ll tell you what, we’re not going to get over this. It should be in a free society, it should be the people’s decision on how they run their life and how they spend their money,” said Paul.
“Yeaaah!”
The crowd was very favorable to Paul but a series of interviews conducted before the speech indicated that there were several undecided voters in the gymnasium.
“I am not sure about Ron Paul and some of his stances. Particularly the border, how he would deal with illegal aliens,” said William Graunke, 66, a retired civil engineer who is leaning towards Romney, but appreciates the fact that Paul served in the military.
Paul did not touch on any local issues during his speech here, instead focusing on larger national issues. This played well with Tyler Cummings, a local gold miner. “The Federal Resreve is able to print money without any accountability to anyone, [that] is kind of disturbing to me,” said Cummings, 24. "I’d like to see the Federal Reserve audited."
After Paul finished speaking he signed some autographs and spoke to the handful of reporters there. The press gaggle was local except for me and former Reason writer Dave Weigel. A boisterous group of Idaho voters that traveled here to see Paul shouted to him frequently while he answered questions.
I asked Paul two questions, both local. One was about his thoughts on the controversial Travel Management Plan for the Humboldt/Toiyabe National Forest. This was a subject that came up frequently during my interviews with Paul supporters here. Paul could not answer specifically about the plan for the forrest but he said he thinks the state should make the decision, not the US Forest Service. "I don't want the federal government dictating to the state of Nevada. Period," he said.
The other local question I asked him was if he would strip funding for the Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an annual event currently going on in Elko that became a national story after Harry Reid referenced it on the floor of the Senate early last year. The event recieves a very small amount of federal funding but its supporters contend it never would have got off the ground almost 30 years ago without federal start up cash.
When I described it to Paul he said it was not something that he would be in support of but that it was minor. "Some of these programs that might be small in amounts and seem to be wonderful they don't motivate me to run for congress or president. I'm motiviated to stop hundreds of billions of overseas spending," he said.
"These are minor programs but philosophically, no, I would not support it," he said.
Cato Paper Shows How Guns Thwart Crimes and Save Lives
In a new Cato Institute
paper,
Clayton Cramer and David Burnett review the controversy over how
often Americans use guns in self-defense each year. Estimates range
from about 100,000 to more than 2 million, and the surveys used to
generate the numbers are subject to weaknesses that plausibly lead
to undercounting or exaggeration. Cramer and Burnett's
contribution, an analysis of defensive gun uses reported in the
press during an eight-year period, does not resolve this issue. As
they emphasize, the vast majority of defensive gun uses seem to be
encounters where brandishing a weapon suffices to interrupt or
prevent a crime. When no shots are fired and no one is injured or
killed, the incident may not even be reported to the police,
let alone be deemed newsworthy. Still, Cramer and Burnett's
analysis, based on a randomly drawn sample of nearly 5,000
incidents, sheds light on the details of cases that are considered
interesting enough to report in a newspaper.
The most common situation, accounting for 1,227 of 4,669 incidents, was a "home invasion," where intruders try to force their way into a home they know to be occupied. Burglaries were also common, accounting for 488 incidents. In 285 cases, the defender had a concealed carry permit, and most of those incidents occurred in public. There were very few cases where a permit holder became involved in an avoidable dispute that turned deadly because he had a gun—a scenario that figures prominently in arguments against nondiscretionary permit laws. Also contrary to the warnings of gun controllers, victims in this sample were rarely disarmed by their attackers; the reverse happened more than 20 times as often. Criminals took away defenders' guns in 11 out of 4,669 incidents, and the defender ended up dead despite being armed in 36 incidents, less than 1 percent of the time. Cramer and Burnett describe many specific cases (mapped by Cato here) in which a gun prevented robbery, rape, serious injury, or death, illustrating their general point that policy makers need to take these benefits into account instead of focusing exclusively on criminal uses.
Cramer and Burnett note that journalists often seem irrationally hostile to the very idea of armed self-defense, as reflected in a 2009 Miami New Times story:
It was pouring rain just after 1 p.m. Monday, July 20, when a man burst into a Honduran grocery store on NW 36th Street in Miami. A shirt was wrapped around his face as he gripped a black semiautomatic handgun. Twenty-year-old Charles Bell shoved the pistol into the face of a manager behind the counter. Then he demanded the contents of the cash register and cartons of cigarettes in a plastic bag. Next he began herding customers to the back of the small market.
After the store's manger shot and killed the robber, police deemed it a justifiable homicide. The headline on the article: "South Florida Store Clerks Go Vigilante."
A. Barton Hinkle on the Abuse of "Literally"
All patriotic Americans ought to stand up and say
enough is enough. We need a law to put a stop to this
literally-abuse. If we don’t get one—and soon—then the Almighty is
sure to send another Flood as punishment for our
transgressions. In fact, it may already be too late, writes A.
Barton Hinkle. As these words are written, it is raining cats and
dogs outside. Literally!
Plan to Take British Health Records Into Virtual Reality Encounters Bureaucratic Reality, Shuts Down
It's hard to imagine a better environment in which to test a government-run health information technology system than Britain's National Health Service. The system is fully socialized, with a single government payer, universal enrollment, and doctors employed directly by the state. There are roughly 60 million beneficiaries, which is big enough to see if the system can scale, but perhaps not so big that it's sure to be overwhelming. It's popular enough that in 2010, the country's conservative party successfully ran on a health platform where the top item was a promise to increase spending on the system every year. In other words, it's about the best possible testing ground for instituting a complex, integrated system of computerized health records through government oversight.
And yet it still hasn't worked. As Greg Scandlen notes, it seems that the country's health system is canceling a multi-year, $20 billion Health IT project after a report concluding that it was impossible to deliver on the plan's ambitious goals. The Independent reports:
A plan to create the world's largest single civilian computer system linking all parts of the National Health Service is to be abandoned by the Government after running up billions of pounds in bills. Ministers are expected to announce next month that they are scrapping a central part of the much-delayed and hugely controversial 10-year National Programme for IT.
Instead, local health trusts and hospitals will be allowed to develop or buy individual computer systems to suit their needs – with a much smaller central server capable of "interrogating" them to provide centralised information on patient care. News of the Government's plans comes as a damning report from a cross-party committee of MPs concludes that the £11.4bn programme had proved "beyond the capacity of the Department of Health to deliver".
The NHS's failure isn't the only government-managed health IT debacle. The 2009 stimulus package included $30 billion to help fund a major health IT rollout here in the U.S. In addition, doctors are spending an average of about $40,000 each to build out electronic health records systems in their offices. But as Marketwatch reported last summer, "even after all that expense, few physicians will be able to send patient records to other doctors who could benefit from having rapid access to medical histories."
As with so much bureaucracy, the biggest problems with publicly managed health IT systems tend to be practical in nature—poor administration and unexpected challenges with implementation. According to The Independent, "The project has been beset by changing specifications, technical challenges and clashes with suppliers, which has left it years behind schedule and way over cost." Technology contractors walked out on the project or failed to deliver. Leadership inside Britain's health service was unable to cope with the competing demands of elected officials and on-the-ground project management. It was a typical bureaucratic mess.
This is not to suggest that electronic health records are themselves a bad idea. But these government-funded efforts to encourage their use don't have a great track record.
The State Squeal of Vermont
The
Vermont State Police recently discovered that the decals on the
sides of its patrol cars had been subtly altered by the addition of
a pig-shaped splotch on the cow in the state seal. Pig,
the Associated Press
reports, is "a derogatory term for police." The 16-inch
decals were first produced two years ago by inmates at the state
prison in Windsor, and about 60 are in circulation. "While some may
find humor in the decal modifications," state police Maj. Bill
Sheets said yesterday, "the joke unfortunately comes at the expense
of the taxpayers." A.P. says replacing the decals will cost $780,
which "will be be covered by a surplus in the revolving fund
that supports the offender work program." That's just one-tenth of
a cent per Vermonter. Where can you get a better entertainment
value?
[Thanks to Mike Spinney for the tip.]
Nick Gillespie on Why the Super Bowl (and Other Sports) Shouldn't Become Political Footballs
As a teenage, mostly non-practicing heterosexual
libertarian regularly accused of being gay and communist simply for
playing soccer in the 1970s, Nick Gillespie gets annoyed when some
dumb game is larded up with ideological meaning. Over the years,
characters as distinct as Ethel Rosenberg and Peggy Noonan have
done just that and, with the Super Bowl just days away, the
conservative National Review is even making the case that
mixed-martial arts is "the true conservative sport"—even more than
NASCAR.
Seeing your favorite sport through political filters is no way to while away your weekends, Gillespie writes, and it is a real buzz kill when it comes to enjoying athletics.
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