Category: Government

He Cares So You Don’t Have To

I suspect that President Obama’s selection of Dr. Thomas R. Frieden for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be sold as a limited need to scale up to the needs of the nation from his current position as New York City health commissioner. It’s more likely because Dr. Frieden is inclined to further the state’s intrusion into personal choices:

Dr. Alfred Sommer, emeritus dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was on the team that recommended Dr. Frieden as New York’s health chief in 2002, recalled interviewing him shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Dr. Frieden had flown to New York from India, where he was living and working on tuberculosis control.

Before he left India, he was asked about his top priority, Dr. Sommer said. “Oh, well, that’s easy, Al,” Dr. Sommer recalled him replying. “Tobacco. Tobacco is killing more people, and that’s my top priority.”

“Tom, I don’t disagree that tobacco is a real scourge, but have you heard of 9/11?” Dr. Sommer said he countered.

“Of course I know about that, but bioterrorists are not going to kill more New Yorkers than tobacco is,” Dr. Frieden said.

Dr. Frieden’s efforts to ban smoking and trans fats in restaurants, to require calorie counts on menus and to restrict sodium don’t offer much hope that he’ll fill the role responsibly, with respect for the voluntary choices of individuals.

Previous entries on Dr. Frieden here and here.

Yeah, do we get tasers and tear gas?

Via Boing Boing here’s a video of police officers dealing with a naked man at the Coachella music festival. (Link only because the video contains nudity.) The man seems under the influence of something. There is also a large crowd surrounding them defending the naked man. The situation could descend into chaos. These are important caveats suggesting a quick, definitive resolution will be best. They begin with the most reasonable, least problematic solution by giving the man clothing. Only when it’s clear he will not cooperate, they escalate. They’re doing their job.

Once it becomes clear that some level of exertion will be necessary, however, the video shows that the cops opt instead for the Taser. The video demonstrates they chose the lazy route, and they use it – and other harsh techniques – before fully attempting to subdue the individual. At approximately the 2:30 mark, the police wrestle the man to the ground. He continues resisting. Some level of force is necessary and what they’re doing isn’t enough. Their actions become unacceptable at this point. Two officers struggle with him while another officer stands around holding the garment the man refused to wear. There is no obvious reason this officer should stand idly by. It’s clear the man will not voluntarily cover himself, and he’s involved in an active struggle. One of the two officers struggling with the man gets up and prepares his Taser. The previously idle officer now joins the struggle by pouncing on the man, driving his knee into him. Then, the previous officer tasers the man multiple times. They subdue and cover him.

I’m willing to assume they avoided wrestling with him as long as they did because the man was naked and not because they had an urge to ultimately rough him up. Neither is flattering to the police because dealing with this is their job, even if he’s naked. But it’s understandable. Yet, to avoid the physical effort required by their job once they’d committed to arresting the man, they used unnecessary force (repeatedly). And, although they did not trigger crowd involvement beyond words, they pushed the situation closer to what they tried to avoid in the beginning than they should have. This is an example where police used the Taser as an alternative to effort rather than as an alternative to deadly force. They wouldn’t shoot the man for not cooperating. They shouldn’t have tasered him.

Do Children Have Any Rights?

Any point in the long line of events leading to the Supreme Court hearing a case on the strip search of students by school officials demonstrates that we’ve collectively lost our minds. It’s easy enough to shout “Will no one think of the children,” and I will. Will no one think of the children? Not as an emotional plea, although that is valid. This is a demand for recognition that children are individuals, as well, with the same complement of rights protected by the Constitution. We can debate the degree to which they are fully vested versus held in “trust” (e.g. free speech), and that’s a useful debate. This is not that.

None of the lawyers had a particularly easy time of it. Matthew W. Wright, representing the school district, said that intimate searches should be allowed even for the most common over-the-counter drugs.

“At some point it gets silly,” Justice David H. Souter said. “Having an aspirin tablet does not present a health and safety risk.”

Mr. Wright did draw the line at searches of students’ body cavities, but only on the practical ground that school officials are not trained to conduct such searches. Mr. Wright said there was no legal obstacle to such a search.

Mr. Wright, and the government, may have a legal point on this topic using strict semantics. But the moral question is clear. These children own their bodies. They are due the same respect and dignity we offer to adults. (We violate the rights of adults. The point is that we violate the rights of children more.) Anyone who would propose that school officials could legitimately perform a body cavity search on a student if properly trained has lost his way.

I know enough to understand that the questions asked by Justices are not necessarily indicative of the eventual outcome. With that caveat:

Without intimating a view on the ickiness of what Mr. Wolf had described, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suggested that the law might treat different undergarments differently. “The issue here covers the brassiere as well,” he said, “which doesn’t seem as outlandish as the underpants.”

Not as outlandish, perhaps, but according to whom? The student, or does her (or his) opinion not matter? I know, DRUGS!@#$!@!!!. But, is there any room for the consideration that the person searched might find exploring her brassiere outlandish? If we extend this to even younger students, as a ruling in the school’s favor surely would over a short period of time, would a female student who develops breasts earlier than her classmates be self-conscious of this fact? Could it be mortifying to have her brassiere searched? Is there a “breast-no breasts” exception to the Fourth Amendment, or just a general view that children have no rights?

“My thought process,” Justice Souter said, “is I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can’t find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry.”

Notice that Justice Souter states what he would rather have when comparing the strip search of a minor and an event that has no verifiable examples. This is the same idiocy that states that pre-emptive, legalized torture is acceptable because there might be a ticking time bomb. What is done is subservient to why the actor does it because DRUGS!@#$!@!!!.

Radley Balko sums it up best:

It’s a little troubling to see how comfortable these old men (Ginsburg isn’t quoted in the article) seem to be with allowing school administrators access to the genitalia of school children based on nothing more than a hunch that they might be “crotching” some ibuprofen.

At this point, the drug war really can’t be parodied, can it?

This is madness.

John Cole offers a good summary of this case, titled “I’m Not a Lawyer or a Constitutional Scholar”:

And as such, will probably not understand the legal intricacies of this case that was debated in the Supreme Court yesterday. However, I can state that as someone with an IQ over room temperature, the fact that we are debating whether it is appropriate for school authorities to strip search kids is a sure sign that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong with this country and our sense of perspective, and I blame the war on drugs.

That’s succinct to the point of perfection.

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I got the Balloon Juice link from Doug Mataconis at Below The Beltway. I no longer read Balloon Juice, even though Mr. Cole provides excellent commentary like the quote above. His update to the post reminds me why I no longer read. After an excerpt from a linked summary he introduces with “Government by old men afraid of advil is disgusting”, Mr. Cole writes:

Where is the outrage? Oh, yeah. They are too busy protesting the fact that Bill Gate’s taxes are going to go up 3%! Tyranny!

Link to examples, if they exist. I’m sure they do. But it is shrill and unfair to mock – out-of-context – someone’s opposition to another issue and imply that agitating for one issue makes having a coherent position on another topic is impossible. This is common, as I’ve experienced, but it’s a pathetic tactic in any context. If someone has made up his mind on a topic, that’s okay. I have, for example. But that person should be prepared to defend himself if he brings up the topic. If not, don’t bring up the topic. Doing so is the sign of an incurious, closed mind.

“Buck Up, Little Camper”

Last week when the government finally released the torture memos, Ta-Nehisi Coates discussed this:

Mr. Obama condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again. But he also repeated his opposition to a lengthy inquiry into the program, saying that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”

Obama’s stance is the standard cowardice of politics. Holding criminals accountable for their behavior is an ongoing campaign tactic, applied only to those who are not one’s peers. But it is nonsense if we are to avoid a repeat of this in the future.

Mr. Coates stated why:

I think this is wrong. More than that I think it’s dismissive, silly and bordering on insult to any literate human being. In point of fact “spending our time and energy laying blame for the past” is exactly what the justice system does. By Obama’s logic murderers would go free in the streets. The real question is not whether you’re going to lay blame for the past, but who your [sic] going to lay it on, and for which past. What Obama is really saying in this statement is he won’t hold this particular group accountable, for this particular past.

This is a dangerous course because it doesn’t simply not “lay blame for the past,” it shrugs off arguably the solemn responsibility of safeguarding the future. The price of doing nothing, of not enforcing laws, is the implicit statement that it really is OK to torture, that the most you’ll face is a wag of the finger. The concern isn’t mere vengeance.

This is exactly right. It is obvious that the United States tortured prisoners during the Bush administration. Yes it will be uncomfortable to prosecute high-ranking officials, including a former president. But justice is important if we are to walk back from the insanity of the Bush years. The difficulty in effort and emotion is not a sufficient reason to avoid the necessary task.

Mr. Coates contemplates this difficulty:

All of that said, what really disturbs me about all of this, is that most Americans still don’t think torture is a big deal. I think in the case of Bush, particularly after 2004, we–the American people–got the government we deserved. I think Bush said a lot about who we were post-9/11. I’d like to see some exploration into how to make this torture argument directly to the people. Maybe we can’t. Maybe people really don’t care that much. But if we’re wondering why Obama isn’t willing to press forward, I think it’s fair to also wonder why the people aren’t pressing him to press forward.

I’m not wondering why Obama isn’t willing to press forward. However, the readiness of so many to look away or actively encourage this behavior is disgusting. I suspect I won’t like the answer if we press forward with prosecution. But I’d rather know that people think this than pretend they don’t.

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The title of this post is a reference from here about this:

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told [CIA] employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the C.I.A.”

This way is not moving forward. It is moving sideways until the next time this happens.

Every Policy Affects Real People

This excerpt is important, but read the entire post at The Crossed Pond:

… I was the face of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for many a sailor, and I kicked out my first queer in 1990. Nothing earth shattering, no complex investigation or lawyerly maneuvering, just a young guy quietly living with a lover, even known about by many of the crew, until the wrong dude found out and reported it. A few questions asked, an admission made, and he was gone.

The next one was more disturbing. He was a hard working deck hand, a book worm, a loner, and a fundamentalist Christian. He made the mistake of leaving a moderately erotic drawing of a partially nude male on his rack in his assigned group berthing compartment. Someone took it, reported it, officers questioned him, and then we kicked him out. But along the way, I learned about self loathing. This young man believed he was demon-haunted and devil-tempted. He could resist these urges so long as we stayed in our home port, where he could attend nightly services at his small church, and pray for strength with the handful of other worshippers. But when we left home port, spending weeks at sea where he had no access to his support group, he grew weak, and would seek anonymous sex in the usual hang outs at the first port call. He hated himself. He comes to mind often; I wonder if he ever came to terms with his sexuality, if he still exists in his self imposed purgatory, or if he killed himself. My questions and doubts grew.

‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was wrong in 1993. It is wrong today. It should be repealed immediately. Every competent individual willing to serve should be able to serve openly, with his or her character measured only by conduct applicable to job performance. The politician’s who have enabled this policy – and continue to enable it – should be reminded that they are on the wrong side of decency and history with their cowardly, unconscionable refusal to correct this mistake.

Link via Positive Liberty.

Has the free market failed?

Andrew Sullivan posted this letter from a reader about problems with the private market for health insurance.

I’m one of the 40+ million Americas that the market has efficiently removed from health care rolls. I was laid off from a corporate job and make ends meet with freelance work while I job hunt in this rather difficult job market.

I bought a private policy — because COBRA was twice as expensive — a year or so ago from the company that held my employer-sponsored plan (rhymes with Clue Loss / Rue Field). I figured this would make continuity of prescriptions and care pretty straightforward, and instead found, when I went to the pharmacy, that those carry-over prescriptions were no longer covered, because my seasonal allergies were now a pre-existing condition. Yes, it’s true that leaving health care in private hands reduces political corruption, but there’s one thing that I’ve seen happen with long term political corruption: indictments. You don’t see that too much with corporate corruption, do you?

I see the point that there’s a problem, but this is an issue of distorted incentives. The government started the process by taxing income to the point where employer-subsidized health insurance became a rational perk. This has lingered to the current day. If insurance had remained an individual decision, would the market produce this result? Assuming the individual could still afford the premiums upon losing a job, a separate issue, it’s logical to assume that there would be no reason to change insurance plans when losing a job. The tax/regulatory structure created by generations of politicians produced a system weaker than it would otherwise be. Why should anyone believe that further government intervention would solve the problem better than government retreat?

The solution to the problem is (A) or (A).

On the general subject of taxation, Matt Yglesias
defends sustained and increasing progressivity (emphasis added):

As Ed says, the argument is that “we can’t have progressives taxes because somebody’s rich uncle might not have the wherewithal to subsidize somebody’s business start-up.”

I’m not going to dignify this with a response. I’ll just note that Schramm is president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation and I believe he was in the room when I first heard the “rich uncle” argument, so I may have been present at the creation of this particular talking point. Meanwhile, the crippling long-term budget deficits that will result from refusing to raise new revenues are not going to be doing any wonders for entrepreneurs. And perhaps more directly to the point, the lack of a guarantee of affordable health coverage is a major impediment to entrepreneurship in the United States. The status quo systematically discourages talented, skilled people form leaving jobs at existing firms in order to strike out on their own, and this is one of the things the administration is trying to address in its budget proposals.

It’s very useful to frame problems with the solution in mind.

Long-term budget deficits occur because Congress does not match spending to tax revenue. (They are crippling because Congress believes that politics is more important than either economics or accounting.) There are at least two solutions. Congress can raise new revenue, as Yglesias suggests. Within that solution, it can raise taxes on high-income Americans or lower-income Americans. Fairness and equality in treatment suggest that everyone should share the burden, if we are to raise taxes. That’s beyond my point here, so I’ll back up and reiterate: Congress can raise new revenue. Congress can also reduce spending. Is that not an acceptable option? Ignoring it reeks of a preference for social engineering over responsibility.

Nor would I write that the lack of a guarantee of affordable1 health coverage is the impediment implied. If person X quits her job to start a business, she loses her medical coverage after a certain period of (more expensive) COBRA coverage. Tying health insurance to an employer is the problem. If her business becomes successful, then her employees will be burdened as she was if they want to leave. The system is flawed and needs to be fixed because it limits individual choices. We should begin our search for a solution from that starting point. Changing our treatment of health insurance to resemble other decisions individuals make for themselves independent of how they earn income is a possible solution Mr. Yglesias ignores.

The general theme within Mr. Yglesias’ framing appears to be a push for equality of outcome rather than equality of treatment. Equality of outcome will never happen in practice for precisely the reasons that his proposed solutions are possible in America. The political atmosphere makes it possible to treat others “more equal” by pitting one group against another, with the politicians conveniently acting as final arbiter. Endorsing that system is at least an implicit statement that control is fine as long as you are the one in control. It’s either that, or the person proposing such a statement is ignorant. I don’t think Mr. Yglesias is ignorant.

1 I will ignore the issue of affordability here. Such a subjective word requires a much deeper analysis, including the trade-offs, that I’m not interested in addressing in this post. Let it suffice that Mr. Yglesias and I probably agree very little on the matter.

New Jersey Worries About Body Hair Removal

I’ve seen this story floating around for a few days, from multiple sources.

Things could get hairy in New Jersey this summer for women who sport revealing bikinis or a little bit less.

The painful Brazilian wax and its intimate derivatives are in danger of being stripped from salon and spa menus if a recent proposal to ban genital waxing is passed by the state’s Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling.

Before I get into my brief take, I’ll stress what I think explains this, which is what Brad Warbiany pointed out at The Liberty Papers:

[Cherry Hill, New Jersey salon owner Linda] Orsuto said that the proposal may be the state’s way of diverting a long-established salon procedure “perfected by aestheticians” to the medical community, where hair can be removed via laser treatment by dermatologists.

As Mr. Warbiany stated perfectly:

Follow the lobbying money.

Those four words explain most government actions, no?

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My take: If this passes, it will be illegal in New Jersey for a woman to have her pubic hair waxed from her genitals, but she will still be free to have her son’s healthy foreskin surgically removed for any reason she can imagine. We have a long way to go before people understand individual liberty.

Limited Government Is Less Prone To This Flaw

I’m trying to figure out a way to criticize Michael Gerson’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post that properly registers the obliviousness to the contradictions of his protests. If I spent enough time to develop something pithy, it would be scathing. Instead, I’ll jump into his opening paragraphs:

There is a common thread running through President Obama’s pro-choice agenda: the coercion of those who disagree with it.

Obama has begun providing federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortions overseas. He has moved to weaken conscience protections for health-care professionals. And he has chosen the most radical possible option on the use of embryonic stem cells — a free license for researchers, with boundaries set only by the National Institutes of Health.

So, when the president wants to use public funds to pay for abortion, we must think of those who disagree with abortion. But when the president wants to direct public funds to faith-based organizations, Gerson misses the flaw. When the president wants to direct public funds to pay for circumcising healthy African infant males, Gerson misses the flaw. What’s good to Michael Gerson is apparently all that’s good, and you should pay for it, too. But how dare you not place limits on government for issues that he opposes.

Michael Gerson is a hypocrite.

Linkfest

LINK: From the April issue of reason, Matt Welch addresses the ongoing topic of “liberalterianism” and how it’s doomed. The heart of his argument, which I agree with completely:

It is certainly no surprise that any party, let alone the Democrats, would want to use that fancy government once it held the awesome reins of power. Unified Republican governance this decade should disabuse even the most gullible from the notion that either of our two major parties is ever going to enact a small-government agenda, especially during a perceived crisis. But already during Obama’s first 100 days we’ve seen how quickly liberals will turn against libertarians once they’re no longer swinging at the same piñata.

Small-l libertarians will never find sufficient common ground with anyone interested in maintaining partisanship at the expense of ideas.

LINK: Also from reason Ronald Bailey discusses a free market approach to health care coverage proposed by University of Chicago economist John Cochrane.

So how does health-status insurance work? As Cochrane explains, “Market-based lifetime health insurance has two components: medical insurance and health-status insurance. Medical insurance covers your medical expenses in the current year, minus deductibles and copayments. Health-status insurance covers the risk that your medical premiums will rise.” Cochrane offers the example of a 25-year-old who will likely incur $2,000 in medical expenses in a year. His medical policy component would thus cost about $2,000 per year, plus administrative fees and profit. For purposes of illustration, Cochrane then assumes the 25-year-old has a 1 percent risk of developing a chronic medical condition that would increase his average medical expenses to $10,000 per year. In that case, he would be able to buy medical insurance for $10,000 per year—which is a big financial hit. That’s where health-status insurance comes in: It insures that you can be insured in the future.

I’m not fully convinced that this would work, but I’m not unconvinced, either. I don’t know enough. However, the idea seems to be based in personal responsibility. Life is unfair, so some of us get sick. There are costs involved. It’s unfortunate if medical costs cause financial distress. We should mitigate that, but provide individuals the options to do that for themselves. That is the right approach.

Mr. Cochrane also discusses how his plan would help separate health insurance from employer provision. That will be a feature of any responsible health care reform. (Transferring the incentive from employer to government does not qualify as that type of responsible reform.)

LINK: Harold Meyerson is an incurious propagandist:

But in the United States, conservatives have never bashed socialism because its specter was actually stalking America. Rather, they’ve wielded the cudgel against such progressive reforms as free universal education, the minimum wage or tighter financial regulations. Their signal success is to have kept the United States free from the taint of universal health care. The result: We have the world’s highest health-care costs, borne by businesses and employees that cannot afford them; nearly 50 million Americans have no coverage; infant mortality rates are higher than those in 41 nations — but at least (phew!) we don’t have socialized medicine.

Universal education is not “free”. The minimum wage costs jobs. Financial regulations overlooked obvious warnings of Bernie Madoff. “Nearly 50 million” uninsured is not true. Infant mortality is more complex than a quick comparison can demonstrate.

He also wrote this, so it’s clear that he’s interested in his narrative more than facts.

Take it from a democratic socialist: Laissez-faire American capitalism is about to be supplanted not by socialism but by a more regulated, viable capitalism. And the reason isn’t that the woods are full of secret socialists who are only now outing themselves.

We do not have laissez-faire capitalism. No amount of stating preferred explanations will make them true.

LINK: Steven Pearlstein defends President Obama’s budget in a way I don’t fully understand.

In the meantime, the federal government is one of the few entities that is still able to borrow in the current environment, and given the perceived safety of buying government bonds, the cost of that borrowing is about as low as it has ever been. From a purely cash-flow point of view, substituting 18 percent credit card debt with 3 percent Treasury bond debt is a positive development for the grandchildren.

The 18 percent credit card debt makes no sense here. Government borrowing isn’t replacing that. And my hypothetical grandchildren do not have any debt right now. Adding more, even at 3 percent, is hardly a positive development for them. The administration intends to grow the debt, not refinance it.

Refinancing costs are relevant, too. If the so-called positive development of new debt at 3 percent interest helps us, what will this new debt look like at 4, 5, or more percent when interest rates rise, as they will? Maintaining the apparently-permanent interest payments is a cost.

He continues with a bit about how infrastructure creates lasting economic value without defending it. Would the Bridge to Nowhere have justified its cost? Doesn’t matter, it seems. He reassures:

Strange as it may sound, there are times when it’s necessary to make things worse in order to make them better. Fighting a war to achieve a lasting peace. Making a patient sick to cure his cancer with radiation or chemotherapy. And, yes, taking on more debt to help get the country out of a debt-induced recession.

Unlike chemotherapy, where doctors eventually stop dosing a patient, what evidence do we have that politicians will ever believe we’ve reached the “ideal time for the government to deleverage and put its financial house in order”? The new deficit spending is permanent. The only open question once the budget passes is who will pay for it. Right now, the answer is “the rich” and the Chinese. Eventually, it will be the middle class, including all of our grandchildren.

LINK: Wanting an iPhone does not mean a consumer is entitled to an iPhone with the carrier of his choice.

The Consumers Union, the New America Foundation, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as software provider Mozilla and small wireless carriers MetroPCS (PCS) and Leap Wireless International (LEAP), are lining up in opposition not only to the Apple-AT&T partnership, but to all manner of arrangements whereby mobile phones are tethered exclusively to a single wireless service provider.

Apparently a voluntary contract between two parties means nothing if it means a consumer has to then make a choice that she doesn’t like. I want an iPhone with Sprint, but I can’t get it. My response is to decide which has more value and act accordingly, not whine to the government.

More Consumers Union nonsense here and here.