Fake Scandal de Jour

Talk about ridiculous. The Denver Post's crack reporter Tim Hoover reports:

Sen. Shawn Mitchell said he was just poking fun at Democrats, not race, when he directed a comment today at Senate President Peter Groff and Sen. Ken Gordon that some lawmakers found insensitive.

Mitchell, a Broomfield Republican who is white, was speaking on a medical malpractice law bill sponsored by Groff, a Denver Democrat and the Senate's first black president.

Groff and Majority Leader Ken Gordon, who is white, were standing near the podium as Mitchell argued in opposition to the bill. At one point, Mitchell mistakenly addressed Gordon as Groff, prompting him to correct himself and say to Groff, "Excuse me, Mr. President. You all look alike to me." ... Groff said that Mitchell had come and apologized to him. "I didn't take offense when I heard it (the remark)," said Groff...

Hoover mentions ColoradoPols.com, which had this to say about the incident:

Mitchell Statement to Groff Draws Questions
by: Colorado Pols
Thu Feb 28, 2008 at 11:04:41 AM MST

We're hearing about an exchange in the Colorado Senate this morning that culminated in supposedly racially charged words from Republican Sen. Shawn Mitchell to Senate President Peter Groff, as in, "you all look the same to me."
Numerous people have confirmed that this exchange took place, but as the first comment below indicates, this could have been said/heard in a different context than it was intended.

Here's the audio clip of the remark--we think Mitchell was genuinely trying to make a joke, though perhaps one in poor taste. He appears to have confused Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon (happens to be white) with Senate President Peter Groff (happens to be black), and the "joke" was made while correcting himself. Some people who were there seem to think that it was not so innocent, but we'll let you decide for yourself.

And here is Mitchell's reply:

What Really Happened
Hey Pols, Shawn Mitchell here. You're being misled by someone with an agenda. Here's what happened. During a debate on medical malpractice insurance, I mistakenly attributed a comment by Peter Groff instead to Ken Gordon. Each of them started in instantly with the jokes, along the lines of "I'm taller" or "I'm better looking." Since one is tall, young, and black, and the other is short, middle-aged plus, and white, I made a quick jab at absurd humor and said, "Well they all look alike to me," referring to Democratic leadership. In case your informant is unaware, Groff is Senate President and Gordon is Majority Leader. So, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you can chill the scandal siren.

Here are pictures of Senators Groff and Gordon, taken from their official web pages:



Quite obviously, Mitchell's comment was not remotely racist. I do not think that his comment had any racial element whatsoever.

But let's say, hypothetically, that Mitchell's comment had some distant connection to the racist comment that people of Heritage X "all look alike." Then the force of Mitchell's comment would be to make fun of that racist comment. It's not racist to make fun of racists.

Have any of Mitchell's critics seen Sarah Silverman's film, "Jesus is Magic?" This film is filled -- absolutely filled -- with overtly racist comments. Except that Silverman is obviously making fun of those comments by exaggerating them to the point of absurdity. How many left-wingers have condemned Silverman for this movie? Come on -- how many? The answer, to my knowledge, is zero. Instead, this film vaulted Silverman's career. Variety calls it "Explosively funny, unnervingly shocking and perversely adorable!"

I submit that anyone who blasts Mitchell for his comment, but who does not condemn Silverman a thousand fold, is a hypocrite (and an idiot to boot).

Sunshine Payola

Now that Peter Blake has taken his retirement package from the Rocky Mountain News, he seems to writing for the paper for free. But, whether or not he's not being paid for his work, his articles remain invaluable. His February 28 article describes the case of a Rick Gilliam, who pushed for mandates for solar power before cashing in on... solar power. Here is the story as Blake tells it:

Amendment 37, an initiative approved by voters in 2004, was designed by renewable-energy advocates. It specified that 10 percent of the power generated by the state's largest utilities had to come from renewable sources by 2015. Most will come from wind, which, though unreliable as a baseload source, is relatively cheap. But solar, although far more expensive, has its advocates, and they must be appeased. The initiative specified that 4 percent of the 10 percent [meaning 4 percent of total energy] be generated by the sun.

The voters chose in 2004, but three years later the legislature was so confident that renewables were popular it decided to kick up their share to 20 percent, by 2020, without a referendum.

Rick Gilliam of Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit environmental group, was the principal author of Amendment 37 and its registered representative. In 2005 and 2006, after Amendment 37 passed, he won major environmental awards.

But in January 2007 he... join[ed] SunEdison of Baltimore as director of Western states policy. SunEdison had just landed a contract from Xcel to build the largest "solar electric farm" in Colorado, near Alamosa. Designed to produce 8.22 megawatts capable of powering 2,600 homes along the Front Range, it cost $60 million. It went online late last year.

In other words, Gilliam is responsible for the forced transfer of wealth to solar-electric producers -- including himself. Neat trick! But this is hardly new: who do you think pushed for the corn-gas laws? Or the mercury-bulb laws? Rent seeking is the second-oldest profession in human history, if not nearly as honorable.

Squash Competition to Save It?

I had to laugh at this headline for a Rocky Mountain News Speakout by William J. Barr: "Chain stores would ruin Colorado's competitive liquor business."

The thrust the piece is that Colorado's legislature must maintain the ban on chain liquor stores in order to preserve competition. In other words, in Barr's view, "competition" means threatening to send in armed officers to prevent people from opening stores. "Competition" means forcibly preventing people from associating voluntarily in the economic sphere. In short, according to Barr, "competition" means outlawing select "capitalist acts among consenting adults," to again invoke Nozick.

Barr's position is utterly ridiculous. Using political force to shut down one's competitors is the antithesis of free-market competition. But apparently Barr favors the sort of competition by which special interest groups grovel for protectionist legislation from morally corrupt politicians.

Real competition means that people have the protected right to offer their goods and services freely to willing customers. Nobody is forcing a single consumer to do business with a store that happens to be part of a chain. On a free market, any store that does not meet the needs of consumers will fail. If a chain succeeds on a free market, it is because quality management, economies of scale, and/or earned reputation draws in customers. So what Barr is really arguing is that customers must be forcibly prevented from doing business with stores that best meet their needs.

John Lewis on Greek Law

Last year I wrote about historian John Lewis's trip to Colorado here and here. Now Lewis's new book, Early Greek Lawgivers, is available. Following is part of a brief review:

This short book is in the publisher's Classical World Series, which is designed for "students and teachers of Classical Civilisation at late school and early university level." Lewis discusses the work of the often-shadowy figures that were the early lawgivers set against the background of the societies in which they lived and worked and the development of the legal code. It is an excellent introduction to the topic, which can be comfortably set as additional background reading in undergraduate courses on Greek civilization and law and society. ...

There is a lot in this short book, which is succinctly written, stimulating, and introduces to students earlier lawgivers as well as the better known figures of Draco, Solon, and Lycurgus, who all too often are the only ones studied in courses.

What's more, Lewis's Solon the Thinker is now available in paperback: "This first paperback edition contains a new appendix of translations of the fragments of Solon by the author."

The books are enormously helpful in understanding the development of law in Greek society and the origins of law as such.

The Negawatt

The "negawatt" is a symptom of the insanity of the environmentalist movement. Indisputable is the fact that energy production has enhanced and prolonged our lives in countless ways. Modern transportation allows us to move ourselves and goods around our towns, nation, and world. Electricity powers our household appliances, factories, offices, lights, computers, medical equipment, and on and on. But the environmentalist movement wishes to subvert human well-being to "unblemished" nature. While many environmentalists reluctantly acquiesce to the use of "alternative" forms of energy, which today almost always costs more, environmentalists most forcefully push for energy reduction. As two environmentalists recently explained for The Denver Post:

Investing in energy efficiency is a better deal for consumers and the environment. As Gov. Bill Ritter has stated, "The cheapest watt of electricity is the watt that isn't consumed at all. It's called the negawatt."

In other words, we are supposed to spend our time and resources, not expanding our production of energy, but contracting it. Rather than produce, we are supposed to reduce. Rather than seek out ways to provide more watts of energy, we are to actively use less. We are to measure our success not by the megawatt by by the "negawatt."

Obviously, people in a free market continually strive to produce more and better products for lower costs, which means finding more efficient means of production. If a factory's owners can produce the same amount of goods in the same amount of time by spending less on energy, then, other things being equal, those owners will freely and happily make the change. If consumers can purchase a lightbulb that works at least as well but costs less to operate without causing other problems, producers will be able to persuade consumers to act in their own interests. Politicians need not hold a gun to people's heads or otherwise threaten force to get people to do things that are efficient in the full sense of the term, which accounts for preferences and time as well as energy use. Economic efficiency often entails energy efficiency, which properly means that an expanding pool of energy becomes available for other uses.

Yet the environmentalists exuberantly call for the threat and use of physical force to change people's behaviors. They call for "renewable" energy mandates (but for bans on nuclear power), mandates for bulbs that some people don't like and fear are toxic, forced wealth transfers for corn gas, and so on. Environmentalists measure "efficiency" in terms of restricting human use of natural resources, and they generally ignore the most important natural resources: human life and time.

As a release from the Ayn Rand Institute points out, environmentalists are becoming more brazen in their demands to impose economic controls:

Many people are calling for drastic political action to cope with climate change. But the authors of a new book, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, go much further, claiming that global warming can be effectively dealt with only by "an authoritarian form of government."

Environmentalists argue that humans are the primary cause of global warming and, absent a wide-scale political take-over of the economy, global warming will advance until it causes catastrophic problems. Yet the degree of human involvement in warming and the magnitude of future problems are matters of politically-motivated guess work. To reach their alarmist conclusions, environmentalists pretend to predict not only the weather but the stock market -- for a century into the future.

Even assuming the environmentalist case about carbon dioxide and the future consequences of global warming, the further assumption -- that this problem requires expansive political force in the economy -- is hardly warranted. Indeed, it is only an unfettered free market that could ably handle the potential problems of warming while ensuring the maximum advancement of human life.

Consider just two recent news reports. Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes that "the technology needed for collecting and storing [sunlight] is about to emerge as the field of solar energy is going to advance exponentially" over the coming decades. If this is true, then the best thing the government could to is to return to its proper function of protecting property rights and freedom of production. Maybe solar energy won't turn out to be the best way to go. Maybe it will be some sort of nuclear power, or even something not yet invented. But threatening to send in the storm troopers to non-authorized production plants and throw people in jail for declining to subsidize the projects favored by special-interest groups is hardly the way to go, though it is the way favored by the typical environmentalist.

Other scientists think that they can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If global warming actually worsened over the coming decades and actually started to cause the sorts of wide-scale catastrophes that environmentalists scream about, then many people would be quite willing to spend a bit extra on fuel or even voluntarily contribute to carbon-dioxide removal factories.

But the simple fact is that today's politicians do not know what the future climate holds or what the best response to any change would be. Nor are their political aspirations typically in consonance with such lofty concerns. What is certain is that subjecting people to political force wastes resources (in the full, economic sense of the term) and prevents people from applying the full force of their minds to the problem of improving methods of production and adapting to changing circumstances of all varieties.

Waitress, Stardust Best Movies of '07

I spent Oscar night watching good movies on video. I didn't even know the Oscars were on television until I happened to check the news online and notice that some winners had already been announced.

Out of the 24 Oscar winners, I've seen only four of the movies. Of those, I didn't particularly like Golden Compass, and Bourne won only for technical achievements. I quite liked Ratatouille (even though I've never understood why "animated feature" gets its own category, given that there are so few decent animated movies in a given year), and Elizabeth: The Golden Age was okay. The only other winner that I have a particular interest in seeing is Juno. I do want to see No Country for Old Men, and I might watch Once, though I've already marked There Will Be Blood off of my "maybe" list. I don't care how good the acting is if the movie is fundamentally grotesque.

So what did I do while happily ignoring the Oscars? My wife and I watched Feast of Love, which we enjoyed despite some serious problems with the writing (such as the use of a psychic as a plot device), and then we discovered a very fine film: American Pastime.

I'd never heard of this latter film till we saw a preview on another rental. Both my wife and I loved this movie. Okay, part of the plot is somewhat contrived; the interracial romance, the father who just doesn't understand his daughter, the competition among brothers, and the miracle sports comeback all felt a bit obvious. But I'd rather watch an old-fashioned, heartfelt story than a play of some miserable moral monster. Oscar can stuff it, as far as I'm concerned (though I've rarely been much of a fan, as my notes from 2006 and 2004 suggest.) At least Michael Moore didn't win, which surprised me.

American Pastime is about a baseball team formed in a Japanese-American internment camp. But it's about much more than that. It's mostly about a young man's struggle to deal with racism and injustice. The main character loves jazz and baseball, but his pending college education (on a baseball scholarship) is interrupted by the war and his forced relocation to the camp. Understandably, he feels bitter about this. He and his brother clash -- until his brother joins the Army to fight in Germany. And the young man finds a romantic interest in a girl who just happens to be the piano-playing daughter of the camp's main guard, who just happens to be the star player on the local baseball team. As I mentioned, this sounds like a story-telling setup, but the characters are well developed and believable. The main actors are quite good.

Looking back at 2007, two movies stand out for me. Neither received a single Oscar nomination.

Waitress is a spectacular movie. The Oscar group committed something approaching a moral sin by failing to recognize Adrienne Shelly for screenplay, Keri Russell for best actress, and Andy Griffith for best supporting actor. Waitress is among the great films of the decade, not just of 2007.

Russell plays a waitress (big surprise) who is also a spectacular baker of pies, which reflect her moods. She works at a pie shop owned by Griffith's character, and Griffith is absolutely superb as the grumpy but perceptive proprietor. He nimbly tightropes between a cynical demeanor and a compassionate heart. The problem is that the waitress is married to a complete jerk -- and she is pregnant. This is a love story, but not between the characters of Russell and romantic interest Nathan Fillion, but between the woman and her child. It is a beautiful, gorgeously written story.

Stardust is my other favorite film of the year. I've already briefly summarized it:

A young man, trying to win the heart of the local beauty, sees a falling star and pledges to fetch it in exchange for the girl's hand. But to retrieve the star, our hero must cross the wall that separates England from the magical world beyond. In that world, a fallen star is not a hunk of metal and ash -- it is a lovely young lady, in this case portrayed by Claire Danes. Our hero must learn to become a man, save the star, and figure out whom he loves.

This coming-of-age story is a fantasy for grownups. Forget about how silly it sounds to make a star into a girl: it works. And Robert De Niro as the tough-talking (but eccentric dressing) pirate is both hilarious and touching.

Both Waitress and Stardust are such fabulous movies that, of course, neither won even a single nomination from Oscar. (In neither film is a despicable son of a bitch the main character.) But who cares what Oscar thinks: both films earn an Ari.

How It's Made

Last time I had access to cable TV, I watched several episodes of the show "How It's Made." It's a spectacular show that reveals how various products are mass produced.

What has mass production done for us? In short, a lot fewer people can make a lot more life-advancing stuff. That allows more people to enjoy the products. Practically all of the clothes we wear, most of the food we eat, and just about every product in our homes was mass produced (or significantly assisted by mass production) using advanced technical processes.

Many of today's labor-intensive jobs are made possible by mass production, which frees up labor for other jobs. When the country first started, most people worked in agriculture. Now a tiny minority do. Today, businesses exist to wash your dog or provide it with therapy. "In 2003, more than 15 million people practiced Yoga, according to Yoga Journal magazine," writes one practitioner. Several massage clinics have recently opened up near my house, and chiropractors are everywhere. These are just a few examples.

Yet who pauses to recognize the profound improvements to their lives made possible by science, technology, and a market free enough to develop the wonders of mass production?

Up from Anarchy

Ironically, after spending many years as a libertarian who flirted with "anarcho-capitalism," I was recently criticized in a letter to the Rocky Mountain News by a libertarian anarchist. I'll take that as a sign of my progress. John Chamberlain of Longmont writes for a letter dated February 14:

It's a shame when someone gets so close the truth without quite reaching it.

Ari Armstrong ("Loading the dice against responsibility," Speakout, Jan. 18) scores many good points against Rocky Mountain News columnist Paul Campos, especially in explaining how government activism actually hurts the poor.

But he also writes, "Government can be effective when it sticks to protecting people's rights - that is, preventing crime and protecting people and their property from violence." The problem is that governments, in their current form, depend on taking people's property by violence for their very existence. They are self-contradictory. Their acts of theft (which are euphemized as "taxation") are considered crimes if anyone else does them.

Furthermore, modern governments prevent anyone else from competing against them within the same geographic area.

Governments performs many useful services, but they shouldn't be monopolies. Why would anyone support monopoly? Government should be a voluntary subscription service. Let's take "government by the consent of the governed" seriously!

I am quite familiar with the notion of competing defense agencies, having read the works of Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, and others. (I've also written about Randy Barnett's "polycentric" legal system.)

I essentially agree with Ayn Rand (who, by the way, does not conflate the issues of taxation and geographic monopoly), that competing defense agencies would devolve into violence. Rand writes:

[S]uppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones' house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith's complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.

The typical response is that the two defense agencies will seek arbitration and reach a peaceable solution. But there are two problems with such a reply. First, it manifest a typical libertarian failing of assuming universal rationality in motives. (This is the same failing that leads many libertarians to conclude that Islamic terrorists would become peaceable if only the United States did not antagonize them.) Yet, as world history demonstrates, people do not always reach peaceable solutions that would be in their "rational self-interests;" quite the opposite.

Second, if the competing defense agencies all agree to binding arbitration, then they have formed the very sort of "monopoly" that motivated the criticism in the first place. (I think this is basically along the lines of what Robert Nozick had to say on the matter.) To make such cooperation work, defense agencies would necessarily have to subject themselves to a monopoly power. And if a "competing" agency tried to defy those rules, its members would be arrested and thrown into jail. Sort of like what happens today. As "anarcho-capitalists" are fond of pointing out, today most peace officers are privately hired. Yet they are subject -- and quite properly so -- to the government's rules. Once "competing" agents of force agree to create and obey a central authority, they are no longer "competing" in the relevant sense. And, once they make this move, they must consider the optimal structure of government -- for which no better alternative has been found than a constitutional republic.

Avoid Identity Theft

The United States Post Office sent me a pamphlet from the Federal Trade Commission about identity theft. The pamphlet states, "Protect your Social Security number. Don't carry your Social Security card in your wallet or write your Social Security number on a check. Give it out only if absolutely necessary or ask to use another identifier."

Take note, Qwest and Comcast. I very nearly dropped my Qwest phone and internet service last week. Internet service had been spotty, and when I called to complain Qwest's representative demanded that I give him my Social Security number over the phone. When I refused, he suggested that he could also send me to the disconnection department. I hung up.

I had Comcast on the line and was very close to purchasing its services -- until its representative demanded my Social Security number over the phone. I told her that was unacceptable.

Fortunately, an employee of Qwest who was sent to work on the problem explained to me what was going wrong with the internet service, how he intended to fix it, and how Qwest does not really need my Social Security number over the phone, in his opinion. Finally, somebody from Qwest lived up to the company's loudly-touted "spirit of service."

(If Comcast would stop spending so much money sending me junk mail and simply offer me a reasonable deal without demanding unnecessary personal information, I'd probably sign up with Comcast. But, aside from the jerk that Qwest subjected me to over the phone, I've been fairly happy with Qwest, except when I'm trying to watch a video online, which is slower.)

Disclaimer: Nothing in this post should be taken to suggest that I do not still advocate the phasing out of Social Security, the privatization of the Post Office, and the abolition of the FTC.

'Studies Have Shown'

In a February 10 article for The Denver Post, Katy Human wrote, "Children with health insurance, studies have shown, are less likely than uninsured kids to end up in emergency rooms, more likely to get key vaccinations and less likely to be absent from school."

The article promoted tax-funded health programs and included not a word from critics, but I was first interested in Human's claim about the studies. Which studies did she have in mind? I asked Human via e-mail, "Is the lack of insurance causing the problems mentioned, or is the lack of insurance itself a symptom of having poorer and less educated parents (on average)?"

Human responded on February 12:

Oh, I know you know the answer to this, Ari. There are many many many studies on this -- and all, of course, control for factors such as income and education of parents. There are also studies showing before-and-after for same kids and same families, once the families make a change (adding or dropping insurance.)

But what Human did not do is provide me with a single citation regarding these "many many studies." I suppose that at least some of the studies that she had in mind do contain the sorts of controls that she mentioned. However, I wanted to look for myself, not take Human's word on faith. Moreover, not only did I want to see for myself whether the statistical controls are adequate, but I wanted to learn what is the magnitude of difference. How much difference is there between the insured and uninsured?

I asked Human on February 12 and again on February 13 for her citations. I was hardly being overly demanding in my request; I wrote, "You mentioned that there are many such studies; citations for the two or three that you find most persuasive would suffice." This would have taken only a minute or two of Human's time, as obviously she is already familiar with the studies in question.

I have yet to hear back from her.

I suggest that The Denver Post adopt the following policy. If reporters, for lack of space, mention but do not specify studies or other sources, the reporters should be required to provide the names of those studies or sources to interested readers. Otherwise, readers have no way to verify the reliability of the studies or sources.

February 21 Update: In response to this post, Human send me a list of citations:

Here you go. I won't be doing this for you again - you can do it yourself, and I don't have time to repeat these types of searches for everyone who asks.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15121980?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlusDrugs1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18219242?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18045482?ordinalpos=10&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805222?ordinalpos=9&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

ADULTS: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18096863?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

I replied, "Thanks! However, you are incorrect that I can correctly guess the studies that you have in mind on my own." After all, I am not a mind reader. Moreover, I do not regard my request as an imposition, given that Human already knew which studies she had in mind. I could have spent hours trying to guess the studies to which Human was referring and still not guessed correctly, while it took Human perhaps a minute or two to send me the links.

If Human does not wish to respond to readers about her citations, then she is free to include them briefly within her articles. In this case, all of the links point to the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Including that information would have added seven words to Human's article, including the worlds "by" and "the." Even that brief citation would have pointed readers in the right direction.

I will evaluate the studies within the next couple of days and then discuss the political implications of them. February 22 Update: I've started to work on this, but it will take me some days to write up the results, which I may release with a co-author and perhaps first through another outlet.

The Sin is the Tax

So-called "sin taxes" are appropriately named, because it is morally wrong to forcibly transfer wealth even if the taxes discriminate against politically-incorrect behavior. Here's the latest from the Rocky Mountain News:

...Denver Democrat [Rep. Jerry Frangas] very quietly drafted a bill introduced this week that would raise alcohol taxes 2 percent to cover all of Colorado's 180,000 uninsured children.

The tax of 11 cents, for example, on a $5.49 six-pack of Budweiser, would raise about $57 million for the state children's health care program. When paired with federal matching funds, Frangas said it would provide up to $150 million.

In other words, through the magic of federal "matching" welfare payments, Frangas can capture a portion of the national income tax by imposing a state sales tax. That way, Frangas can also force people in every other state to fund the health care of select Coloradans. Ah, the glories of federalism in the modern age.

But socialized medicine is fine, "for the children," right? On the contrary, generally parents have a moral obligation to fund their own children's health-care expenses, and they should plan their families and expenses accordingly. Of course, parents whose children suffer unexpected, catastrophic illnesses already benefit from a wide array of voluntary charity programs (often in addition to insurance payments), as is appropriate. All of us want to see innocent children taken care of, which is exactly why even today's mixed economy often provides for their needs and why a truly free market would do so even better. However, unlike force-funded welfare, voluntary charity is more likely to discourage dependency and irresponsibility on the part of the parents. Offhand, I don't have a good estimate for how much socialized medicine "for the children" displaces private insurance (and discourages parental responsibility), but the figure is large. And, obviously, socialized medicine "for the children" is merely a stepping stone to socialized medicine for everyone. As one advocate of politically-funded medicine reportedly said, "[S]ome of you may think of me as an incrementalist. I prefer to think of myself as a sneaky sequentialist."

If politicians really wanted to help, they would repeal the interventions that have artificially increased the costs of health care and insurance and reduced access to medical services especially among the poor (as Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh explain.)

What about a tax on alcohol? I oppose sales taxes in general. But, so long as there is a sales tax, it is wrong to discriminate against some people (in this case consumers of alcoholic beverages) and select legal activities. No doubt advocates of the tax on alcohol will argue that the tax would fund a "worthy" welfare program while discouraging a vice. But it is the proper role of government to protect individual rights, not to socially engineer behavior desired by politicians. While obviously alcohol can be abused -- as can many other properly legal products -- there is nothing inherently rights-violating or irresponsible about drinking alcohol. And purchasers of alcohol ought not be uniquely forced to subsidize other people's children.

'Do Not Be a Hero'

Kirk Mitchell writes for the February 15 Denver Post:

"If danger presents itself, flee the area, if at all possible, or seek sanctuary in a locked classroom, restroom," according to one memo sent to staffers and students at metro campuses of the University of Colorado. "Do not be a hero. Be a good witness. Report what you have seen as soon as you can notify the campus police."

Vincent Carroll has responded with mild criticism:

People don't need exhortations to flee danger. That's what they will do almost every time without a prod.

But why the explicit warning against heroism?

Of course a university shouldn't encourage reckless behavior in a crisis, or try to shame people into taking chances they would otherwise avoid. Most of us aren't cut out for heroics anyway.

But do we really want to insist that people avoid heroics, as if there were something faintly disreputable about those who spontaneously risk their lives on behalf of others?

As my readers might expect, I want to offer a somewhat stronger criticism.

Generally, the advice to flee is appropriate for students. The problem with the advice is that it is not always possible to flee. In some cases, heroic action is the only reasonable way to protect one's life. Students who are unable to flee or "seek sanctuary" should attack, as their only other option is to wait to be murdered. For example, at a school shooting in Oregon, the killer "was tackled by other students." Here is a more detailed account of that story, as reported by the AP:

Jake Ryker was shot in the chest but managed to tackle a schoolmate who had opened fire in the Thurston High School cafeteria.

On Monday night, Jake's father, a Navy diver wearing his full dress uniform, presented him with the highest honor in the Boy Scouts of America.

Robert Ryker's hands trembled as he pinned the red ribbon with gold medallion of the Honor Medal with Crossed Palms to Jake's chest before a crowd of about 300 people at Thurston Christian Church. ...

Jake and his younger brother, Josh, 14, and three other Boy Scouts subdued the gunman after two other Thurston students were killed and 22 wounded on May 21.

Josh Ryker, Douglas and David Ure, and Adam Walburger all were presented Monday night with the Honor Medal, the second-highest honor in scouting. It was the first time in the 88-year history of the Boy Scouts that five medals for heroism were awarded at one time.

"I believe it was no coincidence that the five who stopped the shooting were Scouts," said Jerry Dempsy, Oregon Trail Council executive for the Boy Scouts. "I'm so grateful they stopped the killing when they did."

Jake was shot through the chest during the shooting spree. When the gunman ran out of ammunition and started to reload, Jake tackled him, and was shot in a finger. His brother and the three other Scouts piled on and held the shooter until help arrived.

Notably,"Jake Ryker gave credit to the fact that he had taken a marksmanship and safety training program given by the National Rifle Association. ... His father, Rob Ryker said that both Jake and his 14-year-old brother, Josh, had taken the course." Because of his training, Ryker knew when to tackle the killer. (Dave Kopel mentions Ryker in his article about "common-sense school protection.")

And, sometimes, more mature and better-trained students may choose to intervene rather than flee, if they reasonably believe that they can save lives without putting themselves in too great a danger. For example, at the Appalachian School of Law, two armed students subdued a murderer.

Mitchell's article does not make clear whether the "memo sent to staffers and students" was intended also as advice for staffers, or as information for staffers to pass along to students. If it was intended as advice for staffers, then the advice is despicable, for instructors have accepted as a chosen responsibility the care of their students. While no staffer should place him or herself in undue danger without good reason, instructors have a moral responsibility to take reasonable, heroic actions to protect their students, as Joel Myrick did.

Outside of the school environment, there is Jeanne Assam, who used her concealed, Beretta 9 mm semiautomatic handgun to shoot a murderer at New Life Church.

The rash of copy-cat school shootings, in part encouraged by irresponsible media coverage, reflect a cultural sickness in which moral relativism and nihilism undermine some people's values and very lives. The solution to such problems is not to impose gun restrictions that fail to impede criminals but that only make self-defense more difficult.

CU's policy is only helping to create what Jeff Snyder calls a "Nation of Cowards." But cowardice only encourages criminals.

If CU's administrators wanted to act to save lives in the event of a violent attack -- as well as to deter such attacks -- they would establish a policy of allowing trained staffers to carry concealed handguns. The memo to staffers should then read, "If someone starts attacking your students with intent to kill, then, within reasonable guidelines of safety appropriate to an emergency situation, shoot the bastard."

Legislature Tries to Restrict Guns, Abortion

The following column originally appeared in Grand Junction's Free Press.

February 18, 2008

Pick your poison: Dems and GOP both violate rights

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

A legislative committee heard two bills in two weeks. Both votes split along party lines. The first week, all the Democrats voted to violate our rights. The second week, all the Republicans did so.

Senator Sue Windels sponsored Bill 49 to impose criminal penalties on gun owners who do not store their guns the way that district attorneys deem proper after the fact. On Monday, February 4, the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee heard the bill. Windels joined with fellow Democrats Chris Romer and Abel Tapia to pass the bill to the next committee, over the objections of Republicans Bill Cadman and David Schultheis.

On February 11, the committee heard Schultheis's Bill 95 (which Cadman cosponsored) to impose criminal penalties on doctors who fail to observe a 24-hour waiting period for their clients seeking an abortion. Both Republicans voted for the bill, though the Democrats killed it.

While the bills cover quite different situations, they have much in common. Both bills would impose useless additions to Colorado's already-massive books of statutes. Both would create arbitrary and onerous restrictions on activities that people have a right to pursue but that some ultimately want to ban altogether.

Let's first look at the gun bill. As the Daily Sentinel pointed out earlier in the month, existing laws already cover cases of placing children in danger. The effect of Bill 49 would be to discourage citizens from keeping firearms for self-defense. When citizens are too afraid of prosecution to defend themselves, the advantage goes to the real criminals.

As Cadman said in a Republican press release, "We have a good balance right now between the need to keep kids from misusing guns and the right of homeowners to be able to defend their families. This bill would upset that balance by giving home intruders the upper hand and tying the hands of homeowners... This bill likely would have a chilling effect on gun ownership."

Originally, Bill 49 stated that it applied if a gun owner "reasonably should know that a minor would be able to gain access to the firearm" without permission. And who gets to decide what's "reasonable?" Prosecutors, some of whom are unfriendly toward defensive gun ownership. The committee dropped that language in favor of a line that says the bill applies in cases of "criminal negligence." In other words, you commit "criminal negligence" if you commit "criminal negligence" -- again as determined by prosecutors.

Another problem with the bill is that it says it doesn't apply if a minor obtains the gun through burglary or robbery. So does the criminal prosecution of the gun owner hinge upon the criminal conviction of the minor? Who decides whether the minor should face charges? Apparently, again the prosecutor gets to make the call.

Of course, while many Colorado Democrats don't express this motivation, many activists who favor storage laws, waiting periods, and other restrictions ultimately want to ban the use and ownership of guns, at least for defensive purposes.

What about the abortion bill? Bill 95 would have required a doctor to provide information about ultrasounds to all women seeking an abortion, then imposed a 24-hour waiting period. But women already know what abortion implies -- the destruction of a potential but not actual person -- and are already free to order ultrasounds.

As Jody Berger of Planned Parenthood pointed out to us, an ultrasound cannot even detect a pregnancy before five weeks. And Planned Parenthood already administers an ultrasound for every abortion in its clinics, which offer abortions from around five to eighteen weeks of pregnancy. (The clinics offer "morning after" medications up to 72 hours following intercourse.)

Berger said, "What would have been onerous is the 24-hour waiting period. In a lot of rural areas, a doctor is available only one day a week. And clients who drive three or four hours to come to the Planned Parenthood center in Denver have to make that drive twice. If they come with their husband or boyfriend, that means two people have to take two days off of work."

So Schultheis, who is on record opposing waiting periods for purchases of firearms, is the sponsor of the bill to impose waiting periods for abortions.

Mike Saccone recorded the hypocrisy of Republicans and Democrats alike in his January 23 and February 11 stories for the Sentinel. Shultheis said his bill was "trying to whatever degree we can to reduce the number of abortions" -- the exact attitude of the anti-gun lobby toward gun ownership. Of course, Schultheis really wants to ban abortion, just as many anti-gun activists ultimately want to ban defensive gun ownership.

And Romer said of the abortion bill, "It puts a burden on certain people" -- the way that the gun bill that Romer voted for puts a burden on gun owners.

These Democrats and Republicans deserve each other. But Colorado deserves better.

Linn is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son Ari edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

'A Liberation Package'

Recently I criticized Bush's "stimulus" package, which essentially consists of deficit spending. On February 14, Forbes published an article by Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute titled, "To Stimulate The Economy, Liberate It."

Brook begins by explaining that the key to economic growth is production, not "consumer spending." And "a productive, dynamic economy requires of a government is that it restrict itself to protecting property rights from force and fraud, and refrain from interfering in free production and trade." Brook then goes on to explain how existing political intrusions in the economy have created today's troubles. He summarizes the main causes of the "subprime meltdown:"

There is the Federal Reserve, which wrought havoc with the markets by manipulating interest rates, first setting them below the rate of inflation and then quintupling them.

The Fed's initial policy convinced subprime borrowers that if they took out mortgages tied to Fed rates, they could afford homes that they ordinarily couldn't. The Fed's artificially low rates fueled a borrowing spree and housing bubble that were instrumental in the subprime meltdown. Then there is the network of entities backed by the government, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were big champions of subprime lending and big propagandists for the idea that everyone needs to own a home to live the American Dream. Finally, there is the government's long-standing policy of assuring large financial institutions that they are "too big to fail," which encourages short-range, high-risk investments.

Brook briefly describes how various other restrictions and taxes harm economic productivity. He concludes: "What our economy needs is not a stimulation package, but a liberation package."

Unfortunately, it is a package in which few of today's politicians are interested.

Straw Men in Warm Phone Booths

Colorado State Representative Kevin Lundberg said that Governor Bill Ritter's Climate Action Plan is "predicated on junk science," according to The Denver Post.

It would be somewhat easier to take Lundberg's pronouncements about science seriously had he not also claimed that "most of our laws" have a "religious foundation."

Nevertheless, the environmentalist response is no more persuasive. The Post continues:

Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and one of the plan's authors, said the carbon dioxide/global warming connection is widely accepted as scientific fact.

"You could have a convention of all the scientists who dispute climate change in a relatively small phone booth," he said.

Martin has created a straw man. Nobody disputes "climate change." Everybody grants that the earth's climate has long cycled between warm and cool periods. Nor does anybody doubt a "connection" between carbon dioxide and warming. However, one point in serious dispute is whether increased carbon dioxide causes or follows warming. Another point in serious dispute it to what degree industrialization has contributed to modern warming.

However, even if Martin were correct that human activity is primarily responsible for global warming and that the trend will eventually generate serious problems, his "solution" -- to further socialize the economy -- is hardly defensible (though it's terrific if you're a special-interest group looking to line your pockets with tax dollars and political favoritism). The best way to enable people to cope with nature, and to promote the sorts of technological innovations that will eventually create serious alternatives in energy production, is to achieve a free market.

Schwartz Beats Polis's Health Argument

In a February 13 Speakout column in the Rocky Mountain News, Jared Polis, the gazillionaire running for Congress (in my district), argued:

[L]et us not delude ourselves into thinking that we have anything close to a "free market" in health care. A free market would allow the uninsured to die on the hospital doorstep rather than provide them treatment they cannot pay for. Having made a moral decision not to allow people in our great country to die in this fashion, let us discuss how to more efficiently provide for sensible universal health care.

Polis is correct that we do not have a free market in health care, but his description of a free market is completely ridiculous. My dad and I have already addressed the argument that Polis makes, and I wrote a lengthier critique along the same lines.

Brian Schwartz challenged Polis directly. In a comment to Polis's article, Schwartz argued:

Jared Polis writes: "A free market would allow the uninsured to die on the hospital doorstep rather than provide them treatment they cannot pay for."

This is a pathetic argument. Is Mr. Polis so heartless that he wouldn't help such a person if the law didn't compel him to do so? Or if he would, does he think that doctors are so heartless? Give me a break, Jared.

In the wake of the French Revolution, French economist Frederic Bastiat wrote that "every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all...It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

Apparently nothing has changed.

And on his blog, Schwartz adds:

[I]t is not hard to imagine that our community would provide such care even if a politician’s law didn’t compel us to do so. It’s not hard to imagine, because people do it. Consider the Shriners Hospitals for Children. According to Charity Navigator, their total revenue exceeed $640 million in 2005. In Colorado, private philanthropy accounted for almost $200 million in medical care for the uninsured. ...

The above examples do not address emergency situations, but it’s difficult to imagine that people in our society would voluntarily donate money to provide medical care for the uninsured in non-emergency situations, but not in emergency situations. Jared Polis, can you shed some light on this?

According to Jared Polis, a law is required compel doctors to treat the uninsured in emergency situations. Is Polis saying that doctors are so heartless and cruel that they would not treat someone for free? Is he saying that the electorate as too callous to fund charities to pay such that doctors could treat the uninsured in emergency situations?

Apparently, the answer is “yes.” Polis writes that we have “made a moral decision not to allow people in our great country to die in this fashion.” Not quite. Moral decisions are a matter of choice, not a threat. EMTALA threatens doctors with penalties up to $50,000 for not complying.

So Jared Polis thinks that the citizens of Colorado and Colorado’s physicians must be forced to do the right thing, since they lack the moral fiber to do it themselves. And yet, Jared Polis seeks public office, to represent us, the very people he doesn’t trust to do the right thing. So if the (apparently immoral) citizens of Colorado’s 2nd District elect Mr. Polis, how can we trust him to do the right thing?

Polis is clearly out of his depth. So he should fit right in should he move to Washington, D.C.

Demonic International Airport

The Denver Post hosts a photo and description of the giant new Mustang that now sits on the road to Denver International Airport. "Denver officials commissioned 'Mustang' from [sculptor Luis] Jimenez in 1992," the Post reports.

My first reaction to the sculpture was that it's "repugnant." My wife said, "It looks like it's possessed."

My wife's view seems to be a common one. On a separate blog post, the Post includes a number of comments about the piece that are almost entirely negative. Here are the highlights: "diabolical," "hideous," "a demon horse... melt it down," "truly horrifying," "looked better when it was wrapped in plastic," "waste of tax payer money... beautiful if you are a satan follower," "more appropriate in a horror type theme park," "a debacle," "an embarrasment to Colorado," "likely to give children nightmares."

A Very Costly Health-Care Solution

The following article originally was published by the Rocky Mountain News:

SPEAKOUT: A very costly health-care solution

By Linda Gorman and Ari Armstrong
Wednesday, January 30, 2008

As the health-care debate unfolds, we hear a lot about cost-shifting, the idea that some people are charged more for health care to make up for the fact that others do not pay. Various legislators, journalists and activists tell us that the state should adopt the Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform's recommendation to impose an individual mandate and force everyone to buy health insurance in order to end the unfairness of cost-shifting.

In fact, the commission's recommendations likely will shift more costs onto those who already have insurance. Along with the individual mandate, the commission recommends large subsidies for those whom the commission considers too poor to purchase the insurance it says they should have.

Under the commission's plan, people with health insurance would be taxed to subsidize health insurance for single people making as much as $40,000 a year, and families of four making as much as $82,600 a year. Many of these people pay for their own health care now, or have the assets to do so in an emergency.

The commission would also increase cost-shifting by forcing many more people into Medicaid.

Because Medicaid pays so little to providers, Medicaid as a whole generates far more uncompensated care and cost- shifting than the uninsured.

Those who advocate an individual mandate throw up all kinds of numbers to support the wild claims that the proposal would save everyone money. A Jan. 8 article from The Denver Post claims that "Coloradans who have insurance spend an extra $950 each year to cover the costs of those who show up at the hospital without insurance."

The article attributes the number to state Rep. Anne McGihon, who said that the figure comes from Partnership for a Healthy Colorado. Partnership for a Healthy Colorado, in turn, says it got the figure from Families USA, which published a paper in 2005. That paper's estimates were unable to accurately predict the percentage of uninsured residents in Colorado. The paper also grossly overestimated at least some costs of uncompensated care.

The Lewin Group, the modeling firm hired by the commission to collect information about Colorado, reported total Colorado expenses for the uninsured of about $1.4 billion. Of that amount, around 45 percent, or $627 million, was paid out-of-pocket by the uninsured themselves.

Private philanthropy covered $197 million. Another $341 million was paid by the Veterans Administration, workers compensation and various public programs.

The leftover uncompensated costs, the ones that are not paid by any identifiable source, total $239 million. Divide $239 million by Colorado's 2.8 million insured residents, and the result is a maximum likely cost-shift of about $85 per insured individual per year.

To "fix" the problem of $239 million in cost-shifting, the commission proposes to increase health spending in Colorado by more than $3 billion, funded with an income tax increase of $800 million to $1.8 billion, new taxes on various politically incorrect types of food and drink, and an increase in the cigarette tax.

The sensible way to solve cost-shifting is to reduce health-care costs so that people fund their own health care, not to force people to buy insurance created by special-interest groups or to expand Medicaid. Professor Christopher Conover of Duke University estimates that 10 percent of annual health costs are caused by inefficient regulation. Results from experiments in consumer-directed health-care plans suggest that freeing consumers, providers and insurers can reduce costs by up to 30 percent.

The hostility of the commission to any plans like this was summed up in two votes that took place one after another on the same day. First the commission voted to recommend that the state legislature study single-payer health reform plans. Then it voted not to recommend that the legislature study consumer-directed reforms. While single-payer plans have failed around the world, consumer-directed reforms are succeeding wherever they're given the chance.

Linda Gorman, a senior fellow with the Independence Institute, serves on the Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform. Ari Armstrong writes for FreeColorado.com.

March 8, 2008, Update: After reading Dave Kopel's article about citations, it occurred to me that I had not provided the citations for the article above, so here they are, as provided by Linda. The first eight references refer to the "experiments in consumer-directed health-care plans."

1. Willard G. Manning et al. June 1987. “Health Insurance and the Demand for medical Care: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment.” American Economic Review, 77,3, p. 251-275.
* The abstract says “A catastrophic insurance plan reduces expenditures 31 percent relative to zero out-of-pocket price.”
* In the body of the paper they predict expenditures and find that “Mean predicted expenditure in the free care plan is 46 percent higher than in the 95 percent plan…” (p. 260)
2. Agenda, FY 05-06 Joint Budget Committee Hearing, Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, State of Colorado, January 4 and 5 2005. In response to question 32 the Department wrote: Average monthly allocation per client, $3,925. Average monthly expenditure per clint:$3,131 per client. This works out to a monthly saving of 20%.
3. “Full placement feat: HSA helps Wendy’s grill health costs,” Employee Benefit News, June 1, 2006. Gale Infotrak version, record A146476601. Reports that the return on investment for HSA program is 221% due to the fact that health claims costs fell by 14% from 2004 to 2005 and are on track to be 4% less than last year.
4. Silicon Designs experiment in 2005/2006. Lower out-of-pocket costs from employees (4.9 %) Lower company cost, from about 17% of salaries paid to about 15 percent of salaries paid. John Cole. “Report on One Year of Experience with HSAs/HDHPs,” http://www.silicondesigns.com/hsa.pdf. Accessed March 8, 2008.
5. Humana, Inc. June 2005. “Health Care Consumers: Passive or Active? A Three-year Report on Humana’s Consumer Solution.” http://apps.humana.com/marketing/documents.asp?file=519272 accessed March 8, 2008. A report on a three year internal experiment with a consumer directed plan for Humana employees. Cost increases were lower than trend by roughly 15 percent over the two years.
6. Wharam et al. 2007. “Emergency Department Use and Subsequent Hospitalizations Among Members of a High-Deductible Health Plan,” JAMA, 297, 1093-1102. This article looks at ED visits and subsequent rehospitalizations among members of a health plan that switched a fraction of insureds from a traditional HMO to a high deductible plan in 2001-2005. It concludes that ED visits decreased in those switched to high deductible plan with reductions primarily in repeat visits for conditions that were not high severity and in the rate of hospitalizations. It does not conclude anything about spending clinical outcomes.
7. J. Hsu et al. 2006. “Cost-sharing for emergency care and unfavorable clinical events: findings from the safety and financial ramifications of ED copayments study,” Health Services Research, 41, 5, 1801-20. Another study of the effects of copayments on ED use that does not directly address expenditures but does find that ED visits decrease with no apparent health effects when payments range from $20 to $100.
8. John Mackey. October 2004. Whole Foods Market’s Consumer-Driven Health Plan. A speech delivered at the State Policy Network Annual Meeting. Transcript available at http://www.worldcongress.com/news/Mackey_Transcript.pdf.

Christopher J. Conover. October 4, 2004. Health Care Regulation a $169 Billion Hidden Tax, Policy Analysis No. 527, Cato Institute, Washington DC. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa527.pdf

Withhold Medicine from the Elderly and Obese?

Advocates of politically-controlled medicine in the U.S. and in Colorado typically make two major errors. First, they conflate today's mixed economy in medicine, in which decades of political controls have wreaked havoc with the provision of medical services, with the "free market." Second, they claim that a "free market" would heartlessly fail to provide medical services to people who need them.

For a little dose of reality, check out a January 28 article by the UK's Telegraph. It is socialized medicine that pits doctors against patients and that rations care:

Don't treat the old and unhealthy, say doctors
By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:09am GMT 28/01/2008

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone. ...

About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt.

Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money.

This reminds me of Colorado's former Governor Dick Lamm, who once said that the elderly have a "duty to die."

The central problem is that, when everyone is paying everyone else's medical bills, everyone wants to spend as much as possible on his or her own medical care but as little as possible on everyone else's medical care. Conflict is built into the system.

By contrast, a truly free market is characterized by voluntary cooperation among doctors, patients, insurers, and charitable organizations.

When politicians and bureaucrats control medicine, they necessarily tend to try to control the personal lives of the citizenry. The Telegraph continues:

The Government announced plans last week to offer fat people cash incentives to diet and exercise as part of a desperate strategy to steer Britain off a course that will otherwise see half the population dangerously overweight by 2050.

Obesity costs the British taxpayer £7 billion a year. Overweight people are more likely to contract diabetes, cancer and heart disease, and to require replacement joints or stomach-stapling operations.

Under politicized medicine, when medical care is "free," people have less incentive to take care of their health. And taxpayers, politicians, bureaucrats, and health-care providers have more incentive to try to micromanage the lives of everybody else. As Lin Zinser and Dr. Paul Hsieh point out, "When the government pays our health care bills, in order to save money, it inevitably demands greater control in how we lead our daily lives."

Shooting No 'Accident'

The Rocky Mountain News reported today:

Mesa County sheriff's deputies are investigating an accidental shooting at a Grand Junction gun store Saturday, in which an employee was shot in the abdomen.

The accident happened at Jerry's Outdoor Sports, a sheriff's spokeswoman said Sunday. Witnesses said a customer had brought a .243-caliber rifle into the store for servicing. While the weapon was being worked on, it discharged a bullet...

Okay, when you're working on a gun that you haven't bothered to unload, the resulting discharge is not an "accident." Apparently the shooting was unintentional, but an "accident" it certainly was not. "Always keep your gun unloaded until you're ready to shoot." It's one of the essential three rules of gun safety.

Also, why does the Rocky use passive language? The gun "was being worked on?" The gun "discharged a bullet?" Where was the person during all of this working and discharging? Guns are inanimate objects; they don't fire themselves.

Fees for Bags

I expressly ask for plastic bags at stores because my wife and I reuse them to clean the kitty box and to line our trash cans. I even have particular uses for particular bags from different stores. I do, however, joyfully throw these bags in the trash whenever they become punctured. Thank goodness I don't live in Denver. The Rocky Mountain News recently reported:

Paper or plastic?

It really doesn't matter because either one might cost you a dime more under a proposal making the rounds at Denver City Hall.

An organization called BetterBagsColorado is lobbying the City Council for legislation to charge grocery store shoppers 10 cents for every plastic or paper bag they use to carry their goodies home.

The proposal, which would affect supermarkets with annual revenues of $2 million or more, is intended to help protect the environment by reducing the plastic and paper bags that end up in landfills.

First, there's a group called BetterBagsColorado? Deborah Hart of BetterBagsColorado told the News, "The only way you're going to change your behavior, really, is to have a little ouch at the checkout because you get enough ouches and you'll make a new habit out of it."

The article sensibly continues:

But Keith Christman, senior director of packaging for Progressive Bag Affiliates, a trade organization that represents manufacturers and recyclers of plastic bags, said such fees only make people buy more plastic trash bags or sandwich bags.

"We know from studies that we've done that 92 percent of consumers report that they reuse their plastic bags for things like disposing of waste around their house, litter bags in their cars, picking up after their pets and taking their lunch to work," he said.

The paper also lists other regions that have banned or restricted plastic grocery bags: 80 British cities, San Francisco, Melbourne, Ireland, China, and Bangladesh.

God forbid that grocers and their customers be able to decide on bag policy without political intervention.

This example proves once again that environmentalists consistently ignore the most important resource: human time. Often I swing by the grocery store unexpectedly or purchase many items I hadn't planned to buy. If the policy spreads, will I really have to keep bags on hand, just in case? Will I really have to make en extra effort to purchase other plastic bags for my needs, or figure out how to do without? Even though the local grocery store promises to recycle plastic bags (though I'm not sure how effective that is), I don't collect punctured bags for recycling simply because I have better things to do with my time. But, for environmentalists, no amount of wasted human time matters in the context of a miniscule contributor to landfills and global warming. Call it death by a thousand-thousand "ouches."

Force Versus Choice in Medical Care

Some days ago "Yaakov" left a comment regarding the article, "More political control of medicine comes with higher costs." That article contains the following paragraph:

[W]hy is it that some people can demand "free" care from hospitals in the first place? After all, people can't force businesses to give them "free" food or clothing. The reason is that the "Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1985 [EMTALA]... requires that hospitals that accept Medicare patients diagnose and treat anyone who comes within two hundred feet of an emergency room, regardless of whether the person can pay for the treatment" (see the article by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh, MD, at TheObjectiveStandard.com). We should repeal that unjust law and return to a system of voluntary charity.

I decided to post Yaakov's comment with my reply. Here is the comment:

January 23, 2008 12:39:49 AM MST

Granting for a moment that all of your information is accurate, an issue remains.

If the law is changed, it will become legal for a doctor to watch somebody die in front of him and not spend any effort or money to save the dying person.

Would you go to a doctor who had let a child bleed to death because the child had no insurance? How would you feel if it was your next door neighbor's kid and your brother was the doctor? Would you want to be that doctor?

This is a country that spent $10 billion on pet medical care. We fly sick kids in from third world countries to do $500,000 operations for free. We will not put up with poor children dying outside hospitals that only admit the rich.

We may go bankrupt, but something significant in our brains is going to have to change before the changes you advocate will be enacted.

My dad and I responded to a similar charge in a follow-up article of February 4. Here I'll reiterate and expand some of those arguments.

Yaakov's basic error is to assume that every desirable outcome must and ought to be forced by political controls backed by men with guns. Thus, by this reasoning, if we want doctors to treat bleeding children, we must force doctors to treat them without compensation.

Yaakov's assumption that good outcomes require political force is clearly false. Indeed, political force interferes with good outcomes. For example, the fact that Soviet economic planners forced people to produce an efficient industrial society did not, in fact, achieve an efficient industrial society. It created mass poverty and starvation.

The fact that various nations impose socialized medicine does not prevent people there from dying from lack of care. Under socialized medicine, it is, in effect, sometimes "legal for a doctor to watch somebody die in front of him and not spend any effort or money to save the dying person." Under socialized medicine, the practice is not only permitted, it is inevitable. For details, see the section, "Attempted Solutions," in the article by Zinser and Hsieh.

But let's examine the central errors of Yaakov's position in more detail. If Yaakov actually believes his claims, then he should also advocate the following policies:

* If someone comes to Yaakov's house and claims to need a bed for the night (or the week, or the month), then Yaakov must be forced to provide the comer with a bed without compensation. If Yaakov refuses, he'll be subjected to severe financial penalties. It should make absolutely no difference whether Yaakov has an extra bed, whether Yaakov has other plans for his beds, whether the comer can afford to rent a bed elsewhere, or whether Yaakov thinks that the comer deserves a free bed.

* If someone comes to Yaakov's house and claims to need food, clothing, or any other essential item, Yaakov should also be forced to provide those things, without limit, and without compensation.

* Let us assume that Yaakov owns a business. If someone comes to Yaakov claiming to need a job in order to be able to afford the basic necessities of life, then Yaakov must be forced to provide the person with a job, regardless of whether Yaakov can afford the salary, and regardless of whether the person is willing and able to perform any useful work.

* If someone approaches Yaakov and claims to need his car for an essential purpose -- such as a trip to the hospital -- then Yaakov must be forced to lend his car to the person, without compensation, regardless of whether the person could get transportation elsewhere.

If doctors should be forced to provide service to any comer, regardless of circumstances, then grocers should also be forced to give out free food to anyone who claims to need it, clothing stores should be forced to give away free clothing, and so on.

Imagine the sort of society in which we would live if Yaakov's policy were consistently imposed. It would be a society in which people competed, not to produce and prosper, but to make themselves as needy as possible. Why get an education, why work, why treat others fairly, if you can just take whatever you want by force?

Recently I quoted a passage from Atlas Shrugged that perfectly sums up the sort of society that Yaakov implicitly advocates:

It didn't take us long to see how it all worked out. Any man who tried to play straight, had to refuse himself everything. He lost his taste for any pleasure... He felt ashamed of every mouthful of food he swallowed, wondering whose weary nights of overtime had paid for it, knowing that his food was not his by right, miserably wishing to be cheated rather than to cheat... [H]e couldn't marry or bring children into the world, when he could plan nothing, promise nothing, count on nothing. But the shiftless and the irresponsible had a field day of it. They bred babies... they got more sickness than any doctor could disprove, they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homes -- what the hell, "the family" was paying for it! They found more ways of getting in "need" than the rest of us could ever imagine -- they developed a special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed. (pages 619-20)

Forcing people to provide assistance to others, whatever the details, is grossly immoral and a violation of individual rights. The ultimate conclusion is Marx's dictum, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," with "need" determined by whoever seizes power.

The alternative is liberty. Each individual has the right to decide how to live his own life and use his own resources. In a system of individual rights, individuals often choose, by their own volition and good will toward others, to help others in need. However, such individuals also tend to make sure that their charitable donations are spent well to help those who deserve it without encouraging dependency.

Yaakov offers the sympathetic case of a child bleeding to death. Of all the people I've met, including Christians, Muslims, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, and so on, not a single one of them (save criminals) would hesitate to take every conceivable step to save a child in such circumstances. I also know a number of doctors, and they deserve far better than Yaakov's unjust insinuation that they will not help those innocently in desperate need unless they are forced to do so. Typically doctors are among the first ones to rush to the scene of an emergency.

Even in our semi-free market, all sorts of charitable organizations exist specifically to help children. For instance, my dad is a Shriner:

Shriners Hospitals for Children relies on the generosity of donors to help us continue our mission of providing specialized pediatric care at no charge, conducting innovative research and providing world-class teaching programs for physicians and other health care professionals.

In a truly free market, I suspect that most hospitals and clinics would offer charitable services. Because marginal costs often are much lower than average costs (due to the high costs of facilities and machinery), many health providers would also offer sliding scales for payment options.

But don't parents bear any responsibility for raising their children? If parents were, in normal circumstances (as opposed to cases of rare, expensive problems), required to pay their health bills, perhaps parents would think twice about having children that they cannot afford to support. Perhaps parents would take better care of their children, reducing the chances of needing a trip to the emergency room. Perhaps in non-emergency situations parents would seek out less-expensive care options, such as regular doctors' offices. Perhaps more parents would purchase health insurance. Perhaps more parents would realize that they have to save money for health expenses, just as they have to save money for the rent and groceries. Perhaps more parents would take out short-term loans to pay off health expenses. Why should doctors (but not any other professional class) be forced to pay for parental irresponsibility?

But let us consider even less sympathetic cases as well. What about the people who could pay for their health care but choose to freeload? To take another example, one cycle proceeds as follows: an impoverished alcoholic, in rough shape because of a lifetime of bad choices and irresponsible behavior, drinks himself into unconsciousness, so somebody calls an ambulance, which takes the drunk to a hospital, which then must spend many thousands of dollars drying the guy out and fixing his self-induced medical ailments. Repeat this process every few weeks. Does Yaakov really believe that hospitals should be forced to treat, without compensation and without limit, chronic alcoholics, drug addicts, and gangsters who live by violence?

If we could attain a free society, that would imply a healthier culture in which such problems would be reduced. However, assuming the persistence of such problems, I do not doubt that a variety of charitable programs would be available even for such hard cases (as they are today). However, if I were running such a program, I would also impose very strict conditions for assistance. Alcoholics and drug addicts would have to clean up their lives, and criminals would have to work and live under controlled conditions. Charity in such cases should focus on rehabilitation and should avoid enabling self-destructive lifestyles.

Not only do existing rules encourage irresponsibility, they also harm the responsible. Not surprisingly, it is the unjust, immoral policy that Yaakov advocates that is responsible for depriving some people of health care. As Zinser and Hsieh point out:

[A]s a result of EMTALA, hospitals are closing emergency rooms. According to the American College of Emergency Physicians, from 1993 to 2003, while the U.S. population grew by 12 percent, emergency room visits grew by 27 percent -- from 90 million to 114 million visits. In that same period, however, 425 emergency rooms closed (14 percent of the ERs that existed in 1993), along with 703 hospitals and nearly 200,000 beds. More close every year.

By mandating that doctors and hospitals treat patients at a financial loss, EMTALA violates the rights of doctors and hospitals to set the terms of their business. Consequently, doctors who are unwilling to lose money or who are tired of treating dishonest patients withdraw from emergency rooms. This leads to more overcrowding, longer waiting times, and, in some cases, the closing of ERs. As the remaining ERs become still more overcrowded and understaffed, the quality of emergency room services necessarily declines, harming honest patients who have genuine emergencies.

As Zinser and Hsieh argue, the problems with modern medicine are caused by the imposition of political force. Today, many immoral political policies impose force, violating the rights of doctors, patients, and insurers. A just system, and a system that offers the best medical care, is one in which the rights of doctors, patients, and other parties are consistently protected.

Sentinel Opposes Storage Bill

The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction published a strongly worded editorial February 5 against the gun storage bill. Tracking a point I made yesterday, the Sentinel points out that existing laws already address the issue of putting children in danger.

The paper goes on to make two points that I did not make (though I've written about in years past). First, the penalties of the bill hardly match the inherent penalties of irresponsible gun handling: "On top of losing your child or seeing him involved in a horrible crime, you could be fined."

Second, the law would only change the behaviors of people who are already safe:

[R]esponsible gun owners already keep their guns secured when minors are around. Equally important, they make sure their children are instructed in gun safety and understand the rules with respect to access to their weapons.

However, the irresponsible gun owners -- those who care little about having loaded guns available and easily accessible even if their are children around -- aren’t likely to change simply because the state creates a new misdemeanor charge and a fine for violating it.

The result of the bill would be to discourage responsible, defensive gun ownership and thereby empower criminals. It's nice to see that the Sentinel, unlike various state legislators, has thought this one through.

Unsafe Storage

They're back. Colorado's Democrats held off for as long as they could, but, as predicted, their animosity toward peaceable gun owners is rising to the surface. (There are some exceptions among Colorado's Democrats.)

Mike Saccone reported the story for the February 5 Daily Sentinel, which assigned the biased headline, "Bill would crack down on careless gun storage." The bill would do no such thing. It would instead intimidate gun owners who store their guns safely, giving criminals the upper hand. A more accurate headline would have stated, "Bill would coddle criminals, punish responsible gun owners." (Of course, the Sentinel could also consider hiring headline writers capable of distinguishing between neutral and slanted language. "Bill would create new gun storage rules" would have been fine.)

Saccone writes, "Senate Bill 49 would make it a misdemeanor offense for an adult to fail to safely and securely store a firearm, which a 16-year-old or 17-year-old child could then use to harm someone or take the gun to school."

But, as I wrote back in 2001, existing laws already cover cases of putting children in mortal danger, without discriminating against one class of citizens (i.e., gun owners). The Democrats, though, wish to punish gun owners in particular and criminalize them for responsible storage of a gun, which in many contexts means storing the gun such that it is available for potential defensive use.

Of course, many of those who support the "storage" bill generally oppose defensive gun ownership, and their strategy is to incrementally outlaw it.

The bills are available at the Colorado legislature's web page.

The new twist for Senate Bill 08-049 is that it emphasizes "teenage suicide." This is a clever political move, because, obviously, nobody likes teenage suicide. But why is that suddenly the issue? The bill states, "A recent and comprehensive study of the effectiveness of laws to prevent minors' access to firearms shows a significant decrease in firearm suicides by minors in states that have adopted these laws..." I have not read the unspecified "recent and comprehensive study." But the uncritical reader might miss the significance of the phrase "firearm suicides." The anti-gun lobby apparently doesn't care whether the total suicide rate stays the same, so long as "firearm suicides" go down. If people switch methods of suicide, that's totally irrelevant, so far as the anti-gun lobby is concerned. Obviously, the proper goal is to responsibly reduce total teenage suicides, which are fundamentally unrelated to gun laws.

Nor does the anti-gun lobby care whether more people are victimized by criminals who have less to fear when they break into somebody's home.

Another problem with the bill is its invocation of the "reasonable person" standard. Unfortunately, prosecutors are not always reasonable; sometimes they prosecute cases to inflate their statistics so that they can run for higher office. Yet the bill requires the posting of notices that demand that "you store[] the firearm in a manner that a reasonable person would believe is inaccessible to a minor." Gee, nothing ambiguous about that!

For once, the Republicans have discovered their back bones:

ColoradoSenateNews.com

Controversial curb on gun owners passes committee on party-line vote

Tuesday, 05 February 2008

Republicans sided with a host of witnesses in a Senate committee hearing Monday challenging a Democrat measure placing new conditions on guns stored at home. The State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee's GOP members said Senate Bill 49 would make it much harder for homeowners to protect themselves and their families against home intrusions and burglaries.

SB 49, sponsored in the Senate by Arvada Democrat Sue Windels, holds homeowners criminally liable--subject to a misdemeanor charge--if minors obtain their firearms and commit suicide or a crime against another. Windels says the measure is meant to cut crime and teen suicides, but Republicans on the committee said the bill would backfire.

"Current law already addresses this issue," Sen. Bill Cadman, a Colorado Springs Republican on the committee, said after the hearing.

"We have a good balance right now between the need to keep kids from misusing guns and the right of homeowners to be able to defend their families," Cadman said. "This bill would upset that balance by giving home intruders the upper hand and tying the hands of homeowners."

Current law already bars people from knowingly or recklessly allowing firearms to fall into the hands of any person under the age of 18.

Cadman said the bill as drafted imposes a one-size-fits-all restriction on homeowners by coercing them into keeping their guns inaccessible. As a result, he said, guns not only would be difficult to use in those circumstances where a homeowner needs quick access for home defense but also could wind up discouraging more citizens from trying to defend themselves at all.

"This bill likely would have a chilling effect on gun ownership," Cadman said.

Cadman added that statistics show that a decline in the ability of homeowners to defend themselves leads to an increase in crimes against those homeowners.

Cadman and fellow Colorado Springs Republican Sen. Dave Schultheis voted against the proposal. It passed 3-2 on a party line vote.

Defenders of the right to self-defense contend SB 49 represents the latest in a series of swipes at gun ownership by law-abiding citizens since ruling Democrats took power in the General Assembly. Last year, Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter signed two bills into law that placed additional restrictions on the right of Coloradans to carry concealed weapon.

SB 49 is now en route to the Senate Appropriations Committee for consideration.

Hollywood Welfare

While politicians are busy making up euphemisms for corporate welfare, journalists are busy covering for them.

Joanne Kelley wrote an article for the January 30 Rocky Mountain News titled, "$10 million bill aims to lure Hollywood to Colorado." Kelley describes a "$10 million cash rebate program" that "would boost the fledgling incentive budget from its current $600,000 a year in an attempt to help the state compete with others that have attracted far more Hollywood film productions after spending heavily on enticements." Not surprisingly, a Republican, Representative Tom Massey, co-sponsored the bill. Because Republicans love welfare, even if it's for Hollywood.

Kelley continues, "Producers with motion picture budgets of at least $250,000 would be able to collect a cash rebate of up to 15 percent of the money they spend while shooting a movie in Colorado."

Let's stop right there. This is not a "rebate." It is a forced wealth transfer, a subsidy. It is corporate welfare. The top definition of "rebate" from Dictionary.com, based on Random House, is "a return of part of the original payment for some service or merchandise; partial refund." For example, if you buy a computer from a store, and then the computer's manufacturer sends you a check for a fraction of the original payment, that's a rebate.

That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about Colorado politicians forcibly taking money from some people in Colorado in order to give the money to other people who probably aren't even from Colorado. They're probably from California. So, basically, the proposal would forcibly transfer wealth from Coloradans to Californians -- and, indirectly, to some other Coloradans. (Does anyone wish to check which Colorado lobbyists support the bill?) To return to the computer example, it would be as though you purchased a computer from Joe, and then Fred forced Judy to pay you some money. Such a practice may accurately be described as a lot of things, but "rebate" is not among them.

The Hollywood welfare scheme is a bad idea for at least three reasons. Before turning to the fundamental moral argument, I'll deal with the two economic points.

Kelley writes:

Proponents of boosting the rebate fund to $10 million point to the recent 12-day shoot of the Paramount Pictures film NowhereLand, starring Eddie Murphy. In that short time, the production spent $3.25 million here, booking rooms at the Brown Palace and hiring 12,000 extras and 65 crew members.

"If we had better incentives, they probably would have shot more of the movie here," said Rep. Cheri Jahn, D- Wheat Ridge, a co-sponsor of the legislation.

As Jayne might say, I'm smelling a lot of "if" coming off of this plan. The fact is, we'll never know whether somebody filmed a movie here specifically to get the welfare transfer, or whether they planned to film the movie here anyway, and then decided to cash in on the Hollywood welfare. However, we can be assured that politicians will point to all of the spending of all of the movies that get a subsidy and pretend that the inflated figure is somehow relevant.

Kelley points out that New Mexico also offers Hollywood welfare. This points to the second problem with the Colorado scheme. If Colorado increases its Hollywood welfare, this will only encourage other regions to increase theirs as well. Long term, this is a great deal for Hollywood but a lousy deal for the suckers paying the subsidies.

However, the moral point is more important. It is wrong to force Coloradans to subsidize movies against their wishes. People have the right to control their own income. Moreover, Hollywood welfare is a violation of free speech. The right of free speech entails the right not to speak and not to financially support the propagation of ideas that one finds offensive. Movies, by their nature, deal with ideas. Inevitably, a subsidy will go to a movie that at least some Coloradans find objectionable. A peripheral implication is that Hollywood welfare forces Coloradans of poor and average financial means to subsidize quite wealthy people, such as Eddie Murphy and Hollywood producers. If we take seriously a recent article from The Denver Post, Colorado's taxes are already regressive. Forcing Colorado's poor to subsidize wealthy Hollywood movie makers (or even wealthy Colorado hotel owners) would add insult to injury.

Hollywood welfare violates the rights of Coloradans and is therefore morally wrong.

Freedom is Compassionate, Force is Not

The following article originally appeared in the February 4, 2008, edition of Grand Junction's Free Press.

Freedom is compassionate, force is not

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

We've been writing a lot about health policy because it is an extremely important issue that has been at the center of the political table for the past couple of years. One side of the debate calls for more political control of medicine in the form of more tax spending, more mandates, and more political interference. The other side, which we join, points out that existing problems in medicine are the result of just such political force, and the solution is liberty in medicine, a free market that consistently protects individual rights to direct one's resources and interact voluntarily.

In our January 21 column, we argued, among other things, that doctors should not be forced to provide service without compensation. This is hardly a radical claim. For instance, most people don't expect grocery stores to offer "free" food to any comer who claims to need it. However, even though nobody forces them to do so, many grocery stores voluntarily contribute to food banks. We have heard of no proposal to force grocery stores to offer "free" food to whoever demands it, without compensation. Nor are we unique in thinking that the use of such force would result in widespread abuses. Certainly nobody seriously proposes the nationalization of grocery stores to "solve" the problem of hunger.

Yet some expect us to believe that, while we count on the free market to provide us with other necessities of life, from food to housing to clothing, in health care the proper approach is socialized medicine.

In his January 24 reply, Michael Pramenko alleges that we are heartless for endorsing a free market in medicine. He offers as examples a man suffering chest pains, an infant born prematurely, and a child with asthma. If these people cannot afford treatment, will they be tossed out in the street? Pramenko is relying upon his readers' sympathy, and the very fact that so many people care about such patients ensures that they will find care in a free market.

A free market means one in which people are free to interact voluntarily. Thus, a free market includes all voluntary charity. For example, as a Shriner, your elder author helps to raise funds for the Shriners Hospitals, which provide care to children at no charge. In a free market, not only would many hospitals and clinics provide services to the poor at no cost or at discounted rates, but many individuals and foundations would provide funds to cover such care.

What is heartless is forcing a doctor to provide care to any person who walks in the door, regardless of the circumstances and without compensation. Such a system invites widespread abuse. Many people who can afford to pay for their care simply skip out on their bills. Some who could afford insurance choose not to buy it; after all, one is guaranteed "free" care by law, at somebody else's expense. Others neglect their health, actively damage their health (as through alcoholism), or ignore lower-cost options because the law grants them "free" yet expensive emergency care.

If Pramenko actually believes that doctors should be forced to offer care, then why stop there? Why not also force grocery stores, clothing stores, and so on, to also provide "free" goods to anyone who claims to need them, without compensation? Why not force private individuals to help others who claim to be in need, without limit? For instance, if somebody knocks on Pramenko's door and claims to need a place to live for a few months, shouldn't Premenko be forced to give the person a home, without compensation, no questions asked? Anybody with any common sense can predict the resulting chaos and injustice of any such policy.

In fact, as Lin Zinser and Dr. Paul Hsieh review in an article available at TheObjectiveStandard.com, the law forcing hospitals to offer "free" care has resulted in many emergency rooms shutting down.

Just as all of us have the right to decide whom to help in our own homes and with our own charitable dollars, just as we have the right to offer our labor in return for money, so doctors have the right to decide whom to serve and on what terms, as accepted voluntarily by the patient. No one has the right to demand "free" service from a doctor, or from a grocer, or from anyone. Doctors who wish to provide care at no cost are free to do so, and doctors who wish to work only in exchange for compensation have that right.

But Pramenko is not content merely to leave in place existing unjust laws that harm our health. He wants to impose more such controls. The result will be higher taxes, more political controls placed on doctors, and more rationing for patients. Politically controlled medicine is heartless.

The alternative to Pramenko's heartless, health-harming, politically-controlled medicine is a compassionate and just free market in medicine.


Linn is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son Ari edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

Stimulus Nonsense

On January 20 I criticized Bush's so-called "stimulus" proposal:

There are two obvious problems with Bush's proposal. First, it includes no commitment to offsetting the welfare transfers and tax rebates with reductions in federal spending. Second, it seems to promise more federal spending to cover the additional welfare transfers. In other words, spending will go up even more, while tax revenues will go down. This will be achieved through the magic of deficit spending, which necessarily takes real wealth out of the private economy by reducing investments, and/or more inflation. And, to address the problem of unemployment, Bush will pay people more not to work.

Finally some professional economists are chiming in.

Walter Williams writes:

There are three ways government can get the money for a stimulus package. It can tax, borrow or inflate the currency by printing money. If government taxes to hand out money, one person is stimulated at the expense of another who pays the tax, who is unstimulated and has less money to spend. If government borrows the money, it's the same story. This time the unstimulated person is the lender who has less money to spend. If government prints money, creditors, and then everyone else, are unstimulated.

John Lott, Jr. writes for Fox News (January 28):

The notion that sending people $300 to $600 checks will increase spending is based on an old Keynesian notion. The reason why this won't work is that the money has to come from someplace. Two options are open: either the government raises taxes or borrows. Everyone understands how taxes merely redistributes the money. But borrowing is no different. Borrowing takes money from those who otherwise would have used it to do everything from investing to buying houses or cars. ...

All the "stimulus package" will do is take wealth from some people and give it to others. It will not increase total expenditures. ...

The Democrats... know that extending unemployment benefits will increase the unemployment rate, thus making it easier for Democrats to use the economy as an election issue.

Dozens of economic research papers indicate that when you extend or increase unemployment benefits, you lengthen unemployment, because recipients wait until their benefits have been exhausted to take their next job. Even the economists who advise the Democrats know this. Larry Katz, the chief economist at the Labor Department during the Clinton administration, co-authored a study that found that workers are almost three times more successful in finding jobs when benefits are just about to run out.

Lott suggests that the right approach is to "cut marginal tax rates on individuals and companies." I quite agree, provided that federal spending is reduced comparably.

However, Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute argued on January 16 that we need more substantive economic reforms to achieve a more prosperous economy:

We don't need the government to 'stimulate' the economy with some new intervention; we need it to liberate us from all its destructive economic intervention that put us in this situation.

We need liberation from environmentalist restrictions on oil drilling and energy production. We need liberation from Sarbanes-Oxley, which treats businessmen as guilty until proven innocent and increases the cost of doing business for every publicly traded corporation. We need liberation from the government's pervasive regulation and semi-socialization of the health-care market, which have artificially driven up the costs of health care. We need liberation from the intervention of the Federal Reserve, which is destroying our savings by inflating the currency. And we need liberation from countless other forms of government spending; if spending does not decrease, then any 'stimulus' tax cuts are simply tax increases for the future.

We should not regard Uncle Sam as an economic Doctor Sam, whom we need to stimulate the heart of the economy with his defibrillator. When the government violates our right to produce and trade freely, it is an economic cancer that needs to be removed from the economy.

Hear, hear.

Poverty and Responsibility

The following article originally appeared in the Rocky Mountain News on January 18:

SPEAKOUT: Loading the dice against responsibility

Columnist Campos' claims about racism riddled with confusions

By Ari Armstrong

Friday, January 18, 2008

The ever-subtle Rocky Mountain News columnist Paul Campos suggests that those who praise "individual responsibility" believe that "poor black people are disproportionately lazy, stupid and immoral." Campos adds that the same people also mock "the notion that the government (meaning you and me) can do anything but make things... even worse" for the chronically poor. (See Campos' Jan. 9 column, "Dice loaded against blacks.")

Campos' claims are riddled with confusions. There is no contradiction between upholding individual responsibility and finding problems with the circumstances in which the chronically poor find themselves. Nobody disputes the historical fact that slavery and racist laws and prejudices severely harmed black Americans.

But is racism the main cause of today's problems? Or, as I believe, have a variety of misguided government programs entrenched chronic poverty?

Myriad economic controls, along with payroll taxes of 15 percent, make it hard for the poor to get ahead. Welfare programs have discouraged work, encouraged broken families, and displaced voluntary charity. Government-run schools and other programs often underserve the poor. This is a real (and complicated) debate, and Campos cannot win it by unfairly insinuating that his opponents are racists.

Campos suggests that one must either blame individuals or blame their circumstances. Often that is a false alternative. In fact, as various black leaders have passionately argued, blacks trapped in poverty often exacerbate their own problems. (The point is true regardless of race.) Somebody who impregnates a teenage girl with no plans to raise the child cannot merely blame racists or the government for such behavior. Gangsters who rob and kill, and hook children on drugs are morally responsible for their acts.

The fact is that some people born into chronic poverty break the cycle, earn a decent education, and rise to the middle class or beyond. They are able to do it through strength of character. At the same time, others born to advantage waste their lives. As people should be blamed for their irresponsible behavior, so they should be praised for their achievements. Individual responsibility works both ways.

Campos claims that "the government" consists merely of "you and me," so why be skeptical of its potential for social planning? This is an odd claim, for Campos implies through his broader comments that some people are politically powerless. In fact, politics is plagued by interest groups and political payoffs. Are welfare programs somehow immune from such problems?

Campos' broader error is to ignore the particular nature of government. It makes a difference whether "you and I" rely on persuasion and voluntary interaction, or whether we bring to bear the force of government. I believe that it is precisely because political programs rely upon the forcible redistribution of wealth and the forcible restraint of voluntary interaction that such programs tend to miss their lofty aims.

That is not to say that government plays no legitimate role.

Government can be effective when it sticks to protecting people's rights - that is, preventing crime and protecting people and their property from violence. Higher crime is a major reason why the chronically poor have trouble getting ahead, and government dramatically improves the lot of the poor by protecting people's rights.

Campos fundamentally misrepresents the arguments of those who champion individual responsibility. Partly because of that, he also fails to make his own case. And for that I blame Paul Campos, not his background or circumstances. Individual responsibility applies to everyone.

Ari Armstrong edits FreeColorado.com and blogs at AriArmstrong.com. He is a resident of Westminster.