Gus Van Horn blog

If you are a parent you have, by now, heard of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and may have even spent enough time thinking about it to determine for yourself whether this is a real disorder and, if so, whether it really is common or is merely over-diagnosed. But you probably have not yet heard of Slow Cognitive Tempo (SCT), which a leading proponent claims to affect around two million children in the United States: Dr. Allen Frances, who headed the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV for the American Psychiatric Association, is not amused and is making no bones about it. "Sluggish Cognitive Tempo is a remarkably silly name for an even sillier proposal," Frances wrote at the Psychology Today website. "Its main characteristics are vaguely described but include some combination daydreaming, lethargy, and slow mental processing. [minor format edits, links removed] Having an imaginitive daughter and remembering my own tendency to daydream as a child, I am none too thrilled to learn that momentum is building behind SCT. Perhaps I should consider placing a wager that some busybody will want to medicate her for it at some point down the road, as a means of financing her higher education. -- CAV Link to Original

There is <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/updates-on-ferguson-shooting/collection_38dae294-b61e-5dbf-8c3c-f6384c6100ba.html#utm_source=stltoday.com&amp;utm_campaign=hot-topics-2&amp;utm_medium=direct">rioting and looting</a> going on mostly north of my neck of the woods, although the barbarism has also <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/08/massive-brawl-shuts-down-st-louis-galleria-mall-on-lockdown/">engulfed an upscale shopping mall</a>. The major local paper <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/ferguson-area-businesses-cope-with-aftermath-of-weekend-riot/article_4a310ec3-94de-57dd-95f7-4e350f6a6fa2.html">refers</a> to this ongoing travesty as being "in response to" the fatal shooting of a young man by a police officer. I beg to differ with this wording, for it, as an <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-get-it-right-about-the-terrible-wrong-in-ferguson/article_93ee8213-2406-5771-a959-2fcc8c486340.html">editorial</a> in the same paper might put it, is inexcusable. <br /><br />This brutality is only tenuously related to what happened Saturday. Perhaps "excused by" would have been a better turn of phrase. Stealing and vandalism -- victimizing people who had nothing to do with this sad event -- are neither called for nor justified. Indeed they are continuing despite the fact that: (1) the full circumstances of the shooting have yet to be determined; (2) the young man's family <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/chi-missouri-police-shooting-protests-20140811,0,1870857.story">has asked for it to end</a> (as have locals); and (3) the man who was shot <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/michael-brown-remembered-as-a-gentle-giant/article_cbafa12e-7305-5fd7-8e0e-3139f472d130.html">was an aspiring businessman</a>. Whatever the level of grief or sense of injustice one might feel for the loss of another, I am sure it would not motivate someone to harm someone very much like the departed.<br /><br />There are numerous calls for "justice" in the wake of this shooting, but neither <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/shooting-an-unarmed-suspect-could-be-justified-according-to-the/article_e9b5412f-2283-512e-8636-0d2bbe958c5c.html">presuming the policeman was wrong</a> nor stooping to brutality should be confused with a call for actual justice. There are many things wrong with our society, but perhaps the worst is the corruption of the concept of <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/justice.html#order_2">justice</a>, whether well-meaning or deliberate, that has occurred over the last few decades. If we are to have a functioning society at all, we will quickly get up to speed on this virtue and begin practicing it at all times.<br /><br />Now is not the time to mince words about the rioting. Whatever the circumstances of Michael Brown's death, the lawless actions that have followed are completely inexcusable.<br /><br />-- CAV Link to Original

Video of a thuggish rant (transcribed at the next link) by a union boss has gone viral. Said union boss, Michael Mulgrew, who heads a teachers' union in New York City is "defending" the "Common Core" curriculum mandated for government schools by the federal government. I found the following part of psychologist Michael Hurd's analysis particularly worthwhile: Consider the chronic emotional state of someone entrenched in this public school monopoly, particularly as a union official. They're angry, and they're frightened. On some level, some better part of them (if it exists) knows that they haven't earned their status, power or income. They're only garnering it because the government guarantees it by funding and legislation. When people criticize or question them, it reminds them that they haven't really and honestly earned what they've got. While not all public school teachers or even union officials are necessarily like this, the fact remains that they hold their jobs as a protected monopoly. As a system or enterprise of education, they're never going out of business. Year after year, the worse they perform, or the more questionable their practices (as in imposing political views via Common Core), the more money and power they attain. This thuggishnes -- part of the nature of government schools as Hurd explains -- caused me to recall that one of the biggest current fads among such "educators" is, ironically, a crusade against bullying. Out of curiosity, I decided to see what thought, if any, Mulgrew has given to the subject. As it turns out, he has written "Teaching to End Bullying" a short essay (appearing in a book on the "bullying crisis") about his union's efforts in this crusade. Amid an embarrassing amount of self-promotion, I gleaned the following insight, which he seems to have forgotten, assuming he actually wrote it: The kids who are bullies ... don't see the other child as a real person; they see only their own anger and frustration. But once they get to know the other kid and see him or her as a person, they start to empathize. This plainly goes for the adults who are bullies, although many of them have developed enough guile to hide such an attitude from others. I would add that such budding empathy would depend on there being, as Hurd put it, a "better part" in the nature of the bully (more likely in a child than in an adult), not to mention a considerable, sincere effort to walk a mile in the victim's moccasins, as the old saying goes. I don't expect Mulgrew the thug to do this in regard to the parents he is threatening. He will not take even a moment any time soon to consider how or why a parent might become "cold, twisted, [and] sick" come to question the Common Core curricululum. Nor do I expect this person to do the honorable thing. That is, Michael Mulgrew should apologize for threatening the parents of the children he is supposed to be helping -- and resign from his union post and his profession at once. More parents should question the whole notion of government-run schools, which restrict our choices about who will educate our children (and how), not to mention entrenching the likes of Michael Mulgrew. Only massive government coercion could cause so many people to entrust their own children to such a person. Parents will stand up to this -- or see their own children suffer the consequences -- sooner or later. -- CAV Link to Original

This Shouldn't Have Been Necessary In what is mistaken for good news these days, Houston's city council voted by a wide margin to pass an ordinance allowing ride-sharing services, such as Uber and Lyft, to operate legally in their fair city. No one seems to bat an eye at the fact that, even in one of the most capitalistic cities in the country, agreements between consenting adults are treated like a privilege granted by the state, rather than a right to be protected by it. The default condition in a free society is that a legitimate concern needn't get permission to do business. Oh, and there are already strings attached: Council members did pass several amendments that were designed to make the competition more level. Currently, Uber and Lyft do not have a metered fare like a cab, and can change how much they charge based on demand. City leaders voted to allow that for cabs as well. But, it will only apply to cabs hailed through an app, not to cabs people catch on the street or at a hotel. Those cabs will still need to adhere to meter rates. So cabs can't adjust their rates and, presumably, a ride-share operator who wanted to use a meter would be on the wrong side of the law if he did. Such is the business climate in one of America's freer cities. Weekend Reading "By examining the lives of people who experience tragic loss, you can find that the most resilient among them seized the new opportunities that arose." -- Michael Hurd, in "Loss Hurts, But It Can Also be Opportunity" at The Delaware Wave "People who feel that they have too little control over their lives certainly need to address the issue -- but not on the roads of resort towns." -- Michael Hurd, in "Vacation Mindset Syndrome" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents The second teaser quote above would make me more inclined to laugh at impulsive drivers -- if only they weren't so dangerous. If you like steak, ... ... you'll love Argentina, says Maciej Ceglowski, who also offers the following amusing speculation after travelling there: Surely [Juan Díaz de] Solís was wearing one of those crucifixes that shows Jesus actually hanging from the cross. It must have been a simple mistake on the part of the natives, who saw him as a friendly gift from the visitors on the boat, complete with a serving suggestion suspended around his neck. In any case, you will now see crucified lambs and calves in the front window of many a larger parrilla, roasting for hours in front of unfazed diners. Ceglowski, the proprietor of my favorite bookmarking site, is also quite an entertaining writer. If you have some time to kill, stop by his blog, Idle Words, and look around, particularly at his travel entries. --CAV Link to Original

Good news, in terms of the short-term political fortunes of the Democratic Party, comes from an article in the New Republic. Said article warns the Democrats that its "white working class problem" can't be solved simply by writing off the South. I think the warning will go unheeded despite the fact that the article supports its contention by re-analyzing the data the Democrats are betting on. Crucial to this re-analysis is a breakdown of the country into "a set of regions that more closely mirrors the basic, underlying sociological and political divisions in the nation" -- rather than just Central-Northeast-West-South. The article concludes: Many Democrats would prefer not to have to face this monumental organization challenge, hoping instead that the existing Obama coalition and demographic changes in America will prove sufficient to elect a president in 2016, hold the Senate, and weaken GOP control over the House of Representatives. But the harsh reality for Democrats is that they cannot achieve all three of these objectives without increasing their support among white working class Americans--and if Democrats keep telling themselves that "the problem is just the South," that support may decrease instead. I'd go further, based on my experiences of growing up in the South and of living in the Northeast for several years. From what I can tell, from encounters with angry leftists (e.g., "Republican people" used as a direct insult (I am not a Republican.)) and from overhearing conversations in public (e.g., "some hick from Texas" as shorthand for "white Southerner"), many Democrats like to imagine that nothing has changed in the South in the past half-century plus, and are quite happy to write off any fair-skinned individual from that part of the country. And, based on my reading of left-wing commentary, I think that most Democrats would also prefer not to question their policies or why they don't appeal to large swaths of "working class whites". It's easy to be smug when one can assume that the whole problem is due to a bunch of easily-marginalized hicks. May the donkey keep its blinders on! Perhaps this will buy more time for cultural change and the emergence of a significant pro-individual rights electoral bloc. I hold out little hope for an improvement from the GOP, but perhaps its short-term profit can stall our headlong march into tyranny. -- CAV Link to Original

In the past, I have, for several reasons, argued against the notion of "states' rights" and the related idea of the separate states as being "laboratories of democracy". In the first of the two links, I pretty much summed up what I think the rights of the states (which can only derive from individual rights) consist of: The only valid application of the notion of states' rights is to permit states to handle relatively unimportant matters as they see fit. This allows, for example, a thinly-populated state like Nebraska to have a unicameral legislature, or a state originally settled by the French, like Louisiana, to base its legal system on Napoleonic Coderather than English Common Law. In neither case are individual rights being violated. That said, the existence of separate state governments has historically had the undeniable side-benefit of sometimes causing our country to be less-than-uniformly tyrannical, as when the "free states" existed during the time of slavery (which our Constitution permitted until it was corrected by amendment). At least there was somewhere to run, within the United States, back then. That said, this accidental protection from mistaken and wrong federal law is quickly eroding, as an interesting article in The Atlantic makes clear. Here's an example, of how the feds ramrod economy-strangling environmental regulations down the throats of states that don't want them: Money isn't the only lever the feds use to increase their influence over state governments. Formally, the federal government can't require states to implement federal regulations. But environmental regulations show how easy it is to get around that constraint. The Clean Air Act allows the states to issue federal permits--but only under federally approved state implementation plans, or SIPs. Those plans must meet a dizzying number of conditions; otherwise, the EPA trumps with a federal implementation plan, or FIP. When EPA comes in with its FIP, it often comes to "crucify" local industries, as former EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz boasted at a closed-door meeting early in the Obama administration. The crucifixion takes the form of costly added requirements and endless delays. The federal government basically says to uncooperative states, "Implement our regulations for us, or we'll do it ourselves, and your constituents will be sorry." Predictably, constituents pressure state officials to protect them from the dire prospect of EPA implementing its own regulations, as we saw when Texas at first resisted implementing EPA's new greenhouse gas regulations. The article includes a brief historical survey of the legislative and legal history behind this trend and concludes with this warning: The mounting federal takeover of the states started slowly during the New Deal and has intensified substantially, especially in recent years. That inexorable trend is leading to unsustainable levels of government spending and a regulatory regime that grows more intrusive and oppressive by the day. One solution is paramount: Strengthen the vital but oft-neglected separation of federal and state governments. I agree with the prognosis, but not the diagnosis or the proposed cure. The problem isn't that the states are less sovereign than they ought to be, but that individuals are having their rights violated rather than protected by improper government. Simply making the individual states more idependent will not really solve this more fundmental problem. Fifty tyrannies that plunder their citizens and order them around is no more desirable than one. Merely fighting fighting for greater state-level independence distracts from the real fight for freedom, which entails all levels of government protecting individual rights, rather than violating them. -- CAV Link to Original

Cass Sunstein -- whose book advocating government meddling shares an interesting similarity in its title with an Ayn Rand essay against the same -- has posted a warning to Americans who value rule of law and individual freedom. However, sensing that the cause of freedom is on the ropes, Sunstein casts his information as a prescription, rather than the list of vulnerabilities that it is. Basically, Sunstein wants an autocratic President to "get Washington working", and sees three ways to achieve this: (1) fast action by any recently-elected President; (2) "broad grants of authority", such as George W. Bush obtained after the jihadist atrocities of September 11, 2001 (Curiously, Sunstein is mum on how well the NSA surveillance that started then has been "working".); and (3) "creatively designed laws" that allow the President and Congress to pass the buck to others. Note that all of these remove debate and careful deliberation from the political process -- both at the time of the passage of a law, when disaster might be averted and long after disaster has become apparent or has occurred and a course correction the President might not agree with might be called for. Ayn Rand hit the nail on the head in "Have Gun, Will Nudge", when she showed the following about that the motives of Sunstein and his ilk: Sunstein regards the American public at large as cattle to be prodded, rather than sovereign individuals with rights. It is up to us to push back by seeking to reestablish proper limits on the government in general and the executive branch in particular if we are to live once again as free men. -- CAV Link to Original

A column by Star Parker, a conservative columnist who often praises free markets, caused me to do a search for the term "regulation" on the recently-revamped website of the Ayn Rand Institute. As a result, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that ARI has posted the entirety of Rand's 1960's essay on regulations, "Have Gun, Will Nudge", in which she shows exactly what is wrong with regulation (as opposed to legitimate law). In reference to the Parker column (with which I have many, many issues), I found the following passage particularly relevant: Consider the implications. If the public is not competent to judge television programs and its own entertainment -- how can it be competent to judge political issues? Or economic problems? Or nuclear policies? Or international affairs? And since -- on the above premise -- the answer is that it can't, shouldn't its guardians protect it from those books and newspapers which, in the guardians' judgment, are not consonant with the public interest and would only confuse the poor incompetent that's unable to judge? In her column, Parker lauds Texas for imposing new regulations on abortion clinics. Even if we take her at her word that she sees this as an improvement to patient safety (vice a sneaky way to make abortions harder to obtain), one could just as well substitute "physicians" for "television programs", "welfare" for "entertainment", and "medical procedures" for "books and newspapers" in the above passage. Even if Parker, who opposes abortion, can't see these "regulations" for what they are -- a threat to the freedom to have an abortion in particular and to make medical choices in general -- that's the threat they do, in fact, pose. One cannot advocate economic freedom and improper government "guidelines" at the same time. Parker ends her column by asking, "What, after all, can 'freedom' mean when it does not start with recognizing the sanctity of life?" That's a good question, although I disagree with Parker's premise that embryos constitute human lives. But one also cannot discuss freedom without knowing that it entails an individual's right to act according to his or her best judgement, even when it is wrong, so long as doing so does not violate the rights of others. -- CAV Link to Original

Double Dishonesty from Anti-GMO Activists Amanda Maxham of the Ayn Rand Institute writes a post that deserves to go viral -- unlike a scaremongering graphic some anti-GMO activists posted to the Internet with that intent, only to abruptly remove it: [Although] insulin resistance or "double diabetes" is a real condition that some do develop, this has nothing to do with the technology used to create human insulin as the meme implies... GMO Free USA is not using the term to helpfully educate people about managing and treating diabetes, but to scare people out of taking their medication because of how it is created. This reminds me of a Charles Babbage quote I posted yesterday, except that I am able to "rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke" someone to raise such a proposition. Aside from out-and-out lying, there is also a kind of confusion one can induce in himself when one has decided that reality should conform to one's ideas rather than vice versa. (Perhaps we should call it "reality resistance".) I doubt that, after pulling this image, GMO-Free USA disbanded or even issued a retraction. The only reason the graphic was removed was because it wouldn't take too many questions to discover how mendacious it was. Weekend Reading "If we take this approach to its logical endpoint, 'public health' merely reduces to public policy in general, rendering the term 'public health' nearly meaningless." -- Paul Hsieh, in "No, Gun Violence Is Not a 'Public Health' Issue" at Forbes "The threat of being found out is like an emotional time bomb -- maybe it will go off; maybe it won't." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Folly of Deceit" at The Delaware Coast Press "[W]ith some quiet self-reflection, the needy person can retrain him- or herself to respond differently to situations that spark these anxieties." -- Michael Hurd , in "Why 'Needy' People Cling" at The Delaware Wave "No one ever admits that they want to silence others, so they invoke this magic concept [the 'public interest' -- ed] to do that dirty work for them." -- Steve Simpson, in "Gutting the First Amendment" at The American Spectator "In fact, the labels won't convey any actual information at all - just an intimidating warning that the product contains GMOs." -- Amanda Maxham, in "What GMO Labels Really Tell Us" at Politix In More Detail Paul Hsieh's column could serve as a template to debunk almost any current leftist cause (as well as a few conservative ones). This is because the unstated premise that too often passes as an argument is an intentional attempt to shame anyone who might disagree via a non-sequitur, like, "If you really care about [fill in the issue here (e.g., public health)], you will [support/oppose] [fill in the pet cause here (e.g., gun control)]." In Defense of Clutter An article defending clutter from Life Hacker reminds me of an old post of mine on minimalism, and of a recent episode in which keeping an old computer around saved me money and time. Before recounting that episode, let me bring up an interesting point that people often miss when evaluating notions like minimalism. In his zeal to minimize distractions, the geek's mistake isn't that he consistently applies a principle, but that he misapplies it. To take full advantage of working without distractions, one must first understand when a laser-like focus is called for, and when, say, letting one's mind explore things that strike its fancy is called for. (I don't use it myself, but I have even run across a task management system that attempts to put mental wandering to some use.) So keeping some junk doesn't make one a hoarder any more than it violates an intelligent application of the idea of keeping only what you need around and generally streamlining your life. Here's how keeping something I couldn't readily use around helped me in a pinch: A tiny screw on the very laptop I use for writing on most days had worked its way loose and became lost. Unfortunately, the screw held one of the screen hinges to a couple of the components of the base, meaning that my screen became hard to adjust and unstable. Worse, the hinge threatened to break parts of the base almost every time the screen moved. I knew exactly what the problem was, and called a computer repair shop in hopes of being able to stop by for a quick fix. The representative, apparently unable to comprehend my description of the problem or taking me for a fool, told me I'd have to leave my laptop there for 48 hours for "diagnostics". I demurred and decided to call a few other places -- until I remembered the old laptop, which I'd partially disassembled in the process of determining that a repair was beyond my expertise. I kept it in case I might decide to cannibalize any components later on. Good call: it just happened to have the same kind of screw in its screen hinge. My repair cost went to zero and I didn't even have to spend time looking for a decent repair shop. --CAV Link to Original

1. A web page designer, who had been working with a client in real time, makes an amusing realization after getting his client's okay: This reminds me a little of the old story about how Michelangelo responded to a critic's assertion that the nose on the David was too big. 2. While we're considering new variants on old themes, someone has warned us that key-duplicating apps can be used for break-ins. Also, much of what I said about "bumping" nearly eight years ago still applies. 3. Charles Babbage, who built a mechanical computer in the nineteenth century, was asked twice by members of the British parliament whether his machine would spit out correct answers if given the wrong data. Something about the wording of his reaction makes me smile: "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." 4. The following bit of advice on removing poison ivy is, like the whole piece, both good and amusing. The main poison ivy plant in our back yard is huge: I'll be paying someone else to remove it soon, thank you very much. -- CAV Link to Original

There is an interesting column by Larry Elder out regarding the two recent conflicting federal court rulings on ObamaCare tax credits. I do not know how important to any Supreme Court decision the following information will be, but Elder shows Jonathan Gruber, the architect of the Affordable Care Act, contradicting himself on the matter, and trying to sweep it under the rug. Twice in 2012, Gruber made it clear that the language of the bill excluded from the tax breaks anyone purchasing from a federal exchange: By not setting up an exchange, the politicians of a state are costing state residents hundreds and millions and billions of dollars. ... That is really the ultimate threat, is, will people understand that, gee, if your governor doesn't set up an exchange, you're losing hundreds of millions of dollars of tax credits to be delivered to your citizens. And, a week later: The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its [health insurance exchange] backstop, I think, partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it. I think what's important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you're essentially saying to your citizens you're going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. More recently, this is what Gruber -- Add a second "b" and you have a perfect name for a villain in an Ayn Rand novel -- had to say: We can go to the people who wrote it and say did you ever intend this as a poison pill or is it a typo every single one says it's a typo? [ sic] And every single one of them will say this is just a typo. So there is no mystery here. Regarding the contradiction, obvious once he learned that someone noted his earlier remarks, Gruber called those "speak-os". Elder is confident of a Supreme Court ruling against ObamaCare, since, as Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute puts it, "This is not a constitutional challenge to the law. It's not asking any court to strike down the law. It's actually asking them to uphold the law." That might be nice, except that for who we have in charge of enforcing the law and the extremely limited likelihood of Congress exercising the appropriate remedy. -- CAV Link to Original

The title comes from my smart (-aleck?) phone's "correction" of a simple question I was trying to ask my wife, via text. She and her father were to meet up with me and her mother during a family vacation, and they were a half-hour or so away in a car. Smart phones and auto-correct come to mind because this morning, just as I sat down to write, I heard, over her monitor, the distinct sound of my daughter vomiting. Yep. Despite the fact we had ear grommets installed a few months ago, this has all the usual symptoms of an ear infection. She has even spontaneously complained of pain in her right ear. That distinct sound also means I'll be on the phone a lot more than I'd care to be today, setting up a doctor's appointment and probably cancelling a couple of other appointments I'd planned for the day. Some of this will involve texting. Some will involve making entries in calendars and to-do lists. Anything to do with entering text will involve the auto-correct function of my phone, of which it seems I can never be suspicious enough. I am constantly sending supplementary texts like, "'far', not 'fat'" or "'.', not 'n'", after taking a (usually) quick look upon hitting send and seeing that my phone really does treat "fat out" and "n" at the end of a sentence as if they are idiomatic. (I keep a list of the really good ones, but that will have to wait.) Grousing aside, and as an article I recently encountered through Arts and Letters Daily points out, what is truly remarkable is how much auto-correct gets right. Nevertheless, "The Fasinatng ... Frustrating ... Fascinating History of Autocorrect" does have its own amusing moments: So take a break from your busy routine -- as shall I -- and marvel at the technological wizardry behind auto-correct. But never let your guard down! -- CAV Link to Original

Writing against the tide of leftist sentiment for an Israeli cease-fire, Thomas Sowell hits the nail on the head, although he somehow manages to succeed in being generous at the same time: Israel was attacked, not only by vast numbers of rockets but was also invaded -- underground -- by mazes of tunnels. There is something grotesque about people living thousands of miles away, in safety and comfort, loftily second-guessing and trying to micro-manage what the Israelis are doing in a matter of life and death. Such self-indulgences are a danger, not simply to Israel, but to the whole Western world, for it betrays a lack of realism that shows in everything from the current disastrous consequences of our policies in Egypt, Libya and Iraq to future catastrophes from a nuclear-armed Iran. [links dropped, bold added] Sowell continues, likening the calls for a ceasefire to "discussing abstract people in an abstract world". Sowell can be forgiven for making the common mistake of thinking that abstractions (proper ones, anyway) have nothing to do with concrete reality. Perhaps such an error -- or the fact that Sowell is a true gentleman -- explains why he described this as "grotesque" rather than the way I describe it: obscene. The left, which once battled prejudice, now practices fact-free moral condemnation sanctimoniously. (I can't call moral equivalence here by any other name.) The left's treatment of Israel may feel like a parlor game or even a noble cause to many. However, I find both the complete disregard of what the Israelis face and the fact that this disregard has real consequences deeply disturbing. Like the excellent Caroline Glick article I commented on recently, I highly recommend reading this piece in its entirety. -- CAV Link to Original

Some time ago, I linkedto a good piece on the ridiculous "moral panic" back in the 1980's over role-playing games (particularly Dungeons and Dragons). Over the weekend, I ran across an equally good, positive piece on Dungeons and Dragons. Like its author, I enjoyed the game while it was at the peak of its popularity, and I also saw the engrossing game as a much better passtime than most of the alternatives: For much of its existence, D. & D. has attracted ridicule, fear, and threats of censorship from those who don't play or understand the game. It is surrounded by a fog of negative connotations. David M. Ewalt, the author of Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It, writes, "If you're an adult who plays … you're a loser, you're a freak, you live in your parents' basement." The game has been accused of fomenting Communist subversion and of being " a feeding program for occultism and witchcraft." One mother, whose D. & D.-playing son committed suicide, started an organization called Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD). Though that negative perception is changing, as popular culture and the fantasy milieu become increasingly synonymous, I believe that the benefits of D. & D. are still significantly underappreciated. Though its detractors see the game as a gateway to various forms of delinquency, I would argue that the reverse is true. For countless players, Dungeons & Dragons redirected teen-age miseries and energies that might have been put to more destructive uses. How many depressed and lonely kids turned away from suicide because they found community and escape in role-playing games? How many acts of bullying or vandalism were sublimated into dice-driven combat? How many teen pregnancies were averted because one of the potential partners was too busy looking for treasure in a crypt? (Make all the jokes you want, but some of my fellow-players were jocks who had girlfriends; sometimes the girlfriends played, too.) How many underage D.U.I.s never came to pass because spell tables were being consulted late into the night? (It's hard to play D. & D. drunk; it requires too much concentration and analytical thought.) Just this week, the Times published an article about the game's formative influence on a diverse generation of writers, including Junot Díaz, Sherman Alexie, George R. R. Martin, Sharyn McCrumb, and David Lindsay-Abaire. (To the Times' lineup, I'd add a murderers' row of Ed Park, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Paul La Farge, Colson Whitehead, and Sam Lipsyte.) [format edits] John Michaud goes on to note such benefits as the game getting kids to read who otherwise didn't care to. (I remember my mother noticing how much better my brother became at reading after we'd played a while.) And, speaking for myself, who was shy and very bookish then, the game (and others like it) got me to expand my circle of friends in high school and helped me jump-start my social life when I began college. Would I make the claim, as the author does, that D&D saved my life? No, but it certainly made it more enjoyable, and Michaud has helped me see that it was beneficial for many of the other kids I knew who played it. I recommend reading the whole thing some time before the new New Yorker paywall goes up in three months. And I look forward to dusting off my old rulebooks some time down the road and, like Michaud, introducing my kids to the game. -- CAV Link to Original

1. At the age of one year, Little Man is what you might call a "late adopter" of solid food. He's been catching up lately, and I finally noticed something that might help. If he wants something, he'll reach to pick it up. If not, he swats at it. 2. If your kids like Lego, there's a beach in Britain with your name on it: A container filled with millions of Lego pieces fell into the sea off Cornwall in 1997. But instead of remaining at the bottom of the ocean, they are still washing up on Cornish beaches today - offering an insight into the mysterious world of oceans and tides. By coincidence, lots of marine-themed toys were among the pieces. 3. In 2012, DNA testing had become inexpensive enough that cryptobiologists began using it to verifya group of scientists offered to test fur samples thought to come from a Sasquatch. Oddly, the results from the thirty most promising samplesdidn't make big news: The resulting sequences were then fed into the massive GenBank database of previously characterized sequences. Two of the samples--those from India and Bhutan--had sequences matching those of fossilized polar bears. Every other sequence matched extant animals including raccoons, sheep, black bears, cows, and even a porcupine. Somehow, I doubt that this will end the hunt for Bigfoot. 4. The escapist hobby of a five year old boy has led to fame and fortune in adulthood: Willard Wigan makes tiny art. His sculptures are so small that they're often presented literally in the eye of a needle; the painstaking work requires him to work late at night, when traffic vibrations are minimal, and to slow his own pulse so he can sculpt between hand tremors. There's more, including a video of the sculptor and some of his work, at Futility Closet -- CAV Link to Original

Two recent court rulings pertaining to the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka ObamaCare) are making the news. The lion's share of the attention is going to Halbig vs. Burwell, in which a court ruled that the ACA does not call for tax breaks for people who purchase insurance through "exchanges" set up by the federal government (as opposed to exchanges run by states). Depending on whom you read, this ruling is a disingenuous exercise in context-dropping (and the tax breaks are fine) or it exposes a serious flaw in the ACA (which has effectively been gutted). I'd love it for the ACA to be rendered moot, but I strongly suspect that the ruling that has gotten all the attention will be struck down. But my layman's speculations on the news are beside the point... The reactions to these rulings on the part of conservatives is what interests me, and it all reminds me of the atmosphere just before the Supreme Court first rescued ObamaCare (via calling the individual mandate a tax). Having failed to oppose the ACA on the principle that it (like the rest of the welfare state) violates individual rights, the conservatives, unsurprisingly, saw the law passed and seemed to be wishing for it to just go away. (I think the court should have ruled differently, but we shouldn't have gotten to that point, anyway.) The first article I cite brings this to mind in a couple of ways, primarily by means of the scenarios its author contemplates, obviously salivating at the prospect, should the ruling be upheld: In other words, the battle the GOP shrank from the first time hasn't gone away. Had ObamaCare never been passed, there would have remained calls for the government to "do something" about the uninsured and the choice to do something -- or not, and explain that it is wrong for the government to do so. Had the individual mandate been struck down, those calls and that choice would have come. Those calls and that choice are set to return if -- contrary to what I expect -- the Halbig ruling stands. And if the ACA remains untouched? Republicans won't have to stand up to self-righteous thieves, but some other excuse for the government to loot the productive and pass it around will come -- maybe even as a result of economic distortions caused by the ACA. And that familiar call and that choice will return. It is high time that conservatives question the moral basis of government looting and start to argue from the moral high groundthat limited government actually possesses. -- CAV Link to Original

Caroline Glick gets Americans up to speed on events in Israel, which is currently using ground troops to destroy an extensive network of technologically advanced tunnels built by Hamas, the terrorist organization that runs the Gaza Strip. In the process, she also gets us up to speed on just how bad Obama's foreign policy regarding Israel has been: Due to their recognition of the threat Hamas and its allies pose to the survivability of their regimes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken the unprecedented step of supporting Israel's efforts to defeat Hamas. They understand that a decisive Israeli blow against Hamas in Gaza will directly benefit them. Not only will Hamas be weakened, but its state sponsors and terrorist comrades will be weakened as well. Presently, Hamas's most outspoken state sponsors are Qatar and Turkey. And later: IDF forces in Gaza had destroyed 23 tunnels. The number of additional tunnels is still unknown. While Israel had killed 183 terrorists, it appeared that most of the terrorists killed were in the low to middle ranks of Hamas's leadership hierarchy. Hamas's senior commanders, as well as its political leadership have hunkered down in hidden tunnel complexes. In other words, Israel is making good progress. But it hasn't completed its missions. It needs several more days of hard fighting. Recognizing this, Israel's newfound Muslim allies have not been pushing for a cease-fire. In contrast, the Obama administration is insisting on concluding a cease-fire immediately. [bold added] While I regard "allies" is too strong a word to use for the Moslem regimes backing Israel due to Hamas being a common enemy, it speaks volumes that Israel has the backing of three such regimes for this offensive, while Barack Obama wants to bring it to a halt. The editor of Jewish World Review, where I found this piece, wishes to "make [this article] go viral", and I concur that it deserves to. The parts I have excerpted are just the tip of the iceberg regarding the threat Hamas poses to the most civilized nation in the Middle East. Glick also paints a vivid picture of what having to live near Hamas has meant in the daily lives of Israeli citizens. That aspect of the article alone makes it a powerful tool against the pervasive -- and wrong -- notion that both sides in this conflict are morally equivalent. -- CAV Link to Original

An interesting example of cronyism (This involves government meddling in the economy, so please don't call it "crony capitalism".) surfaces at a web site devoted to the idea that free broadband would be a great way for governments to distribute loot. The Broadband Reportenumerates and details "19 State Laws That Stop Your City From Installing Blazing Fast Internet". Whether the government can or cannot provide superior Internet service is immaterial here, because it can only do so by stealing from individuals. (I do not mean this as a defense of these "roadblock" laws, although they are forestalling the government entering the ISP market with a huge price advantage.) Here's an example of such a law, which the article holds (and I have no trouble believing) a small number of internet service providers (ISPs) lobbied to have put on the books: Virginia allows municipal electric utilities to offer telecommunication services such as broadband. But there is a catch. Legislators in Virginia have forbidden cities from cross-subsidizing money for the purposes of creating a municipal broadband installation. (This is something corporations can do without regulation.) Then to make matters worse, municipalities are required to artificially inflate prices to match the costs of private industries for materials, taxes, licenses, and more. Certainly, administrative hurdles can act as one of the largest barricades to a municipality starting their own broadband service when legislators are involved. It is interesting to see how the outfit presenting this information has decided to frame this issue, as an obstacle to lots of people getting "free" broadband. I propose that we re-frame this as: ISPs have successfully thrown up roadblocks to subsidized competition from the government in their most profitable markets. As far as I know, telecommunications is one of the most regulated industries in the country, and has been for quite some time. Many of the players have doubtless not just grown accustomed to regulation, but have earned a share of the guilt for this sordid state of affairs via "regulatory capture", gaming the rules to avoid real, free-market competition -- much like the alcohol industry and taxi companies have. This is wrong, but even if this were not the case, ISPs might still end up lobbying the government, like railroads once did. Commenting on such a state of affairs (after providing historical context I don't have time to rehash here), Ayn Rand notes, in Chapter 7 of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal: [W]hat could the railroads do, except try to "own whole legislatures," if these legislatures held the power of life or death over them? What could the railroads do, except resort to bribery, if they wished to exist at all? Who was to blame and who was "corrupt"--the businessmen who had to pay "protection money" for the right to remain in business--or the politicians who held the power to sell that right? Sadly, in today's mixed economy, the parties on both side of this battle want it both ways: (1) The now-corrupt businesses, which should instead be competing for profits on merit are lobbying for profits with protection from hard work and competition; and (2) Too many disappointed (or potential) customers are demanding the removal of these regulatory hurdles -- not to unleash the power of the free market, but so an entity (the government) can force some people to subsidize Internet service for others. At best, the ISPs are blind to the fact that government control of their businesses isn't freedom, and those who want broadband are blind to the fact that, in the government, they are putting themselves at the mercy of an entity that is larger and more powerful than the businesses currently getting fat off its rules. Perhaps, if we wanted cheap, "blazing fast" Internet (and better ISPs), we (and any pro-capitalist ISP's out there) should agitate for a prohibition of the government from interfering in the economy. Then, the profit motive could work again for cheaper, higher quality service, and the people who actually used it would be the ones paying for it. (As an added benefit, for those concerned with any remaining people "under-served" by the freer market, they would be free to subsidize (at lower cost) as many as they could afford.) One final note: As much as I disapprove of regulatory capture, it is ironic that this phenomenon seems to be all that (temporarily) stands in the way of a de facto government takeover of the Interent (via loot-funded competition) in some states. -- CAV Link to Original

Reader Snedcat recently pointed me to a blog posting titled, "No, Conservatives, There Is No Left-Wing Soccer Conspiracy" by John Pepple, author of Soccer, the Left, & the Farce of Multiculturalism. Pepple's ruminations about the phenomenon of conservative commentators railing against soccer raise many interesting issues, but two stand out. Before I dive in, let me note that, contrary to Pepple, I do see some leftists glomming on to the soccer bandwagon and trying to politicize it (as I note in the last link). However, I do agree that the left hasn't been the force behind its now widespread and growng popularity in the U.S. First, Pepple, who strikes me as a disaffected, old-fashioned leftist, finds zero evidence of broad left-wing support for the game or -- and I find this even more interesting -- any other sport: Think about this. Every now and then Legal Insurrectionshows a photo someone has taken of a car whose rear end is filled with leftist bumper stickers. Have you ever seen one of these cars with a soccer bumper sticker on it? Of course not. Leftists who are soccer fans are few and far between, and even when they are fans, they don't make a big political thing about it (which goes against their habit of politicizing everything, but that is their business). When I go to games, many of the cars in the parking lot have bumper stickers related to soccer on their bumpers, and they never have anything related to leftist causes, but when I go to Whole Foods (which is almost never), the bumper stickers I see in their parking lot never have anything related to soccer. [format edits] Considering what sports offer vis-a-vis the leftist idea of equality, this comes as no surprise. (But still, don't expect facts like these to cause Ann Coulter and her ilk to question their emotional associations, or do anything other than double downon their peculiar brand of patronizing cluelessness.) Second, Pepple notes that the lukewarm reception of soccer by the left in general is despite the fact that one would think it a shoe-in, based on multiculturalist rhetoric: ... The "activists" have been inactive when it comes to advancing soccer, even though (as I spent a chapter arguing in my book) it seems to be right up their alley (especially in terms of multiculturalism). And this may be what conservatives are picking up on, that it seems perfectly natural for the left to adopt soccer, even though they mostly have not done so. This is because the "activists" aren't. They're bullies, from their style of argumentation, through their rhetorical approach, and down to their hypocrisy. Multiculturalism isn't about ending racism, but about perpetuating injustice to Western civilization through lip-service to a just cause. The lack of interest in soccer, even in terms of promoting it, is just a symptom. Pepple has helped me see that soccer is one of those rare cultural phenomena that can show much about both its more vocal detractors and those who seem like natural allies, but who remain oddly silent about it. And I have hardly scratched the surface regarding the issues his piece brings up. -- CAV Link to Original

Political analyst Dick Morris comments on his recent decision to read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: As a liberal, I had never considered it and as a conservative, never gotten around to it. Based on the following, he seems to be pretty impressed: Last night, I read an eloquent statement by Dr. Hendricks, a character in the novel who was on strike and refused to donate his services to State run medicine. It is worth pondering today. It echoes the cri de coeur of every doctor in America[.] [format edits] Following is a direct quote of 380 words from the novel, which I recommend reading (or re-reading) in full. It ends, "t not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it -- and still less safe if he is the sort who doesn't." I am glad to see that someone as popular and well-regarded as Dick Morris is pointing out this work, and especially this particular quote. -- CAV Link to Original

John Stossel notes the careless use of polling data to excuse government looting and meddling: It turns out that government spent your billions on urban transit based on surveys that asked people if they want to live in "walkable communities." Of course people said yes! Who doesn't want to live in a neighborhood where you can "walk to shops"? But if they'd asked, "Are you willing to spend about four times as much per square foot to live in a city instead of a spacious suburban home?" they'd get different answers. Set aside the important moral objections to the government confiscating money from individuals -- for any purpose -- and think about this for a moment. Why would the bureaucrats bother getting better information? They aren't accountable to customers or backers who will want to know where the money went if it doesn't yield some kind of return. They'll personally look busy collecting their data and analyzing it ad nauseam to produce the kinds of results their agencies need to justify raking in more money. So many people are used to being robbed of nickels and dimes on a daily basis that the few who are curious about where their money is going won't have the time to get into much of a lather about whether they think it is being wasted. Indeed, such polling data will make it look like most people are getting what they want and defuse all but the most principled anger. I could go on, but isn't it mind-boggling how the abdication of the trader principle makes government planning even dumber than common sense would suggest, based on the fact that government planners, being human beings, aren't omniscient to begin with. -- CAV Link to Original

The latest good news/bad news story in which the bad news more than makes up for the good takes the form of a medical student who is receiving publicity for wanting to "take down" a popular quack. Unfortunately, his cure is short-sighted and, as such, worse than the disease: I wrote policy for the Medical Society of the State of New York [where Dr. Oz is licensed] and the American Medical Association asking them to more actively address medical quackery on TV and in the media -- specifically Dr. Oz. The New York policy was passed in modified form. Organized medicine in New York is aware of what Dr. Oz is saying and how he is able to fall through the gaps of regulation. Many New York physicians testified at their annual meeting about the harm they are seeing happen day-to-day with their own patients. Patients stop taking proven medications in favor of "natural" medications that Dr. Oz promotes. Many patients trusted Dr. Oz more than their own family doctors and this conflict hurt the doctor-patient relationship. When we brought the policy to the American Medical Association, they reaffirmed existing policy instead of our resolution asking them to take action against inappropriate medical testimonials on TV. The AMA basically thought they were doing enough with existing policy. [bold added] If I read this story correctly, Benjamin Mazer wants to sic the state regulatory apparatus on any physician who doesn't toe the line regarding what the government regards as proper medical advice. As harmful as pseudoscientific advocacy can be, that harm is nothing compared to that of subjecting to government scrutiny (beyond prosecution for outright fraud) everyone who voices an opinion. Some time ago, on the related issue of nutritional advice, I commented that: There is no reason consonant with the government's proper function of protecting individual rights for the government to restrict what individual citizens say or to whom they say it. That is, barring instances in which what someone says violates the rights of others (e.g., slander or fraud), it shouldn't be against the law, period, for anyone to say anything, including offering advice of any kind. People who hear advice have free will and minds of their own: They can accept or reject what they hear, and simply offering advice, good or bad, doesn't pick their pockets or break their legs. On top of this, as John Stossel recently pointed out, the whole idea of the government relieving consumers of the need to think for themselves is bunk for several reasons. (Regarding the Stossel piece, I noted, too, that such "protection" does far more harm than any charlatan can by paving the road for them -- by putting people to sleep.) As much as I sympathize with Benjamin Mazer, I find his agenda self-defeating and inimical to freedom. The government is simply unable to serve as a substitute brain for patients who refuse to think. Furthermore, by dictating what constitutes acceptable "expert" advice, it endangers the progress of medicine by both lulling patients who might otherwise take a more active role in their own care and by making experts who might have good reasons to depart from the orthodoxy reluctant to air their views. -- CAV Link to Original

Here's a sign of the times. Flytenow, an online flight-sharing service, is seeking to allay the legal concerns of its clientele that flight-sharing might run afoul of regulatory authorities, namely the FAA. On February 12th, 2014, Flytenow submitted an official FAA Chief Counsel request for legal interpretation of its services. The FAA's self-imposed deadline to respond to our request was June 18th, 2014. In lieu of a formal deliberation from the FAA, Flytenow offers the following interpretation of the [Federal Aviation Regulations] in consultation with Gregory Winton of the Aviation Law Firm for general information purposes only... [link in original] This "informational" post goes on for about another 500 words interpreting regulatory arcana regarding whether the pilots who offer services are "holding out" or share a "common purpose" with their prospective passengers. I am no attorney, but working within this system by interpreting these rules to cover this new business model should be a no-brainer even for a bureaucrat. (These rules shouldn't even be on the books since they criminalize mutual agreements between individuals that harm no one, but still...) Nevertheless, in over four months, the FAA couldn't or wouldn't cough up an answer. For anyone who subscribes to the notion that we need the government to monitor and regulate every last move we make, I ask this question: "If the government is supposed to be so wise and powerful, why can't it answer even a simple question like this one in the more-than-ample time it gave itself?" This is not to frame the issue of government regulation as a matter of mere competence, although it is an interesting way of considering that issue. -- CAV Link to Original

Regulars here know that I oppose government regulation of the economy on the grounds that it violates individual rights and is, therefore, contrary to the proper purpose of government. That said, in the fight against regulation, it can be persuasive to consider cost-benefit analyses, such as one I got wind of a few years ago that placed a price tag of $1.75 trillion per annum on federal regulation alone. However, this approach comes with a couple of problems, one of them being that, in the face of such analyses, many people lose sight of the main objection against regulations noted above. Another problem is that an ideological opponent might simply lob the results of a completely different cost-benefit analysis your way: My analysis ... went through the [Office of Management and Budget] data, which indicate that the benefits of government regulations have consistently and significantly exceeded their costs. Unless you have at least a basic understanding of at least one of these analyses, you aren't going to be able to offer much insight about this little discrepancy -- not that there's anything right about the government issuing marching orders. That said, I think it is safe to say that the author of the above quote did not factor in a close cousin of Bastiat's Broken Window. Let's call it aborted innovation. The Health Care Blog reports that Google's co-founders have a very limited entrepreneurial appetite for branching out into medicine due to the regulatory environment they would face: On the face of it, it's pretty amazing that a company that doesn't think twice about tackling absurdly challenging scientific projects (e.g., driverless cars) is brought to its knees by the prospect of dealing with the byzantine regulation around healthcare (and more generally, our "calcified hairball" system of care, as VC Esther Dyson has put it). A similar sentiment has been expressed by VC and Uber-investor Bill Gurley as well; evidently taking on taxi and limousine commissions is more palatable than taking on the healthcare establishment. [minor edits] The author thinks that there is a path forward even "within the constraints of our existing system", but this system may have already cost us the progress that two very able minds could have brought us. Whatever the calculable costs or alleged benefits of the government building hoops and making us jump through them -- which is wrong to begin with -- I fail to see how many people would tolerate this going on for long if they knew these hoops were causing people to pass on the chance to save or improve their very lives. -- CAV Link to Original

A. Barton Hinkle writes a thought-provoking piece in which he examines a common political argument he phrases as "[Fill-in-the-blank] is great for the economy!" Hinkle considers numerous examples of politicians and others using this excuse to push various forms of government meddling, including: even more money for government schools (Barack Obama), government enforcement of the Christian definition of marriage (Rick Santorum), and government loot for the movie industry (the Virginia Film Office). Of this rationale, even in those cases when it is true, Hinkle notes: Why give so much top billing to the bottom line? Well, Americans are pragmatic. They might not care about a particular endeavor by itself, but if you can show that it's good for business, they might agree to go along. The only trouble is that not everything can be good for business all the time. The economic argument is also rather sad. There is more to life than dollars and cents, and it seems a little pusillanimous not to say so. ... Neil deGrasse Tyson believes in space exploration because of its glorious scientific promise -- not because it might be good for Lockheed-Martin. Why not make the case for space on its own merits? We should educate children for their own benefit, not because of their potential future utility to us. People ought go to theaters and art galleries to gasp in wonder at artistic brilliance and beauty -- not because of the multiplier effect. That's the real irony of the ubiquitous economic argument. Worthwhile causes speak for themselves. Pitching them as little more than economic stimuli really just sells them short. [bold added] Hinkle is half-right, but he fails to see that "the economy" is both a worthy cause and is being worse than sold short. Although he notes that the economy is about trade-offs, he forgets to ask, "for whom?" it is or ought to be. Had he done so, he'd might have seen that all of these proposals involve the government making Americans less free to make their own choices on numerous matters that harm nobody else and are nobody else's business. Indeed, he might even have seen that these arguments not only sell short such things as education, science, and the arts, they sell the economy down the river -- a proper, free economy that enables Americans to become prosperous and make their own choices. However, Hinkle hardly bears the blame for this. As Ayn Rand helped me see, and I have subsequently noticed many times myself, it has been conservative and libertarian commentators who have failed, time and time again, to make a moral case for capitalism -- when they haven't outright attacked capitalism as immoral on altruistic grounds. (The latter is usually via some kind of "admission" along the lines of it being the least-bad way of promoting some vague "common good".) Although the poor would generally be better off under capitalism, the moral basis for that system, rational selfishness, directly conflicts with the idea that man exists to serve other men, and its political spawn -- the notion that it is good to steal from one person or otherwise compel him to allegedly benefit another. This contradiction, between capitalism and the default morality of the vast majority of Americans, is what many who want a freer economy hope to avoid having to address when they merely tout some slight loosening of government controls as "good for the economy" (rather than, say, a baby step in the direction of freedom). The failure to address this contradiction is also why you rarely see them asking pointed questions, like: "Why isn't every day a 'tax holiday' if those are so good for the economy?" or "Why confine tax incentives to such a stingy amount or to just one industry?" or "Isn't government manipulation of the economy, even for an apparent short-term gain, directly antithetical to its mission of protecting the rights of all individuals, all the time?" (In every case, they would quickly face the task of questioning the propriety of the entitlement state.) This failure has persisted for so long that most people accept some government measure (vice their own freedom) as indicative of what's "good" for "the economy". So now, the fiscal conservatives' chickens have come home to roost: "Good for the economy" (or even other past shibboleths) is no longer even vague shorthand for lower taxes or less central planning, let alone capitalism. As we see from Hinkle's piece, it often means quite the opposite. -- CAV Link to Original