Political Videos from The Onion

There are some funny US Politics videos these days at The Onion, including:

• Latest Poll Reveals 430 New Demographics That Will Decide Election
• Bush Tours America to Survey Damage Caused by His Disastrous Presidency
• 'No Values Voters' Looking to Support Most Evil Candidate
• Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results of 2008 Election Early
• McCain Vows to Replace Secret Service with His own Bare Fists
• Portrayal of Obama as Elitist Hailed as Step Forward for African Americans
• Poll: Bullshit is Most Important Issue for 2008 Voters
• How To Pretend You Give a Shit About the Election
• As Obese Population Rises, More Candidates Courting the Fat Vote

FIRE ad in US News and World Report

I was pleased to learn today of an ad that FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is running in the 2008 edition of U.S. News and World Report's America's Best Colleges issue. Here is the ad. And here is the FIRE press release about it. Good for them! I'll be interested to learn what if any response there is to this ad, from the five "red alert" schools (Brandeis, Colorado College, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and Valdosta State) or otherwise.

Priest to hold Beauty Pageant for Nuns

I read this story in my local newspaper today. The headline sounds like a joke news story that would normally run The Onion. But apparently this is a real story. There are many versions of this news item today... see the short BBC article: Priest to hold nun beauty pageant.

On Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

A month ago Paul Gigot wrote a great opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal: "The Fannie Mae Gang". If your only somewhat familiar with the history of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, then I encourage you to read this article. I really liked the ending of the article, and I've bolded a key paragraph:

Fan and Fred also couldn't prosper for as long as they have without the support of the political left, both in Congress and the intellectual class. This includes Mr. Frank and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Capitol Hill, as well as Mr. Krugman and the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein in the press. Their claim is that the companies are essential for homeownership.

Yet as studies have shown, about half of the implicit taxpayer subsidy for Fan and Fred is pocketed by shareholders and management. According to the Federal Reserve, the half that goes to homeowners adds up to a mere seven basis points on mortgages. In return for this, Fannie was able to pay no fewer than 21 of its executives more than $1 million in 2002, and in 2003 Mr. Raines pocketed more than $20 million. Fannie's left-wing defenders are underwriters of crony capitalism, not affordable housing.

So here we are this week, with the House and Senate preparing to commit taxpayer money to save Fannie and Freddie. The implicit taxpayer guarantee that Messrs. Gray and Raines and so many others said didn't exist has become explicit. Taxpayers may end up having to inject capital into the companies, in addition to guaranteeing their debt.

The abiding lesson here is what happens when you combine private profit with government power. You create political monsters that are protected both by journalists on the left and pseudo-capitalists on Wall Street, by liberal Democrats and country-club Republicans. Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Campaigning to spare taxpayers from that result would represent genuine "change," not that either presidential candidate seems interested.

Ugh. Clearly these "institutions" need to end up being privatized somehow (if you need to first nationalize them, I'd be open to at least considering that, as long as the end goal was privatizing). Indeed, Fannie and Freddie should never have been created in the first place. The government should not be in the housing loan business, risky ones or otherwise. Why? The proper role of government is the protection of individual rights. There is no individual right to own a home, pure and simple. So the government shouldn't be involved, not directly and not through half-government proxies like Freddie and Fannie.

Social Security's Promises are a Fraud

Alex Epstein wrote a great post at the blog Principles in Practice titled Retire Social Security. He makes a strong case for the immorality of the Social Security system, something almost never argued in the mainstream media (or almost anywhere outside of Objectivist circles really.)

But I especially liked his debunking of the promises of the Social Security system as a fraud:

Social Security is commonly portrayed as benefiting most, if not all, Americans by providing them "risk-free" financial security in old age.

This is a fraud.

Under Social Security, lower- and middle-class individuals are forced to pay a significant portion of their gross income—approximately 12 percent—for the alleged purpose of securing their retirement. That money is not saved or invested, but transferred directly to the program's current beneficiaries—with the "promise" that when current taxpayers get old, the income of future taxpayers will be transferred to them. Since this scheme creates no wealth, any benefits one person receives in excess of his payments necessarily come at the expense of others.

Under Social Security, every aspect of the government's "promise" to provide financial security is at the mercy of political whim. The government can change how much of an individual's money it takes—it has increased the payroll tax 17 times since 1935. The government can spend his money on anything it wants—observe the long-time practice of spending any annual Social Security surplus on other entitlement programs. The government can change when (and therefore if) it chooses to pay him benefits and how much they consist of—witness the current proposals to raise the age cutoff or lower future benefits. Under Social Security, whether an individual gets twice as much from others as was taken from him, or half as much, or nothing at all, is entirely at the discretion of politicians. He cannot count on Social Security for anything—except a massive drain on his income.

On Parental Rights and Homeschooling in California

Thomas Bowden at the blog Principles in Practice posted "California Children Still Considered State Property" in response to a recent legal decision on homeschooling and parental rights in California. He argues that the court decision didn't go nearly far enough to truly establish parental rights of child education. A good article, he concludes by rightly asking the bigger questions:

But what if parents stopped groveling and started asking whether the state has any right at all to be running schools, dictating educational standards for children, and “permitting” parents to homeschool their own kids? This would call into question the moral foundation of public education as such.

But I especially liked the following paragraph, which draws a great analogy:

Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a child’s parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to fulfill their parental obligations, on pain of losing legal custody. But the fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit government to seize control of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed cafeterias.

That is a great analogy. I especially like "outlaw home-cooked meals", which is a direct reductio ad absurdem of any attempt to outlaw homeschooling.

Spaghetti Cat

This clip from an episode of The Soup is pretty funny. If this did in fact really happen on that morning show -- what a strange thing!

On Miracles and the Amputee Question, Again

I read this story in today's newspaper: "Hawaii teacher's cure clears way for a new saint". This is yet another standard "If you pray to the name of the right dead person, then a supernatural event -- a miracle -- will occur and your wish will be granted. No lamp with a genie inside required." In this case, a woman in Hawaii was given really bad news about her cancer, and so she prayed to "Father Damien". Contrary to the dire prognosis, she has now gotten better, and she attributes this to a miracle. Doctors and Scientists rightly refer to such things as unexplained events since there is no good evidence or theory to explain what happened (I don't think the name given in the article, "complete spontaneous regression of cancer", actually explains anything from a scientific/causal standpoint).

Each time I hear a story of this kind, I think back to the "Question of Amputees". I blogged on this about a year ago: Why Don't Miracles Ever Grow New Limbs? The idea is, why do so-called miracles so often involve really complicated medical situations, that are internal to the body, where there are complex statistics going into the prognosis/survival chances? Its almost always diseases, such as cancer, that get "cured" from the miracle. Have you ever heard of someone getting a new arm from a miracle? No. And people don't even pray for such things, at least I assume they don't. Why is that? These are meant to be rhetorical questions of course, a sort of reductio ad absurdem of claims of miracles.

By the way, the last line of the AP article read "Audrey Toguchi [the cancer survivor] still prays often to Damien, asking him to help others."

Prediction: If she prays for specific people to get healed from diseases (or for anything else really), and the desired change doesn't occur -- the press won't cover it. And I doubt she'll even mention the failures to many people. I suspect that so-called "Saints" and other supposed miracle-workers actually have an extremely low "batting average", so to speak. But how often do you see headlines like these in the news:

• Prospective Saint fails again, is now 2 for 10,497 in answering miracle requests
• Accident left victim an amputee, prayers haven't produced a new leg after 50 years
• Saint apparently indifferent to the desperate pleas of entire village
• Image of Mary on rock seems to have stopped working, as no prayers answered in past decade

Or consider this other common annoyance: athletes who pray before a game and/or thank their favorite deity for help in their victory. Again, a rhetorical question: Why don't you ever read these kinds of headlines?

• Team prays before the game, but still loses 46-7
• Player doesn't thank god after loss, noting prayer was not answered
• Player blames the Almighty after a crushing defeat
• Both teams pray before game, supernatural forces clearly favored East Jersey squad

On Chinese Censorship and the Continuing Popularity of Mao

Here is an interesting post from someone visiting China: Shadow of Mao: There's no memory of democracy's brief bloom in China. And then here is another one, on a similar subject.

Granted, the average person on the street in the US isn't particularly knowledgeable of politics and world events -- Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" routines have demonstrated that time and again.

But you would think that people in China -- people standing in Tiananmen Square, mind you -- would know of the student protests and use of tanks by the government there in 1989. But apparently not. Just how powerful is the censorship machine in China? Surely it doesn't rival that of the completely closed off North Korea. But this article is enlightening, not only for the street interviews but also for the report on Google successes and failures: searches for democracy, free Tibet, and so on bring back zero results, while "Mao is great" bring back plenty.

And on the subject of Mao, how long will it be before the Chinese decide that he wasn't so great, that instead he was responsible for the murder of tens of millions of Chinese people? When will they stop gleefully getting their photos taken with Mao posters, stop selling Mao-merchanidize, and start understanding the true history of their country during the 20th century? Apparently it will take a while, given the many levels of censorship in place.

On Chinglish

The July issue of Wired had an interesting short article "Anyone Here Speak Chinglish?". Michael Erard describes how English is evolving into a global lingua franca, and how the living language is changing as a result. He notes that with current trends "By 2020, native English speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language."

This raises many interesting questions, including what will the language sound and look like in 20 or 30 years. And what will be considered "good" or "acceptable" English usage in schools. Read his article for many examples of such changes likely because of the numbers of people who will be speaking "Chinglish" -- English as spoken by native Chinese people.

IJ Takes on Stupid Texas Computer Repair Law

The Institute for Justice is taking on a ridiculous law in Texas that is requiring that computer repair businesses obtain a private investigator's license to analyze their customers' data. I learned of this from the latest issue of "Liberty and Law", a newsletter I receive from IJ because I am a donor:

According to the government, the law covers any type of data analysis that looks
into the "conduct of persons" or the "causes of events". This definition encompasses everything from parents seeking to know whom their child has been chatting with online to a technician informing a business owner that her computer was infected by a virus when an employee visited prohibited websites.

I sincerely hope that IJ will be victorious in their lawsuit in this matter -- one of many in which they provide a defense of liberty and a righteous response to outrageous government regulations.

Yet Another Failure in the War on Marijuana

The horror stories continue unabated in the federal governments war against marijuana. See this story: Police Raid Maryland Mayor's Home and Kill His Dogs. How sad this story is, and how completely unnecessary. Notice this doesn't happen with regulated drug markets such as alcohol and nicotine. See Radley Balko's commentary on this story too.

And this is not an just isolated, never-happened-before-and-will-never-happen-again incident. Such commando-tactics are used all the time in the government's failed "war on drugs". See Cato's map of "Botched Paramilitary Police Raids: An Epidemic of Isolated Incidents".

Funny Videos on Stop Signs, Web Design, and Fonts

Here are some videos I've enjoyed recently:

• What if a major corporation designed a stop sign? (if you've worked in a creative role for a corporation, you'll like this one)
• The Web Design Rap (if you know HTML/web design, you'll like this)
• Font Conference (what if fonts gathered for a conference?)

Krauthammer on Pelosi on Drilling

Charles Krauthammer's Washington Post column this past week was pretty good: "Pelosi: Save the Planet, Let Someone Else Drill". He does a great job stating the unintended consequences of Pelosi's resistance to allowing for off-shore drilling and drilling in a very, very small amount of the ANWR. Here is snippet, but I encourage you to read his entire column:

Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic?

The net environmental effect of Pelosi's no-drilling willfulness is negative. Outsourcing U.S. oil production does nothing to lessen worldwide environmental despoliation. It simply exports it to more corrupt, less efficient, more unstable parts of the world -- thereby increasing net planetary damage.