Like the nation's leading libertarian politics
and culture mag, Reason, lad mag Maxim has decided to go 3D in its
latest issue, pasting volumetric images of celebrated tennis
non-champion Anna Kournikova over its cover and interior like
so many errant service returns:
The sexiest sports star in history has strutted her stuff on the courts of Wimbledon and in the pages of our magazine. She's also become the hottest military pinup since Betty Grable was titillating troops during World War II. In our October issue, Anna talks about working with servicemen overseas, her relationship status, and what it's like to finally be an American girl.
Betty Grable? Sexiest sports star in history? C'mon guys! What about the Press sisters, the Iron Curtain's trailblazing pioneers in weight training, steroid use, and (quite possibly) gender-reassignment surgery? At least Tamara and Irinia Press won fists-the-size-of-canned-hams-ful of Olympic gold for the CCCP in the 1960s before disappearing forever into the rolling fields of Mother Russia after demonstrating the clear superiority of the Soviet system to that of the effete and so-called Free World. The Cold War would have ended like a decade earlier if only Shirley Babashoff and the then-thought-to-be-crybabies U.S. ladies swim team had been able to crush an East German squad more juiced than Mark McGwire's buttocks after visiting a locker-room toilet with Jose Canseco!
If you want to see the truly
stunning (and ideologically sexalicious) use of 3D in magazine
- and online video - contexts, there's really no alternative
(as the Betty Grable of politics, Margaret Thatcher,
might put it): You gotta go with Reason's senses-shattering 3D
November issue, which comes with its own 3D glasses and
reach-out-and-grab-ya charts of outta-control federal spending,
debt, and public-sector-employee compensation.
More than that, though, the November ish - on newsstands now, or buy a print subscription for just $20 a year! - offers up no fewer than 14 ways to slash government spending before it ribbonizes the economy like Freddy Krueger on a Halloween-candy-induced bender! We chose to go 3D with this information because we believe the only reason that even more Americans aren't in the streets protesting runaway government spending is that traditional 2D graphics just can't convey the creeping doom that awaits our grandchildren's grandchildren (who will have a tough enough life if the prophecy of Battle for the Planet of the Apes comes to pass and all kids are stuck in a dysfunctional, monopolistic edumication system that consists of John Huston dressed like an Ourangutan lecturing primates of all creeds, colors, and complexions on universal brotherhood). To get the Full Monty of understanding, you need to have the trendlines of federal spending, debt accrual, and super-sized compensation hit you right in the face will all the gruesome, malformed force of a Brett Favre text message.
So boys and girls, sneak into your parents' wallet or purse, get their credit cards and subscribe already. (The complimentary 3D Reason.tv glasses in the November ish will work just fine on the Maxim spreads too, so consider it a twofer.) And when the glasses arrive, you can check out and experience Reason.tv's online 3D Fiscal House of Horrors, including a health warning from former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) and the episodes "I Spend on Your Grave!," "Night of the Living Debt!," and "Attack of the Killer Compensation!"
In the meantime, here's our 3D videos in 2D, where they still pack a vomit-inducing punch not seem since George H.W. Bush spewed all over Japanese officials back when we thought we were all going to be working for the Japanese busing tables at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center:
In the latest edition of Friday Funnies, Henry
Payne looks at how Congress is dealing with the budget crisis.
With California in the final stages of its
torturous budget process, Tim Cavanaugh is appearing all week on
the local news at Los Angeles' Fox 11 to discuss creative
accounting, internal borrowing, deferred debt, fiscal hanky panky,
and the battle
over public sector pensions that is the real story behind the
three-months-overdue budget.
The state Assembly passed the budget about an hour ago, and the state could have a signed deal by tomorrow.
Appearances so far:
Monday: How final is the final deal?
Tuesday: Are back benchers going to freak out when they see the deal?
Wednesday: We finally get a look at the plan:
Beatings will continue until morale improves, so if you're in L.A., tune in to the 10 o'clock news on Channel 11, not the 11 o'clock news on Channel 10. Clips are also available at myfoxla.com/, and will be posted here the following day.
If it’s an economic decision, the federal government can make it for you. That’s the takeaway from a ruling this afternoon by a federal judge in Michigan.
Judge George Caram Steeh, who
was considering the constitutionality of the PPACA’s individual
mandate, which requires all Americans to purchase private health
insurance, said the requirement is constitutional. The judge’s
reasoning boiled down to the argument that even though the decision
not to purchase health insurance may not be economic activity,
which the federal government is allowed to regulate under the
Constitution’s Commerce Clause, it is an economic decision, because
it has ramifications across the entire health care market. The
decision noted that in United States v. Lopez, the Supreme Court
ruled that, under the Commerce Clause, the federal government has
the authority to regulate “those activities that substantially
affect interstate commerce.” The choice not to purchase health
insurance meets that criteria, according to the judge, and
therefore the federal government has full authority to regulate
it:
There is a rational basis to conclude that, in the aggregate, decisions to forego insurance coverage in preference to attempting to pay for health care out of pocket drive up the cost of insurance. The costs of caring for the uninsured who prove unable to pay are shifted to health care providers, to the insured population in the form of higher premiums, to governments, and to taxpayers. The decision whether to purchase insurance or to attempt to pay for health care out of pocket, is plainly economic. These decisions, viewed in the aggregate, have clear and direct impacts on health care providers, taxpayers, and the insured population who ultimately pay for the care provided to those who go without insurance. These are the economic effects addressed by Congress in enacting the Act and the minimum coverage provision.
The health care market is unlike other markets. No one can guarantee his or her health, or ensure that he or she will never participate in the health care market. Indeed, the opposite is nearly always true. The question is how participants in the health care market pay for medical expenses - through insurance, or through an attempt to pay out of pocket with a backstop of uncompensated care funded by third parties. This phenomenon of costshifting is what makes the health care market unique. Far from “inactivity,” by choosing to forgo insurance plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now through the purchase of insurance, collectively shifting billions of dollars, $43 billion in 2008, onto other market participants. As this cost-shifting is exactly what the Health Care Reform Act was enacted to address, there is no need for metaphysical gymnastics of the sort proscribed by Lopez.
The plaintiffs have not opted out of the health care services market because, as living, breathing beings, who do not oppose medical services on religious grounds, they cannot opt out of this market. As inseparable and integral members of the health care services market, plaintiffs have made a choice regarding the method of payment for the services they expect to receive. The government makes the apropos analogy of paying by credit card rather than by check. How participants in the health care services market pay for such services has a documented impact on interstate commerce. Obviously, this market reality forms the rational basis for Congressional action designed to reduce the number of uninsureds.
In fact, one could opt out of the market entirely if one were so inclined. Granted, most people aren’t, but a lack of religious motivation doesn’t actually constitute no possible motivation at all. Regardless, even if one doesn’t opt out of the health services market entirely, it’s relatively easy to vary the degree to which one opts in. One individual might choose to see a doctor regularly for routine or preemptive care; another might choose to see a doctor only when very sick. Today’s decision effectively declares that in order to reduce the cost of uncompensated care, the government can force individuals to buy into a particular set of benefits—it's not merely a mandate to buy any kind of insurance, but a mandate to buy insurance deemed acceptable by the government—regardless of whether that individual would’ve purchased that same level of benefits on his or her own. (It also ignores the minor detail that the law requires taxpayers to pay in excess of $100 billion a year to solve a $43 billion problem. More on uncompensated care here.)
So are there any limits to congressional power under the Commerce Clause? Steeh's decision points to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1990. In that case, the Court ruled that carrying a gun near a school was not, in fact, economic activity, and the government’s arguments saying it was merely constituted “[piling] inference upon inference.” That act, says Steeh, “was first and foremost about providing a safe environment for students in the areas surrounding their schools, as opposed to an economic regulation.” It’s nice to know that Judge Steeh thinks there are limits to Congressional power. It’s less comforting to know that he thinks that economic inactivity—such as not purchasing health insurance—is up for grabs anyway just because it creates an economic ripple effect that could potentially touch some federal policy.
The decision is the first to rule on the constitutional merits of the new health care law. Other similar challenges are working their way through the court systems in Virginia and Florida. Expect the ruling to be appealed and one of the challenges to eventually end up in the Supreme Court.
Update: Ilya Somin fleshes out the response to the argument that the decision not to buy insurance somehow constitutes "activity":
The problem with this reasoning is that those who choose not to buy health insurance aren’t necessarily therefore going to buy the same services in other ways later. Some will, but some won’t. It depends on whether or not they get sick, how severe (and how treatable their illnesses are), whether if they do get sick, they can get assistance from charity, and many other factors. In addition, some people might be able to maintain their health simply by buying services that aren’t usually covered by insurance anyway, such as numerous low-cost medicines available in drug stores and the like. In such cases, they aren’t really participating in the same market as insurance purchasers. Of course, many people will buy the same service later, and for some the probability of doing so is quite high. But the individual mandate makes no distinctions on any such basis. It sweeps in nearly everyone.
In his talk at the Cato
Institute yesterday, South African political scientist Greg Mills
shared a conversation he’d had with a Latin American government
official, who observed that “complaining about globalization is
like complaining about the quality of one’s orgasm.” This “there is
no such thing as a bad orgasm” mentality has produced Latin
American success stories like Chile and Panama. In his book
Why
Africa is Poor, Mills argues that the same approach could
work in Africa as well.
He believes "a positive approach to competitiveness" could transform the continent, and is achievable through a “simple formula of policies.” A lot of these are commonsensical and many are cost-free. Right now, it takes four weeks for Zambian copper to reach South Africa by train. Says Mills, “a border should be something you speed by at 50 miles an hour, not something you sit at for weeks on end.” In Zambia it takes 33 government permits to run a certified tourism agency. As a result, the country has only a single developed corridor around Victoria Falls. The Zambian government has spent 50 years producing reports on how to diversify its economy and tap into global markets—none of which, according to Mills, have ever really been implemented.
Yet some of the most intuitive changes would be far from painless. Mills says Zambia could undertake the kind of sweeping regulatory reforms needed to build its manufacturing sector and attract tourism, things like purging its socialist-era civil service and getting rid of windfall taxes on mining and agriculture. But to do so the leadership “would have to signal the end to business as usual” in a country where “business as usual” is working out just fine for a foreign aid-subsidized government and a government-subsidized urban elite.
Behind the usual rent seeking lurks a deeper reason for African economic stagnation, and it’s highlighted by what Mills called the potentially most important African political development since independence: the possible secession of the South Sudan. For Mills, the failure of states like Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Congo “illustrate the difficulty of extending governance over these large territories.” A free South Sudan would kick off the process of political fragmentation and smart, pro-growth governance that he thinks Africa needs to overcome its economic ills.
Unfortunately, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir is ready to go to war to preserve the Sudan’s oil wealth and prevent a third of the country from becoming a pro-western independent state. The South Sudan will likely become a reminder of everything holding Africa back, namely violent, rent-seeking governments that can act with almost total impunity. Mills realizes that this is a problem. “Colonialism gave you a sense that someone else was responsible for your destiny,” he said, explaining why Africans seem willing to tolerate even the most self-isolating and incompetent governments. But in the Sudan, the Congo, and other large, dysfunctional countries, there are already violent and destabilizing anti-government elements at play—and no stable foundation on which a functioning, pro-globalization government could stand if those elements are ever victorious.
South Sudan aside, Mills’ argument that stable yet under-performing states can lead the rest of the continent forward is appealingly optimistic without being overly utopian. If war-torn states like the Sudan are ever going to save themselves, the Zambias of the region—small, peaceful, resource-rich countries brimming with potential—must save themselves first.
The Drug War Chronicle summarizes the results of 13 polls that have asked California voters about Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative, since May:
The average for all the polls so far has Prop 19 winning 47.4%, with 43.2% opposed and 9.4% undecided.
The numbers would have been better for Prop 19 except for Monday's Reuter/Ipsos poll, which bucked the trend to show Prop 19 losing by 10 points. It is one of only three polls that show the measure losing; one was a Field Poll in July and the other was another Reuters/Ipsos poll in June....
Undecideds would have to break dramatically toward a no vote for the initiative to lose if the poll average today holds until Election Day. With Prop 19 at nearly 48% and undecideds at just under 10%, it would need to pick up just better than one out of five of those voters to get over the top.
A last-minute flurry of ads by opponents of Prop. 19, who at this point have very little money in the bank, could change that calculus. Then again, the poll results may understate support for the initiative if people worry that expressing tolerance for pot smoking might reflect negatively on them. Poll maven Nate Silver argues that such reluctance may explain why support for legalizing pot tends to be lower in surveys done by live people, as opposed to computerized phone calls.
Brian Doherty discussed the politics of Prop. 19 earlier today, and yesterday I rebutted five commonly heard arguments against it.
A new study by Columbia University
researchers Peter Muennig and Sherry Glied in the journal
Health Affairs, according to the study's press release,
disturbingly
found:
While the U.S. has achieved gains in 15-year survival rates decade by decade between 1975 and 2005, the researchers discovered that other countries have experienced even greater gains, leading the U.S. to slip in country ranking, even as per capita health care spending in the U.S. increased at more than twice the rate of the comparison countries. Fifteen-year survival rates for men and women ages 45 and 65 in the US have fallen relative to the other 12 countries over the past 30 years. Forty-five year old U.S. white women fared the worst -- by 2005 their 15-year survival rates were lower than that of all the other countries. Moreover, the survival rates of this group in 2005 had not even surpassed the 1975 15-year survival rates for Swiss, Swedish, Dutch or Japanese women. The U.S. ranking for 15-year life expectancy for 45-year-old men also declined, falling from 3rd in 1975 to 12th in 2005,
The study controls for possibly confounding factors such as differentials in smoking, obesity, accident and homicide rates, and ethnicity. So how bad is it? The study authors don't provide the raw data, but eyeballing their graphs in the article and appendix provides a rough idea of the magnitude of changes in survival rates that occurred between 1975 and 2005.
For example, in 1975, the 15 year survival rate for U.S. women at age 45 was about 91.5 percent. It was then the lowest of the 13 industrialized countries included in the study. By 2005, that had increased by 2.5 percent to about 94 percent. In 1975, the average for the 12 comparison countries appears to have been about 93.3 percent, rising by 2.9 percent to a bit over 96 percent. It remains the lowest 15 year survival rate.
For men, in 1975, 84.7 percent of U.S. 45-year old males survived 15 years, rising by 5.7 percent to just over 90 percent by 2005. In 1975, the comparison country average appears to have been 87 percent, rising by 6.3 percent to around 93 percent in 2005.
With regard to 65 year old American women, about 63 percent survived 15 years in 1975, rising 7.7 percent to around 71 percent in 2005. In 1975, the comparison country average was about 60 percent, rising a remarkable 17.4 percent to average 77 percent in 2005.
And for 65 year old American men, about 43 percent survived 15 years in 1975, rising by 17.6 percent to just over 60 percent in 2005. In 1975, the comparison country average was about 40 percent, rising by 21.6 years to around 62 percent.
In the meantime, the study shows that U.S. per capita health spending increased at nearly twice the rate in other wealthy countries. Consequently, the U.S. now spends well over twice the median amount of industrialized nations on health care, and far more than any other country as a percentage of its gross domestic product. So why are we doing so much worse relatively speaking? Muennig and Glied opine:
We speculate that the nature of our health care system—specifically, its reliance on unregulated fee-for-service and specialty care—may explain both the increased spending and the relative deterioration in survival that we observed. If so, meaningful reform may not only save money over the long term, it may also save lives.
Muennig and Glied are clearly supporters of some sort of universal government-run health care scheme, so they do not explore how our fragmented system evolved into the inefficient, dysfunctional mess that we all enjoy today. For future research, I suggest that they might profitably investigate the inefficiencies produced by third party payments, a health insurance market fragmented into 50 fiefdoms, the practice of defensive medicine, regulations designed to prevent competition, the the lack of incentives for patients to comparison shop, and so forth. That might result in truly "meaningful reform."
Hat tip to Mark Sletten.
It seems quite possible, even likely, that
California’s historic Proposition 19 to legalize adult possession
and cultivation of marijuana will
actually pass in November. This possible victory came after a
struggle against political and media elites and, at least at first,
against the wishes of the rest of the drug policy reform movement.
But as Senior Editor Brian Doherty explains, this looming victory
for drug law sanity unfortunately doesn't mean that the war on
marijuana will be over.
Watch tonight at 9 p.m. and again at midnight on
Fox Business Channel, as the libertarian host talks to
Reason Contributing Editor Veronique de Rugy and others
about the GDP-sized hole we've dug ourselves into. From the show
description:
Thirteen and a half trillion dollars in debt and getting worse every day. Add in the entitlement promises and the deficit we face is forty five trillion. Economist Veronique de Rugy explains that just raising taxes won't fix the problem and that we're facing a Greek-style financial meltdown.
Almost as cheery as Ben Bernanke!
Broadcast details here, de Rugy's Reason archive here, Stossel's here.
Berkeley economist Brad DeLong put together the chart above. In it, he uses 1991 data and matches an Iron Curtain country with a free-market equivalent. The appalling result of trying to "attempting to reproduce the Rathenau-Ludendorff Imperial German war economy of World War I" in communist countries is plain to see.
In 1989, the Iron Curtain came down, and we could see what a difference it made as we could examine levels of material well-being on both sides of the Curtain. This is as close to a perfect natural experiment as anyone could wish: the Iron Curtain's location was determined by where Stalin's and Mao's and Giap's armies marched--which is as exogenous to other determinants of economic well-being as anyone could wish....
Eschewing markets robs you of between 80% and 90% of your potential economic productivity.
Now you can argue that the difference in human well-being is less than this gap in material wealth. Cuba, after all, has a high life expectancy and a low level of inequality.
Or you can argue that the difference in human well-being is much, much greater than this gap in material wealth.
Hat Tip: Alan Vanneman.
As Radley Balko noted this morning, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seeking federal permission to prevent residents of his city from using food stamps to buy soda or other sugar-sweetened beverages. The New York Times reports that "public health experts greeted Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal cautiously":
George Hacker, senior policy adviser for the health promotion project of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said a more equitable approach might be to use educational campaigns to dissuade food-stamp users from buying sugared drinks.
"The world would be better, I think, if people limited their purchases of sugared beverages," Mr. Hacker said. "However, there are a great many ethical reasons to consider why one would not want to stigmatize people on food stamps."
This concern about stigmatizing poor people should not be confused with a concern about imposing disproportionate burdens on them in the name of public health, because CSPI does support a sin tax on soda, a levy that hits people of modest means especially hard. As with cigarette taxes, another regressive public health intervention, the quasi-progressive justification is that punishing poor people for their consumption choices ultimately improves their lives by changing their behavior: The more the tax hurts them, the more it helps them. But the same logic also applies to the food stamp restrictions that Bloomberg wants, which have basically the same impact, making unhealthy choices harder to afford for the people who need the nudge most.
More on soda taxes here. I profiled CSPI in a 2003 Reason article that opened by describing CSPI founder Michael Jacobson's distaste for "liquid candy."
President Barack Obama is making his bid to be "the education president." At the start of NBC's recent Education Nation summit in New York, Obama appeared on the Today Show and touted what he claimed were a wide-ranging set of reforms to improve America's K-12 schools.
Yet Obama's education vision deserves an F for at least three reasons:
1. Money Talks. Obama says that the educational system needs new ideas and more money. Despite a doubling in inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending since the early 1970s, student achievement is flat at best. But Obama is placing most of his bets on the money part. While he brags constantly about his Race to the Top initiative, in which states competed for $4 billion to fund innovative programs, he's spent more than $80 billion in no-strings-attached stimulus funds to maintain the educational status quo.
2. Choice Cuts. Candidate Obama said that he'd try any reform idea regardless of ideology. Yet one of his first education-related moves after taking office was to aid his Senate mentor, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), in killing a successful and popular D.C. voucher program that let low-income residents exercise the same choice Obama did in sending his daughters to private school.
3. The Unions Forever. The two largest teachers unions, The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, overwhelmingly supported Obama with their votes and their contributions. Some 95 percent of the groups' campaign contributions go to Democratic candidates and the NEA, spends more money on elections that Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Walmart, and the AFL-CIO combined. No wonder Obama's big talking point is that he wants to add 10,000 more teachers to public payrolls despite the fact that there are already more teachers per student than ever.
Reforming education may not be politically easy, but the solution is pretty simple: Give parents and students more ability to choose - and exit - schools. This works for every other sort of business and it works for higher education, too. There's no reason to think it wouldn't work for K-12 education.
And sadly, there's absolutely no reason to think that Obama will embrace that sort of change.
Written and produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also hosts. Approximately 2.30 minutes. Go to Reason.tv for iPod, HD, and audio versions. Subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel for automatic notification when new videos go live.
For more "3 Reasons" videos, go here.
In case Nick
Gillespie's earlier post about today's Nobel Prize winning
novelist who is "one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the
post-war era and one of the great libertarian heroes of the age"
whet your appetite for more Vargas Llosa love, below are two more
tidbits about the worthy winner (and Reason
contributor)—plus some tips about how to find great restaurants in
D.C.
First:
It is 31 years since Mario Vargas Llosa punched Gabriel García Márquez in the face. It happened like this. "Mario!" exclaimed Márquez happily on seeing his old literary chum after a film premiere in Mexico City. He marched towards the Peruvian, arms outstretched as if for an embrace. "How dare you come and greet me after what you did to Patricia in Barcelona!" Vargas Llosa reportedly shouted and decked the Colombian with a right hook. Mexican writers ran around looking for steaks to put on the Colombian's eye. Patricia, it turns out, was Mario's wife. The two men have reportedly never spoken since. So began one of the greatest rows in literary history.
The incident ended with a steak on Marquez's eye. While the feud may have started over a woman, it has continued in the realm of politics:
In addition to trying to encourage peace in Colombia, his civil-war-ravaged native country, Garcia Marquez continued to support the Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, with whom he developed a close association. The upside was that he used it to mediate talks in Cuba between Colombia's government and its Marxist guerrillas....
For his part, Vargas Llosa was scathing about his former friend's links to Castro, calling him "the courtier". How, he asked, when large parts of the world's intellectual community had become critical of the Cuban revolution, over issues such as censorship and the treatment of anti-Castro artists, could Garcia Marquez always remain so loyal to the dictator? (Vargas Llosa was not alone; it was even hinted by Garcia Marquez's political detractors that his defence of Caribbean socialism had helped him to win the Nobel Prize when he was not much older than 50.)
And, while Garcia Marquez cosied up to Castro, Vargas Llosa was travelling in the opposite political direction. He became increasingly active politically in his native Peru and steadily took on more right-wing economic views. In 1990, he ran for the presidency on a centre-right ticket, proposing a drastic austerity programme that would have hit the country's poorest people hardest. He won 34 per cent of the vote but was defeated by an agricultural engineer named Alberto Fujimori.
More recently, in the 2006 presidential elections in Peru, he campaigned in favour of a strongly conservative candidate, and asked "how it is possible that at least a third of Peruvians want a return to dictatorship, authoritarianism, a subjugated press, judicial manipulation, impunity and the systematic abuse of human rights". Which is by no means how Garcia Marquez sees things.
Second: Vargas Llosa is a favorite of libertarian economist and Marginal Revolution blogger Tyler Cowen. And when it comes to matters of taste, it always pays to do what Tyler says. While there are those who ask themselves What Would Tyler Durden Do?, I prefer a milder cultural mentor.
Every year for Christmas, my husband gets me a box of books. A big box. This year, it was stuffed with selections from Cowen's list of favorite books, and while virtually all of the books were hits, the clear winner was Mario Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World. Many of the themes from his two essays for Reason are present in this brilliant 1981 novel. It's great starter Vargas Llosa, for anyone looking to dip into his fiction.
Bonus Cowen-Vargas Llosa connection: In an astonishing example of the social payoffs of neurodiversity, Cowen has visited what seems to be every single strip mall or otherwise down-at-the-heels ethnic restaurant in the entire D.C. area. He writes up the winners in a popular Ethnic Dining Guide. Wondering where to go for dinner in D.C.? Just let Cowen tell you what to do.He'll even guide you to an excellent Peruvian restaurant, if you're looking for a place to celebrate tonight!
Yesterday the judge in the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the former Guantanamo inmate who is accused of participating in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, ruled that federal prosecutors may not use a witness who was identified through Ghailani's coerced statements. The government says the witness was prepared to testify that he sold Ghailani the TNT used to blow up the embassy in Tanzania. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that the testimony was too closely tied to information the CIA obtained from Ghailani while holding him at a secret prison where he says he was tortured. Civil libertarians who argue that the federal courts are perfectly capable of handling terrorism cases and conservatives who think terrorism suspects should never receive civilian trials both say the exclusion of this testimony shows they're right. But whether or not the system is working, Kaplan's ruling suggests it is ultimately irrelevant:
The judge said he felt it was appropriate to emphasize that the trial was still proceeding, and that if Mr. Ghailani were convicted he faced the possibility of life imprisonment.
He added that Mr. Ghailani's status of "enemy combatant" probably would permit his detention as something akin "to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end, even if he were found not guilty."
In other words, if Ghailani is convicted, he will be imprisoned for life, and the same thing will happen if he is acquitted. Even with the benefit of the Fifth Amendment's ban on coerced self-incrimination and the exclusionary rule, Ghailani has exactly zero chance of ever regaining his freedom. So what exactly is the point of the trial?
Asked whether Ghailani will be returned to military custody if his trial does not turn out the way the government wants, Attorney General Eric Holder dodged the question, saying, "We intend to proceed with this trial." But there is no need to be coy. As I noted more than a year ago, detaining terrorism suspects after they're acquitted is the Obama administration's publicly declared policy.
It's raining! Why hasn't Congress passed the Good
Weather Act? Sounds dumb, right? But as John Stossel writes, why is
it any dumber than a law called the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act, which promised to cover more for less money?
After all, Congres can’t repeal the laws of economics.
The Obama administration has consistently taken the position that the new health care law won’t cause individuals to change their health care plans and doesn’t cut Medicare benefits. In fact, administration officials say, the law actually extends the solvency of Medicare. But the only way they can make that claim is by relying on accounting practices that both the Congressional Budget Office and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services say amount to double counting. Meanwhile, millions of seniors are expected to be shifted off their current Medicare advantage plans by 2019.
As Michael Ramlet and former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin pointed out in a recent briefing, the new health care law took hundreds of millions of dollars out of Medicare and, rather than using it to shore up the program, plowed it into a new entitlement. The law’s authors also failed to produce a genuinely sustainable solution to the “doc fix” problem—which is why the current-law scenario for the federal budget assumes that we’ll soon see a large cut to physician reimbursements. And because the authors nabbed Medicare funding to pay for their new program, trimming the entitlement—arguably the single biggest long-term problem for the federal budget—probably won’t be part of the deficit-reduction package.
Republicans, with a few exceptions, aren’t much more savvy about fixing the program. The GOP has responded to the PPACA's cuts largely by circling the wagons around Medicare and promising not to touch it, which obviously isn’t a viable long-term policy either.
No, the takeaway from all of this isn’t, as some Republican politicians seem to think, that changes to Medicare and its benefits ought to be avoided at all costs. Indeed, significant changes will be required to put the program on a sustainable, manageable fiscal footing. Instead, it’s that the president and his allies tried to sell the public on the new health care law by insisting, over and over again, that current health plans and Medicare benefits wouldn’t be affected. Did the administration know how the law would play out in advance? Maybe, maybe not. But no matter what, many of the promises the president and his allies made about the law just ain’t true.
SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston has a very interesting recap of yesterday’s oral arguments in Snyder v. Phelps, the case stemming from the ugly military funeral protests staged by the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. Here’s a snippet:
When the Supreme Court meets in private Friday to discuss Snyder v. Phelps, a profound question will hang over the discussion: Should we — and can we — set aside our emotional reaction? If the answer, implicit or otherwise, is no, the Justices may then proceed to craft a way to write into the First Amendment a “funeral exception” to the right to speak out in public in outrageous and hurtful ways. It was apparent, throughout an hour of oral argument Wednesday, that emotion was more dominant than law, at least among most of the Justices. Perhaps typically, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who did seem to want to talk about legal principles, could not keep from pronouncing that “this is a case about exploiting a private family’s grief. Why should the First Amendment tolerate that?”...
Another telling sign was Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., repeating with increasing force the accusation that the Westboro Baptist funeral protesters had singled out the dead soldier’s father and the funeral, not to enter a discussion about public affairs including morality, but simply to achieve “maximum publicity.” Snyder, he said, sought only to bury his son, not to make any kind of statement. The Chief Justice was openly skeptical of the small church’s claim, made by its lawyer, that “it is not an issue of seeking maximum publicity; it was using a public platform to bring a public message.”
It's that feisty foe of illegal immigration, Lou Dobbs:
Dobbs has continued to advocate an enforcement-first approach to immigration, emphasizing, as he did in a March 2010 interview on Univision, that "the illegal employer is the central issue in this entire mess!"...
But with his relentless diatribes against "illegals" and their employers, Dobbs is casting stones from a house—make that an estate—of glass. Based on a yearlong investigation, including interviews with five immigrants who worked without papers on his properties, The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute have found that Dobbs has relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his 22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper.
Whole thing here.
Congratulations to
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who has just been awarded
the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature for "for his cartography of
structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's
resistance, revolt and defeat," according to the Swedish Academy.
Vargas Llosa is one of those rare literary creatures who has not
only helped to define the aesthetic stylistic innovation of his
period but directly influence its events.
The author of over 30 books - and very nearly the president of Peru - Vargas Llosa is one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the post-war era and one of the great libertarian heroes of the age at least since his highly public criticism of the Castro regime starting in the early 1970s. An outspoken critic of authoritarian regimes on the right and the left, who else but Vargas Llosa would have called for the legalization of drugs while addressing the American Enterprise Institute's annual dinner a few years back? He has been a consistent voice against repression wherever he finds it and an eloquent champion of freedom in all its manifestations. His insistence that all aspects of liberty - political, economic, and cultural - are inextricably linked is as powerful as it is rare among writers of his stature.
For more on the award, go here.
Reason is proud to have published two essays by Vargas Llosa.
1995's "The Children of Columbus: From violent conquest to common culture," is a meditation on the legacy of Spanish and European rule in the Americas. Here's a snippet:
Our age may be one of tremendous events, but it is also one of intellectual confusion. It is an age that has witnessed the collapse of the bloodiest regimes in history, and the eruption of liberty in societies where it never existed before, or where it was but a pale, elusive fire. But it has also witnessed the perversion of common sense and the assailment of values and reason by ideology. Ideology has become the lay religion of our time, and its dogmas, stereotypes, commonplaces, and excommunications continue to contaminate the intelligentsia of the Western world. The condemnations, the discomfort, and the silence of so many intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic concerning the Quincentenary [of Columbus' landing in the New World] can be explained by the fear of praising the moral or material achievements of our democracies, and thereby losing the "politically correct" credentials so necessary for success in the cultural establishment of the First and Third Worlds. The Second World, the Soviet Union and its satellites, failed and collapsed precisely because ideology had moved beyond the musings of individuals to become the reason of state. Prominent intellectuals continue to cast a shadow of doubt and skepticism on liberty and democracy, but this is an aberration. Liberty is nothing to be ashamed of. It ought to be cherished with the fervor of those who have lost it, or have just regained it. Like the young people of the former East Germany who in 1989 tore down the wall in Berlin, one of the tasks for men and women of the new generation is to tear down the ideological walls of the prison houses of thought and culture still prevalent in so many free nations.
And here is an excerpt from 2001's "Global Pillage or Global Village?: Why we must create a universal culture of liberty":
Some governments are embarrassed to confess that [they have benefited from deregulating their economies], and others -- including some real Tartuffes -- cover their bases by spewing out volleys of rhetoric against neoliberalism. Nevertheless, they have no other recourse than to privatize businesses, liberalize prices, open markets, attempt to control inflation, and try to integrate their economies into international markets. They have come to learn -- the hard way -- that in today's economic environment, the country that does not follow those guidelines commits suicide. Or, in less terrifying terms: That country condemns itself to poverty, decay, and even disintegration. Many sectors of the Latin American left have evolved from being bitter enemies of economic liberty to embracing the wise confession of Václav Havel: "Though my heart may be left of center, I have always known that the only economic system that works is a market economy....This is the only natural economy, the only kind that makes sense, the only one that can lead to prosperity, because it is the only one that reflects the nature of life itself."
For Reason commentary on Vargas Llosa, his influence, and many of his works, go here.
Debt collectors contact consumers approximately
four billion times a year. With so many contacts, there are bound
to be complaints. In 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
received 88,190 consumer complaints about third-party debt
collectors. More than 2,500 of these involved collectors who used
threats of violence, or actual violence, while plying their trade.
Another 11,505 involved false threats of arrest or property
seizure. Yet as Greg Beato notes, approximately zero involved one
of the more egregious aspects of debt collection: the way the
industry outsources collection efforts to the civil court system,
using taxpayer money and government force to strong-arm nickels
from low-level deadbeats.
I have a feeling this story will soon be national news. From the NMissCommentor, a legal blog in Mississippi:
[Attorney] Danny Lampley . . . was jailed by Chancery Court Judge Littlejohn in Tupelo for failing to recite the pledge of allegiance in open court today. Danny was one of the local lawyers who represented the plaintiff in the Pontotoc school prayer case years ago, working with the ACLU and People for the American Way.
I’m informed that Danny rose and was respectful, but did not recite the pledge...
The order incarcerating him provides:
BE IT REMEMBERED, this date, the Court having ordered all present in the courtroom to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegience, and having found that Danny Lampley, Attorney at Law, failed and refused to do so, finds said Danny Lampley to be in criminal contempt of court.
The order states that for this, Danny Lampley “is hereby ordered to be incaraerated in that Lee County jail.” The order continues:
IT IS FURTHER ORDED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED, that Danny Lampley shall purge himself of said criminal contempt by complying with the order of this Court by standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in open court.
I'd say it's time Judge Littlejohn turned in his robe. This is just astonishingly ignorant, arrogant, and thuggish. Oh, and illegal. It's also way illegal. Like, not even close.
New York
Times media-beat writer David Carr has a front-page
takedown today of the old-boy managers that Sam Zell brought in
to run the media giant Tribune Co., where they apparently carried
on like Sterling Cooper executives without the charm,
Mid-Century Modern, and
managerial ju-jitsu. Here's a representative sample:
One of their first priorities was rewriting the employee handbook.
"Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use," the new handbook warned. "You might experience an attitude you don't share. You might hear a joke that you don't consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process." It then added, "This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment."
The new permissive ethos was quickly on display. When Kim Johnson, who had worked with [Randy] Michaels as an executive at Clear Channel, was hired as senior vice president of local sales on June 16, 2008, the news release said she was "a former waitress at Knockers — the Place for Hot Racks and Cold Brews," a jocular reference to a fictitious restaurant chain.
A woman who used to work at the Tribune Company in a senior position, but did not want to be identified because she now worked at another media company in Chicago, said that Mr. Michaels and Marc Chase, who was brought in to run Tribune Interactive, had a loud conversation on an open balcony above a work area about the sexual suitability of various employees. [...]
The Chicago Tribune's circulation continues to slide, with weekday circulation down 9.8 percent in the first half of 2010. The Los Angeles Times is in worse shape, having lost 14.7 percent of its weekday circulation in the period. (Over all, the industry lost 8.7 percent weekly circulation in the period.) [...]
Despite the company's problems, the managers have been rewarded handsomely.
There are more lurid tales on all of the above topics throughout. The Tribune's typically ham-handed response is here.
My biases here are all-encompassing–I used to work at the L.A. Times (though not technically under Zell), I root actively for managerial behavior that makes the newsroom there uncomfortable, and have a distressing tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to crazy rich people who take a flyer on the newspaper biz. And I'm friendly with Senor Carr.
That said, although some of the antics described might even raise an eyebrow hair at the not-ready-for-sensitive-ears Reason office, and although maybe 99% of journalists who have worked under Zell are today saying "SEE??," there are IMO three hugely undercovered media stories as regards the Zell-era Times. They are:
1) Despite the persistent fever dreams of
Nikki Finke and the newsroom, who yearned for a
benevolent local billionaire hero to deliver them from evil, Sam
Zell was literally the only person willing to make a bet on a
beleaguered newspaper company. People love to mock how little skin
he had in the game–infamously, just $315 million of an $8.2 billion
purchase–but that in itself is a telling indicator of just how
unattractive these properties are. Zell's failure (and the
immediate cultural hostility with which he was greeted) limits the
ownership options for companies that don't have very many left.
2) There isn't a single management team that Spring Street hasn't despised since the (over-)sainted Otis Chandler exited the scene three decades ago. If I had a dollar for every word written in the Columbia Journalism Review about the malodorous new publisher of the L.A. Times, well, I probably wouldn't be writing blog posts on Wednesday nights!
3) And the most undercovered L.A. Times media story of all? The paper, as Brian Doherty, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and even a reluctant Tim Cavanaugh have all recently noted here, has been bringing it of late, plunging into real and impactful tough-nosed coverage of local power structures, while taking the whole "website that publishes a newspaper" thing seriously enough that both traffic and quality have grown through the roof.
Did that happen in spite of Zell? Because of him, at least in part? Now that would be a media story that would interest me beyond the rubbernecking pleasure of hearing about frat-boy antics by managers who never bothered learning the native dialect. Entrenched newsroom cultures are, because of the Success Curse and other problems, almost impossible things to displace or significantly change. If the L.A. Times has changed a key part of its culture–and I do mean if; I have no inside info, and I no longer read it every day–then that has more long-term significance to the news industry than some buffoon making titty jokes and signing lavish executive bonuses at yet another sinking media ship.
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