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Labels: health care John Nuttall, 57, needs surgery to set the ankle which he broke in three places two years ago because it did not mend naturally with a plaster cast. Doctors at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro have refused to operate because they say his heavy smoking would reduce the chance of healing, and there is a risk of complications which could lead to amputation. They have told him they will treat him only if he gives up smoking. But the former builder has been unable to break his habit and is now resigned to coping with the injury as he cannot afford private treatment. He is in constant pain from the grating of the broken bones against each other and has been prescribed daily doses of morphine. Mr Nuttall, of Newlyn, Cornwall, broke the ankle in a fall in 2005. Initially he refused surgery because he had caught MRSA at a different hospital four years earlier, and was terrified of history repeating itself. He hoped the fractured bones would knit together with a standard plaster cast to immobilise his ankle. But six months and three plaster casts later, it became clear that an operation to pin the bones was the only solution. Labels: health care German researchers this week showed off their Gryphon personal strap-on jet wing that lets the pilot scream through the air at about 135MPH. The Gryphon features a six-foot wing and hand-held rotary controls for the rudder. The system includes onboard oxygen and helmet that features a heads-up display. Researchers say the final version of the flying wing will contain an electronic system that will take care of some of the steering for the pilot which today can be a little tricky, researchers say. The company also plans to add small jets to the wing making it a true jetpack in the future.To land the wing today, the pilot separates the device from the backpack and opens the parachute contained inside. The wing remains attached to the pilot by a cord and falls to the ground a few feet below him, complete with the baggage stored inside - the current capacity is 44 lbs. The system is being touted as a faster and stealthier alternative to high altitude parachutes, known as HALOs currently in use by the military. While the Gryphon pilot moves through the air much faster than someone using a regular parachute, he can stay in the air much longer if need be, because there is no period of free fall, researchers say. The ideal application for the Gryphon could be its use by Special Forces units to jump from a great heights and then glide through the air to a site of intervention many miles away. Parachutists could get into areas that are difficult to reach without their transport planes having to fly into a danger zone. A stealthy Gryphon insertion followed by a massive air assault might be an option where there was a target which might move away on short notice, or if there were hostages who might be killed at any sign of a rescue mission, researchers say. Researchers say the Gryphon is aimed at the military and could also become an extreme sport system. No timetable for either application was announced however. The Gryphon is currently under development by German company ESG Elektroniksystem. Labels: humor Labels: gun history, my books Labels: gun rights Labels: deinstitutionalization U.S. 10-year Treasury bond prices continued to slide today, as traders ease off buying bonds on expectations of a guaranteed rate cut. Traders have priced in a 100% chance of a Fed rate cut next week, which is allowing bonds to take a breather after nearly 2 months of straight rallying. Bonds typically rise on economic weakness and fall on economic strength, so traders have taken a mostly defensive stance ahead of next week's Fed announcement. The dollar fell to new lows versus the euro, and was down against the yen, as traders bet that the U.S. Fed will cut rates next week to ease economic pressures. The recent credit crisis shook up the currency markets, with the yen rallying on equity weakness, as traders exited the carry trade. The dollar has been under major pressure in the last weeks ahead of the Fed meeting; with an almost guaranteed rate cut on the way, many traders are taking positions against the dollar on overall slowing growth and credit exposure. Labels: gun rights Labels: cars Labels: transgender Labels: decline and fall of Western civilization Labels: humor Labels: freedom of speech Labels: freedom of speech, Islamofascism Labels: terrorism Labels: terrorism Labels: terrorism Labels: gun history (2007-09-07) — Just hours after the release of al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden’s latest video message inviting all Americans to convert to Islam, U.S. President George said he would “seriously consider the offer, because it sure would simplify the war in Iraq.” “If I convert to Islam and order all of our troops to do the same,” said Mr. Bush, “we can stay in Iraq indefinitely, drop the restrictive rules of engagement, save a lot of money by using cheap, unguided bombs, clear neighborhoods flat out, blow up mosques with impunity and still go to heaven — not to mention that I’d get more favorable coverage from the U.S. news media.” Labels: politicians behaving badly Labels: terrorism The Letter I Am Sending Today to My Idaho Legislators Is there a serious and avoidable problem with Idaho's mental health system? I am seeing some troubling signs that deficiencies in how we deal with the mentally ill are impairing public safety. This letter will give a series of recent incidents that at least suggest that the legislature has a duty to ask some questions. The most visible example involves Jason Hamilton, the recent sniper in Moscow. He had a history of violence, and after a suicide attempt, was ordered to submit to a psychological examination--at which time he told the psychiatrist, that the next time, "he would try to take a large number of people with him." Three months later, that's exactly what he did, killing three people and himself.[1] I've tried to understand why Hamilton wasn’t hospitalized for mental illness. It doesn't seem to be a deficiency of our laws. As I read Idaho Code 66-322, Hamilton was clearly someone who needed to be hospitalized. So why wasn't he? Was it lack of space? Did the psychiatrist not believe that Hamilton seriously intended mass murder? Did he not realize that Hamilton had a history of violence? Was the psychiatrist afraid of being sued if he recommended that Hamilton be hospitalized? If the problem was just the short, unhappy life of Jason Hamilton, perhaps we could just write it off as one individual tragedy. But there are plenty of other worrisome examples that suggest that something isn’t working here. John Joseph Delling is being held on two murder charges, among many other crimes. There are some indications that Delling's problems involve mental illness. News accounts suggest that Delling's conviction at 17 of a crime of violence was because of mental illness. "The victim requested that Delling be given a mental evaluation, but it's not clear whether an evaluation took place."[2] More recently, family members recognized that his behavior suggested mental illness, and took away and sold his guns.[3] There are plenty of other examples, such as Brent Eugene High of Nampa, who was arrested back in January after allegedly murdering two housemates with an ax. He told police that he did it, and his remarks and actions suggest schizophrenia. His attorney is arguing mental defect.[4] This isn't just an Idaho problem, of course. America has had a lot of recent incidents where people with significant mental illness problems have become headlines by committing or attempting murder--and very often, there was plenty of advance warning, with previous hospitalizations and indications that they were psychotic and dangerous.[5] This problem is gaining national prominence—at least partly because of the Virginia Tech murders a few months ago. The New York Times wrote about "spree killers" several years back, and also noticed that much of the problem is associated with mental illness.[6] Professor Bernard Harcourt of the University of Chicago Law School has recently pointed to a statistically significant relationship between the mental hospital institutionalization and prison population rates and murder rates from 1928 through 2000.[7] Not every mentally ill person is a danger to others, of course. Many are completely harmless to others—but dangerous to themselves. It is heartbreaking to read news accounts from Oregon of mentally ill people who have starved themselves to death, while family, friends, and police looked on helplessly.[8] To a large extent, the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960s and 1970s is to blame. Isn’t it time for our legislature to start asking some questions about this? There’s no question that some of the changes that Idaho might have to make are going to cost some money. But I find myself wondering if it is really that much more expensive to provide sufficient care for the mentally ill before they become tragic headlines. Murder trials, cleaning up crime scenes, psychiatric evaluations to determine competency to stand trial--these aren't cheap, either. And while hospitalizing a mentally ill person for many years (as some may need to be) is expensive--so is life in prison for murder. Dealing with homelessness isn't cheap either, and this is at least partly a consequence of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. The January 2006 unsheltered homeless survey for Idaho showed that 5.1% of the homeless by their own answer were seriously mental ill, 14.3% described themselves as "disabled" but would not identify in what way, and 10.1% were homeless because of substance abuse (with which mental illness is often masked).[9] I look forward to hearing from you that the legislature is prepared to start asking questions. As you might gather from this letter, I have been researching the subject for several years now, and I would be happy to provide assistance to legislative staff in looking into what actions, if any, the legislature might need to take for the benefit of Idahoans. [1] Associated Press, “Moscow gunman's suicidal admission,” KTVB, May 22, 2007, last accessed August 16, 2007. [2] Associated Press, “Man accused of shooting 3 during cross-country road trip; high school link probed,” USA Today, April 10, 2007, last accessed August 16, 2007. [3] Rebecca Boone, Associated Press, “Classmate slaying suspect called erratic,” Boston Globe, April 11, 2007, last accessed August 16, 2007. [4] Kaycee Murray, “Both Nampa murder victims identified,” KTVB, January 29, 2007, , last accessed August 16, 2007; Heath Druzin, “High pleads not guilty in double murder,” Idaho Statesman, June 23, 2007. [5] “Slaughter in a School Yard,” Time, January 30, 1989, 29; AP, “Police Still Unraveling Trail Left by Woman in Rampage,” New York Times, May 22, 1988, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jaxon Van Derbeken, Bill Wallace, and Stacy Finz, “L.A. Suspect Dreamed of Killing: History of erratic behavior, ties to neo-Nazi group,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1999, A1, , last accessed April 29, 2007; Jim Yardley, “DEATHS IN A CHURCH: THE OVERVIEW; An Angry Mystery Man Who Brought Death,” New York Times, September 17, 1999, last accessed April 29, 2007; “Tapes, letters reveal gunman's chilling actions, thoughts,” CNN, September 17, 1999, last accessed April 29, 2007; Bill Miller, “Capitol Shooter's Mind-Set Detailed,” Washington Post, April 23, 1999, last accessed April 24, 2007; Martin Kasindorf, “Woman kills 5, self at postal plant,” USA Today, February 1, 2006, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jim Maniaci, “'Crazy as a loon',” Gallup [N.M.] Independent, February 2, 2006, last accessed April 24, 2007; “Close the loophole Cho sneaked through ,” Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot, April 25, 2007, last accessed April 25, 2007; Dr. Michael Welner, “Cho Likely Schizophrenic, Evidence Suggests,” ABC News, April 17, 2007, last accessed April 24, 2007; UPI, “AROUND THE NATION; Courtroom Gunman Is Freed in Bail,” New York Times, April 13, 1986, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jeremy Hay, “Son held in slaying of mother in RP,” Santa Rosa (Cal.) Press-Democrat, April 19, 2007, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jaxon Van Debeken, “Slasher Suspect Had Violated His Previous Probation: Authorities lost track of case,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 1998, last accessed April 24, 2007; Michael A. Fuoco, “Baumhammers' attorney to argue mental infirmity,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 1, 2000, last accessed April 24, 2007; Jim McKinnon, “Baumhammers' father protests death penalty,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 10, 2001, last accessed April 24, 2007; Frank Trippett, “The Madman on the Ferry,” Time, July 21, 1986, last accessed May 13, 2007; Jim O'Grady, “Officials Decide to Release Man Who Killed 2 With Sword,” New York Times, March 26, 2000, , last accessed May 13, 2007; Susan Kuczka, “As teen heals, issues about attacker linger,” Chicago Tribune, August 28, 2007, last accessed September 9, 2007; Steven Gurr, “Man shot during confrontation: Officials say man had mental history, made threatening gestures,” Gainesville [Florida] Times, September 7, 2007, last accessed September 9, 2007. [6] Laurie Goodstein and William Glaberson, “The Well-Marked Roads to Homicidal Rage,” New York Times, April 10, 2000. [7] Bernard E. Harcourt, “From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution,” Texas Law Review, 84[2006]:1766-75. [8] Michelle Roberts, “Free to Die,” Portland Oregonian, December 30, 2002, last accessed May 7, 2007. [9] Idaho Homeless Policy Council, Idaho’s Action Plan to Reduce Homelessness, last accessed August 17, 2007. Labels: deinstitutionalization, Idaho politics Labels: politicians behaving badly Labels: gun technology Data released by the New York Federal Reserve shows that foreign central banks have cut their stash of US Treasuries by $48bn since late July, with falls of $32bn in the last two weeks alone. "This comes as a big surprise and it is definitely worrying," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas. "We won't know if China is behind this until the Treasury releases its TIC data in November, but what it does show is that world central banks are in a hurry to get out of the US. They don't seem to be switching into other currencies, so it is possible they are moving into gold instead. Gold is now gaining momentum across all currencies and has broken through resistance at 500 euros," he said. While the greenback has been resilient over recent weeks - even regaining something of a 'safe-haven' role as banks scrambled to buy the currency to cover dollar debts - most experts believe that America's $850bn current account deficit will eventually cause the dollar to resume its relentless slide. Two top advisers to the Chinese government gave strong hints in August that Beijing should use its estimated $900bn holdings of US Treasuries and agency bonds as a "bargaining chip", words taken as an implicit threat to trigger as US bond crash if provoked. The Chinese government has since put out an official statement clarifying that it has no intention in taking such an irresponsible step, which would in any case backfire by devaluing China's remaining holding. Mr Powell said the switch out of Treasuires was a purely commercial decision. "If if turns out that the Chinese are behind this, it is merely an attempt to increase returns on investment. It has nothing to do with settling protectionist scores," he said. Labels: economics MEDFORD — A high school teacher wanting to carry a gun on campus is fueling a challenge against a Medford School District policy that prohibits possession of a weapon on school grounds. Portland-based lawyer Jim Leuenberger, with backing from the Oregon Firearms Federation, said in an e-mail sent Friday to the Mail Tribune that he intends to ask a Jackson County Circuit Court judge to declare the policy "illegal and void" for holders of concealed handgun licences. Leuenberger identified the woman only as a high school teacher and said he will file the complaint using "Jane Doe" as the plaintiff. The issue arose when rumors swirled that a Medford teacher was carrying a weapon on campus. School officials approached the teacher and she denied the accusation, said schools attorney Tim Gerking. The district declined to name the teacher because of personnel privacy laws. The teacher was reminded of district policy and asked not to carry the firearm and she said she would comply, Gerking said. The teacher then contacted the firearms federation and Leuenberger. It is not clear whether the teacher ever brought a weapon onto school grounds. Her attorney said she has divorced her husband and obtained a restraining order against him. "Notwithstanding the restraining order," Leuenberger wrote, "she has reason to believe he visited her home when she was absent." When contacted by the Mail Tribune, the teacher asked to remain anonymous because she feared for her and her daughter's safety. Labels: gun rights Labels: humor In 1610, Galileo Galilei published a small book describing astronomical observations that he had made of the skies above Padua. His homemade telescopes had less magnifying and resolving power than most beginners’ telescopes sold today, yet with them he made astonishing discoveries: that the moon has mountains and other topographical features; that Jupiter is orbited by satellites, which he called planets; and that the Milky Way is made up of individual stars. It may seem strange that this last observation could have surprised anyone, but in Galileo’s time people assumed that the Milky Way must be some kind of continuous substance. It truly resembled a streak of spilled liquid—our word “galaxy” comes from the Greek for milk—and it was so bright that it cast shadows on the ground (as did Jupiter and Venus). Today, by contrast, most Americans are unable to see the Milky Way in the sky above the place where they live, and those who can see it are sometimes baffled by its name.
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A New Program? Or Expand An Existing Program?
There's a widespread argument that the government needs to do something about health insurance for the uninsured. I'm more sympathetic to these concerns than I used to be, partly because using emergency rooms in place of a doctor's visit is terribly inefficient. What should cost $40 at a doctor's office becomes $150 in an emergency room. Worse, from both a human suffering standpoint, and because of the costs, some poor people, because they have no coverage, wait until a minor problem becomes a major problem.
Unfortunately, because poor people tend not to be able to pay emergency room bills, through the miracle of cost-shifting, either taxpayers or insured patients get stuck with much of that $150 bill. Because hospitals built with federal funds under the Hill-Burton Act of 1946 can't turn away emergency room patients, and the very poorest Americans are eligible for Medicaid, in a sense, we already have socialized health insurance; it's just not terribly efficient in how it works. If you have an ideological objection to socialized health insurance, you are several decades too late to stop it.
So if our government decides to come up with a more rational approach to this, I find myself asking, "Does an entirely new program make sense? Or expand an existing program?" There is already federally operated health insurance system in existence for the very poorest of Americans: Medicaid. The eligibility rules allow only the very, very poorest Americans to get onto Medicaid. According to this report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (so don't believe everything that they tell you), much of the recent increase in uninsured population consists of families with incomes at 200%-399% of the federal poverty level (or about $40,000 to $80,000 per year family income for a family of four) whose employers dropped coverage.
I've read some years back that a sizable fraction of the uninsured in America earned more than $15 per hour--back when that wasn't a bad wage. My guess is that a fair number of these were people that didn't think that they needed health insurance. A family of four with an $80,000 a year income that has no health insurance makes me scratch my head. Unless they are living in California, or New York City, or a few other incredibly expensive places to live, why can't they afford health insurance? A family of four bringing in $80,000 a year in much of America should be able to buy at least catastrophic health insurance. Is the problem that they can't? Or that they have decided that they don't need it?
So here's my thought for the morning: if the problem is that a family of four earning $25,000 a year can't afford health insurance (and that does not seem ridiculous to me), instead of creating an entirely new agency, with its own fancy new offices, dozens of $100,000 a year plus bureaucrats and thousands of mid-level bureaucrats to administer a program to provide health insurance for those who are too rich for Medicaid, but who make less than say, $30,000 a year for a family of four--why not just expand Medicaid eligibility upward a bit? Some of the regulations would need to be rewritten, and that costs money, but compared to starting up an entirely new program, it has to be administratively inexpensive.
And I fear that this is why the Democrats keep pushing for an entirely new program that would largely duplicate Medicaid. A hundred thousand new unionized government employees! More union dues!
UPDATE: One of my readers pointed to this Cato Institute paper about exploding Medicaid costs to the federal government, and it opens with one of those classic "this trend will continue without anyone every coming to their senses and stopping it" statements:Current trends and policies imply unsustainable growth in federal Medicaid outlays. In the year 2006, federal Medicaid spending was 11.9 percent of federal general revenues and 1.5 percent of GDP. Making conservative assumptions about future growth in Medicaid enrollment and spending per beneficiary, this paper estimates that the present value of federal Medicaid outlays over the next 100 years will take up 24 percent of the present value of federal general revenues and 3.7 percent of the present value of GDP calculated over the same period.
Well, heck, it could, if no one in Congress ever came to their senses, and we don't "solve" the problem by becoming the Islamic States of America, or the Space Brothers give us a cure for obesity, alcoholism, cancer, and pornography. You have to plan for the future, but this kind of breathless extrapolation is a bit much.
By the end of the next 100 years, that is, in the year 2106, Medicaid’s share of federal general revenues will be 48 percent—four times larger than its 11.9 percent share in 2006. In the year 2106, federal Medicaid spending as a share of GDP is estimated to be 7.4 percent—a fivefold increase from its current share of 1.5 percent. If the federal government continues to match state Medicaid outlays at the current rate, Medicaid’s share of GDP in the year 2106 will become 13 percent—or one-eighth of GDP in 2106. If current policies and trends are maintained, federal Medicaid outlays will take up 36 percent of lifetime federal general revenue taxes for males born in 2025 and 69 percent for females born in that year. For females born after 2050, almost all of their lifetime federal nonpayroll taxes will be consumed by their lifetime Medicaid benefits.
I find myself wondering how much of Medicaid's rapidly expanding costs are related to poor people taking their kids with bad colds to the E/R. Perhaps a bit more spending on preventative care--and especially money spent discouraging really destructive behaviors, as much as it would offend the Democrats--might save a good bit of expense down the road.
National Health Service Refuses To Treat Broken Ankle
To hear some people tell the tale, if the U.S. had a national health system, like Britain, Americans would be so much better off. But as this news account from the September 14, 2007 Daily Mail reminds us, there's a cost to having the government exercising a monopoly:A man with a broken ankle is facing a lifetime of pain because a Health Service hospital has refused to treat him unless he gives up smoking.
I can understand the National Health Service's concerns--Mr. Nutall is engaged in a dangerous habit, and it will make it more difficult for him to recover from this surgery. Like all health systems, it is having to make decisions about how to allocate resources. Should it spend it on someone who is behaving foolishly by continuing to smoke? Or spend it on someone else?
Now, I expect that most liberals would regard this is a wonderful thing--the NHS has told him to stop smoking, or they won't do this surgery. But imagine if President Clinton's single payer health insurance scheme gets implemented. Will they be deciding that people who continue to engage in unprotected casual sex are doing the equivalent of continuing to smoke, and refuse them treatment for future STDs (including AIDS)? What about people that are carrying an extra fifty pounds? Using this same model of allocating health care resources to those who aren't actively aggravating their health risks, that would be a rational response.
Pretty obviously, the ACLU would file suit alleging that the casual sex ban discriminated against homosexuals, and the courts would certainly agree. Those who are a little heavy, however, aren't going to be so lucky in challenging this in the courts.
I'm not saying that the current health system in America does any better of a job on this--although in my experience, the most that insurers do here is to charge different health insurance rates for smokers and non-smokers. What am I saying is that those who look to single payer health insurance or a socialized medical system need to look at how those systems actually work, not just at how they want them to work.
Paging Buck Rogers, Paging Buck Rogers
Your jetpack has apparently arrived--or will be shortly:
What Causes Poverty?
Are poverty rates increasing in Ada County (where Boise is located)? If they are increasing, why?
I wasn't able to find poverty rate changes over time, but I did find something very interesting that might explain, at least in part, an increase in poverty rates in Ada County since 2000. Table 2.5 here shows that the percentage of the population living in poverty is usually much higher for Hispanics than for the general population: 17% vs. 8% in Ada County; 24% vs. 12% for the entire state of Idaho--and the Hispanic proportion of the population is increasing in Ada County.
This report from the City of Boise shows that the Hispanic percentage of Ada County went from 4.5% in 2000 to 5.0% in 2004, with a projection of 5.8% in 2009. That doesn't sound like much--but an 11% increase in Hispanics when they are more than twice as likely to be in poverty makes a big difference. Unfortunately, there's no breakdown of illegals vs. legals, or for that matter, of citizens vs. aliens. It would not be at all difficult to see how a large influx of aliens with limited English skills and averaging less than a high school education would increase poverty rates for the county.
Is poverty increasing in America? Is the gap between rich and poor increasing? This New York Times report about income mobility for the period 1988-98 is really cute--you can mouse over the various quintiles of the population and see whether they stayed the same, move up, or moved down in that ten year period. Not surprisingly, a bit more than half of the poorest quintile stayed poor. Also, not surprisingly, most families in the top quintile stayed there. What is a bit surprising is that the percentage of families in the top and bottom quintiles that stayed there after ten years--at least as represented by this graph--was the same.
This suggests that whatever was going in America, there were roughly equal opportunities to fall from the heights and rise from the bottom. If America was the country that liberals like to claim--a place where the rich benefit from everything, and the middle class are being ground down into poverty--you wouldn't know it from watching this relative equal opportunity to rise and false.
About 5% of the richest quintile in 1988 ended up in the poorest quintile by 1998, and about 2.5% of the poorest quintile ended up in the richest quintile over that same ten year period. Families in the middle quintile were slightly more likely to end up in the richest quintile than in the poorest quintile, and about equally likely to end up in the income quintile either just above or just below them. What seems to be increasing is not poverty, but a slight tendency for middle income people to move up.
More recently, what has happened? Here's a 2004 press release from the Census Bureau:
# The number of people below the official poverty thresholds numbered 35.9 million in 2003, or 1.3 million more than in 2002, for a 2003 poverty rate of 12.5 percent. Although up from 2002, this rate is below the average of the 1980s and 1990s.
# The poverty rate and number of families in poverty increased from 9.6 percent and 7.2 million in 2002 to 10.0 percent and 7.6 million in 2003. The corresponding numbers for unrelated individuals in poverty in 2003 were 20.4 percent and 9.7 million (not different from 2002).
That's an increase in the poverty rate from 2002 to 2003, but not a huge one.
More recently, I found this poverty rate table from the Census Bureau. It shows that the percentage of the population living in poverty declined from 12.7% in 2004 to 12.3% in 2006. Fortunately, they give standard error numbers for these percentages, so we can see that the change is statistically significant.
The table also shows a breakdown of poverty rates by state, with a non-significant decline in poverty rate in Idaho from 2004 to 2006. This gives me increased confidence that the increase in Ada County could be because of an influx of illegal immigrants, at least in part. California, Arizona, and Texas, all of which have a huge illegal immigrant population, also have higher poverty rates than Idaho.
There's another table of historical poverty information, covering 1987-2006 for people 16 years of age and older, that shows a connection between work and poverty. People who worked full-time year round were very, very unlikely to be in poverty. Of those who worked full-time year round, the percentage in poverty never exceeded 3%. Of those who did not work at all during the year, the percentage in poverty varied between 19.8% and 24.2%. In other words, those who did not work at all were 6 to 8 times more likely to be in poverty than those who worked full-time year round. Unsurprisingly, those who worked, but not full-time year round, were in the middle in the percentage of those in poverty.
Now, there may be a reason why someone does not work full-time year round, such as a shortage of jobs, or chronic illness. But if someone does not work at all, that has to be more than just a shortage of work. It could be disability, it could be a substance abuse problem, it could be that Mom has a bunch of small children to care for and the father has run off. But the very small percentages of full-time year round workers in poverty suggest that a shortage of decent paying jobs isn't likely to be the primary explanation for living in poverty for anything but a few percent of the poor.
UPDATE: It occurred to me this morning that while less than 3% of those 16 and older who work full time year round are in poverty, that doesn't tell us much about their dependents. The poverty definition is dependent on household size, and there probably is at least one child living in poverty with that worker.
Another difficulty is that while those living in poverty is a very small percentage of full time year round workers--less than 3%--it doesn't tell us much about what percentage of those living in poverty work full time year round. I don't immediately see any statistics on this, but the relative size of populations "full-time year round," those who didn't work at all during the year, and those who worked some--would suggest that full-time year round workers could be a large fraction of those 16 and older who live in poverty. As Different River pointed out here:So: 1.8% of workers earn the minimum wage, and 5.3% of those workers come from households below the poverty line. In other words, only 0.0954% of workers — that is, less than 1 in 1,000 workers — are minimum-wage workers from households below the poverty line. And no doubt not all of them are the highest-earning worker in the household. Some of them probably even have other jobs themselves.
As I pointed out here, a Bureau of Labor Statistics report found that minimum wage jobs were transitory for the vast majority of workers:
Of course, this is not much consolation if you are that 1 in 1,000+ workers. It is probably also not much consolation that at that level, you have to pay taxes on that income. Not regular income tax, but Social Security and Medicare tax. One who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year pays $1,638.74 in Social Security and Medicare tax. Half of that is through a direct payroll deduction, and half is the “employer share,” which is money the employer must pay as a cost of hiring the employee, but which the employee does not actually receive. Thus, the net wages of a full-time, minimum-wage worker, after taxes is only $9,073.06.
We could give a substantial benefit to minumum-wage workers — at no cost to their employers — by exempting workers at that income level from Social Security and Medicare tax. The cost to the Treasury and the Social Security and Medicare systems would be minimal, since there are so few of those workers.But realistically--how many minimum wage workers stay at that level their entire life? For the vast majority of workers, minimum wage is a phase you go through for a few months or, for most, for a year or two, as this Bureau of Labor Statistics abstract explains:
UPDATE 2: I spoke too soon when I suggested that there was at least one child dependent on the person in poverty. This Census Bureau table about poverty and dependent children shows that in 2006, there were 36,460,000 people living in poverty in America, of whom 12,333,000 were related children under 18. That means that for every child under 18 living in poverty, there were roughly two adults living in poverty. Obviously, that's an average; there are probably a lot of poverty families that consist of one adult and two or three children, some that have two parents and two or three children--but that also implies a fair number of person living in poverty with no under 18 children in the house.For example, a study by Ralph E. Smith and Bruce Vavrichek examined the 1-year earnings mobility of workers that initially worked at minimum wage jobs.[3] They found that 63 percent of the minimum-wage workers in their sample were employed at higher-than-minimum wage jobs 1 year later. Also, Bradley R. Schiller found that "only 15 percent of the 1980 entrants still had any (minimum wage) experience after three years, "which suggests that long-term minimum wage employment is rare.[4] More than three-quarters of Schiller’s sample were still attending school while working at their first job, however, and relatively few of the sample workers had embarked on their post-school career.[5]
Not contributing money to Social Security in the first year out of a forty year working career is not going to make any difference to the size of that worker's retirement check. But it may be the difference between having enough money to pay for shoes, or food.
Too Stupid To Buy Bread At The Market Without Assistance
I first heard this expression from a student in the Sonoma State University Shooting Club, and it put me on the floor laughing. Alas, there are plenty of examples in places that you would not expect them.
A friend showed me this message that appeared on the "Edit Direct Deposit" screen for setting up paycheck deposits.Entering a random string of numbers in the account number field, will cause your direct deposit to be rejected. This will delay you receiving pay by several days. If you are trying to inactive your direct deposit contact Human Resources at...
What sort of person would think that entering a random string of numbers in the account field makes sense? Oh yes, the employer is a university.
Speaking Engagement in Twin Falls, Idaho
I'll be speaking in Twin Falls next month. More details here.
What Is The World Coming To?
The Idaho Statesman actually quoted something that I had to say. Admittedly, not about anything substantive, like deinstitutionalization fo the mentally ill, but still, it's a start. Maybe I can stop making joking comparisons of them to the Prince of Darkness.
"I'm always right"
Robyn Ringler is an upstate New York gun control advocate who operates a blog at the Albany Times-Union. (Why someone who isn't a reporter for them has a blog at their newspaper--well, let's just file that under "newspaper shows its lack of political bias," shall we?)
For a long time, she has allowed people to comment about her gun control claims--and while some of the comments were rude and nasty, some have been simply disagreeing with Ms. Ringler. For example, after she made a pretty bizarre claim about how rarely guns are used in self-defense, I commented with a link to the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog. I wasn't rude or insulting--just pointed out that there was evidence that it was actually pretty common. She deleted my comment, as she did for many who posted evidence that contradicted her claims.
Now, she has a right to do that--it's her blog. She also has a right to have no comments at all. You really do need to police comments on your blog, because there will be people that will post comments that aren't just nasty, but criminal in nature. This is part of why I don't allow comments on my blog--it's a lot of work to keep your eye on what's going on there. It does say a lot for Ringler's position that she doesn't allow thoughtful, evidence-based opposing ideas there.
Still, her announcement that she was going to stop allowing comments doesn't particularly upset or surprise me--this is a common response of gun control advocates, who soon discover that we knuckle-dragging Neanderthals don't just outnumber them, but we're smarter than they are--way smarter. What does amuse me is how she chose to announce it. I do not accept comments because I don't have time and I'm always right!
Below is a screen shot that one of my co-bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog took.
Most people (other than lawyers and lobbyists, who get paid to do this), pretty obviously, don't continually defend positions that they think are wrong. But most people recognize that they make mistakes. (I made several yesterday, relating to using regular expressions in sed scripts to remove certain complex strings.) But "I'm always right"? My, that's an arrogant position.
Historical Suicidal Political Cluelessness
When I watch leftists and liberals put up as many obstacles as possible in the War On Terror, I find myself wondering, "Has there ever been such suicidal political cluelessness before? Don't they realize what Islamofascists are going to do to women, to homosexuals, to Jews, to free thinkers, and the rest of the liberal and leftist coalition?" (Let me emphasize that there are women, homosexuals, Jews, and free thinkers who are not part of the liberal and leftist coalition.)
I'm reading Saul Friedlander's Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, largely because my wife thought I was a little too enthusiastic about the arguments of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Friedlander points to some suicidal political cluelessness at the rise of Hitler that easily rival the current idiocy:Even after the April 1 Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, some well-known German-Jewish figures, such as Rabbi Joachim Prinz, declared that it was unreasonable to take an anti-Nazi position. For Prinz, arguing against Germany's "reorganization," who aim was "to give people bread and work... was neither intended nor possible." ... Some eccentrics went much further. Thus, as late as the summer of 1933, in the opening statement of his lectures on the Roman poet Horace, the Kiel University historian Felix Jacoby declared: "As a Jew I find myself in a difficult situation. But as a historian I have learned not to consider historical events from a private perspective. Since 1927, I have voted for Adolf Hitler, and I consider myself lucky to be able to lecture on Augustus' poet in the year of the national revival. Augustus is the only figure of world history whom one may compare to Adolf Hitler."
Friedlander points out that Jacoby's statement among German Jews and Lippman's praise among journalists were exceptional cases--but then again, much of the lunatic fringe left, relative to the American population, qualifies as exceptional cases. If they weren't so stinking rich (people like George Soros, for example), we could just ignore them.
...
And Walter Lippman, the most prominent American political commentator of the day and himself a Jew, found words of praise for Hitler and could not resist a sideswipe at the Jews. [pp. 15-19]
Really, Really Sad
I received an email during the night that is a textbook example of psychosis. I'm just reproducing the beginning of this rambling and bizarre email:You must read all the below to fully understand the threat in your community...
I have no idea who this guy is, but it is the case that people with these severe delusions sometimes let others know about these "conspiracies" before going off the deep end, such as Larry Gene Ashbrook's letters to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, some weeks before he went into Wedgewood Baptist Church and murdered seven people. Others give no advance warning, such as Russell Eugene Weston Jr., who murdered two U.S. Capitol police officers in 1999. From U.S. v. Russell Eugene Weston, Jr. (D.C.App. 2000):
Briefly, as the one time officer, Ted Teeter Jr, White River Jct, Vermont, from three different states, you have this email as a warning of a threat in your community that remains undetected now after numerous years. Further, the below described technology is utilized on those we interact with before their position allows for the calculation of our position we become the next victim which often leads to the victimization of the entire family, children. Interaction in schools, the market or in traffic as we drive allows for the calculation of our position, exponential growth in victimization numbers. Additionally, this email is provided without malicuous intent or to resemble the work of the unstable or estranged individual, I am quite within faculty as I allow the below testimony that is factual and supported by observations, investigations of satellite trajectories and documentation within your region. Below as you read through this letter you'll observe facts that are supported by a classified document furnished far below as I decsribe a technology that has been in use and remains the undetected within hundreds of members of your community and those of within my region and thousands nationally, internationally. Breifly, I was attacked as a very young child by a technology that utilizes a satellite trajectories, "satellite pole" military terminology to provide a continuous connection with a humans neurological system while they never detect the presence which is altering the subjects thoughts, beliefs, decisions, judgements and reasoning along with emotions. To ensure you that the following letter is not specific to myself I'll allow that recently in my community the technology was utilized to neurologically instruct two families that burned their homes down around themselves while they remained inside as their children slept. Upon awareness of my victimization US Army personnel utilizing a process referred to as "audio voices, radar hearing", a process that allows personnel to relay a electromagnetic "voice" within the human subject, provided "Start a church..." several times before a young female eleven years of age from "Sarasota, Fla" was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a "Joseph Smith" as well of Florida. I reside only a few miles away from the mormon churches founders, "Joseph Smith" birthplace in South Royalton, Vermont. Essentially, US Army personnel are utilizing unsuspecting victims of the technology to commit crimes they normally would not have without grotesque alterations in neurological respect. While the subjects recieve foreign neurological instruction US Army personnel provide "Human robots..Zombies etc"Forty-three years old and having a history of mental illness, Weston has lived with family members for most of his life. He has worked for only brief periods as a laborer, maintenance man, and mechanic. The prison psychiatrist who treated Weston and who concluded that he was not competent to stand trial, Dr. Sally Johnson, reported that Weston told her the following: While "working for NASA" in the early 1980's, he developed a "Ruby Satellite System," a powerful reverse time machine that enables users to "push time in reverse.... by passing us through the Jurassic Sea, putting us into another time frame." For those like Weston with access to the "Ruby Satellite System," nothing is permanent-the user can simply reverse time. If convicted and executed, Weston will "simply be time reversed, put into a safe in the Capitol, and be able to resume his life at whatever point he chooses."
Mr. Teeter's email is very troubling. Clearly, Mr. Teeter is mentally ill--and in a form that has historically led to violence. As my postings about deinstitutionalization over the last few months have pointed out, even if the appropriate mental health authorities where he lives (apparently in Vermont) were informed of Mr. Teeter's condition, they couldn't do much about it--until he becomes a bloody headline.
Weston gave Dr. Johnson considerable detail about the Ruby Satellite System. Although the system was originally used infrequently, "those who are now in control are basically cannibals." They have overused the system and "worn time down to 1/32 of one element of time," spawning the development and spread of "Black Heva," a disease similar to HIV or the plague. Black Heva "result[s] from human corpses rot- ting, turning black, and spreading the most deadliest disease known to mankind." Black Heva will soon reach "epidemic proportions," killing thirty-five percent of the people in the United States. System overuse also has resulted in "computers not working right, bones being irregularly shaped, tele- phone poles and electric poles being uneven, buildings leaning, ... rock structures distorting and swelling, [and] unequal ground swelling and wide spread earthquakes." Users can access the Ruby Satellite System through three different consoles, one of which is on the first floor of the U.S. Capitol and has the capacity to override the entire System. Located in the "great safe of the U.S. Senate," the override console is accessible through a "room that is entered by going in the front of the Capitol and taking a door to the left, next to the elevators." Because "time was running out," Weston had to get to the override console in the Capitol so that he could stem the spread of Black Heva and prevent further calamities.
Interest Rates About to Drop?
Well, that's what the bond traders think. From September 12, 2007 TradingMarkets.com:
New Additions
I have added "HR 2640: Sensible Solution or Trojan Horse?" to the popular magazine articles page.
My Second Unexpectedly Pleasant Car Repair This Year
Well, maybe "pleasant" isn't the right word--perhaps, "less unpleasant than I was expecting." A few weeks back, my wife's Equinox had the ABS and Traction Control System lights coming on. We took it into the Chevy dealer in Boise (which was Lithia, then Chevrolet of Boise, now apparently Peterson Chevrolet), and they decided that it was the left front wheel sensor, which provides wheel rotation information used by both the Anti-lock Braking and Traction Control Systems. They replaced it. It came to about $300.
Well, the light came back on again over the weekend. We dropped the car off on Monday. The service advisor informed us, "We replaced the wrong part. The wheel sensor wasn't the problem, but the wiring harness." Because it was an intermittent failure of the harness--and all the test points are behind the wiring harness--they couldn't distinguish from a bad wheel sensor. I was a bit surprised to hear a repair facility admit that they replaced a part in error; more typically, you hear, "Both parts were bad!"
Even more startling was that having admitted that they replaced the wrong part, they are not charging us to replace the wiring harness. Even better, because the parts and labor are slightly less expensive than the part that they replaced in error, they are crediting us with $27 for the difference.
One of the reasons that I hate having cars repaired, along with the enormous hassle of dropping off a car in the morning (especially so far from where we now live), is that you pay a lot of money for experts who often aren't so expert. When a dealer admits that they blew it--and doesn't expect you to pay for their mistake--that's a very positive sign that you are getting something when you pay for expert repair.
What's Wrong With This Sentence?
From the September 12, 2007 Idaho Statesman:While in prison, Spencer cut off her own testicles with a disposable razor blade in an apparent effort to rid her body of testosterone. Spencer survived the self-castration, and prison doctors prescribed testosterone replacement therapy - refusing to prescribe the estrogen that Spencer wanted.
Separate from the issue of Spencer's problem--"Gender Identity Disorder" (GID)--this reporter has decided to go along with Spencer's definition of himself as "her" in a sentence that refers to one of the most clearly male defining parts of one's body.
I shudder to think what will happen when the psychiatric profession recognizes "Species Identity Disorder," and reporters can't figure out whether to refer to someone as he, she, or it. I was going to observe that once SID is recognized, how will a "former-human-who-now-identifies-as-a-lizard" have the right to sue in court? But I'm sure by then, law professors will have rationalized that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the rights of non-humans as well as the transspecied.
Why Rising Gasoline Prices Are Good For You
No, seriously! An economist claims that rising gasoline prices reduces obesity:Science Daily — Just as rising gasoline prices are forcing many Americans to tighten their financial belts, new research suggests higher fuel costs may come with a related silver lining — trimmer waistlines.
I find this claim implausible. Like nearly all human behavior changes caused by financial incentives, it operates at the margins. Where I live, the only regular destination that I can reach by foot rather than by car is my mailbox, which is a bit more than half a mile away. When I lived in West Boise, my job was 1 1/2 miles away. While I very occasionally walked or bicycled, cost was not a factor in the decision--simply because driving 1 1/2 miles was very, very cheap (about 3 1/2 gallons a month), and unless gasoline rose by $10 per gallon, the reduced driving cost was more than made up for with the inconvenience of not being to zip home to have lunch with my wife, and the cost of eating in the company cafeteria.
"An additional $1 in real gasoline prices would reduce obesity in the U.S. by 15 percent after three years," suggests Charles Courtemanche, an economics researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.
Higher gas prices could result in trimmer waistlines, suggests a WUSTL researcher.
"In fact, about 13 percent of the rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to falling real gas prices during the period."
Courtemanche's conclusions are based on a comparison of average state fuel prices with health behavior trends documented in government surveys covering two decades, 1984-2004. He provides evidences for two direct and causal links between gasoline prices and obesity.
"If the price of gas rises, the cost of driving also rises, which may affect body weight in two ways," Courtemanche explains.
"First, people may substitute from driving to walking, bicycling, or taking public transportation. Walking and bicycling are forms of exercise, which increase calories expended, decreasing weight.
"If a person uses public transportation, such as subways, buses, trolleys, or rail services, the need to move to and from the public transit stops is likely to result in additional walking, again decreasing weight.
Even a ten mile each way commute is only 440 miles per month; for a 20 mpg car, that's 22 gallons a month of commute cost. Even a $1 per gallon price increase is only $22 per month (and assuming that mass transit alternatives don't increase in response to rising gasoline prices). It is hard to imagine anyone but the most desperately poor commuters would be influenced by such a paltry amount to give up the convenience of driving to work and back in one's own car.
I can easily see how people who live more than fifty miles from work, and have rapid transit as a realistic alternative, might be encouraged by rising gasoline prices to not drive. Fifty miles each way to work is 2200 miles a month; in a 20 mpg car, that's 110 gallons per month, and a $1 per gallon increase would mean $110 extra month. Maybe that makes a big difference for people who live in the Northeast, or the San Francisco Bay Area, where a 50 mile commute isn't all that unusual, and there are realistic mass transit alternatives available. In most of America, people with 50 mile commutes don't have bus service available, and very few are going to bicycle or walk to work."Second, since the opportunity cost of eating out at restaurants rises when the price of gas increases, people may substitute from eating out to preparing their own meals at home, which tend to be healthier. People may also eat out less in an effort to save money to pay for the increased cost of gas."
This I find this a more plausible explanation. If you live in suburbia or in a rural area (like I do), there are very, very few choices within walking distance. (For me, the only walking distance eating establishments involve road kill--although I did bicycle down to breakfast in Horseshoe Bend once.) It is conceivable that some people, after paying the extra cost of gasoline, may decide that they can't afford to eat out, and instead of gorging themselves at McDonald's or a nice restaurant, stay home instead.
Jernalists Who Cant Spel
There's a difference between typos (which a lot of journalists make) and having no idea what the word is, so you accept what the spell checker suggests. From September 11, 2007 KMVT channel 11:Monday evening, a base jumper dangled from the Perrine Bridge after his parachute got tangled in one of the beams. Gary Golay, a witness says, “his cute opened at about 56 feet. And as soon as it opened, the wind blew it shut, threw it straight into the gerter.”
Okay, I will assume that "cute" was just a missing "h." But "gerter" instead of "girder" and "repelling" instead of "rappelling"?
After hanging for two hours, repelling squads from search and rescue and St. Luke’s lowered him to a boat, where he was life flighted to the hospital.
Sgt. Darron Brown, Twin Falls Co. Sheriff reported, “The bridge is kind of a unique situation, because just repelling off the bridge or being belayed off the bridge in this instance that the gentleman was in, you can't just reach him by going off of the bridge. We had to send a couple of people on the catwalk underneath the bridge, throw a line to the paramedic that was being belayed down to him, so that we could reach him and treat the victim.”
I'm a bit disappointed by "after his parachute got tangled in one of the beams." It's valid English, and if the "jernalist" quoted someone, I would give him high marks for capturing the flavor of a not very educated person. But most people that write for a living recognize that "got" is a very weak and uneducated verb. Something like "after his parachute became tangled in one of the beams" or "after his parachute tangled itself in one of the beams" would be more appropriate to a news organization--not a junior high student's description of the event.
Flat Buns
Carl's Jr. does have a talent for producing salacious and offensive ads. First it was Paris Hilton. This ad is promoting their new patty melt sandwich, with a clever parody of one of the vulgar hip-hop songs--but like the hip-hop song that it parodies, it is vulgar and turns women into sexual objects. All of this for about one second of their new sandwich.
Ditto for this sexually provocative ad--a little classier, but not much--and again, for less than a second of anything about the sandwich. You aren't renting the sexual services of a pretty blonde--you're buying a sandwich, remember?
More proof that you can make a pile of money advertising to the immature.
Golf Humor
I'm not a golfer, but even I can recognize the humor in these:# 10 -- Golfer: (Frustrated.) "I'm going to drown myself in the lake."
Caddy: "Can you keep your head down that long?"
# 9 -- Golfer: "I'd move heaven and earth to break 100 on this course."
Caddy: "Try heaven, you've already moved a lot of earth."
# 8 -- Golfer: "Do you think my game is improving?"
Caddy: "Yes sir, you miss the ball much closer now."
# 7 -- Golfer: "Do you think I can get there with a 5 iron?"
Caddy: "Eventually."
# 6 -- Golfer : "You've got to be the worst caddy in the world."
Caddy: "I don't think so sir. That would be too much of a coincidence."
# 5 -- Golfer: "Please stop checking your watch all the time. It distracts me."
Caddy: "It's not a watch - it's a compass."
# 4 -- Golfer: "How do you like my game?"
Caddy: "Very good sir, but personally, I prefer golf."
# 3 -- Golfer: "Do you think it's a sin to play on Sunday?"
Caddy: "The way you play, sir, it's a sin on any day."
# 2 -- Golfer: "This is the worst course I've ever played on."
Caddy: "We left the golf course an hour ago."
# 1 -- Golfer: "That can't be my ball, it's too old."
Caddy: "It's been a long time since we teed off, sir.
The Triumph of Law Over Common Sense
One of the recurring problems of free speech law is the concept of being "content-neutral." A government agency is allowed to prohibit certain forms of speech as long as the content of the speech is not a factor in making the decision. Thus, a public university can prohibit speeches by uninvited speakers as long as the decision isn't based on the content. If they let uninvited speaker A deliver a speech about the evils of capitalism, they can't let uninvited speaker B deliver a speech about how capitalism is a good thing. Professor Volokh has a discussion of this question of content neutrality over here.
A high school in North Carolina has banned the American flag on campus--as a result of one of these insane triumphs of ACLUism over common sense:SAMPSON COUNTY, N.C. – On the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, students at one high school were not allowed to wear clothes with an American Flag.
Does it bother anyone besides me that the laws of the United States have been twisted to put a symbol of the United States at the same level of protection as symbols of other nations? I'm not sure that I am keen on a ban on flags from other countries--which I suspect is aimed at Mexican nationalists who, for some odd reason, love Mexico so much that they have to move to the U.S.--but banning the flag of our country just to prohibit antipatriotic uses of the Mexican flag is nonsensical.
Under a new school rule, students at Hobbton High School are not allowed to wear items with flags, from any country, including the United States.
The new rule stems from a controversy over students wearing shirts bearing flags of other countries.
Free Speech: Not Allowed In Belgium
A protest in Brussels against the Islamization of Europe was to be held on September 11. And what happened? Proof that the Islamization is well under way. From September 11, 2007 Radio Netherlands:Anti-Islamist protesters are crying foul after the mayor of Brussels banned a demonstration due to attract some 20,000 protesters. Organisers denounced as 'anti-democratic' the arrest of dozens of demonstrators who went out to the streets in spite of the ban. Police also detained the leaders of Belgium's far-right Vlaams Belang party, Filip Dewinter and Frank Vanhecke.
And why was the protest prohibited?
stopislam220.jpgFewer than 200 protesters gathered in the city's EU quarter to rally against the 'Islamisation of Europe'. They were vastly outnumbered by over 1,000 police officers who promptly rounded up anyone brandishing a flag or a megaphone.Freddy Thielemans, Brussels' Socialist Mayor, declared the protest illegal last week, fearing it would lead to violent clashes with the city's 'substantial' foreign community.
But that's not how Arab nations do things, is it? The notion of free speech--especially if it is free speech directed against Islam--simply doesn't exist."We were worried about chaos and security threats. As soon as you get a blanket movement like this that puts everyone under the same label, you risk triggering a backlash."
The protest was organised by Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE), a newly-founded organisation which seeks to regroup all other similar movements in Europe.
Gerard Nash, one of SIOE'ds founders:"The fact that the Mayor banned us just illustrates our point. If people are against us, they could have organised a peaceful protest to say so, that's how we do things in Europe."
Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal reports from the scene, with video of the police breaking up a peaceful protest.
UPDATE: I notice Michelle Malkin has a number of the same links, and some other ones as well about this suppression of free speech by the left.
Anti-War Protestor With Axe
As I mentioned yesterday, some of the anti-war protestors seem to be severely disturbed--because their actions actually hurt their cause, not help it--like this incident in an anti-war protest in Portland. As I mentioned in late July, some of the anti-war protestors have escalated to vandalism and murder. Here's yet another reminder of the mental disturbance that seems to show up surprisingly often in the anti-war protest community, reported by AP on September 11, 2007:AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A U.S. citizen has confessed to using an axe to kill a Dutch student after failing to find a soldier to attack, his lawyer said Tuesday.
The suspect, Carlos Hartmann, 41, of Tecumseh, Mich., has confessed to the Sept. 8 killing on a train platform in the southern city of Roosendaal, defence lawyer Peter Gremmen said.
Gremmen said Hartmann wanted to punish the Netherlands for its support of the war in Iraq.
Hartmann appeared before a judge Tuesday and was ordered held for another two weeks for investigation.
"He hates soldiers, and says that the army kills people, so it would be legitimate if he were also to kill someone . . . from the American military - or from its NATO allies," Gremmen said in a telephone interview.
When he failed to find a soldier at the Roosendaal train station, "he got such a crazy, disturbed idea that he killed a civilian," Gremmen said.
Hartmann did not attempt to escape and was arrested shortly after the killing.
Bureaucratic Snafu
This article from the September 10, 2007 New York Times appears to be the results of two conflicting efforts, both of which are individually sensible, but together produce idiocy, and a violation of freedom of religion:Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.
The first goal--to remove material promoting hatred and extremism--seems perfectly reasonable. In 1940, or 1950, individual prison chaplains would have been told to look over the materials that they had, and use their good judgment to remove such questionable works.
The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups.
Some inmates are outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, in a federal prison camp in upstate New York, filed a class-action lawsuit last month claiming the bureau’s actions violate their rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The second goal is the bureaucrats don't want to have to read every book and listen to every audiotape to make a decision about each and every one--so they hired some experts to tell them what to allow:The Bureau of Prisons said it relied on experts to produce lists of up to 150 book titles and 150 multimedia resources for each of 20 religions or religious categories — everything from Bahaism to Yoruba. The lists will be expanded in October, and there will be occasional updates, Ms. Billingsley said. Prayer books and other worship materials are not affected by this process.
Maybe it would have been better to produce a set of guidelines, and ask prison chaplains to go through the collections and decide what to remove? Ah, but that would have allowed individual judgment and produced an endless supply of suits by the ACLU, challenging each and every decision (of which about 5% would have been questionable or wrong decisions).
America's Best
I am so impressed with the young men and women that I meet who are either coming back from service, or going in--and being from Idaho, everywhere you go, you find these examples. As a result, this report from Rich Reddinger, on a mailing list that I am a member of doesn't surprise me:Last evening I went for a ride on my Harley to clear my head and enjoy the evening air. I made a stop at the local Sheetz store ( Local stop-n-rob ). I was sitting outside the store on my bike when a young marine sergeant all "spit and polished up" pulled up beside me in his car and got out and said "hello sir".
I said hello back and to save the "sir" for officers and that I'm just "Rich". I asked him if he was returning to base and he told me he had some recruiting work to do. I asked him if he'd been to the "sand box" and he said the he had been there twice.
I couldn't help think, there I was in the company of a real hero that's young enough to be my son. So I held out my hand and shook his and said "Thank you". His reply was a simple "No problem".
We chatted a bit more and I ask how things are *REALLY* going over there. He asked me to please spread the word that the news media are lying to us and that they are making head way and things really are improving and that we really can't pull out right now because if we do all the hard work and lost lives will be for nothing. I promised him that I would do just that. So this e-mail is the start of my promise.
I also asked him how he has been received here at home with his recruiting work and the public in general. He said 90% of the people have been positive towards him. But then he told me how he had been spit at before and that just that day he was cursed at and called names. I got all chocked up and didn't know what to say or do. So I just simply held out my hand once more to shake his and said "I'm Sorry" to which he replied once more with a simple "No problem". I'll never forget that young kid and wish him my best.
Rich
http://www.greatlite.com/rjl127
Never Forget
It has been six years today. I wish that I had something memorable to tell you about what happened that morning, or that I remember exactly when I first heard about it, but it is all still something of a blur now. Over at James Lileks' blog, he tells about what he remembers, and many of the comments are from readers telling their memories--as important to our generation as, "Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor?" was to the Greatest Generation.
What I do remember is the following Sunday, walking into church and being utterly shocked at how many people where there--far in excess of the normal crowd. Great evil has a way of forcing people to consider deeper questions--to back away from mindless materialism and ask if there's something a bit deeper involved.
My own job was evaporating away; my employer was issuing promises instead of paychecks, and I briefly considered joining up--but I was 45, and too old.
A lot of people have short memories, and after a certain amount of hesitation, the left went into full force efforts to blame the United States for the terrorist attacks, and argued that invading Afghanistan was a bad thing to do. Jonah Goldberg points out the absurdity of what has happened in those intervening six years:If I had said in late 2001, with bodies still being pulled from the wreckage, anthrax flying through the mail, pandemonium reigning at the airports, and bombs falling on Kabul, that by ‘07 leading Democrats would be ridiculing the idea of the war on terror as a bumper sticker, I’d have been thought mad. If I’d predicted that a third of Democrats would be telling pollsters that Bush knew in advance about 9/11, and that the eleventh of September would become an innocuous date for parental get-togethers to talk about potty-training strategies and phonics for preschoolers, people would have thought I was crazy.
It seems that much of the population has a very, very short memory, and a remarkable capacity for rationalization. It doesn't help any that the left controls most news media and universities.
More RKBA Cases
Added Fife v. State (Ark. 1876), Dunston v. State (Ala. 1900), State v. Gohl (Wash. 1907), and State v. Keet (Mo. 1916) to to the primary sources page.
I Don't Know Why Deer Are So Beautiful to Me...
But they really are. I know that they have to be hunted, or, because we have destroyed most of their natural predators, their numbers will grow so rapidly that they will starve. It is still amazing to watch one of these apparently gentle creatures munching on the brush in the front yard.
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More Ferocious Satire By Scrappleface
In response to Osama bin Laden's demand that we all convert to Islam:
Yup! The stuff that al-Qaeda does around the world--and brags about, like beheading people with swords--gets almost no negative press--while actions that the U.S. military punishes (like rape and murder)--gets enormous negative press. Why is that? Just leftist hypocrisy, I suppose.
New Jersey Corruption
I mentioned a few days ago the indictments being handed down in New Jersey. Michelle Malkin has lots more details about the indictments and the public officials who apparently accepted bribes from what turned out to be an FBI front company. I notice that much of this corruption involves public school boards awarding contracts. It makes you wonder how much of the problem of inner city schools is partly the fault of corrupt practices by the elected officials. I presume that a lot of this corruption doesn't involve FBI front companies.
Oh yeah: almost entirely Democrats, some with ties to Hilary Clinton. I am so surprised!
There are corrupt Republicans, of course (Duke Cunningham, for example), but it does seem as though when you want corrupt politicians by the bushel, Democrats are a more reliable supplier.
Lunatic Fringe Code Pinkers
I was watching a bit of General Petraeus's report to Congress on CNN, and a number of the Code Pink lunatics were screaming, hollering, and in general, trying to disrupt the hearings. If they thought that they were going to actually change the actions of the government, I guess it might be worth being prosecuted for disrupting Congress, but if their disruptions have any effect, it is to make the antiwar position less viable for members of this Congressional committee, not more.
The Norman Hsu Story Just Gets Weirder
Eric over at Classical Values links to a number of stories about Hsu's strange behavior on a train, and his involvement with Chinese child prostitution gangsters in San Francisco.
The First Environmentalists & the .50 BMG
There's a strong tendency in environmentalist circles to imagine the Indians as the first environmentalists, living in harmony with nature. It isn't true. The Indians of what is now the U.S. didn't get a chance to destroy their environment (except for the really big herbivores that disappeared about the same time the Indians arrived), because they lived at a very, very low technology level, and there weren't many of them here.
I used to joke that I wasn't quite sure what the civilian need for rifles chambered in .50 BMG was--"in case blue whales come back on land?" For that reason, I find this item over at Snowflakes in Hell about how the Makah tribe hunts whales with a .50 BMG rifle quite amusing. It turns out that this wasn't a casual decision:The Tribe was interested in substituting the traditional killing lance for a large calbier rifle both to eliminate a prolonged pursuit and because the use of the killing lance would be considered inhumane by modern standards. The Tribe contracted a veterinarian with a background in ballistics and together investigated the performance of several high caliber firearms including the Winchester.458 Magnum, the Weatherby .460 Magnum, the .50BMG, and the .577 A-Square Tyrannosaur. The Tribe found that all of these weapons to be adequate, but the .50BMG and .577 A-Square Tyrannosaur to be the most potent combination. The .577 A-Square Tyrannosaur was selected for the 1999 hunt since it was a substantially lighter rifle (14 pounds versus 20 pounds for a .50BMG) and because it had a 3-round capacity (one cartridge in the chamber, two cartridges in the magazine) compared to the single-shot .50BMG caliber configurations which were tested.
What in the world is a ".577 A-Square Tyrannosaur" cartridge? Has someone been watching Jurassic Park too many times? Terry Wieland’s On Ammo
UPDATE: A reader tells me:
The .577 Tyrannosaur: A-Square’s Behemoth Fills A Need. Sort Of.
The .577 Tyrannosaur is not one of the classic nitro-express cartridges. In fact, designed in 1993, it is barely a dozen years old. It was created by Art Alphin, then-owner of A-Square, at the specific request of some of his Zimbabwean professional-hunter friends.
Although only a few score Tyrannosaur rifles have been made in that time, the cartridge is worthy of attention for several reasons:
First, it delivers power like very few others and, second, it does so at a fraction the price of anything else in its class. Finally, it offers rifle-lovers of reasonable means the opportunity to play with one of the most interesting of all bullet diameters - the .577.
The original .577 Nitro Express is a rimmed cartridge that has been around for more than a century. One can still buy a .577 double rifle from H&H or Rigby, but it will cost big bucks, and used .577s also command a premium price. This is a problem for the PH of modest means whose work involves elephants, because the .577 NE is an elephant cartridge par excellence, renowned for its penetration and knockdown power.
As Art tells it, he was approached in 1993 by two Zimbabwe PHs who had experienced serious problems with elephants while armed with .458 Winchesters. They wanted something bigger - much bigger. Could Art build his Hannibal dangerous-game rifle in .577 or even .600 NE?I saw your post on rifle calibers for whale hunting, which reminded me of contemporary TV footage that showed the Makah tribe pursuing and finally killing a 30' grey whale in May of 1999.
The September 9, 2007 Seattle Times confirms that there was a rifle hunt in 1999 by the Makah tribe of a gray whale.
Googling the event now showed the media coverage evidently had been cleaned up for posterity, the gruesome spectacle I remember showed a power boat running alongside, several 'braves' firing AK-47 style rifles into the whale, apparently over 300 [!] rounds of 7.62 x 39 were pumped into the whale's right side, while the power boat on the left had the harpoonist and the gunner with the .50 calibre rifle who finally finished the animal off.
Since none of 'whalers' had done this before, they did not realize the whale would sink when it died. When the .50 calibre gunner shot and killed it, it began to sink.
A fishing trawler was standing off, either fishing or watching this marine circus, he came in and used his derrick and a big net to prevent the dead whale from sinking.
The whale was towed to the beach and partially butchered, the tribe's people did not like the taste of the meat, and the rest of the dead whale and guts [quite a lot of it] were left on the beach.
The US government agents who financed and encouraged this, had to clean up the beach and haul the carcass of the dead whale out to sea and let it sink in deep water.
Our tax dollars at work!
Dumping Treasury Bonds?
A couple of different readers have pointed me towards articles about China dumping Treasury bonds, such as this one from the September 6, 2007 Daily Telegraph:A sharp drop in foreign holdings of US Treasury bonds over the last five weeks has raised concerns that China is quietly withdrawing its funds from the United States, leaving the dollar increasingly vulnerable.
The article points out that China has denied doing so:
What if China sells off Treasuries and agency bonds? This drives down the price of the bonds--which is a bad thing if you are currently holding those instruments, and can't afford to hold them to maturity--or until the market recovers. As prices fall, however, the yield rises inversely. If you need a high yielding investment, you might then be able to buy those higher yielding bonds on the cheap, and get a low-risk investment that pays very nicely.
I think there is a downside, however. Rising yields will make it more difficult for those agencies (many of which finance housing in the U.S.) to continue offering low interest rates on mortgages. Since mortgage rates are already higher than is good for housing prices, this might force the Fed to cut interest rates to revive the economy more rapidly than is good for inflation.
On the other hand, a falling dollar is good for U.S. manufacturers and exporters (like ScopeRoller), because it makes U.S. goods cheaper to export, and easier to sell than goods imported from abroad.
This Might Be The Perfect Lawsuit
I used to kid my gun rights lawyer friends that to win a lawsuit against the DC gun law, we would need the ultimate sympathetic defendant: "A disabled black lesbian, defending herself with an unregistered handgun against a neo-Nazi with a long history of hate crimes against women." Now, from the September 9, 2007 Southern Oregon Mail-Tribune, we seem to have a very nearly perfect plaintiff in a lawsuit:
Even gun control advocates often start to backpedal towards sanity when it comes to a woman being stalked by an ex-husband.
Great Line From An Old Bob Hope Movie
I thought that I had seen all of the Bob Hope movies--but I don't remember this one, The Ghost Breakers--or this great line! Click here to download a short clip.
Dark Skies
When the New Yorker isn't pushing a political agenda, they often write well-written, thoughtful articles like this one from the August 20, 2007 issue about the importance of dark skies:
The article also points to a curious and disturbing correlation--one that I have seen mentioned before, but I am still skeptical of, but weirder things than this have to turned to be true:The twenty-four-hour day/night cycle, which is also known as the circadian clock, influences physiological processes in virtually all living things. Pervasive artificial illumination has existed for such a brief period that not even the species that invented it has had time to adapt, biologically or otherwise. The most widely discussed human malady related to the disturbance of circadian rhythms is jet lag, but there are others. Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center, in Farmington, has suggested a link between cancer and the “circadian disruption” of hormones caused by artificial lighting. Early in his career, Stevens was one of many researchers struck by the markedly high incidence of breast cancer among women in the industrialized world, in comparison with those in developing countries, and he at first supported the most common early hypothesis, which was that the cause must be dietary. Yet repeated studies found no clear link to food. In the early eighties, Stevens told me recently, “I literally woke up in the middle of the night—there was a street lamp outside the window, and it was so bright that I could almost read in my bedroom—and I thought, Could it be that?” A few years later, he persuaded the authors of the Nurses’ Health Study, one of the largest and most rigorous investigations of women’s medical issues ever undertaken, to add questions about nighttime employment, and the study subsequently revealed a strong association between working the night shift and an increased risk of breast cancer. Eva Schernhammer, of the Harvard Medical School, and Karl Schulmeister, an Austrian physicist, analyzed the work-shift data from the Nurses’ Study several years ago, and wrote, “We hypothesize that the potential primary culprit for this observed association is the lack of melatonin, a cancer-protective agent whose production is severely diminished in people exposed to light at night.”
The article also points out the obvious environmental benefits--but points out that environmentalists haven't been much concerned about this:Although nighttime lighting has seldom been a priority of environmentalists—one of whom described it to me recently as a “soft” issue—bad or unnecessary lighting not only wastes billions of dollars’ worth of energy every year but also can wreak havoc on ecosystems. Migrating birds can be fatally “captured” by artificial lights, a fact that was made obvious a half century ago, when early versions of a common meteorological device called a ceilometer—which used a powerful vertical beam of light to measure cloud ceilings—sometimes killed thousands of migrating birds in a single night. Artificial light can be especially lethal to insects. Gerhard Eisenbeis, a German entomologist, has written that outdoor lighting can have a “vacuum cleaner” effect on local insect populations, causing large numbers to be “sucked out of habitat.” An earlier German study showed that new, brightly lit gas stations initially attracted large numbers of insects, but that the numbers fell rapidly after two years, presumably because local populations were decimated. One of the several ways in which light fixtures kill insects is by causing them to rest on the ground or in vegetation, where they become easy prey.
This essay is well worth reading in full for the pleasure of its writing. Time to annoy my county commissioners about the subject, I suppose.
