Tō-ji, a Buddhist temple of the Shingon sect in Kyoto, one of the many beautiful attractions in Japan you aren’t visiting.
Welcome to Straffinrun Tours. Do you want to go around and see some of Japan’s oldest and most visited shrines and temples? Experience the subtle beauty of a tea ceremony? Try your hand at the wondrous art of ikebana? Yes? Get the f*** out of here because you bore me. Use Google and save yourself a couple grand. My tour is focused on exposing you to the concept of 本音 (pronounced honne) and 建前 (tatemae). For that we will need to meet and watch real Japanese people doing mundane things in their daily lives.
Have you ever laughed at a bad joke your boss or customer has made because the social situation called for it? If yes, you have practiced tatemae. The Chinese characters 建前 translate literally as “constructed front” and can be seen as your social persona that we put up to keep us from beating each other to death. Some people say it’s basically lying, but, well, they’re idiots.
Ever fantasize about slamming you boss’s head into the corner of his desk after hearing his bad pun for the 26th time? Well, that would be honne. 本音 literally means “real sound” or, in other words, what you are really feeling at the moment. Hopefully, you practice some impulse control and don’t run around calling a spade a spade. It can be a bad idea. Especially in Compton.
Pachinko parlor
So now that you’ve gotten the basics of honne/tatemae down, let’s find out what the little Nipponjins are up to. First stop on the tour is a Pachinko parlor. Noisy, smoky, and filled with dejected people gambling. The game itself is ridiculous, but we’re not here to be bedazzled with blinking lights and digital breasts. Over there! Don’t look, but look at the woman in her 60s, wearing the tiger pattern blouse. Her machine just went “reach” which means she has two of the three numbers necessary to win. Will she? Zannen (too bad). She lost. Did you see her reaction? She pawed at the screen as if to say, “Oh, you’re a bad boy.” Now watch the man in his 40s, wearing the suit. His machine just went “reach”. Zannen. He lost, too. Yet his was a stone-faced reaction despite having a 70% chance of winning \10,000. The tiger blouse woman showed you her honne and the man, his tatemae. You’ll notice about 90% of the players react like the man and 10% like the woman. That’s Japan. You don’t show your emotions in daily, public life unless you’re a freak.
Let’s get out of here and grab a drink. I know a pub down the street. Yes, it does say “Pub,” but remember that donut you bought at the bakery in the station this morning? It had “Donut” written on the wrapper, but it had eggplant inside. This is not your mother’s English. “Pub” to them means a small bar where, usually, a youngish gal, the one-san, and an oldish gal, the oba-san, fawn over you and you pay through the nose for the pleasure.
The only pic I could find tagged “oba-san” that wasn’t granny porn.
“Aah, sutoraifeen-san. Hisashiburi, desu ne” (long time, no see). The oba-san greets us as we slide into our stools, her 48-year-old bosom defying gravity due to the hiked up obi (sash) of her kimono. She pours us two Jim Beam Ryes on the rocks from the bottle with my name on it that she pulled off the shelf behind the bar counter. Talk to her. She is a master of tatemae. Your jokes will be hilarious. You look like Bradley Cooper, and where did you ever find that sweater? Goodwill? I’m not familiar with that brand. Is it a boutique on Rodeo Drive?
Here’s the rub; she doesn’t care about you other than you’re a paying customer. She thinks you know that, but you see how good you feel regardless? It’s dishonest honesty. The true masters of tatemae don’t trick you into believing what they are saying is true, but rather allow you to bathe in the respect they are showering you with. This is not your Western, “You look great. Did you lose weight?” type of flattery. It’s respect, so soak it in.
Unless you want to drop a mortgage payment, I suggest we get out of here. Hopefully, you’re beginning to see from our experiences at the pachinko parlor and the “pub” that honne/tatemae permeate Japanese consciousness. You get polite, speedy, and competent service at the convenience store because to do otherwise would be disrespectful of not only you, the customer but also of the clerk themselves.
So when you get back to The States and hear about “trigger warnings” and “micro-aggressions,” think about honne/tatemae. Are the sensitive souls pushing this nonsense because they want a more respectful discourse, or are they simply forcing people to yield to their superior wisdom? If it were truly about being respectful, they would show their tatemae and keep their petty grievances in the honne box. Running around, pointing out trivial offenses is the exact opposite of what honne/tatemae is all about. And for all the faults the concept has, it does provide a shield which can insulate you from nutjobs. The next time you’re accosted by a pink-haired slob for using the wrong pronoun, just remember the oba-san from the pub and tell her, “Those black yoga pants really do smooth out the ripples in your thighs.”
In a world run by animals, It’ll take more than a man to survive.
Florida Man accidentally set me on a disastrous quest last night, dear reader; a disastrous quest to find a furry spoof of Mad Max Fury Road. The disaster came about because he misremembered the title and set me looking on Amazon and Google for “Furry Road” and have since had to raze my internet identity to the ground and start fresh as Ásbjӧrn Bernhard of Oshkosh, WI. I have also learned important lessons about using the term furry in GIS with safe search disabled.
After letting me twist in the wind for a bit, FM found the correct name for the movie Furry Fury and let me know it was only six minutes long. Back to Amazon, more searching for furry-related content, and I’m settling in for six minutes of the worst cinema I’ve seen in a long time… possibly since I saw Battlefield Earth in theaters, which has a 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. That said, at only six minutes, I didn’t come away feeling cheated for time, though certainly this movie lacked the muzzled post-apocalyptic Tom Hardy which made Fury Road watchable. We live in an era where even fan films can have a significant amount of polish; Furry Fury feels like an intentional nostalgia trip to low-budget ’80s movies. Every element of it is poorly executed and somehow that works as an homage to the B-movies of yesteryear. I’m sure Gojira would love this film were he not so triggered by furries (and homemade ice cream, but that’s a tale for another time).
The plot is elegant: Wolf encounters the feline Furryosa in some post-apocalyptic ruins while she is running away from a gang comprised of Bear, Dog, and Kangareau (with puppet joey) and must battle to save her. The action is delightfully gory in classic B-movie style, and the cuts and edits are painfully obvious. There is no yiffing and the film is entirely safe for work (although if your coworkers catch you watching a movie with entirely furry actors they may judge you).
Most people care a lot about equality. References to it abound in national mottoes and constitutions. But what do people really mean when they talk about equality?
Surely they know people are unequal in countless ways already: strength, intelligence, looks, height, gender, age, and so on. It is impossible to equalize people in these areas, outside of science fiction. So the only way people can be equal in a meaningful way is if they are held to the same standard.
But some people don’t like that. In particular, it bothers them a great deal that some are rich and others are poor. Others demand that people they perceive as inferior be treated differently.
I once saw a very interesting video of an experiment with monkeys. There were two monkeys in separate cages but close enough to see each other. They had tokens in their cages, and the trainers had taught the monkeys to hand them the tokens in exchange for a cucumber slice. But then they started giving one monkey grapes instead of cucumbers. Monkeys like cucumbers, but they love grapes. The other monkey began throwing back the cucumber slices at the trainers when it was not getting “equal pay for equal work.”
It appears that primates have a kind of instinct for fairness. People are similar, except that they become angry in response to things they merely *perceive* as unfair. Social justice has become the new catchphrase for this group, though they most shy away from explaining how it differs from regular justice.
Imagine your boss calls you to his office and tells you you’ve been doing great work this year and so decides to give you a bonus of $5,000. You walk out of the office feeling amazing. A coworker notices and asks what you’re so happy about. You tell him about the bonus and he replies, “Oh, I got $10,000 and so did everyone else.” You would probably instantly become angry. But why? You’re still richer than you were before. Why would it upset you that others are doing better? Their greater success did not cause your lesser success. You’d probably be angry because you’d say to yourself you’re just as good as them and so deserve the same – even if this wasn’t true.
The easiest way to be unhappy is to compare yourself to other people. This is why many religions teach that envy is a sin.
Communist countries, too, tried to eliminate envy by making everyone equal. There was an inherent contradiction in this. If you put a group in charge of equalizing people, you have created a new form of inequality. There are many jokes about this from the USSR:
In the US, the rich become powerful, but in the USSR, the powerful become rich.
In capitalism, man exploits man, but in socialism, it’s the other way around.
One joke I particularly like is the story of a bunch of triumphant Bolsheviks rejoicing in the streets after they hear of the revolution. They ask an old woman why she isn’t rejoicing, that soon there will be no more rich people. The old woman says “I thought the point of the revolution was that there would be no more *poor* people.”
Although it often rubs us the wrong way when we see someone doing better than us, it’s important to resist the urge to bring them down. When people are free to be the best they can be, the result is better goods and services for everyone.
Finally, it’s important to realize that money and power always find each other, no matter how hard we try to keep them apart. The only answer to this is for people to believe that there should be strict limits on the government’s power and that people should be free to live as they want. Aristotle said justice consists of“treating equals equally, and unequals unequally.” Anything else is unjust and stupid.
Freedom does not guarantee happiness, but forced equality guarantees misery.
Everything has a limit. The natural world is full of them. For example, there is no such thing as an unboilable liquid. Every liquid will boil if you heat it up enough. The same holds true for man-made things. It is impossible to build a mile-high brick tower with parallel sides, because after a few hundred feet, the weight of the bricks on top would crush the ones at the base.
(Source: physbot.co.uk)
There are mental and emotional limits as well. There is a limit to how much a person can remember or learn. There is a limit to how much stress a person can take, and so on.
Laws have limits, too. Many people mistakenly think laws are magic spells that alter behavior. Nothing could be further from the truth. Take speed limits, for example. How many people drive the speed limit? Hardly anyone. Almost everyone drives over the speed limit – most by a little, some by a lot.
If there were no speed limits, most people would drive faster, but only up to a point. This is because there are mechanical limits to how fast it a car can go, as well as psychological limits – such as the driver’s sense of fear.
Many people do not realize what a law is. Laws are not suggestions or friendly pieces of advice. They are enforced with violence. A law is essentially a formal threat. “Do this or else.”
People weigh risk when they make any decision, including whether to follow a law. Even if a law carries a very harsh punishment, it will not deter many people if there is a low risk of being caught. For example, in 19th century England, many minor crimes such as theft were punishable by death. Thieves were hanged in public before huge crowds. And while those people were gawking, pickpockets would take advantage of the distraction to steal.
In brief, laws are like language – they only work when a community is in near universal agreement on them. Imagine if each person in a town spoke a language differently. That language would be useless because the same word would mean different things to different people.
Fuck this guy.
Another point to consider is that since laws are made by imperfect people, there will be imperfect laws. Things which were once illegal are now legal and vice-versa. And in many cases, those bad laws were only repealed because many people were breaking them, and this put pressure on politicians to change them. All moral progress comes from lawbreakers – the abolitionists who defied slavery laws, the suffragettes who defied sexist laws, the anti-war protesters who defied draft laws, and so on. The United States itself was founded by outlaws.
Shakespeare wrote, “None call treason as treason if it prospers.” So it is with laws. If a group of outlaws are successful in getting a law repealed, they are no longer outlaws.
One last point to consider: there are limits to how well a law can be enforced. There is only so much that can be spent on police, courts, jails, and so on. Given that, the sensible thing would be to focus those scarce resources on preventing actual crimes – the kind that actually have a victim.
Laws can also have awful side-effects. In Boulder, CO, for example, the city built many speed bumps in residential areas to prevent speeding cars from hitting children. Unfortunately, those speed bumps also forced ambulances to slow down, and for heart attacks, a minute or two can make the difference between life and death. The speed bumps lead to a great increase in heart attack mortality.
Research in the USA supports these claims. One report from Boulder, Colorado suggests that for every life saved by traffic calming, as many as 85 people may die because emergency vehicles are delayed. It found response times are typically extended by 14% by speed-reduction measures. Another study conducted by the fire department in Austin, Texas showed an increase in the travel time of ambulances when transporting victims of up to 100%.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. If you want to make A better, you will make B worse.
When most people hear of a problem, they reflexively say “there ought to be a law.” They ought to remember these words:
“The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen;… that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.”
―Ralph Waldo Emerson
To begin, I’m as much a lawyer as Charlie Kelly is; I just prefer to focus on beer law instead of bird law. The after effect of the terrible experiment in alcohol prohibition in the United States is the cause of most of these bizarre and strange laws. Before prohibition, the peak number of breweries in the US was over 4,100 (1873). While consolidation was already happening previous to the 18th amendment being ratified, once it was passed it started forcing breweries to close. By the time the 21st amendment was ratified, less than 750 breweries remained active. The number of breweries continued to decline as consolidation continued until we reached the nadir of less than 100 breweries in the 1970’s.
Thankfully, Jimmy Carter did something great, and he legalized homebrewing on the national level in 1978 (although it was not legal on the state level in all states until 2013). Once homebrewing became legal, it allowed for experimentation with styles and techniques that led to small independent breweries opening up (at the time called micro-breweries, now referred to as craft beer). It took until 1994 for craft beer to even make up 1% of the US market in volume. Two years later, the US had over 1,000 active breweries, and then it took until 2011 for the US to pass 2,000 active breweries. After that, growth exploded, reaching 3,000 active breweries in 2014 and reaching over 4,100 in 2015 (while now making up 10% of the US market).
If you are unaware, after prohibition a three tier system was put into place to extract taxes and still allow regulation of alcohol production and distribution. These tiers are regulated on the state level, meaning that we have a rare opportunity to look at each of the states, and compare the results of their regulations over the 30 years since small breweries started opening. Thankfully, the Mercatus Center has done this, with a focus on two factors:
Self-distribution – Allowing breweries to sell their beer directly to retailers instead of going through a distributor
Beer franchise laws – Which determine when a brewery can terminate their deal with a distributor
The study finds that allowing breweries to self-distribute and to get out of contracts with distributors they are having issue with leads to more breweries and a higher volume of production. This leads to more jobs, more options for consumers, and more taxes for the state (they’ll always take their cut).
It’s a common refrain that drugs should be legalized and treated like alcohol. If we want to regulate drugs like alcohol, the study by the Mercatus Center shows us that we should have less regulation if we want people to have more options. These options do not always need to be for stronger and more potent items. Two of the current fads in the craft beer world are session beers and sour beers. Both of which are generally lower in alcohol than your average beer.
Of course, we’ll also want to try to avoid some of the more terrible laws that exist currently in some states. People are generally used to the alcohol laws in their state: they know if they have to go to a special store to buy some things, or if they need to make sure to stock up on Saturday; however, they generally don’t know the laws in the states around them. These laws vary wildly state to state, with some states being relatively good (California and Oregon come to mind) and some states just bad (Utah and Pennsylvania, I’m looking at you)
Some of the more bizarre laws from the more moderate locations include:
Georgia is just this year passing a law that will allow breweries to sell directly to visitors. Note, not just beer to-go, but beer in general. Currently you need to purchase a “tour” that will come with samples of beer and sometimes a “gift” you can take home with you.
Minnesota allows to-go sales at breweries, at least until they get too big (section 4.2), where too big is 250,000 barrels (barrels are 31 fl. gallons) of beer a year.
To show that the breweries aren’t always the good guys: Indiana, which forbids beer sales on Sundays, allows an exception for breweries.
Thankfully, in this area things are getting better. In doing the research for this, I ran across several laws that have already been repealed/updated. Last year included quite a few sweeping changes to alcohol laws through the states. Almost every one of those laws was opposed by the various groups who had profited by the regulations that were in place (liquor stores, distributors, and AB InBev/SABMiller), and yet the changes continue. It helps that craft beer is still a growing industry. In my home state of Ohio, there are currently 57 active applications for new brewery licenses, and there have been only a handful of breweries that closed their doors in the past year.
If you’re interested in keeping up with the current laws and changes that are being proposed the Brewers Association is a good start, as is your local brewery.
There are few things in the world more frustrating than talking to average people about healthcare, but surely one of them is talking to fellow libertarians about the problems with our healthcare system. This goes beyond frustration with the typical libertarian infighting. Part of it is that there are so many things terribly wrong with our healthcare system, any libertarian can point to most any aspect of the system and find some legitimate confirmation that their favorite peeve is, in fact, a problem. However, even though there are numerous contributing factors to our healthcare woes, there is one evil to rule them all—but very few libertarians seem to understand what that is. The purpose of this analysis is to identify the ultimate cause of our problems, show why most libertarians’ favorite solution doesn’t really address it, and show why the Ryan plan is a hell of a lot better than most libertarians seem to appreciate.
What the Chart Does and Doesn’t Say
So, here is the ultimate source of the problem—Medicare and Medicaid only pay for a fraction of the cost of care. Providers are left to gouge private insurers and out of pocket patients for all the money they lose treating Medicare and Medicaid patients. According to the chart, hospitals are charging private pay patients about 150% of cost.
There are two major implications of this that people don’t generally appreciate. More charts would probably only make things more confusing, just understand two things: 1) Medicare and Medicaid patients are more expensive than private pay patients, and 2) the unfunded costs of Medicaid aren’t evenly distributed across the country.
What the hell does that mean?
Medicare and Medicaid patients tend to cost more than private pay patients. People on Medicare are older and need more in the way of expensive treatments—heart surgeries, terminal illnesses, etc. Poor people on Medicaid, likewise, tend to have more babies, more health problems, and may generally be more expensive to treat than private pay patients.
So, don’t be confused by the averages in the chart—Medicare and Medicaid are covering 85% of the costs (on average), but they’re also covering more expensive costs. In other words, if the average private pay patient goes to the hospital once a year for an MRI scan, when the insurer pays 150% of that relatively small cost, they’re reimbursing that provider for the tens of thousands of dollars the provider lost performing heart surgery on someone with Medicaid or Medicare.
The unfunded costs of Medicaid are not evenly distributed, and that points to another problem caused by Medicare and Medicaid only reimbursing providers for a fraction of the cost of care. Medicaid is for poor people, and poor people aren’t evenly distributed in your city, much less your state.
Hospitals are like retailers in that they serve a local community and that community has a particular income level. If the hospital is in an area with a disproportionate percentage of poor people, then there are few private pay patients in that community on insurance to make up for the shortfall. That means where the chart says that the average private pay patient is paying 150% of cost vs. Medicare/Medicaid’s 85%, it assumes that the patient mix is the national average.
In other words, if the hospital is an area where the local population only has 10% private pay patients and 90% Medicare and Medicaid patients, then that 150% percent of cost figure for private pay patients is going to be much, much higher–and those kinds of patient mix numbers are not uncommon in urban poor areas.
Sensitivity Analysis
The part where you all get mad at me!
Usually, a sensitivity analysis would show how taking the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rate up higher would impact the local cost of care. This sensitivity analysis is more about how the system would improve relative to various solutions. How would doing x, y, or z improve the situation?
For instance, wouldn’t the system be better if individuals and insurers formed the market instead of getting insurance through employers? I suppose it would be better, but that solution doesn’t address the real cause of the problem. Insurers would still be competing to sell you a policy that covers 150% of the cost of care (national average).
What about removing the “Cadillac” tax, getting the AMA to stop limiting class sizes of nurses and doctors, making pricing transparent, or making policies portable across state lines? Without getting into too much detail, transparency and portability are extremely complicated because of Medicaid, and even if those things were possible—what would any of them do about the fact that insurers are still paying 150% of cost (national average)?
Solutions
I suppose a lucid progressive might suggest taxing productive workers to take Medicaid’s and Medicare’s reimbursement rate up to 100%, but 1) raising people’s taxes so they can afford to buy insurance is just playing an especially stupid shell game with costs, 2) Medicare and Medicaid spending already make up almost a third of the federal budget, 3) the Medicare rolls are already set to increase as baby boomers continue to retire, and 4) that might be an extra $300 billion a year in real payouts—something like the size of our national interest payment.
The ultimate solution is to cut these programs.
Medicare is more politically sensitive, and Medicaid is especially responsible for driving up the cost of private insurance in economically distressed areas. Certainly, rolling back the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion is a necessary step before we can cut back the rest of Medicaid—and did you know there is a plan being considered in Congress, right now, that gets rid of the ACA Medicaid expansion after 2019?
Whatever else the Ryan plan isn’t, it’s one of those rare situations in which the actual cause of the problem is actually being addressed.
In this installment, I asked the prog about Detroit and the case of Abner Schoenwetter, whose story was featured on the John Stossel special “Illegal Everything”.
I am not really well versed enough in the policies or politics of Detroit or much of upper Michigan for that matter. Conservatives like to claim that Detroit is a failure of liberal policies because of the rampant crime and poverty prevalent there. But a lot of Detroit’s problems are rooted in the fact that it was built around the auto industry, and the auto industry took a big hit with the advent of the foreign car boom in the early 70s. In fact, if you look at the popularity of foreign cars and their rise, you can see a correlating decline of the US auto industry, and with it, Detroit. Detroit also used to have a booming music industry. The issue is, in most of these major cities that are crumbling, is the industries that were once holding them up, abandoned them. And for every example of “liberal failures” that conservatives love to harp on so much, look to all the southern red states. Your home state of West Virginia for instance, has the worst education and poverty in the country yet the coal industry is thriving there. Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, etc. Are all failures as well. In fact there are more rural whites in red states on welfare and food stamps than any other group. For every Detroit, there is an entire red state that is failing due to the polar opposite policies of suppressing workers rights, civil rights, education, minimum wage, etc. Perhaps the answer is in a healthy balance.
He sort of punted on this one, but at least he hinted that Team Blue may not have all the answers. He correctly traces the problem to industries leaving cities but never elaborates as to why. Better just to pivot to a tu quoque, I guess.
As many have noticed, this guy can barely put a sentence together without making a fallacy. I tried many, many times to explain what he was doing wrong but it never took. I even tried to boil it down to something simpler. I told him there are many ways to argue dishonestly, but the only ways to argue honestly are to show the errors in your opponent’s facts or logic.
The video reports the case of seafood businessman Abner (Abbie) Schoenwetter. He was charged, convicted, and sent to prison for 6 1/2 years by federal prosecutors because he used plastic instead of cardboard to ship lobsters, which violated an obscure Honduran regulation.
So here is my response to the Stossel piece: While it is true there are likely dozens and dozens of superfluous and burdensome laws on the books, they are almost never acted upon by law enforcement. Very rarely if ever will police officers waste their time enforcing lemonade stand or girl scout cookie sales kids soliciting laws unless there is a complaint, or several complaints from other citizens. Just like police would never on their own accord enforce a noise ordinance unless there was a complaint. So it is not superfluous and burdensome laws that are to blame in these situations, but asshole citizens who want to ruin everyone else’s fun and just need to complain about something. Every neighborhood has that one nosy, crochety, old asshole that has nothing to do all day but call the police on skateboarders and teens talking to loudly as they walk through the neighborhood. You, I, and everyone that was ever a child has fell victim to these types of people, who basically annoy the police into enforcing dumb laws that exist that they would rather not enforce. And in general soliciting laws, and I am sure lobster container laws, exist for a purpose….
For instance, to keep every street corner from having guys selling everything from knockoff bags and jewelry to stereos and socks put of their vans on every street corner. Here in Chicago you have probably seen the many street carts of fried foods, ice cream, and pickup trucks selling fruit on the side of North Avenue. Almost none of those people have licenses to sell that stuff, or have passed proper health inspections, but even in a revenue hungry city like Chicago, the police drive right past them and don’t bother wasting their time, unless of course, some old bored asshole calls to complain.
I must say I was stunned that he would even attempt to justify the govt’s actions shown in the video. When I pressed him if he really thought a man should go to jail over lobster boxes, he said this:
Sure it is, but like I said, things like that don’t happen without reason usually. Perhaps the guy was warned or fined time and time again and continued to skirt the law. In some cities you can be arrested for not mowing your lawn if you continue to ignore the ordinance and refuse to pay associated fines. Do I think that’s dumb? Yes. Sure. But these types of examples are extreme and rare. I mean I wouldn’t say I was a victim of the system, but I certainly believe their should be a distinction between grabbing girls asses, and child rape. Or that a 19 year old dating a 17 year old should be charged with statutory rape. More often than not, when these things happen, it’s because the person on the receiving end pissed off the wrong person. In my case for instance, one of my victims, was the court stenographers daughter, and the prosecutor was a rape victim. So they really wanted to throw the boom at me and pretty much saddled me with as much as the could for misdemeanors. But that doesn’t mean I believe there shouldn’t be sex offender registration or laws for these kinds of things. In most cases, the system just needs to be revised and amended, not torn down. If your boat is leaking, you try to patch the leak, not sink the whole damn thing.
I forgot to mention this guy is convicted sex offender. He spent the ages from 17 to 20 grabbing the asses of dozens of random women. Yet last time on I checked, he spends most of his time virtue-signalling on Derpbook. Go figure.
There is a saying that a thief thinks everybody steals. Maybe it’s the same with him. That is, the only thing that keeps him in line is punishment so he assumes everyone else is the same way, and that is why he supports harsh laws and punishments despite being a criminal himself.
I’ve recently become aware of the American Community Survey. And I am outraged at this overreach of government and violation of Constitutional principles and protections.
If you are blissfully ignorant of the ACS, as was I, allow me to disrupt your pleasant Sunday afternoon by sharing the gory details with you. Oh, take a moment to pour an adult beverage first. You’ll need it.
“Results from this survey are used to decide where hospitals and fire stations are needed.”Each year, approximately 3.5 million US households are randomly selected by the US Census Bureau to receive the ACS. It arrives in your mailbox in a large official envelope bearing the legend YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW. There have been some efforts to make it voluntary in the past, but it remains mandatory as of this writing.
“If it’s voluntary, then we’ll just get bad data,” said Kenneth Prewitt, a former director of the census who is now at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “That means businesses will make bad decisions, and government will make bad decisions, which means we won’t even know where we actually are wasting our tax dollars.” NY Times, 20 May 2012
So what is it?
As you are undoubtedly aware, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution requires a decennial census for a very express purpose. This purpose is limited to enumeration to determine the apportionment of “Representatives and direct Taxes.” That’s it. This, of course, began to be perverted quite early on.
Started in 2005, the ACS “replaces” the long-form census questionnaire that was formerly randomly assigned to households during the regular census years. This survey contains an amazing range of intrusive questions. Here are just a few of them, and please note that these are summaries of the very detailed layered queries:
Seriously? Don’t ALL 5 year olds have difficulty bathing and dressing?
your name and phone number
gender (only the traditional male and female are given check boxes)
age and birth date
race
relationship of all persons living in the home
year the building was constructed
actual sales from agricultural products from the property
does the dwelling have hot and cold running water
does the dwelling have a refrigerator
does any resident have a computer, including mobile devices
how do you get ‘net access
how much were all your various utility bills last month
does anyone receive Food Stamps or SNAP
do you have a mortgage or home equity line, and how much is your payment
what is the market value of your home
what are your property taxes
what time did you leave for work LAST WEEK (emphasis theirs)
what is your income from all sources, including child support
for whom do you work, what is the address of your employer and what do you do for them
how much education did you receive and in what major is your degree
where did you live a year ago – provide complete address
how many times have you been married and what’s your current marital status
in what year did you last get hitched
are you raising grandchildren
do you have a disability
do you have difficulty climbing stairs or bathing
number of persons living in the home
(Wait, what? They actually ask a question for which they have authority? Or anyway, they would have authority to ask it were this a decennial census.)
All of these questions, by the way, must be answered for each and every person living in the home. 28 pages in all, if there are five household members.
The Census Bureau freely admits that this entire process is a time-and-hassle burden (FYTW!), providing a “burden estimate” of 40 minutes right on the back of the form and in the brochures accompanying the letter from John H. Thompson, the director of the CB. If one were to actually provide accurate information for the detailed financial questions, it would require gathering of documents and calculations and would take far longer than 40 minutes if your papers are not perfectly ordered. (My total water bill for the last 12 months? Um….)
What happens to the data?
Legit?Now, all other considerations aside, filling out this form and popping it into the mail seems like a field day for an identity thief. In fact, the ACS seems so intrusive and shady to so many people who receive it, that consumer hotlines regularly get phone calls and emails asking reporters to look into it. Austin’s Bob Cole asked Politifact to check it out when he received it. Even the bureaucrats at the Census Bureau realize it sounds suspicious! (See the second question on their own website at right.)
If you are concerned about mailing a form with all this info, you can simply respond to the survey online using the code on your form and a PIN they will assign you when you start the process. Yes, answering invasive government questionnaires from your personal computer seems like a fine idea.
But, hey, don’t worry. The Census Bureau is keeping your information confidential! We all know there has never been a problem with information security in government. Even the tags on FAQs on the ACS website seek to reassure you. “Keywords: security, online, safe, legitimate.”
Surely, too, there has never been a case of a government worker misusing their access. After all, the very pretty “Frequently Asked Questions” brochure that accompanies the form in the mail tells you that every Census Bureau employee has taken an oath and is subject to jail, fines, or both if they disclose “ANY information that could identify you or your household.” I feel better already.
How is the data used?
1 in 38 households receives an “invitation” to participate. (click to enlarge)“The American Community Survey helps local officials, community leaders and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities. It is the premier source for detailed information about the American people and workforce.
“When you respond to the ACS, you are doing your part to help your community plan hospitals and schools, support school lunch programs, improve emergency services, build bridges, and inform businesses looking to add jobs and expand to new markets, and more.”
Yep, that means Starbucks is using this data to decide where to erect another tribute to burnt coffee. Which, you know, means jobs for your neighborhood hipsters and convenient access to overpriced coffee for you.
The Rutherford Institute has a handy article which expands a bit on the ACS and how the data is put to use:
“The Bureau lists 35 different categories of questions on its website and offers an explanation on how the information is to be used. For 12 of those categories, the information is used to assist private corporations. For another 22, the information is used to aid advocacy groups, and in nine of those cases, the Census Bureau states that the responses will be used by advocacy groups to ‘advocate for policies that benefit their groups,’ including advocacy based on age, race, sex, and marital status.”
Help me out here. I’m a little rusty on the Constitution. Which Article covers Target and Home Depot using the government to do their market research for them at the expense of citizens? And certainly the advocacy groups must be in there somewhere, too….
What are the penalties for refusing the invitation to participate?
According to Title 18 U.S.C Section 3571 and Section 3559 you can be fined up to $5,000 and/or imprisoned. However, nobody seems to have been penalized for failing to attend this particular soiree.
It is far more likely that you will simply be hounded and harassed by Census Bureau field agents.
In order to collect the required American Community Survey (ACS) data, we use a multi-part strategy, including Internet, mail, telephone calls, and personal visits.
First, we send a letter to let you know your address has been selected for the ACS.
Then most respondents receive instructions to complete the ACS online. If the survey is not completed, we send you a replacement questionnaire in about two weeks.
If we still do not receive a completed survey, we may attempt to call you from one of our call centers. You may also receive a telephone call if you completed the survey, but clarification is needed on the information you provided.
If we cannot reach you by phone, we may send a Census interviewer to your address to complete the interview in person.
If you think this sounds fairly benign, read through the 900+ comments on this article. Even discounting the, er, less stable commenters, there is a clear pattern of harassment for not playing along and voluntarily giving up your privacy.
What can you do about it?
See how happy we can all be if you just get with the program?This is certainly a perfect opportunity to be a thorn in the side of your Congress humans. Not that I think they will care one little bit. Unless perhaps your Representative happens to be Daniel Webster, Jeff Duncan, or Justin Amash.
You can try simple avoidance techniques, but those field agents are a wily bunch and very determined not to let your privacy remain intact. Perhaps it’s better to take the advice of the Rutherford Institute and hit it head on. They’ve provided strategies in the article linked above and have created a form letter that you may send off to the Census Bureau.
Dr. Dean Ahmad, President and Director, Minaret of Freedom
In which a Palestinian Arab Muslim and a secular Zionist Jew find much accord.
Many take it as a given that Islam and any notion of liberty are diametrically opposed. People are quick to point out the number of Islamic dictatorships and repressive theocracies, and generalize that (for example) to Muslims in America. Dr. Imad Ad-Dean Ahmad, a scholar of Islam and history, would disagree. His organization, Minaret of Freedom, is dedicated to spreading a different narrative, that of a religion which values economic and social freedom, despite its use as a tool of repression by autocrats and theocrats in the Middle East and South Asia.
OMWC: Your background was originally in science. What sort of work were you doing?
Ahmad: My dissertation at the University of Arizona was on “Heavy Element Radio Recombination Lines from the Orion Complex.” (Robert Williams, then an Associate Professor at the astronomy program there, told me years later when he was the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute that mine was the only dissertation from which he could still remember the opening sentence: “From the belt of Orion hangs a sword.”) I focused on radio astronomy and on the conditions in the proto-stellar nebulae in which stars are formed. Comparing observations that I made with the National Radio Observatory’s 140-foot antenna with theoretical calculations I made with the Kitt Peak Observatory’s (at the time) state-of-the-art CDC 6400 computer, I was able to resolve an apparent contradiction in the astronomical literature as to the precise location from which the radiation was emitted.
I worked in astrophysics for another fifteen years after getting my doctorate, publishing models for the solar atmosphere and stellar winds, using mainly X-ray and ultra-violet data.
OMWC: What prompted your career change from science to social and religious activism?
Ahmad: By the late 1980s, I had become increasingly concerned about the inefficiency, immorality, and counter-productivity of American policy in the Middle East. I became painfully aware that of the role that ignorance and political agendas played in formation of bad policy. The so-called experts on the Muslim world had not seen the Iranian revolution coming and their retrospective attempts to account for it were incoherent. Having been a practicing Muslim and a libertarian all my adult life, I realized that the research discipline I had learned as a scientist was much more badly needed in the realm of Islamic studies.
I made the transition by writing a book on the role Islamic Civilization played in the development of modern science (Signs in the Heavens: A Muslim Astronomer’s Perspective on Religion and Science). After I gave a talk on the book for the Honors program at the University of Maryland (College Park) the head of the program invited me to offer a course there on Islamic Civilization. At the same time, the great libertarian historian Leonard Liggio introduced me to the good people at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, who helped me to start the Minaret of Freedom Institute, the Islamic libertarian think tank I have headed for 23 years (www.minaret.org). The Muslim community also came to appreciate my work, initially because of my knowledge on issues related to the Islamic calendar, but gradually on an increasingly wide range of matters from Islamic civilization to Islamic law and chaplaincy.
OMWC: What was the thing or things which led you to libertarian thought in the first place? Were you raised with this or was it reading or experiences that took you in that direction?
Ahmad: My father (a businessman) was politically conservative and my mother (a teacher and media personality) was politically liberal, so my upbringing provided me a choice. The main sources that influenced how I managed to navigate between their very different views were, in order of encounter (and I think in order of importance) the Qur’an, Henry David Thoreau and Ayn Rand. From the Qur’an I learned the non-aggression principle (“Let there be no compulsion in religion” 2:256) and of the individual’s direct responsibility to the Creator (“There is none worthy of worship but God” 37:35) and the corollary of the idolatry inherent in arbitrary human authority over other humans (“Do not fear them but fear Me” 3:175). From Thoreau I learned of the value of individualism (Walden) and of the power that a righteous individual has over a corrupt state (“Civil Disobedience”). From Ayn Rand I first learned the how markets work and why state intervention is both morally evil and consequentially destructive.
OMWC: In some of your writing, you state that (in essence) you regard the Quran as axiomatic. Does your view of libertarianism derive from those axioms?
Ahmad: Axiomatic is your term, not mine. If by that you mean that I find the values articulated in the Qur’an to be the starting point of my weltanschauung, I agree: Every individual is directly responsible to God (37:35), no one bears the burdens of another (35:18); speak truth to power (28:37); stand for justice even against your own self or near of kin, rich or poor (4:135); say to those who reject your way of life, “to you your way and to me mine” (109:1-6); trade is good (4:29) and fraud (83:1-2) is bad; respond to an injury only in kind, or better yet forgive in order that you should be forgiven (42:40); defend yourself (22:39) but do not aggress (2:190).
OMWC: To clarify, I used the word “axiomatic” because of your statement “There are some things we shall take as a given. We shall not question the text of the Qur’an. While the Qur’an itself invites individuals to ascertain for themselves its authenticity by investigating its inimitability, we, as an institution, take the received Arabic text as our starting point.” So at least in my naive view, it would look like an axiom.
Ahmad: I see your point. The distinction is that an axiom is “self-evident,” whereas, the starting points for a Muslim are inherent in the definition of a Muslim. A Muslim, by definition, believes there is only one God and that Muhammad is His Messenger (i.e., that the Qur’an is His message). This is true regardless of whether the Muslim arrived at that point because he finds these things self-evident or because he had previously questioned them and found the answers convincing.
OMWC: Where in the current Muslim world do you see the possibility of libertarian approaches to social and cultural issues as having the greatest chance for a toehold? Can a Muslim country be culturally libertarian in the sense of treating all belief and disbelief equally under law?
Ahmad: I think that Tunisia is the most promising, with the Nahda Party holding fast to these principles whether their fortunes are good or bad. More secular people than I may think Dubai is the most promising since, despite its undemocratic political structure and strong religiosity of its rulers, it seems to be very tolerant socially and culturally. Until recently, Muslim countries were historically much more tolerant than the West on treating subjects of various religious belief under the law. When the Jews were evicted from Spain, they dared not move to any other Western country, but the Sultan of Turkey invited them to the Ottoman lands promising them absolute freedom to work, worship, and raise their families as they saw fit. Oppression of religious minorities in Muslim countries today is no more inherent in Islamic teachings than the oppression of Muslims (and others) in France is inherent in “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.” The one area in which Muslim tradition is a serious obstacle is in the question of equal citizenship. I do not see this as a problem inherent in Islamic law so much as in the conflict of the Westphalian notion of the modern nation-state with the Muslim traditional system of autonomous confessional communities. I am not the only one who has pointed out that the resolution to this conflict may be found in the Prophet Muhammad’s remarkable covenant for the governance of Medina.
OMWC: Do you think that the US has a responsibility to promote liberty in other countries and in other cultures? (This begs the question, of course, of whether the US has a responsibility to promote liberty internally!)
Ahmad: The best way to promote liberty in other countries is to be “the shining city on a hill” and practice it here. The next best way is to trade freely with other countries and facilitate, not impede, cultural and social exchange. Speaking frankly to them can be a good way, if done with discretion and respect. Direct intervention into their internal affairs is generally counter-productive, and military intervention is the absolutely worst way, being immoral, ineffective, and counter-productive.
OMWC: In a related question, does the US, in your view, have a moral imperative to assist in the overthrow of despots where there isn’t a specific threat to us?
Ahmad: No. And there would be far fewer despots if we would stop propping them up.
OMWC: In Europe, Muslims have not seemed to have been integrated into their societies in the same way as Muslims have been in the US. When I hear about the Muslim “threat” here and examples from (say) France or Germany are cited, I ask, “Where are the American banlieues? Why are Naperville, Devon, Lincolnwood, or Orland Park (to choose Chicago suburbs with significant Muslim populations) not hotbeds of crime?” In the US, Muslims tend to be better educated and more economically successful than average, and media posturing aside, apparently as integrated as Jews or Hindus. To what do you attribute that difference?
Ahmad: It is true that Muslims in Europe have not integrated as well as those in the U.S., and while, statistically, Muslims in the U.S. have above average educations and material success, those factors alone cannot account for the more successful integration, since even those American Muslims who are undereducated and in poverty are better integrated than European Muslims. I think the most important single factor accounting for the better integration of Muslims (and other minority religion members) in America than in Europe is the unique American notion of secularity that incorporates both the disestablishment of state from religion and complete freedom of religion. Allowing Muslims the ability to freely interpret and practice their religion with neither interference nor support from the state threatens neither Muslims (and other religious minorities) nor the majority. Under French secularism, the suppression of religion from public life such as the ban on headscarves (and yarmulkes) alienates Muslims (and Jews), and even “neutral” Switzerland bans minarets as a threat to national identity. In England, the state gives preference to Anglicans over other (especially non-Christian) religions, which is a driver of discontent. In Germany the state supports all religions, which provokes resentment in the Christian majority.
OMWC: A rather open-ended question: What would you consider, in general, to be a rational US immigration policy?
Ahmad: Anyone who comes here for a peaceful and positive purpose, including to work or study, should be allowed to do so with a path for citizenship if they want it. Those who demonstrably seek to engage in crime or violence should be denied. The government welfare system should be reformed (or abolished) so that it does not attract freeloaders, and lets private and religious social service agencies carry the load of resettlement.
OMWC: What do you think is the greatest misunderstanding among American libertarians about Islam in a cultural (rather than theological) sense? If a libertarian wanted to understand more about Islamic culture beyond the usual prejudices, what should he or she be reading as an introduction and overview to gain a clearer and more accurate understanding?
Ahmad: The greatest cultural misunderstanding about Islam is the belief that it is culturally monolithic. Islamic culture spans an enormous range of nationalities, ethnic groups, cuisines, literature, arts, architecture, and political systems. If I had to recommend a single book it would be The Cultural Atlas of Islam by Ismail and Lois Faruqi. When you’ve finished reading that book head over to your local mosque and chat with the people there. (Just make sure to talk to more than one person!) Better yet, visit a few different mosques. Muslims are your neighbors and most of them would be delighted to chat with you.
OMWC: And my final question: Given an audience of libertarians with a rather wide range of views on Islam and how it relates to American culture, which question do you wish I had asked? And what over-arching message would you want to convey?
Ahmad: Given that the apprehension about Muslim immigrants is found even among some professing libertarians, I would have welcomed a question along these lines: You note the wide diversity of political views among Muslims. Since you clearly see the Qur’an as a document with some strong libertarian content, why are overt libertarians such a small minority among Muslims? I would have replied that I also see the U.S. Constitution as with a document with some strong libertarian content, and I wonder why are overt libertarians are such a small minority among Americans? In both cases I believe that ignorance of the Quran and the Constitution respectively are the problem, a problem compounded by corrupt political leaders whose interest in power motivates them to keep their respective constituencies in a state of ignorance.
OMWC: I really appreciate the time you’ve taken and the information you’ve given us. My own feeling is that ignorance is the root cause of fear, and your mission to dispel ignorance is far more valuable and effective than the moral preening and name-calling that passes for political discussion these days.
Previously: Part One – If You Can’t See the Chains, Does it Mean They Aren’t There? & Part Two – Let’s You and Him Fight!
by Suthenboy
I grew up in a home where racism was not a thing. We acknowledged that racism existed but it was only ever discussed fleetingly and in vague terms. I spent my early years in Catholic Schools where racism was essentially non-existent. My brother and I had groups of friends that looked like rainbow parties. I was completely ignorant of the language, behavior, and thought processes that were more prevalent in the wider world outside of mine. My rude introduction to that world came when our Catholic School closed down, and I began seventh grade in the wonderful world of public schooling.
Acclimating to this new world meant making friends. I was moderately successful at that. I had decent social skills and could size up candidates in short order. One of the guys I kept running into I will call Ronnie. Ronnie was a tall, lanky Black kid who seemed good-natured. We didn’t have very many Blacks in that rural school district and though they mostly kept to themselves, there wasn’t any noticeable tension between the Blacks and Whites. Ronnie and I had a few friendly conversations and interactions in passing, and it seemed like our friendship was off to a good start.
One morning while changing classes, Ronnie and I passed each other in the hall. He blindsided me with a punch to my shoulder (something that was commonly meant as a gesture of friendship). My arm cramped up and I dropped my armload of books. I laughed because I hadn’t seen it coming, he had ‘gotten me’. Just as he was laughing and turning away I caught him on the shoulder with a quick jab. He laughed. I scrambled to pick up my books and head to my classroom, pointed my finger at him and jokingly said, “Watch out boy!”
Ronnie hit me hard in the face and I was on my ass. That was not a friendly punch and he was pissed. I was confused. I asked him why he had done that. His face was twisted and angry when he said, “You called me ‘boy’”.
What? What the hell was he talking about? ‘Boy’ was a common term built into the language of the 13-year-old ‘boys’ in my circles back then. It was just a word and an accurate one. It was inconceivable to me that such a harmless word would bring about a schizophrenic change in the guy I thought I knew.
Ronnie and I never spoke again despite finishing out our schooling and graduating in the same class. I felt bad for unwittingly insulting him, and he felt bad for reacting the way he had when no slight was intended. We found ourselves at odds in a world neither of us created because of a complex stew of economic and social reasons we did not understand. We were too young and naïve to know how to bridge that gap. The divide between us was not racial, it was cultural.
A simplistic misconception in the minds of most people is that the differences they see in people of different ethnicities is due to innate differences in those ethnicities, instead of the cultural influences one is subject to during their formative years. That those innate differences do not exist is painfully obvious for anyone who cares to look. Yet solving problems related to race remains difficult primarily because that conflation is actively perpetuated by those who gain from poisoning society with identity politics.
The first place I look is a small High School in Washington D.C. that was founded in 1870 named Dunbar High School. It was the first public High School in the country devoted exclusively to educating Blacks. Its founders operated on the premise they developed after noticing the stark differences in IQ scores between northern and southern Whites. In descending order, the regional IQs in the country were northern Whites, northern Blacks, southern Whites, and lastly southern Blacks. They sought to displace the culture that southern Blacks had absorbed from their White contemporaries with that of the north.
By holding the southern Black students to the same standards, or higher, as those of northern Whites, their students achieved a remarkable result. When IQ tests were given again in 1899, the students at Dunbar, the only black school in the city, scored second highest in the city. While the average IQ for Blacks nationwide was merely 85, the average for Dunbar students was over 100 every year until 1955. The majority of Dunbar High graduates were accepted into college, making Dunbar unique in all the country. Nearly 30% of numerous Dunbar grads who attended Harvard, Amherst, Yale, Williams, Cornell, and Dartmouth graduated Phi Beta Kappa. Dunbar grads became the first Blacks to: rise from enlisted man to commissioned officer in the Army, the first Black graduate from Annapolis, the first female Black to earn a Ph.D., the first Black federal judge, the first Black general, the first black cabinet member, Dr. Charles Drew who pioneered blood plasma. During WWII, large numbers of officers from captain to general were Dunbar graduates.
It is glaringly obvious that the success Dunbar graduates achieved was due to the cultural influences they received at their school and this was met with no small amount of criticism from both the Black and White communities as identity politics sought to poison it.
Dr. Thomas Sowell on Dunbar:
“What is relevant to the issue of culture was that this was a school which, from its beginning, had a wholly different cultural orientation from that of the ghetto culture. Seven of its first ten principals were educated in a New England environment. Four had degrees from colleges located in New England and three had degrees from Oberlin, which was established by New Englanders in Ohio as a deliberate project to plant New England Culture in the Midwest. Dunbar High School issued a handbook on behavior to its students that spelled out how one should act, not only in the school but in the world at large. The values and deportment these students were taught would today be called by critics “acting white.”
Nor did the difference in Dunbar students behavior go unnoticed by the local black community. Dunbar High School became so controversial among blacks in Washington that the late Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist William Raspberry said that you could turn any social gathering of the city’s middle-aged blacks into warring factions by simply saying the one word “Dunbar”.
In the end, identity politics and ghetto culture won out. Dunbar was demolished and the program dismantled by the cause to banish Black elitism.
While racism in the United States is mild by comparison to other countries, it still plays a very prominent role in our politics and public discourse, kept alive by those who benefit from a divided citizenry. Conflating race and culture is a strategy used by self-appointed elites to set people with common interests against one another, dividing them along the wildly ridiculous line of race. Vast oceans of human potential have been squandered before and after Dunbar’s existence by the absurd fallacy that a person’s potential is determined by the skin color of one’s parents, and we are all poorer for it. We are all human. Potential is individual, not racial. As my Grandfather was fond of reminding me “It don’t make a shit who your Daddy is. The only thing that counts is what YOU do.”
We should be looking to build a culture that maximizes everyone’s ability to achieve their potential regardless of race. We can rebuild Dunbar. It needn’t be for Blacks. It should be for Americans.
I once saw a very interesting 
In capitalism, man exploits man, but in socialism, it’s the other way around.
In this installment, I asked the prog about Detroit and the case of Abner Schoenwetter, whose story was featured on the John Stossel special “Illegal Everything”.
I forgot to mention this guy is convicted sex offender. He spent the ages from 17 to 20 grabbing the asses of dozens of random women. Yet last time on I checked, he spends most of his time virtue-signalling on Derpbook. Go figure.
The first place I look is a small High School in Washington D.C. that was founded in 1870 named Dunbar High School. It was the first public High School in the country devoted exclusively to educating Blacks. Its founders operated on the premise they developed after noticing the stark differences in IQ scores between northern and southern Whites. In descending order, the regional IQs in the country were northern Whites, northern Blacks, southern Whites, and lastly southern Blacks. They sought to displace the culture that southern Blacks had absorbed from their White contemporaries with that of the north.