Category: Stupidity

Six days

I predicted this, but I’m amazed at the speed and audacity with which the United Nations discarded the words adult and voluntary.

“These (African) countries should now prepare how to introduce circumcision on a large scale,” UNAIDS chief Dr. Peter Piot told Reuters. “The science is clear.”

Baby boys should be targeted first but then attention should switch to adolescent boys and adult men, said Piot, who is in New Delhi to meet Indian officials on how they plan to tackle the world’s largest HIV/AIDS caseload.

The HIV crisis is raging in Africa among sexually-active adults, and UNAIDS wants to focus initial resources on circumcising baby boys. Baby boys can’t fight back, and if you circumcise them young, they’re much more likely to grow up and circumcise their own children. It’s indoctrination to perpetuate an otherwise unthinkable practice. That’s how it occurred in the United States in the early 20th century. It’s how it will occur in Africa in the 21st century.

The United Nations is a despicable organization in the circumcision debate. It lacks any legitimate notion of human rights or gender equality. Baby boys are human beings with inherent rights, not tools for ideological social experimentation.

Who needs brains when we have other people’s money?

One sentence, three flaws:

Scottish parents who wish to have their male infants circumcised should have the procedure paid for by the NHS to prevent the transmission of AIDS, a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert said yesterday.

First, allow me to repeat the obvious counter-argument to this. Male infants are not sexually active and parents have more ability to teach their children safe sex practices and responsibility than ability to predict their child’s personal behavior 15 or more years into the future. So, unless their sons intend to have unprotected sex with HIV-positive women, something parents can’t know, circumcising male infants to protect them from HIV is unconscionable folly.

Second, the World Health Organization is strongly pro-male infant circumcision and strongly anti-female infant circumcision. I understand the reasoning depends on centuries of what’s socially acceptable, but I’ve already pointed out the hypocrisy in applying different rules to boys and girls when they apply equally. Specifically, human rights are subject to more than just a clean operating room and good intentions. The World Health Organization should read through its own literature with a keener eye.

Third, for those in the United States longing for socialized healthcare, this is the sort of quandary you’ll be in. Fanatics will seek to allow parents to chop off parts of their sons on the national dime. That’s absurd enough, since there is no medical need for the surgery, but it should be clear that national resources are not unlimited. Every penny unnecessarily removing a foreskin is a penny not spent curing disease. I suspect socialists don’t think this way. There’s always another rich person who can be forced to pay her fair share, right? That’s unjust, but also false. People will die now so that little boys might not die six or seven decades from now of diseases with causes not specific to their foreskins. It’s stupidity.

You’d Shake Your Canteen and Walk Away

I’m not going to hammer away at the details of New Jersey’s new civil unions for same-sex couples. From what I understand, the basics seem to satisfy the absurd separate exception allowed by the original ruling, while failing to meet the fundamental equal requirement. All in all, a proud day for politicians everywhere.

Instead, this gets to the problem that we’re facing as a civil society: our politicians are allowed to ignore the Constitution(s) they’re expected to uphold.

But Assemblyman Ronald S. Dancer, a Republican from Ocean County, said that the bill was an affront to the Bible, and that “this is one time that I cannot compromise my personal beliefs and faiths.”

I’m not familiar with New Jersey’s practices, but I’m willing to guess that Assemblyman Dancer is not sworn to uphold the Bible or his personal beliefs and faiths. Unfortunately, another state legislator understands the true end-game here, so those of us who support equality are busted:

“I believe the foundation of our state is families, marriage, one man, one woman,” said Senator Robert W. Singer, the Republican from Jackson who sponsored the amendment proposal. “Why do you want to crumble that? We’re not taking away anyone’s rights, just sanctifying what marriage is.”

I can’t wait until the day that the foundation of New Jersey and the United States as a whole crumbles because gay Americans enjoy equal rights. I long for it with my very being. I also want the terrorists to win on that day. And I hate children. And puppies. Definitely puppies.

Politicians are stupid.

Central planning is not an economic policy.

Here’s an interesting but misguided study:

A new poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans favor allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for the Medicare program, suggesting there will be considerable political pressure on the next Congress to do so.

Eight-five percent of the 1,867 adults polled in the Kaiser Family Foundation survey released yesterday said they favored such negotiations, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents.

So people presumably understand that negotiating in the marketplace makes sense. Why include government? Do people not pay attention to results?

Julie L. Goon, special assistant to Bush for economic policy, said that Medicare beneficiaries are saving an average of $1,200 a year on drugs and that the existing program is popular and efficient.

“The government doesn’t do a particularly good job of negotiation,” Goon said. “I think it would be a mistake to open up the political process to what particular prices are available for drugs.”

Success is measured by beneficiaries saving money without noting that the cost is that someone else pays that $1,200. Of course, we could look no further than the stunningly frank admission that government doesn’t do a particularly good job of negotiation. The trade-off for those savings-that-aren’t-really-savings is fewer choices. Well done.

Welcome to government meddling with healthcare. Anyone who wants more is crazy.

My sides hurt from laughing.

I’m thrilled with my Xbox 360, even given the supposed fun factor of the Nintendo Wii. I imagine the Wii is fun, but it seems like more exercise than I want. Yet, I’m glad the Wii exists because without it, Wii Have A Problem wouldn’t exist. If you need a laugh, browse through all the stories of people who’ve broken their televisions, cut themselves, or thrown their remote against the wall when the safety strap broke. Consider this today’s lesson in unintended consequences.

“We are already above that.”

Nothing in this article about raising the minimum wage is in any way support for the move. It doesn’t counter it either, unless you want to make logical inferences into the facts. It’s mostly a “this won’t do much” fluff piece, with a little bit of touchy-feely goodness masquerading as business sense. As such, it’s important to ask, if raising the minimum wage is so irrelevant, why bother? To feel good about ourselves? That’s not wise business.

A couple of morsels:

“When you let the minimum wage fall as low as it’s fallen, it becomes almost irrelevant,” said Harry J. Holzer, professor of public policy at Georgetown University and a former chief economist for the Labor Department. “This is an attempt to make it somewhat more meaningful, but not so meaningful that it destroys a lot of jobs.”

Wait, it becomes almost irrelevant? So the greedy capitalists don’t sit around trying to screw their employees out of wages, instead paying market wages above the minimum required by law? Who would this benefit? The answer, of course, is new, unskilled entrants into the job force (teens) and older workers, presumably staying active with employment. They need more why?

Also note that this attempt would not be so meaningful that it destroys a lot of jobs. A few jobs is acceptable, as long as we’re doing something that feels good. I bet the unemployment line won’t feel good to those (few?) who lose their jobs or don’t get jobs because they’re not created.

Carlos Castro is another area employer who said he won’t cut workers if the minimum wage goes up. As the owner of Todos Supermarkets in Alexandria and Woodbridge, he pays a starting wage of $7 an hour for cashiers, stockers, meat cutters and cooks — well above the $5.15 minimum in Virginia.

“You just can’t get by on minimum wage these days, and I don’t want to force my employees to have to get a second job to support themselves,” Castro said.

Castro said that if Congress increases the federal minimum wage, he will probably raise his pay to keep it above that — precisely what the EPI anticipates happening around the country.

This is the perfect way to see that increasing the minimum wage cause arbitrary, artificial gains for employees. It’s central planning at its ugliest. Who is going to pay for that increase in wages to stay a specific dollar amount above minimum wage? Rather than understand that the market already takes care of the problem in setting wages, the busybodies want to make sure that those few who are near the current, allegedly outdated minimum will no longer be harmed. Except they will be harmed, as prices increase to offset the new expenses. This is not a hard concept.

Rather than tie up business in endless regulation, government needs to get out of the way and let the market, powered by human creativity, solve whatever problems exist that harm the working poor the government so dangerously cares about.

Competence doesn’t care who you love.

Once again, James Taranto shows himself to be little more than an ideological tool in his The Best of the Web Today column, again for bigotry against gays. Writing on this article from the Boston Globe on a minor Democratic push to revisit “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, Mr. Taranto writes:

Meanwhile, a pair of Massachusetts Democrats are tackling another pressing national-security issue…

It seems unlikely that [Rep. Martin] Meehan will succeed in changing the law; the Globe says Rep. Ike Skelton, who will be chairman of the Armed Services Committee, supports “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The likely result, as when Bill Clinton made this his first priority on taking office 14 years ago, is to suggest that Democrats are less interested in national security than in esoteric ideas of equality.

Condescension is a wonderful instrument; I’ve used it myself in this blog. But in reference to this story, Mr. Taranto shows little connection to reality, favoring the party line of hatred above all else.

Of course Democrats aren’t going to reverse “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. They’re chickens uninterested in leading. Big deal. But this has the potential to address a pressing national security issue, no matter how much Mr. Taranto wishes to mock the service of gays in defense of America. Given that current policy resulted in the dismissal of qualified translators where there is a military shortage, I’d say this absolutely has something to do with national security. Unless Mr. Taranto wants to posit that gay translators hurt morale more than dead soldiers and civilians because we couldn’t decipher intelligence clues. As long as the dead soldiers are straight, that outcome is better? Brilliant.

Of course, we could just set aside irrational bigotry and permit gays to serve openly. Maybe it’s an esoteric idea of equality, but it’s an equality that opens the military to skilled people in an ongoing war. That should be reason enough, unless you’re a hack partisan journalist.

Protectionism or Principle?

Sen. Harry Reid has an interesting stance on the recently passed anti-gambling bill, as the gambling lobby prepares to reverse its fortunes with one of Nevada’s senators as Senate Majority Leader:

“I have said on many occasions that I don’t believe in Internet gambling,” Reid said in a meeting with reporters, adding he’d be open to looking at the results of a study on it.

“I know that people say it can be controlled, I just have extreme doubts that it can be. But I’ll be happy to look at the study. I’m not going to turn my head and say never, never.”

We could get to the underlying principle of liberty, in which consenting adults spend their money as they see fit, in a way that harms only themselves, if even that. Since Senator Reid doesn’t believe in Internet gambling, the unprincipled moral position is correct. Wonderful, but rather than asking for studies that suggest Internet gambling isn’t bad, Senator Reid should produce the studies that convinced him that it is bad. Perhaps something a little more compelling than extreme doubts.

I don’t expect a fruitful two years ahead for liberty.

This has to be satirical.

I didn’t get to blog this yesterday, but it’s still worth a mention. It’s always wise to check your assumptions when promoting an idea, especially when that idea is that deficits are wonderful:

A reporter once asked President Reagan if he had anything to say in defense of his deficits. “No” answered Reagan, “they’re big enough to defend themselves.” Liberals howled, and conservatives chuckled, but no one questioned the premise of the question: that deficits are inherently a bad thing. The argument has always about whether the bad thing called deficits are too large and whether they will ever be paid off, not whether they can actually be good for our country. For the record the answers are: no, they’re not too big (see attached chart); no, they will never be paid off, and yes, they can be a good thing.

I actually like the premise of the question, because deficits involve politicians playing with other people’s money. Considering some of those other people haven’t been born yet, caution and responsibility seem to be key. But that’s not the flawed assumption I’m concerned with in this essay.

When strong nations go to war, they borrow money. Weak nations, not so much. That’s because strong nations usually win, and winning nations usually repay their creditors. Rich and successful people don’t have any problem getting someone to loan them money. The same holds for wealthy and successful nations. That’s why, historically, the interest rate of a nation’s bonds is a pretty good inverse indicator of investor confidence in the war effort. The more trouble investors see on the horizon, the more compensation they demand for the added risk.
…

This is the way the world works, some might say, but is it right? What about the children? Is it really fair for them to shoulder the burden of our wars? Heck yeah, it’s fair. Number one, they won’t be children when they start to share the burden of the national debt. Number two, they benefit.

Here’s the flawed assumption. The author expresses a selfish belief that we can have anything we want, and as long as the country survives, the children should just shut up. We’re wise, or at least rich. That’s enough, right?

The author concludes:

Defense is a sort of infrastructure, too. It provides benefits for future generations, just like roads and bridges do. Is it some kind of rip-off that my kid’s future tax bills will include interest payments from the war against Jihadists? Not if we win.

Good grief. Of course defense is vital, and the benefits of maintaining a strong nation carry over beyond just the immediate expenditure. (An assumption with some danger, but I can accept it.) No sane person believes that government shouldn’t protect its people. Defense is a legitimate expense for any government and should be made to the point that the nation remains safe. But that does not give a free pass for rampant spending elsewhere at the expense of future generations.

Look at the federal budget. The bulk of expenditures are in entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, etc.), not defense. To ignore these and believe that the war on Jihadists somehow excuses annual deficits of hundreds of billions of dollars is absurd. Eventually, the interest will absorb the entire budget, so the government will need further resources. At what point does this stop? (Hint: It begins with bank and ends with ruptcy.)

If the author wanted to make a case that the national debt is good, and shouldn’t be paid off, we can talk. He’d still be wrong, I believe, but there might be a case. But the deficit? Ridiculous. There is more than just interest rate signaling involved. Namely, interest payments.

If we want to do something for the children, we need to teach them economics. And the author of this essay should be last in line for the job.

“This is like déjà vu all over again.”

How to learn nothing:

That was fast. A mere two days after Democrats capture Congress claiming they wouldn’t raise taxes, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin tells them they should do so anyway.

“You cannot solve the nation’s fiscal problems without increased revenues,” declared Mr. Rubin, the Democratic Party’s leading economic spokesman, in a speech last Thursday. He also took a crack at economic forecasting by noting that “I think if you were to increase taxes right now, you would have probably about zero negative effect on the economy.” The economics and politics here are worth parsing.

It’s premature to assume that this is The Path&#153 for the next two years because much political wrangling has to happen before we see this implemented. My reaction is more exasperation than anything, which is to say that this is not “buyer’s remorse.” I’ve said many times that a (massive) spending cut is the way to fix our fiscal crisis. But politicians aren’t to be trusted, so I reasonably expected this. Democrats can’t comprehend that spending is too high rather than revenues tax receipts are too low. They’re stupid.¹

Aside from the ridiculous notion that Mr. Rubin believes tax increases would have zero negative effect on the economy, Mr. Rubin seems to be misreading the results of the Democratic victory last week. This is not 1992, when then-candidate Clinton ran on the promise to raise taxes. Everyone knew it was coming with a Clinton victory and still he won. However right or wrong the decision was, its inevitability was obvious. Clinton had the political capital to “encourage” Congress to increase taxes.

The 2006 election signaled no such preference from voters. Democrats could be expected to misinterpret their victory, as its lack of political leadership and foresight has been evident for many years. So, again, I think no one will be surprised if the 110th Congress attempts a tax increase. But they should not be surprised when they find themselves on the outside looking in at control of the 111th Congress.

The rest of the Opinion Journal editorial is reasonable, although it glosses over the deficit considerably more than it should.

¹ As further evidence:

“The middle class is being squeezed,” Mr. Reid said. “Squeezed. The rich are getting richer; the poor are getting poorer. We must do something about education. We must do something to relieve the tax burden on the middle class.”

It doesn’t take a genius to decipher that.