Detailed Abstractions

Sorry for the respite….

• Two great articles in Reason’s February issue:  One by staff science writer, Ron Bailey discussing health care (here), which starts with something everyone should know who’s interested in high price of medical care:

According to the conventional wisdom, the United States faces a massive medical bill thanks to our use of pricey new treatments and equipment. “About half of all growth in health care spending in the past several decades was associated with changes in medical care made possible by advances in technology,” a 2008 Congressional Budget Office report declared….

Don’t be fooled however, some of our more interesting intellectuals think this is reason enough to retard medical advance:

…This is familiar territory for [bio-ethicist Daniel] Callahan, who for decades has advocated reining in medical innovation to reduce health care costs. He also favors limiting the life-extending treatments that older people receive, on the grounds that most of them will “have lived a full and fruitful biographical life prior to age 70.”….

Who like most people that wish to control every thing in your life, including how you’ll die – refuses to take his own medicine:

…Interestingly, Callahan, age 79, underwent a life-saving seven-hour heart procedure in August that cost upward of $100,000….

So out “bio-ethicist” wants to tell your grandmother tough crap, while he does as he pleases.  I’m guessing his title was self-anointed as this is a one-way trip to genocide…. all genocidal societies started with this premise – the young, but very sick & the old, they are burdens on us… what a disgrace as a human being.

But going forward… the second article, written by staff writer Radley Balko… generally disliked because all his articles contain bad news about law enforcement abuses angering most readers and this case is no different.   Read about LE & justice system abuses when they are allowed to seize assets they believe were used in a crime or bought with criminal proceeds (here).  One more thing the state is actively doing to subvert true freedom.

• PysBlog has a good post on reasons we desire and try for conformity (here).

• The IRS, one of the most hated government agencies, is now allowed to bring armed guards into your home if they find you a possible threat (here).  The Christian Science Monitor seems to think this is warranted due to anti-government violence, but tries to prove it with numbers that are likely on par with the rest of society:

…The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which oversees the IRS, handles an average of 918 threats made against IRS employees every year, according to the agency. Between 2001 and 2008, court cases resulting from those threats have resulted in 195 convictions, according to TIGTA….

Even if out of all the hundreds of thousands of people who worked for the IRS between those 7 years, it seems like this is overkill.  Having said that, I also have no faith in their numbers at all.  Months ago we were told to stay away from 10% unemployment, we have to spend money.  We spent, we’re at 10% (here).

Additionally, organizations like MADD routinely exaggerate their findings.  For instance, in their version of “alcohol related accidents” – if you had too much to drink and just want to sleep it off and someone, completely sober, runs into your parked car – that’s an alcohol related accident.

I’m not saying he’s lying, I’m just saying that in my personal experience while studying, believing a government agency is telling the full and accurate truth, especially when that truth gets them extra funding, is highly unlikely.

• Lastly, an oldy but a goody.  My 13 year old daughter heard this on an economics talk I was watching, told one of her friends parents about it & they refused to believe.  You might refuse as well…. but remember, we are all entitled to our opinions, but not our facts (here).  Basic thesis:  Seat belt laws did not reduce driver fatalities significantly, because it increased the number of overall accidents and worse still, it has resulted in more deaths of pedestrians.  Proving once again, that almost all governments laws intending to prevent some result, do more harm than good.

Anyone remember when Halloween was about running around the neighborhood, staying up late, and eating too much candy?  Remember when selling lemonade was easy?

Well, thanks to how enlightened we’ve become, things like that are no longer allowed… by law in some places.

In Bellvile, IL the law encompasses ages of those allowed to trick-or-treat, whether children over 12 should be allowed to wear masks at all, and of course the all important curfew.

I don’t know about you, but it’s odd to me that this many ordinances are required for a fake holiday.  Even the explanation shows how little the mayor grasps what a police state this is becoming (@Fox2News):

…Mayor Eckert said “We had listened for many years to our residents, particularly seniors and single moms who said it was kind of scary many times when high school aged kids, people who are as tall as you and me, 6-feet tall, coming to their door late at night.”

“We firmly believe that trick or treating is for children, and when they get to be an age, if their parents aren’t sensible enough to tell them they’re getting too old, you’re getting too big, then we feel that the ordinance is in tact for our police officers to not have to tap them on the shoulder telling them to knock it off,” explained Eckert….

With all due respect to the mayor, I don’t honestly care what you “firmly” believe about Halloween.

Honestly, I tend to agree that 16 year olds running around for candy is stupid.  But I’m not sure that if parents allow their kids to do things I “firmly believe” are stupid equates to a government attempt to micromanage behavior on Halloween.

It’s instructive that the mayor doesn’t even seem to grasp the long term consequences of these actions.  Maybe someone should ask, “What if you firmly believed Halloween was evil?  Would you ban it altogether?”

Of course since they’re all busy dealing with youth crime, maybe they don’t have the time to answer.

It’s not kids and Halloween messing things up, but kids & unlicensed businesses.  It’s so bad in some places, that neighbor’s are calling the cops  (whole thing here):

…Juveniles, seven of them, on a quiet residential street, selling an uncontrolled substance: lemonade. A neighbor had dimed them out, and a Haverford Township police officer responded in a hurry. When he arrived at the two-story brick house on Maryland Avenue, he dutifully informed Dana Kleinschmidt, mother of four of the reputed offenders, who included 5-year-old triplets, that they were violating the law. They were selling lemonade without a permit….

Which in and of itself is dumb enough, but wait… after scaring little kids, it turns out what they were doing actually wasn’t against the law at all.  Enter John Viola, Deputy Chief of Police, to explain things:

…The responding officer – who was unavailable, whom Viola would not identify, and whose name and badge number were blacked out of the police report – invoked a township ordinance against vending without a permit. What the officer didn’t realize, Viola said, is that the law doesn’t apply to anyone younger than 16…

So there you have it – the War on Kids just had an innocent casualty due to a simple misunderstanding.  It’s just another  training opportunity really.

Or at least that’s as it appears.  In a stunning admission by the Deputy, he explains how they will continue to harass anyone they want, even if it’s not really illegal.  Seriously – how are they supposed to know the law?

…“The police officer would have no way of knowing this on the street,” Viola said. “He acts on information he has available.”…

It seems obvious to me, that if cops aren’t required to know the laws they are enforcing, we might have a problem, but I admit I’m not a cop.  I do recall something from school about ignorance being no defense, but I guess that’s only if you are charged with a crime, not if you’re being harassed for breaking a non-law.

Welcome to (NEW) America:  Home of the criminal, land of the state.

I heard about a recent sobriety checkpoint in my area and what seemed to me a ridiculous use of resources compared to the payoff.  This being quite some time ago, I almost lost the story, but thanks to Google Cache… here it is:

St. Charles police Detective Derek Piasecki reported this morning that a DWI checkpoint this past weekend resulted in 29 arrests. The checkpoint stopped a total of 1,797 drivers at Highway 94 and Portwest Drive. Of those, 920 were westbound, and 877 were eastbound.

Here’s a breakdown of the arrests:

* 25 for driving while intoxicated

* 3 for driving with a revoked license

* 1 for failure to comply

A total of 23 officers from the St. Charles and St. Peters police departments and the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department worked overtime between 10  p.m. and 3 a.m.

Maybe it’s just me, as from the websites I’ve viewed people seem to be not only ok with this, but actually wanting more of it.

Looking from just the numbers however, you have 23 officers working 5 hours @ at least time 1/2.  This equates (23*5) to 110 man hours or (23*7.5)  or 172.5 hours of paid time to arrest 29 people while stopping 1768 other people.

This equates to (110/29) approximately 3.8 man hours per offense, with only 25 actually being arrested for the offense the checkpoint was supposed to stop.

Not only is this an incredibly inefficient use of resources, but to me, seems to be overkill.  98% of the people that were stopped had no other offense than driving in the area the police officers were targeting.

Additionally, this particular stop was announced before hand, making the actual offenders not only stupid for drinking and driving, but also clueless and uninformed.

Of course some can argue that it is worth it to help push down the scourge that is drinking and driving.   Statistics are hard to come by because the only ones compiling them are groups with interests of conflict, but taking their numbers – which includes any fatal accident where alcohol was involved (even if the drunk was passed out on the shoulder of the road and was run over) – about 45 people die daily from drunk drivers.

Maybe for some this makes up for the stunning inefficiencies, for me, I’m not so sure and therein lies the question:

If you have to stop 1787 people to find the 25 you are looking for – is that considered a success?