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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, April 30, 2005
More About The Problems GM & Ford Are Having When I mentioned yesterday the problems that GM & Ford are having, I thought that the struggle with the UAW about health care costs was just short-sightedness by the UAW. Apparently not. This column from the Detroit News indicates that the UAW is playing chicken with GM as part of their campaign to socialize health care: So what does the United Auto Workers tell General Motors as the company probes the idea of reopening the current contract to cut health care costs? "As long as we work within the framework of our [existing contract], we'll make joint efforts to lower costs where it's possible," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger was quoted as saying. Buried Treasure? No Great story I blogged about a few days ago--some roofers who found buried treasure while digging up a tree. But there's a follow-up that isn't quite so romantic: Four men who made headlines by claiming they dug up buried treasure worth as much as $125,000 from one of their yards were charged Friday with stealing the cache of old currency while doing a roofing job at someone's home. Friday, April 29, 2005
How Progressive Is Our Tax Structure? I mentioned a few days ago a Wall Street Journal article that pointed out that the percentage of income and Social Security taxes paid by the top .1% of American income earners has almost doubled between 1979 and 2003. I also mentioned that at least part of why that percentage has almost doubled is because the very wealthiest are much wealthier now than they were in 1979. This should not be a surprise; just about everyone in this society is wealthier than they were in 1979. Even poor people are better off. Would you rather show up an emergency room with a gunshot in 1979, or 2003? Would you rather be relying on Medicaid and the medical system to deal with cancer in 1979, or 2003? Now Jonathan Chaitt is whining in the Los Angeles Times about that Wall Street Journal article, and says what I said: It is certainly true that the richest 0.1% are paying a higher share of the national tax burden. Is that because they're getting socked by the tax code? No, it's because the very rich are earning a far bigger proportion of the national income. In 1979, the highest-earning 0.1% took home about 3% of the national income, and paid about 5% of the taxes. In 1999, they earned about 10% of the national income and paid about 11% of the taxes.So why is he whining? His complaint is that the superrich (including, of course, nearly everyone that funds the Democratic National Committee) are paying a lower percentage of their income in taxes than they did in 1979. But guess what? So are the rest of us! In 1980, for every dollar raise that I received, I was allowed to receive about 45 cents. My marginal tax rate (including federal and state income taxes, Social Security taxes, and state disability insurance) was about 55%. I wasn't a big earner, either. I grossed about $2000 a month--and after the tax vampires were done, that wasn't enough to live large in Los Angeles. My marginal tax rate today is closer to 42%--and I make way more money. I guess Chaitt would be upset because, like the superrich, I am not taxed as heavily as I used to be. The correct response to Chaitt's complaint would be: "So what? Is the purpose of taxes to pay for government services, or to punish people who make more than minimum wage?" You could make an argument that the superrich should pay an even higher percentage of their income than they do now, based on the fact that they don't need all that money. I could buy into that argument, because the superrich tend to spend their money on stuff that is either incredibly childish and extravagant (Britney Spears taking her dog to a restaurant for a $179 steak) or more typically for the superrich, trying to put hard left Democrats into office. But Chaitt isn't making that argument. I wish he would be more explicit about why he is upset. Missing Some Zeroes, I Think Housing is cheap in Boise, compared to California, and mobile homes, even on their own lot are cheap here, but I think someone left some zeroes out: Boise, ID 83713 Is General Motors & Ford Really In This Much Trouble? Or are bond investors overreacting? There are General Motors bonds maturing in October 2008 with annualized YTM (yield to maturity) of 9.068%. There are GM bonds with maturities in 2021 with annualized YTMs exceeding 11%. Ford bonds aren't quite so impressive, but still, there are Ford bonds due in 2025 with annualized YTMs above 9%. There's no question that GM is going to have to do something about its health care benefits costs, and it is conceivable that GM might have to go to the brink of bankruptcy to get out from under the UAW contract. It is conceivable that they might actually go into bankruptcy--but this doesn't mean that their bonds become worthless. A company has to be in pretty bad shape before bondholders get stiffed. GM is not in that bad a shape. It has plants that produce pretty decent cars at a lower price than their Japanese competitors. It has substantial productive assets that, even if GM were absorbed by another company, would still be producing vehicles. These bond yields are just crazy. UPDATE: More here about the reason for the struggle with the UAW. Noted Members of Congress Speech About The Evils of the Filibuster Fortunately, they are Democrats, such as Senator Wellstone, speaking in the Senate on April 2, 1993: I really believe that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, by filibustering through amendment, are making a terrible mistake. They are making a terrible mistake on economic grounds, in terms of what is good for our country economic policywise. They are making a terrible mistake by turning their gaze away from real people with real problems and on a huge and full agenda that has to be met.Of course, Democrats have a long history of using the filibuster to protect their notion of the Constitution, as Senator Byrd observed on the floor of the Senate, November 19, 1989: On November 27, 1922, Senator Samuel M. Shortridge of California moved to take up federal anti-lynching legislation which had passed the House, 8 thus provoking southern senators into launching a vigorous filibuster. On the following morning, immediately following the prayer and a call of the roll to establish a quorum, Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi objected to a request that the reading of the Journal be dispensed with, a request normally granted, and the clerk proceeded to read the Journal. ... Harrison thereupon moved to amend the Journal a third time by inserting the names of localities in which certain North Dakota citizens lived who had, on the previous day, petitioned their senator, praying for the enactment of legislation to stabilize wheat prices. His motion on this occasion being rejected, Harrison candidly announced to the Senate that `we are not disguising what is being done,' and `you are not going to get an agreement to vote on this bill.' He was `opposed to the passage of this so-called `force' bill,' which, should it ever become law, `would be the beginning of tearing down the last fabric left in the Constitution to support the integrity of the State governments.' Underwood then laid down his bare-faced ultimatum to the majority: `There are a large number of men whose names have been sent to the Senate, who have been appointed to important offices . . . and who ought to be confirmed; but they are not going to be confirmed; we are going to transact no more business until we have an understanding about this bill. . . . You know you can not pass it.' There Is a Blog For EVERYTHING Like this blog, Eat Your History, which combines entertaining pop history lessons with associated recipes. For example, today's entry commemorating Alaska Purchase Day combined with a recipe for "SALMON WITH ROASTED ASPARAGUS AND LEMON-CAPER SAUCE." Hunger Strike Protesting Minuteman Project Click over to the picture of the hunger striker, and ask yourself: How long can she last? North Dakota Must Not Have Enough Fun Stuff To Do Someone in Bismarck, N.D., needs to find less destructive ways to entertain himself: BISMARCK, N.D. - A man accused of exposing people to poisonous snakes has been found not guilty by a jury. Is This Parody? Or Just Well-Intentioned & Misdirected? Charlie the Hamster Sings the Ten Commandments with Floyd Robinson Thanks to Dave Barry's blog for bringing this to my attention. Emergency Page for Bill Cosby Lileks is pointing to a very depressing reminder that the dominant media definition of black culture in America today is pimps, whores, and thugs. In 1960, even the KKK wouldn't have tried to portray blacks as sex-crazed criminals like this--I don't think even segregationists in the South would have found this image believable. Bizarre Claim: Child Molesters Are Mostly Hard Core Star Trek Fans It started with this Los Angeles Times article about the efforts of police to locate a child who has appeared in several pornographic films: On one wall is a "Star Trek" poster with investigators' faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie.Corante made some calls, and found that the Times reporter had misreported this: He claims they were misquoted, or if that figure was given it was done so jokingly. Of course, even if the figure was given jokingly, shouldn't the Times' reporter have clarified something that seems rather odd? Shouldn't her editors have questioned her sources?Interesting--and I would suggest that perhaps what you are seeing is that pedophiles tend to be pretty emotionally immature. There are lots of Star Trek fans out there, but most of them, at least once they get past their teen years, aren't the sort of geeks so marvelously parodied in Galaxy Quest. From what I have read about those who sexually abuse children, there are two major categories. One group, usually abusing children within their household (although seldom their biological kids), tend to do so while under the influence of alcohol, and are usually weak in self-control. Their primary sexual orientation is not towards children. Some of this group are successfully treated; some are not. The other group, "fixated pedophiles," are quite different. The fixated pedophile's sexual orientation is primarily towards prepubescent and pubescent children (and usually towards boys). Some psychologists who study sexual abuse are convinced that the fixated pedophiles are not repairable. This orientation is characterological, they argue; it is such a fundamental part of their personality that it cannot be altered. I am skeptical, but that is only because I am optimistic about the potential for people to change. Some of the published work that I have read on this asserts that while fixated pedophiles are that way because they were sexually abused, that a rather special set of circumstances has to happen for a victim to become a fixated pedophile. One of the books that I read suggested that the victim had to be close in age to the victimizer, and in a rather narrow window of age where the sexual experience had some element of pleasure to it, and yet an adult sexual orientation had not developed. Arrested emotional development, geeky obssession with Star Trek, and child molestation? Do you suppose there's a connection? One characteristic that I have noticed over the years that is common (although not necessarily universal) among male homosexuals is an emotional immaturity--behaviors and mannerisms better suited to a child or a young teenager. It does make you wonder if there's a connection between arrested emotional development and sexual abuse, doesn't it? Labels: child sexual abuse Schwarzenegger Praises Minutemen; the Reconquista There are a number of areas where Schwarzenegger and I disagree--in a lot of respects, he is closer to a Democrat than a Republican--but I am pleased to see this: SACRAMENTO — Calling the nation's borders dangerously porous, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday praised the private "Minuteman" campaign that uses armed volunteers to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the U.S.Schwarzenegger also asked the Los Angeles area Spanish-language TV station to pull their "Los Angeles, Mexico" billboard. The station says that this was a joke. Sorry, there's too much ugly history behind the Reconquista movement to find this funny. (The term Reconquista originally referred to the reconquest of Moorish Spain by Christian Europe; the term is now used by certain Marxist Hispanics to refer to the recovery of the Southwest by the same techniques Americans used to take Texas and then California from Mexico in the nineteenth century.) From my unpublished paper, "Race And Reporting: The Los Angeles Times in Early 1916": In 1915, before the Columbus raid, the United States government became aware of the Plan of San Diego. Carranzista officers hatched the plan with the backing of German and Austrian diplomats at Monterrey in Nuevo León. It proposed a revolution to retake the Southwestern states, and establish a republic controlled by Mexicans, Japanese, blacks, and Indians. All Anglo males over sixteen were to be killed. Once successful, the new republic would attach itself to Mexico. The Plan then called for assistance to blacks to similarly take the Southern states out of the United States.[18] While seemingly ludicrous today, there were at least 73 border raids along the Texas border in 1915, “many in the name of the Plan of San Diego”[19]— and a Mexican Army lieutenant colonel loyal to Carranza led at least one of these raids.[20] In Texas, not surprisingly, popular awareness of this plan led both to vigilantism and murder of Hispanics with no apparent connection to the Plan by state and local police,[21] pushing even more Hispanics into supporting the Plan.[22] At least 35,000 residents of the lower Rio Grande Valley relocated to avoid the raids and the revenge that had taken on a distinctly racial nature.[23] Thursday, April 28, 2005
The ACLU Gets It Right, For Once Ohio, like South Carolina, offered its citizens a chance to get specialized license plates with the motto "Choose Life," and the special license fees would be used to fund pro-life counseling for pregnant women. The ACLU argued that offering only "Choose Life" plates--without the alternative "Choose Death" or "Choose To Dispose of Inconvenient Fetal Masses" plates was viewpoint discrimination in an official capacity. They are correct, of course. What do you suppose the chances are that the ACLU would have filed suit if California had offered, "It's Just Fetal Tissue, Get Over It" plates? Not terribly high. Here in Idaho, we have a similar specialty plate for Corvettes. (This was the idea of the father of one of my son's friends, who owns Fairly Reliable Bob's, a used Corvette dealer in Boise.) The money from these has funded a variety of charities here in Idaho over the years. Now, I admit that there's nothing terribly controversial about Corvettes. You either own one, or you are subhuman. Still, I think you could make an argument that Idaho is engaging in "viewpoint discrimination" because they have this Corvette specialty plate, but not one for say, the Fiat 850, or the AMC Pacer. Sure, the Idaho Pacer Club (if such a collection of deranged people existed) probably could get the Idaho legislature to create such a specialty plate authorized--but until they do so, how do we know? And isn't the lack of such a specialty still discrimination? I do expect to see the ACLU filing suit about this violation of viewpoint neutrality immediately, just to prove that it is concern for the First Amendment that motivated their suit in Ohio, not their support for abortion. Labels: abortion Carrying a Concealed Burrito Amusing story--although it tells us the paranoia that school officials are now operating under: Police locked the school down after a citizen saw a student walking into school with a long, skinny object wrapped in a white cloth. He thought it was a gun and called police. The Interstate Minors Abortion Bill A little background: many states require minors to get parental consent for an abortion. This shouldn't be such a big surprise; you can't get your ears pierced without parental consent, and abortion is just a bit more dangerous of a procedure. Even a D&C can lead to pretty serious complications. To my knowledge, antibiotics are regularly prescribed after a D&C, and hemorrhaging is not at all unknown. A few states do not require parental consent for an abortion. The House of Representatives passed a bill that prohibits anyone but a minor's parents from transporting her from one state to another for the purpose of obtaining an abortion. Is such a law constitutional? On the question of interstate commerce, there seems to be no question. Abortion is a business, and this bill impacts transportation of customers across state lines, so Congress is within its authority to regulate it. I'm not thrilled with many of the laws that Congress has passed pursuant to its authority to regulate interstate commerce, but unless liberals want to claim that all the laws that they have enthusiastically supported for a century were wrongly upheld, there is no question about this being within Congressional authority to regulate. The only basis to deny the constitutionality of such a law would be to claim (as abortion rights activists like to do) that there is a right of minors to obtain abortions without parental consent. This might be an argument for striking down state parental consent laws, or for striking down a federal law requiring minors to obtain parental consent, but I don't see that this invalidates a law regulating interstate transportation of minors to obtain abortions. If liberals were trying to strike down all laws that distinguished minors from adults, then they might have a point. But liberals are still defending child labor laws. In the last few years, liberals have vigorously pushed for laws prohibiting sale of tobacco to minors, and even tried to get tobacco advertising removed from magazines that primarily cater to minors. I haven't seen liberals arguing for repeal of the laws against selling alcohol to minors. Some liberals do want the drinking age lowered to 18, but while I think that would be a mistake, it at least would be consistent with the idea that you become a full adult at that age--instead of the current hodgepodge of ages. I can imagine how ballistic liberals would go if anyone proposed abolishing the requirement that you have to be 18 to buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer. Oddly enough, there seems to be only two areas where liberals are intent on treating minors like adults: abolishing age of consent laws by insisting that minors have a constitutional right to have sex with adults, and making abortion available without parental consent or even notification. Coincidence? I don't think so. One of the troubling aspects to all of this is the enormous number of adult men who impregnate minors--and I am not talking about 19 year old guys and 17 year old girls. I'm talking about 30 year old guys and 13 year old girls. Planned Parenthood has played a major part in making sure that these crimes don't come to light. You might almost think that there's some connection between the "abolish age of consent laws" and "no parental consent or notification for abortions". UPDATE: A recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics survey finds that a majority of Americans support both parental consent and parental notification for minors having an abortion. Not surprisingly, respondents who identified themselves as pro-life overwhelmingly supported parental notification (95%) and parental consent (93%). (I would love to hear the reasons for the 5% and 7%, respectively, of pro-life respondents who oppose requiring notification and consent.) Even among pro-choice respondents, however, there was a majority in favor of a requirement for parental notification (64%) and parental consent (55%). Labels: abortion Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Are All Reporters Stupid? Or do they just rewrite the same press releases, customized for each state? I mentioned how the Houston Chronicle reporting the startling fact that crime rates were falling--while the number of prison inmates is going up! Wow! How did that happen? Now, a Florida TV station has also discovered this counterintuitive situation: The national crime rate has fallen over the past decade, but the government reports the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released and Florida's growth rate is outpacing most other states.What will they report next? "Rain falls; but ground gets wet!" Everyone's Dream Finding buried treasure! One morning three weeks ago, such a fairy tale suddenly came true for Barry Villcliff and Tim Crebase, two friends trying to dig up a small tree in Crebase's yard in Methuen, they said.UPDATE: Here's the sad follow-up: they stole it from a house they were roofing. Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal Raped: What Did She Do To Provoke It? Well, no, she wasn't raped, but that's the right analogy: The 27-year-old actress, who stars in a new film about the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center, said in an interview last week that the United States "is responsible in some way" for the attacks.You know, if the 9/11 attacks had been done by Latin Americans, this argument might have at least some vague connection to reality. The U.S. has a long and often less than honorable history of intervention south of the Rio Grande. If the 9/11 attacks had been committed by Iranians, you might be able to draw some connection to the overthrow of Mossadegh by the CIA in the 1950s. If the 9/11 attacks had involved a bunch of Congolese, still upset about the overthrow of Lumumba 40 years ago, you could at least draw a connection. If the 9/11 attacks had been done by Cubans angry about the Bay of Pigs and attempts on Castro's life, I could at least see it as an overreaction. If the 9/11 attacks had been committed by Palestinians angry about our support of Israel, this argument might have at least a fragment of plausible argument. But the worst criticism that you can make of U.S. policy towards the Arab world is that we didn't intervene in the affairs of their governments. Before 9/11, we let Arabs control their own destiny (with the single exception of the Palestinians--whose complaints about Israel, while having some merit, leave plenty of blame in the Arab world). The greatest evil that we did is to buy oil from their governments, turning much of the population of countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia into welfare cases--far richer than they had been in the preindustrial state. If there is any complaint that the Arab world had with the U.S., it reminds me of Mark Twain's observation: "The difference between a man and a dog is that if you take a starving dog off the street, feed it, care for it, and love it, it will not bite you. And that is the difference between a man and a dog." Why Inheriting Wealth Isn't Always a Good Idea This is one of those almost tongue-in-cheek sort of obituaries from the Telegraph that carries a valuable lesson about why inherited wealth can be quite destructive. Note that this guy is a descendant of the evangelical conservative who led the struggle for all sorts of reforms: child labor laws; insane asylum reform; and many other improvements in early Victorian England: The 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, whose death aged 66 was confirmed yesterday, demonstrated the dangers of the possession of inherited wealth coupled with a weakness for women and Champagne. How Technology Changes Social Behavior And not always in a good way: In one video clip, labelled Bitch Slap, a youth approaches a woman at a bus stop and punches her in the face. In another, Knockout Punch, a group of boys wearing uniforms are shown leading another boy across an unidentified school playground before flooring him with a single blow to the head. Imagine That: More Prison Inmates, Less Crime From the Houston Chronicle, this astonishing coincidence: While the U.S. crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, the government reports.The article even goes on to talk about: Paige Harrison, the report's co-author, said the U.S. increase can be attributed largely to get-tough policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s. Among them are mandatory drug sentences, "three-strikes-and-you're-out" laws for repeat offenders and "truth-in-sentencing" laws that restrict early releases.This is one of those "duh!" articles that just makes me wonder what they put into the water coolers at the Houston Chronicle. Is there anyone, except the Sentencing Project, that doesn't see a connection between locking up criminals (even the drug offenders who are most of the inmates--and who commit a large fraction of the violent crimes as well) and dropping crime rates? The Shifting Tax Burden TaxProfBlog reports on a Wall Street Journal article about how the tax burden has shifted from the poor to the rich since 1979. The top .1% in 1979 paid 5.06% of income and Social Security taxes; now they pay 9.52%. The bottom 20% paid 1.22% of the tax burden in 1979; now they pay 0.65% of the tax burden. Of course, one reason for this difference could be that the top .1% today make a lot more money than the top 1% did in 1979. Back in 1980, I went to work for a startup that had just been bought out by GenRad. The founders were, to my way of thinking, fabulously rich; each had received $5 million for their shares. Paul went out and bought a red Porsche 928 for himself, and a white 928 for his wife; Bruce bought a 7-series BMW--cars that an ordinary engineer could never hope to own in Los Angeles. Today, I would only think of them as being rich, since people with $5 million in assets are so common. How Common Was Abortion Before Roe v. Wade? This paper by John Lott and John Whitley contains an interesting table on page 31 that shows abortion rates by state for the years 1969-73. Which states are included varies substantially, but one of the interesting aspects of this table is that in states where, according to standard mythology, abortion was limited to saving the life or health of the mother before Roe v. Wade (1973), there were more abortions per 1000 live births than in the five states that had made abortion available on demand. Oregon, for example, had 199 abortions per 1000 live births in 1970. This cuts both ways. If you believe that Roe v. Wade started a deluge of murdering babies, then why was the abortion rate so high in states that pro-lifers would consider civilized? Does anyone seriously believe that 16% of Oregon pregnancies required an abortion for the life or health of the mother? It should be obvious that a lot of those were elective abortions, disguised as being for "the life or health of the mother." If you believe that before Roe, America was a barbarous place where women had to get backstreet abortions (except for the five "enlightened" states of Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, and Washington), then you need to explain why the abortion rates in some of the states with severe abortion restrictions were higher than the abortion rates in the states that allowed abortion on demand. I find this data fascinating, and disturbing to the conventional wisdom. Labels: abortion Turning the Tables John Lott's article in Investor's Business Daily today points out the absurdities of the liability suits against gun makers. Regular readers of my blog will not find any great surprises there: Every product has illegitimate uses and undesirable consequences, but even lawsuits have had their limits. In 2002 in the U.S., car accidents killed 45,380 people and injured another 3 million, 838 children under the age of 15 drowned, 474 children died from residential fires, and 130 children died in bicycle accidents.One section of the article, however, started me thinking in a mischievous way: Obviously, bad things happen with guns. But the suits ignore that guns also prevent bad things by making it easier for victims to defend themselves. Unlike the tobacco suits, gun makers have powerful arguments about the benefits of gun ownership.Wouldn't it be entertaining to turn the tables, and file suit for injuries caused by gun control laws? We can't sue governments for disarming victims; they enjoy sovereign immunity for actions that are within the normal scope of governmental activity--and unfortunately, passing stupid and counterproductive laws is definitely within the normal scope of governmental activity. But wouldn't it be entertaining to file suit against the gun control groups that have lobbied for these laws? There is absolutely no question in my mind that the courts would decide these cases on behalf of the gun control groups. Even if the law wasn't clear on this, judges are overwhelmingly on the side of gun control. Still, the gun control groups have lost nearly every suit that they have filed against the gun manufacturers and distributors, and the courts have usually thrown these suits out because the theories involved were contrary to the established state of liability law in the U.S. Winning these suits has been terribly expensive for the gun makers--expensive enough that Smith & Wesson, a few years ago, went ahead and signed an absurd agreement with the gun control groups to make the pain stop--and all they did was create a new pain, as gun owners stopped buying S&W products. (S&W has since changed hands and performed the appropriate penance for their sins; you may now again buy S&W with a clear conscience.) Wouldn't it be fair if a few attorneys with some time on their hands decided to file suit against the Violence Policy Center, the Brady Campaign, and some of the other gun control lobbying groups, on behalf of victims of violence? The argument would be something like this: 1. Gun control laws that make it difficult for law-abiding adults to carry a gun for self-defense increase the risk of injury or death to good people because armed victims deter criminal attack. Not every gun control law fits this description, of course, and the suit can stipulate that some gun control laws are either neutral, or may actually reduce crimes. However, laws that effectively prevent law-abiding adults from carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense are not in that category. 2. While it is difficult to determine that any particular person would not have been victimized if not for particular gun control laws, it is certainly the case that such laws increase the overall risk. (This is somewhat analogous to the lawsuit filed in New York City that sued gun makers whose guns were not known to be involved in the crimes that injured the plaintiffs.) 3. If not for the actions of the Violence Policy Center, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, et. al., these laws would not exist, and the plaintiffs would not have been injured. The chain of causation can be demonstrated by the defendants' own puff pieces about how effective they are at preventing non-discretionary concealed handgun permit laws. Now, as I said, this would be a completely ridiculous theory, and I would be really horrified if a judge found it reasonable. Any judge that did buy it should be impeached, or at least have his crayons taken away. (Of course, the same was true with many of these firearms liability suits.) But how much would it cost the VPC, the Brady Center, etc., to defend these suits? Money and time spent defending themselves is money and time that they aren't spending suing gun makers. Don't Be Stupid About Mortgages From coverage of a local employer's efforts to reduce its staff: Remax West real estate broker Stacy Budell, whose office is within two blocks of HP, said she already has fielded a dozen calls from worried employees. "They're all saying: 'How much can we get for our house?' " She said most HP homeowners she's spoken to hope to sell their homes and relocate for new jobs, a potentially money-losing proposition despite Boise's strong housing market. How Many Uninsured Americans Are There? It appears that there are fewer than everyone assumes. From, of all places, the Los Angeles Times: WASHINGTON — The number of Americans without health insurance — one of the most watched and worrisome indicators of economic well-being — may be overstated by as much as 20%, according to research conducted for the government.The article goes on to explain that the 45 million uninsured number comes from Census Bureau studies which appear to greatly understate the number of people who are covered under Medicaid. What is also amazing is the range of results from different surveys: Four government surveys attempt to estimate the number of Americans who are without coverage for a full year, a potentially harmful gap. The results range from a high of 45 million in the Current Population Survey to a low of 19 million in the less-known Survey of Income and Program Participation, also by the Census Bureau.Now, I don't consider 20 million uninsured a number that we should dance and shout for joy about, but remember that there are a lot of people who are uninsured because they choose to be. I have one friend who has decided that he doesn't need health insurance for his family--at least, not enough to get a job. He is convinced that God will provide. I have a number of acquaintances who I suspect don't have health insurance because there's no need for it: in the unlikely event that they had something come up that produced a $500,000 hospital bill, they would just write a check for it. They would notice it, and it would hurt, but rather like the rest of us having to write a $250 check to cover their collision deductible. There are a lot of young single people who can afford to buy health insurance, but are convinced that they don't need it, and are prepared to gamble about this--they have better places to spend their money. No question, a lot of people are uninsured because they can't afford it, and their employer doesn't provide health insurance. But since we don't even know whether there are 20 million uninsured--or 45 million uninsured--I would like a bit more precise information about how many people are in this category before coming up with a legislative solution. Monday, April 25, 2005
"Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall" One of the great speeches of the twentieth century--not quite up there with John Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner," but still a powerful speech--is Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." One of the signs of how powerful a speech is that almost twenty years later, you find phrases from it being consciously used as models. I was looking for information on Cafe, an open source version of Java, and I found this very carefully written letter from Eric S. Raymond of the Open Source Initiative to Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, encouraging Sun to make Java open source--and this sentence jumped out at me: Sun's insistence on continuing tight control of the Java code has damaged Sun's long-term interests by throttling acceptance of the language in the open-source community, ceding the field (and probably the future) to scripting-language competitors like Python and Perl. Once again the choice is between control and ubiquity, and despite your claim that "open source is our friend" Sun appears to be choosing control. Sun's terms are so restrictive that Linux distributions cannot even include Java binaries for use as a browser plugin, let alone as a standalone development tool.Cute! Obviously, there's no comparison between the Berlin Wall and Sun's refusal to open source Java--but it did give me a laugh. BBC: Fair & Balanced Except that they hired hecklers to cause problems for the Conservative Party: The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader.Does anyone still take seriously the notion that the BBC is not politically biased? New York Times Admits Assault Weapon Ban Didn't Work This article appeared in one of the Mississippi papers, but it also appeared in the New York Times: Despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns, the expiration of the decadelong assault weapons ban last September has not set off a sustained surge in the weapons' sales, gun makers and sellers say. It also has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime in the past seven months, according to several metropolitan police departments.This is rich! The gun control groups caused (by Bill Clinton's admission) at least 20 Democratic members of the House their seats in the 1994 elections, and now the VPC says that "there never really was one...." So for the purpose of symbolism, the gun control groups assisted in causing the Democrats to lose control of Congress--and certainly played a small part in John Kerry's loss last November. My question for Democrats is this: Why do you continue to support restrictive gun control? It didn't work. It is a political loser for you. Do you like to lose? This Sounds Pretty Open & Shut It is also one of the arguments that conservatives have advanced for why obscene materials should not be available--molesters use them to persuade victims that "everyone does this". This news story is from Cocoa, Florida: Cocoa police arrested a veteran teacher over the weekend and charged him with molesting a student nearly 100 times.Another news story indicates that there are other victims, and suggests that Cliatt could use the NAMBLA defense: The boy told police that Cliatt would show him homosexual pornography videos and then perform sexual acts on him in a classroom, according to the report. Solar Power: Not Practical In This Latitude It turns out that there's really only about 3 1/3 hours of useful sunlight in winter at this latitude. I spoke with a dealer in solar power systems and he told me that in winter, I would only be able to get about half of my electricity from photovoltaics, unless I was prepared to go to a 10 to 15 kilowatt peak output system. Even a 2.1 kilowatt system would be $20,000 to $30,000 installed. If I have to spend $9000 to put in the line from Idaho Power, solar power just doesn't make any sense. Sunday, April 24, 2005
The Ultimate Specialized Blog I've mentioned Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) before. Rep. Hastings is one of a very small number of federal judges removed from office for corruption. The evidence that he solicited a bribe from a drug dealer who was before him in court wasn't strong enough to convict him, but it was strong enough for a unanimous Senate to remove him from the bench. Not surprisingly, he was immediately elected to the House of Representatives. Anyway, there is a blog devoted just to Rep. Hastings's misbehavior! Time Travellers From The Medieval Period I mentioned a few days ago the claim of widespread anti-Semitism at the Air Force Academy--and my skepticism of the report, largely because it seemed to be largely religious in nature. I've met a few anti-Semites in my time, but overwhelmingly, they did not base their anti-Semitism on religion. I received the following email from a regular reader who served in the Navy from 1977 to 1981: I've been out of the Navy since 1981, so times may have changed. But let me tell you, I had my fair share of "Christians" who openly expressed very high levels of anti-Jewish bias. The common factors were a), they were black, and b) they were Baptists. I got the usual you're-going-to-hell stuff from more effervescent Roman Catholics, but they generally left it at that and did not let it influence things like performance evaluations.America is a big country. This utterly amazes me. Have others had experiences like this? |
