The Proximal Tubule

• All the commentary seems to say the same thing: the GOP won this election on "moral" and cultural issues. Which is good. Because we need the Dems to continue supporting bad economic policies and reach across and try to capture the bigot vote. It's a good day to be a libertarian. Woo hoo.
• I heard a theory a while back that a Bush victory was more likely to bring a quick end to Iraq then a Kery victory. The thought was that Kerry had no motivtion to hurry up because it was seen as a "Bush mistake." Seems like wishful thinking but I hope it's right.
• I voted for the guy with the shirt.
• Well, my prediction was wrong. I made that prediction before Kerry even got nominated, and I stuck with it. I probably should have reconsidered when they picked a guy with "loser" literally tatooed on is forehead. Lesson learned, I guess.
• Best quote: this is an old one that I saw again today, but it sums up the libertarian feeling about today. Nick Gillespie: "To say Bush spends like a drunken sailor is an insult to drunken sailors."
• CNN just blamed bloggers for getting the Kerry hopes up. I pretty much have completely quit watching the news and reading the papers (kinda like Jim Bunning), but if I gotta watch them blame blogs for everything, I'll just have to quit altogether.

Tomorrow, barring another recount mess, we will have a president-elect. I can't tell you his name, but I can tell you a few things about him. He wanted George Bush to have the authority to launch a war in Iraq, and he probably would have invaded whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction there. He thinks the Federal Election Commission should strictly regulate political speech, and he thinks the Federal Communications Commission should strictly regulate non-political speech. He supported the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, and he will not be parsimonious with the public purse. He's a child of privilege who acquired great wealth without earning it in the marketplace. And I didn't vote for him.

If I had to make a wild guess, our health care system will be paid for by explicit or implicit public funds at a rate of 65-70%. My question is this: if we have a nationalized health care system now, and that system is by your estimation broken, is more nationalization the way to go? Especially when every other sector or industry in this country is privately funded and avoids this problem. Except, that is, for education and the military. Oh, yeah, they're publically funded, too.

A far more accurate "bottom-up" approach suggests that the total cost of health services regulation exceeds $339.2 billion. This figure takes into account regulation of health facilities, health professionals, health insurance, drugs and medical devices, and the medical tort system, including the costs of defensive medicine. Moreover, this approach allows for a calculation of some important tangible benefits of regulation. Yet even after subtracting $170.1 billion in benefits, considerable, amounting to $169.1 billion annually. In other words, the costs of health services regulation outweigh benefits by two-to-one and cost the average household over $1,500 per year.

More specific papers are linked to here. Looking at those papers, my guess is that the authors have under-estimated the cost of regulation. For example, I do not think that the work on professional accreditation and licensure captures the rigidities in the system imposed by regulation (prohibiting substitution), or the cost of rent-seeking as professional associations lobby for special favors.

Guither's article just made me despair a little. If the Ku Klux Klan gives your campaign money, you give it back. If an Al-Qaeda-linked "charity" gives you money, you give it back. Do these politicians really put drug legalization into the same category as racism and terrorism? Do these people actually see Pete Guither's views, Pete Guither's values, my values, as so abhorrent that they don't even want our money? That they slander and libel us?

The annual median number of deaths is 1137, of which 85% are over 65, and 2% are 15 or younger. About 10 infants a year die from influenza, which is probably comparable to the death rate among infants from lightning strikes. Also worth noting is that in the most at-risk population, those 85+, deaths from influenza account for 2.2 per 100,000 of population.

While many Americans search in vain for flu shots, members and employees of Congress are able to obtain them quickly and at no charge from the Capitol's attending physician, who has urged all 535 lawmakers to get the vaccines even if they are young and healthy.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), a heart surgeon, sent letters urging his 99 colleagues to get the shots because they mingle and shake hands with so many people, his spokeswoman, Amy Call, said. She said she did not know how many senators have taken his advice.

Eisold "is a big believer that members of Congress are at high risk, because they shake hands with a lot of people" and then visit veterans centers and other concentrations of susceptible people, his spokesman said. Because lawmakers can be both victims and spreaders of flu, he said, Eisold urged all 535 to get the shots.

The news that some medical supply wholesalers are price gouging the flu vaccine probably shouldn't come as a surprise, human nature being what it is. But I doubt the practice is as widespread as the media reports are making it sound. I, for one, haven't received a single fax offering flu vaccine. And the offices and drug stores in our area who have the vaccine seem to be acting responsibly by only giving it to those who are at high risk. At the original price.

He also could have denounced the price gouging of flu shots which is going on in some parts of the country, but knowledge about the true costs of things to the typical American may be too much to expect from the Boy in the Bubble.

Shame on the people who are price gouging," said Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There's no room for this kind of behavior in an environment where we need to pull together as a country to protect our vulnerable populations.

But lectures like these, asking us to pull together or do the right thing, work best in small close communities or families. In a large nation, high prices do the lecturing more effectively. It's not perfect. Some poor people will also get discouraged from buying and we might want public or voluntary measures to help them out. But when we hold prices down artificially or by social pressure or by threat of government prosecution for price gouging, there are costs born today and tomorrow. By not allowing people to profit from setting some supply aside for a crisis, we discourage people from taking such risks in the future.

...Every time we hold prices down, we make such shortages more likely in the future.

Hold the phone! You mean to say that government purchasing of vaccines at a forced discount has something to do with this? Could these be the mysterious "business reasons" that cause some companies to underproduce vaccines?

I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

I suppose to anyone who was paying attention when this measure went into place and had a bit of economic sense about them, this is old news. And frankly, the point has been made before. I just think it's worth bringing up again. And again and again until people start to see the connection between government driven health care and undersupply of goods.

Imagine, now, that the government were to do the same thing for x-ray machines, painkillers, MRIs, nurses, obstetricians, and just about everything else. Government need not be the "provider" of health care to make lives worse. It need only be the majority purchaser, dictating prices to companies and potential doctors. Even with a second-tier in the system for those people who want to shell out money themselves for better care (though I have problems with people paying twice and getting one service), imagine the disparity in health care treatment between those who can pay and have access to the advanced care, and those who have to wait in lines hoping their heart murmer isn't something serious. How many doctors are going to choose to participate in the socialized system?

These shortages, that extend well beyond flu shots into treatments for preventable diseases in children are directly caused by government action.

Maybe regulation not only causes crime, it makes people sick, too.

People expecting children can choose a pre-approved name from a government list of 7,000 mostly Western European and English names - 3,000 for boys, 4,000 for girls. A few ethnic names, like Ali and Hassan, have recently been added. But those wishing to deviate from the official list must seek permission at their local parish church, where all newborns' names are registered. A request for an unapproved name triggers a review at Copenhagen University's Names Investigation Department and at the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs, which has the ultimate authority. The law only applies if one of the parents is Danish.

Many parents do not realize how difficult it can be to get a name approved by the government. About 1,100 names are reviewed every year, and 15 percent to 20 percent are rejected, mostly for odd spellings. Compound surnames, like Tan-Farnsden, also pose a problem.

Parents who try to be creative by naming their child Jakobp or Bebop or Ashleiy (three recent applications) are typically stunned when they are rejected. In some cases, a baby may go without an officially approved name for weeks, even months, making for irate, already sleep-deprived, parents.

The arthritis drug Vioxx was pulled from the market today, by its maker Merck & Co., because of recently discovered high risks to users of heart attack and stroke... A report I heard on WTOP news radio in Washington, DC, featured a physician who complained that Merck took too long to remove Vioxx from the market. The news report went on to mention critics of the Food and Drug Administration -- all of whom apparently believe that the FDA's procedures result in too many drug approvals.

Nowhere in this story or in any account that I've (so far) read does anyone propose that each arthritis sufferer be given the freedom to choose which level of risk he or she endures. The unquestioned presumption is that that there is one proper level of risk and that it is up to national-government bureaucrats to discover and enforce it.

When it comes to marriage, what’s an atheist libertarian to do? What kind of ceremony is appropriate, and who ought to officiate? For an atheist, the obvious choice might appear to be a judge or justice-of-the-peace. But for a libertarian atheist, state idolatry is as objectionable as spiritual idolatry. Sure, libertarians recognize the existence of the state (while atheists do not recognize the existence of a god), but why go inviting the state into what is ultimately a personal commitment? And while many people, including libertarians, might choose to invoke the state’s contract-enforcement apparatus, that act is conceptually distinct from the act of wedding another person (as I argued here).

I was once briefly married. Since my wife-to-be was also an atheist (or agnostic), we opted for the justice-of-the-peace default. But I doubt I’d do that again. As we discovered during our first and only year of joint tax-filing, there are few if any benefits of legal marriage for couples without children. Indeed, we ended up paying a marriage penalty amounting to about $300 of our paltry incomes (yes, I filled out the “dummy” tax forms to find out what we would have paid if we’d been single). If I ever went down that path again, I’d be inclined to postpone the legal marriage unless and until children made it worthwhile. But without ministers or judges, what’s left? Ship captains?

Although natural disasters spread destruction and economic pain to a wide variety of businesses, for some, it can mean a burst in activity and revenue.

For that reason, economists tallying the numbers expect the hurricanes will be neutral in their effect on the U.S. economy, or may even give it a slight boost, particularly because of an expected reconstruction boom in the already red-hot construction industry.

Daley emphasized that most charges involving small amounts of pot are thrown out in the state court system in Chicago.

"If 99 percent of the cases are all thrown out and you have a police officer going, why? Why do we arrest the individual, seize the marijuana, [go] to court and they're all thrown out? It costs you a lot of money for police officers to go to court.

"It's decriminalized now," the mayor added. "Sometimes a fine is worse than being thrown out of court."

Fraternal Order of Police president Mark Donahue acknowledged too many cases involving small quantities of marijuana are "pitched at the initial hearing." But FOP members stand to lose thousands of dollars in court overtime if the city starts ticketing marijuana users instead of jailing them, he said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday signed into law what some advocates describe as one of the state's most important public health policies in two decades - a five-year experiment to reduce the spread of AIDS and other diseases among intravenous drug users by making needles and syringes available without a prescription.
The legislation leaves it to local governments across the state to decide whether to take part in the pilot project. Beginning next year, in cities and counties that embrace the concept, pharmacists will be permitted to sell adults up to 10 sterile needles and syringes at a time. The measure also decriminalizes possession of needles without a prescription.

Philosophical objections aside, the latter have always struck me as the wrong approach strategically, seemingly confirming the canard that what critics of the war on drugs really want is subsidized addiction (a charge that drug czar John Walters hauled out in his recent National Review exchange with the DPA's Ethan Nadelmann). In this case, by contrast, the government is removing a legal barrier to sanitary injection practices by allowing over-the-counter sales of needles and decriminalizing their possession without a prescription.

We all know now about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 $43 million gift to the Taliban -- in thanks for the regime's prohibition on opium. Still, this Robert Scheer column written in May of 2001 is simply chilling:

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.

Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998...

...Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.

The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women?

...The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession.

The sad irony here is that the same government that signed checks to the Taliban in the name of the drug war just months before September 11 to this day accuses drug users of supporting terrorism (a charge that doesn't stick, by the way).

"It would appear effectively to be a life sentence," the judge, Paul G. Cassell of Federal District Court there, wrote in a request to the prosecution and the defense for advice about whether he has any choice but to send the man to prison forever.

Judge Cassell, a brainy, conservative former law professor, surveyed the maximum sentences for other federal crimes. Hijacking an airplane: 25 years. Terrorist bombing intending to kill a bystander: 20 years. Second-degree murder: 14 years. Kidnapping: 13 years. Rape of a 10-year-old: 11 years.

He noted that Mr. Angelos would face a far shorter sentence in the courts of any state. In Utah, prosecutors estimate that he would receive five to seven years.

The Justice Department supports mandatory minimums, said Monica Goodling, a spokeswoman.

"Tough but fair mandatory minimum sentences take habitual lawbreakers off the streets, lock up the most dangerous criminals and help ensure the safety of law-abiding Americans," Ms. Goodling said. "Since these common-sense policies were created, we've seen crime plummet to a 30-year low. The public, the Congress and presidents of both parties have supported mandatory minimums for a simple reason - they work."

In court papers, prosecutors said Mr. Angelos "trafficked in hundreds of pounds of high-grade marijuana," "distributed cocaine and synthetic narcotics" and "affiliated himself with a violent street gang." These assertions, however, were not proved to a jury.

Last year, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court told the American Bar Association that "in too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise and unjust." The association appointed a commission, which recently issued a report urging the abolition of such sentencing.

"There are real economic and human costs," said Douglas A. Berman, an Ohio State University expert on sentencing law, "to putting everyone away for as long as humanly possible."

Melodie Rydalch, a spokeswoman for Paul M. Warner, the United States attorney in Salt Lake City, said his office had no comment on the Angelos case. In general, Ms. Rydalch said, "we will continue to enforce mandatory minimums so long as Congress tells us to."

We get pounded on all game, and eventually this garbage team we are playing is leading 23-8 going to the bottom of the last inning, and talking trash to boot. We plate a couple runs, make a couple outs, and I come up as the potential last out of the game. Now understand, for the year I have solid numbers. However, as the potential last out of the game, I am like 1-8. Its uncanny. However, I am not going to let it happen again. Although the game is way out of reach, I am determined to not make the last out for once. I grit my teeth and bear down. I take the first pitch high for a ball. The second pitch is to my liking, and I turn my hips, turn my wrists, and snap a line drive base hit to center! Its the small victories that count.

Oh, and then seven straight batters reach safely and I come up again to line out and end the game with the tying run on deck. Boo ya.

For me, the chief lesson of 9/11 is the simultaneous power and impotence of government.

9/11 vividly demonstrated how powerless government is to protect us and make us safe. The United States government is the most powerful organisation that has ever existed in human history. It possesses untold wealth, unmatched military might, and a globe-spanning spy network.

And in a few short hours, a handful of murderous fanatics armed with nothing more impressive than boxcutters were able to inflict a series of devastating attacks against which this almighty government was helpless.

Our rulers talk blithely about preventing future attacks, but the truth is they haven’t got a clue how to do it. If some nut wants to inflict a lot of damage and is willing to sacrifice his life to do it, there’s very little that the government can do about it. The 9/11 attacks exposed the protective nation-state as the fraud it is.

But if the government lacks much power to protect, 9/11 also showed how much power it does possess to do harm:

To pursue the arrogant foreign policy that invited the attacks in the first place.

To ensure that no one on board the hijacked planes was carrying weapons that could have been used against the hijackers.

To respond to the attacks by stepping up the assault on civil liberties at home.

To respond to the attacks by raining down death and destruction on innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, thus ensuring that even more American citizens will be targets for retaliation for the next fifty years.

A form of social organization whose power to do evil is enormous while its power to do good is minuscule is a form of social organization that needs to be mothballed.