You just can't truest any of the statistics put forth by the anti-gun crowd.
Here is an example from Matt Vespa at townhall.com.
If you want facts, go to John Lott's Crime Prevention Research Center.
----------------------------------------
So, any time there’s a mass shooting, the anti-gun Left jumps for glee: another opportunity to fundraise, attack Republicans, and make the case yet again for why we need “common sense gun control,” which really means gun bans and the repeal of the Second Amendment. They tout misinformation, push narratives with shoddy data, and partake in our favorite game: not knowing what the current gun laws are and pervasively screw up on gun lexicon. Part of it is just plain ignorance, and part of it is also refusing to accept facts that undercut the narrative. The school shootings data point is pushed hard-core among anti-gunners. It’s total trash.
First, school shootings are still rare. Our schools have never been safer. It’s not the Wild West. EvenThe Washington Post called out Everytown for saying there were 18 shootings thus far back in Februaryafter the tragic Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting:
It is a horrifying statistic. And it is wrong.
Everytown has long inflated its total by including incidents of gunfire that are not really school shootings. Take, for example, what it counted as the year’s first: On the afternoon of Jan. 3, a 31-year-old man who had parked outside a Michigan elementary school called police to say he was armed and suicidal. Several hours later, he killed himself. The school, however, had been closed for seven months. There were no teachers. There were no students.
Also listed on the organization’s site is an incident from Jan. 20, when at 1 a.m. a man was shot at a sorority event on the campus of Wake Forest University. A week later, as a basketball game was being played at a Michigan high school, someone fired several rounds from a gun in the parking lot. No one was injured, and it was past 8 p.m., well after classes had ended for the day, but Everytown still labeled it a school shooting.
Now, National Public Radio dug into the 2015-2016 Department of Educations numbers on school shootings. The department said that 240 school shooting occurring during that period. The funny thing is that NPR found that two-thirds of them never happened. Oh, and there were other issues as well.
This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting." The number is far higher than most other estimates.
But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government's Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn't confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn't meet the government's parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn't respond to our inquiries.
[…]
Most of the school leaders NPR reached had little idea of how shootings got recorded for their schools.
For example, the CRDC reports 26 shootings within the Ventura Unified School District in Southern California.
"I think someone pushed the wrong button," said Jeff Davis, an assistant superintendent there. The outgoing superintendent, Joe Richards, "has been here for almost 30 years and he doesn't remember any shooting," Davis added. "We are in this weird vortex of what's on this screen and what reality is."
So, for all of you who think that government should be more involved in gun violence research, which will be biased and will be politicized and used to chip away at constitutional rights, here’s your answer. When government sharpens the data collection, maybe we can have a discussion, but even then I’m dead setagainst liberal academia being given taxpayer dollars to fund anti-gun studies. You know that’s how the data will be used. For now, asking basic about school shootings by the government is a mess [emphasis mine]:
In the 2015-2016 school year, "Has there been at least one incident at your school that involved a shooting (regardless of whether anyone was hurt)?"
The answer — "nearly 240 schools (0.2 percent of all schools)" — was published this spring.
The government's definition included any discharge of a weapon at school-sponsored events or on school buses. Even so, that would be a rate of shootings, and a level of violence, much higher than anyone else had ever found.
[…]
A separate investigation by the ACLU of Southern California also was able to confirm fewer than a dozen of the incidentsin the government's report, while 59 percent were confirmed errors.
So, if the Left wanted to use the DOE as a talking point to push their odious anti-gun agenda, think again. At the same time, please do—we can make fun of you later.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
The Second Amendment Allows You to Defend Yourself
Erich Pratt in townhall.com.
-----------------------------------------------
Fifty-five years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in our nation’s capital.
People who visited Dr. King’s home described it as an arsenal. One journalist came to his house and later reported that while sitting down in an armchair, he almost landed right on a handgun.
Not only that, after Dr. King’s home was bombed, he applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama in 1956. But he was denied.
All of this just underscores the dangers of gun control. It turns our rights into privileges, allowing prejudiced officials to revoke the rights of decent people at will.
We see this in the Black Codes which either prevented or discouraged the ability of African-Americans to protect themselves with firearms.
This, of course, made them easy prey for the lynch mobs.
One African-American journalist, Ida Wells, documented many of the lynchings that took place in the 19th Century.
But she also noted that the only time blacks actually escaped the lynch mobs was when they “had a gun and used it in self-defense.”
This is why the Second Amendment is so important. It not only safeguards our right to defend ourselves against thugs, it protects that right when the thugs are wearing badges.
The best-known example of this in American history is the colonists’ spirited defense against the British attempt to confiscate weapons and powder at Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775.
But this was not the last time that armed civilians would use their weapons to protect themselves against corrupt officials.
In 1906, a white mob worked itself up into a frenzy and started a race riot in Georgia. Over a thousand men walked through the streets of Atlanta, indiscriminately beating black men and women, black teenagers, and black businessmen.
The scene was gruesome. The best estimates record that dozens of blacks were murdered. Hundreds were wounded.
The rioters spilled from one area of Atlanta into another, until they reached one neighborhood, known as “Darktown,” where African-Americans were armed and shot back. That’s where the riot was stopped in its tracks.
Armed blacks forced the mob to retreat and they prevented a second bloodbath.
All this happened on a Saturday night. The riots were paused because of the armed response, but then they resumed again on Monday.
Only this time, to make matters worse, state law enforcement officers went into south Atlanta and tried to disarm the blacks.
One of the preeminent historians who has covered the 1906 riots, John Dittmer, had this to say about what happened next:
[The lead officer] James Heard, was shot out of his saddle and died instantly. Three other officers ... were wounded in the initial exchange before the outgunned troops fled, leaving Heard’s body behind. (John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era (1900-1920), p. 128).
Once again, the riot was abruptly stopped.
In his 1963 speech, Dr. King spoke of the Declaration of Independence as the great promissory note which guaranteed the unalienable rights of ALL people.
This right of self-protection is the freedom which protects all our other rights against official abuse. We’ve seen this in practice time and again.
Former Secretary of State to George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, tells the story of how her dad would take his shotgun -- and with other armed African Americans in the neighborhood -- would form nightly patrols to protect the town’s people from the KKK.
This was common during the difficult days of the civil rights movement. African Americans would use their firearms to protect themselves against the KKK when the Southern Democrat police departments were looking the other way.
So therein lies the rub -- government agents don’t always act in the best interests of its citizens.
And that’s why there is a Second Amendment -- a guarantee which protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms without infringement.
-----------------------------------------------
Fifty-five years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in our nation’s capital.
People who visited Dr. King’s home described it as an arsenal. One journalist came to his house and later reported that while sitting down in an armchair, he almost landed right on a handgun.
Not only that, after Dr. King’s home was bombed, he applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama in 1956. But he was denied.
All of this just underscores the dangers of gun control. It turns our rights into privileges, allowing prejudiced officials to revoke the rights of decent people at will.
We see this in the Black Codes which either prevented or discouraged the ability of African-Americans to protect themselves with firearms.
This, of course, made them easy prey for the lynch mobs.
One African-American journalist, Ida Wells, documented many of the lynchings that took place in the 19th Century.
But she also noted that the only time blacks actually escaped the lynch mobs was when they “had a gun and used it in self-defense.”
This is why the Second Amendment is so important. It not only safeguards our right to defend ourselves against thugs, it protects that right when the thugs are wearing badges.
The best-known example of this in American history is the colonists’ spirited defense against the British attempt to confiscate weapons and powder at Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775.
But this was not the last time that armed civilians would use their weapons to protect themselves against corrupt officials.
In 1906, a white mob worked itself up into a frenzy and started a race riot in Georgia. Over a thousand men walked through the streets of Atlanta, indiscriminately beating black men and women, black teenagers, and black businessmen.
The scene was gruesome. The best estimates record that dozens of blacks were murdered. Hundreds were wounded.
The rioters spilled from one area of Atlanta into another, until they reached one neighborhood, known as “Darktown,” where African-Americans were armed and shot back. That’s where the riot was stopped in its tracks.
Armed blacks forced the mob to retreat and they prevented a second bloodbath.
All this happened on a Saturday night. The riots were paused because of the armed response, but then they resumed again on Monday.
Only this time, to make matters worse, state law enforcement officers went into south Atlanta and tried to disarm the blacks.
One of the preeminent historians who has covered the 1906 riots, John Dittmer, had this to say about what happened next:
[The lead officer] James Heard, was shot out of his saddle and died instantly. Three other officers ... were wounded in the initial exchange before the outgunned troops fled, leaving Heard’s body behind. (John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era (1900-1920), p. 128).
Once again, the riot was abruptly stopped.
In his 1963 speech, Dr. King spoke of the Declaration of Independence as the great promissory note which guaranteed the unalienable rights of ALL people.
This right of self-protection is the freedom which protects all our other rights against official abuse. We’ve seen this in practice time and again.
Former Secretary of State to George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, tells the story of how her dad would take his shotgun -- and with other armed African Americans in the neighborhood -- would form nightly patrols to protect the town’s people from the KKK.
This was common during the difficult days of the civil rights movement. African Americans would use their firearms to protect themselves against the KKK when the Southern Democrat police departments were looking the other way.
So therein lies the rub -- government agents don’t always act in the best interests of its citizens.
And that’s why there is a Second Amendment -- a guarantee which protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms without infringement.
Are Police Officers Disproportionately Killing Black Men?
From John Lott at townhall.com
JL is the preeminent researcher in this field (despite the lies his critics spread about him).
Check the link to see the statistics.
-------------------------------------------
Democrats have a new hero in Beto O’Rourke, who is campaigning against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Hatred for Cruz is enough to get Democrats excited by the prospect of unseating him, but O’Rourke has also won them over on Wednesday by campaigning against police brutality toward blacks.
O’Rourke asserts that law enforcement members are killing unarmed, black children at a “frightening level” and aren’t being held accountable. He expresses approval for “peaceful, non-violent protests, including taking a knee at a football game.”
When Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the National Anthem a couple of years ago, he wanted to protest police “getting away with murder” of black people. Over the weekend, whole NFL football teams protested police racism against blacks. Protests during the National Anthem have spread to the NBA and major league baseball. In St. Louis last week, after a white officer was acquitted for shooting a black man, protestors chanted “hey ho, hey ho, these racist cops have got to go.” President Trump has called out these protestors, but the perception of many is that racism explains why white officers shoot blacks.
The media has helped create a biased perception. In a recent study, the Crime Prevention Research Center finds that when a white officer kills a suspect, the media usually mentions the race of the officer. This is rarely true when the officer is black.
Polls of blacks paint a bleak picture of relations between blacks and the police, but there is other evidence based on behavior that, overall, blacks trust police at least as much as whites do.
A recent Quinnipiac survey of New York City found that blacks were 11 percentage points more likely to approve of the police in their neighborhood than of the NYPD as a whole. The police that blacks know best, they like.
If blacks really believe that police are racist, one may think that black victims would be less likely to report crimes committed against them. After all, they may doubt the commitment of the officers to solving the crimes. They may think that officers will engage in profiling and arrest an innocent black suspect.
In fact, blacks don’t shy away from reporting crimes to the police. Our report, comparing Department of Justice survey data to crimes reported to the police, shows that from 2008 to 2012 blacks were actually more likely than whites to report violent crimes committed against them to the police — 9 percentage points more likely than whites (54 percent to 45 percent).
That higher rate of reporting applies to all income groups and to both urban and suburban areas. And it's not just that blacks report more crime because they experience more of it. This higher rate of reporting even holds true in areas where whites face higher violent crime rates than blacks do.
This trust appears to be well-placed. White police officers aren’t killing defenseless blacks just because they can.
We found 2,699 police shootings from 2013-2015. We couldn’t rely on FBI data, which consists of cases voluntarily provided by police departments. The FBI lists only 1,366 suspect deaths over the same 3-year period. Our more comprehensive list comes from use of Lexis/Nexis, Freedom of Information Act requests, internet news searches, and several online databases.
The FBI database not only misses half of these cases, it also misses important information that is necessary to understanding why the officers resorted to deadly force, such as whether the suspect was armed or killed while in the act of committing a crime. The FBI disproportionately includes cases from heavily minority areas, giving a misleading picture of the frequency at which blacks are shot.
Our estimates also account for violent crime rates, demographics of the city and police department, characteristics of the suspect and officer, the rate at which police in the state are killed, the educational requirements of the department, and many other factors.
The black officers that we identified were more likely to kill black suspects than were their white colleagues, but the differences were not always statistically significant, meaning that we can’t be sure they were real. At the very least, there's no evidence of white officers disproportionately shooting blacks.
Fortunately, there are steps that we can take to try to reduce the killings. When more police are present at the scene, suspects face reduced odds of being killed. The difference is about 14 to 18 percent for each additional officer. Officers may feel more vulnerable if they are alone at the scene, making them more likely to resort to deadly force. By the same token, suspects are more likely to be emboldened and resist arrest when fewer officers are present.
Police unionization may have had the largest effect, apparently making suspects at least 65% more likely to be killed. This needs more studying, but it could be due to the fact that unions shield their officers from scrutiny or other factors such as laws that delay prosecutors questioning officers. This may make officers more willing to shoot when their own safety feels at all jeopardized.
Many support requiring that officers wear body cameras. We surveyed 900 police departments, 162 of which reported their officers used body cameras. But police acted the same regardless of whether they are wearing the cameras. The Obama administration argued that fear of being recorded would give many officers pause before misbehaving, but that only matters if the officers are misbehaving.
O’Rourke is contributing to a dangerous fiction that prejudiced white officers are going out and disproportionately killing black men. But that doesn’t mean that measures can’t be taken to reduce police shootings. The most obvious step would be to increase the number of officers, in the hopes that more will be present at the scenes of these incidents.
JL is the preeminent researcher in this field (despite the lies his critics spread about him).
Check the link to see the statistics.
-------------------------------------------
Democrats have a new hero in Beto O’Rourke, who is campaigning against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Hatred for Cruz is enough to get Democrats excited by the prospect of unseating him, but O’Rourke has also won them over on Wednesday by campaigning against police brutality toward blacks.
O’Rourke asserts that law enforcement members are killing unarmed, black children at a “frightening level” and aren’t being held accountable. He expresses approval for “peaceful, non-violent protests, including taking a knee at a football game.”
When Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the National Anthem a couple of years ago, he wanted to protest police “getting away with murder” of black people. Over the weekend, whole NFL football teams protested police racism against blacks. Protests during the National Anthem have spread to the NBA and major league baseball. In St. Louis last week, after a white officer was acquitted for shooting a black man, protestors chanted “hey ho, hey ho, these racist cops have got to go.” President Trump has called out these protestors, but the perception of many is that racism explains why white officers shoot blacks.
The media has helped create a biased perception. In a recent study, the Crime Prevention Research Center finds that when a white officer kills a suspect, the media usually mentions the race of the officer. This is rarely true when the officer is black.
Polls of blacks paint a bleak picture of relations between blacks and the police, but there is other evidence based on behavior that, overall, blacks trust police at least as much as whites do.
A recent Quinnipiac survey of New York City found that blacks were 11 percentage points more likely to approve of the police in their neighborhood than of the NYPD as a whole. The police that blacks know best, they like.
If blacks really believe that police are racist, one may think that black victims would be less likely to report crimes committed against them. After all, they may doubt the commitment of the officers to solving the crimes. They may think that officers will engage in profiling and arrest an innocent black suspect.
In fact, blacks don’t shy away from reporting crimes to the police. Our report, comparing Department of Justice survey data to crimes reported to the police, shows that from 2008 to 2012 blacks were actually more likely than whites to report violent crimes committed against them to the police — 9 percentage points more likely than whites (54 percent to 45 percent).
That higher rate of reporting applies to all income groups and to both urban and suburban areas. And it's not just that blacks report more crime because they experience more of it. This higher rate of reporting even holds true in areas where whites face higher violent crime rates than blacks do.
This trust appears to be well-placed. White police officers aren’t killing defenseless blacks just because they can.
We found 2,699 police shootings from 2013-2015. We couldn’t rely on FBI data, which consists of cases voluntarily provided by police departments. The FBI lists only 1,366 suspect deaths over the same 3-year period. Our more comprehensive list comes from use of Lexis/Nexis, Freedom of Information Act requests, internet news searches, and several online databases.
The FBI database not only misses half of these cases, it also misses important information that is necessary to understanding why the officers resorted to deadly force, such as whether the suspect was armed or killed while in the act of committing a crime. The FBI disproportionately includes cases from heavily minority areas, giving a misleading picture of the frequency at which blacks are shot.
Our estimates also account for violent crime rates, demographics of the city and police department, characteristics of the suspect and officer, the rate at which police in the state are killed, the educational requirements of the department, and many other factors.
The black officers that we identified were more likely to kill black suspects than were their white colleagues, but the differences were not always statistically significant, meaning that we can’t be sure they were real. At the very least, there's no evidence of white officers disproportionately shooting blacks.
Fortunately, there are steps that we can take to try to reduce the killings. When more police are present at the scene, suspects face reduced odds of being killed. The difference is about 14 to 18 percent for each additional officer. Officers may feel more vulnerable if they are alone at the scene, making them more likely to resort to deadly force. By the same token, suspects are more likely to be emboldened and resist arrest when fewer officers are present.
Police unionization may have had the largest effect, apparently making suspects at least 65% more likely to be killed. This needs more studying, but it could be due to the fact that unions shield their officers from scrutiny or other factors such as laws that delay prosecutors questioning officers. This may make officers more willing to shoot when their own safety feels at all jeopardized.
Many support requiring that officers wear body cameras. We surveyed 900 police departments, 162 of which reported their officers used body cameras. But police acted the same regardless of whether they are wearing the cameras. The Obama administration argued that fear of being recorded would give many officers pause before misbehaving, but that only matters if the officers are misbehaving.
O’Rourke is contributing to a dangerous fiction that prejudiced white officers are going out and disproportionately killing black men. But that doesn’t mean that measures can’t be taken to reduce police shootings. The most obvious step would be to increase the number of officers, in the hopes that more will be present at the scenes of these incidents.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Another mass murder in a gun free zone
When I heard about the mass murder at Jacksonville Landing and heard the sequence of shots on TV, which was unusually slow, I wondered why nobody shot the shooter - after all, Florida allows concealed carry and a material proportion of Floridians have a concealed carry license.
You guessed it. Jacksonville Landing is a gun free zone.
Here is a section of Jacksonville Landing's rules of contact.
E.b: Possession of a weapon, even if legally carried (except by law enforcement officers) is absolutely prohibited on Landing property.
You guessed it. Jacksonville Landing is a gun free zone.
Here is a section of Jacksonville Landing's rules of contact.
E.b: Possession of a weapon, even if legally carried (except by law enforcement officers) is absolutely prohibited on Landing property.
Saturday, August 25, 2018
The New Socialists Are Dangerous
Here is a link to a publication of the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission and the Young Democratic Socialists of America.
We have already seen the influence of left-wing academics on our youth. This publication advocates action that will make things far worse.
Those who believe that Socialism or Democratic Socialism works are deluded. That does not imply that these believers are not dangerous. The last thing these believers will do is protect our freedom. Rather, if they gain power, they will force you to live as they think you should.
New York State Can’t Be Allowed to Stifle the NRA’s Political Speech
It is the likes of Governor Andrew Cuomo who are the threat to our freedom.
Here is an article by David Cole, ACLU's Legal Director.
-----------------------------------------
It’s no secret that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is no fan of the National Rifle Association. A mailer his campaign sent to New York voters this week proclaims, in bold letters: “If the NRA goes bankrupt, I will remember them in my thoughts and prayers.”
There’s nothing wrong with the governor singling out a political adversary for criticism, or even mockery. That’s just politics, and the NRA itself is no stranger to hardball tactics.
But in a lawsuit the NRA filed against Cuomo this spring, the organization contends that he did more than criticize it. The NRA alleges that Cuomo and top members of his administration abused their regulatory authority over financial institutions to threaten New York banks and insurers that associate with the NRA or other “gun promotion” groups, and that those threats have jeopardized the NRA’s access to basic insurance and banking services in New York.
In the ACLU’s view, targeting a nonprofit advocacy group and seeking to deny it financial services because it promotes a lawful activity (the use of guns) violates the First Amendment. Because we believe the governor’s actions, as alleged, threaten the First Amendment rights of all advocacy organizations, the ACLU on Friday filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the NRA’s right to have its day in court.
The state has asked the court to dismiss the case without even permitting discovery into the administration’s actions. Our brief supports the NRA’s right to discovery on its First Amendment claims. To be clear, the ACLU does not oppose reasonable restrictions on guns (you can read more about that here). Our position in this case has nothing to do with our opinions on the NRA’s policies — it’s about the First Amendment rights of all organizations to engage in political advocacy without fear that the state will use its regulatory authority to penalize them for doing so.
Political advocacy organizations like the NRA (or the ACLU or Planned Parenthood) need basic business services, like insurance and banking, to operate. The NRA says that the state, using its regulatory powers over those industries, is threatening financial companies that do business with the NRA.
The NRA points to both public and non-public actions taken by the Cuomo administration to penalize it for its views. State officials issued press releases and sent threatening letters to banks and insurance companies, and also allegedly communicated “backchannel threats” to companies with ties to the NRA, warning that they would face regulatory action if they failed to end their relationships with the organization.
If the NRA’s charges are true, the state’s actions would clearly violate the First Amendment. Public officials are, of course, free to criticize groups with which they disagree. But they cannot use their regulatory authority to penalize advocacy groups by threatening companies that do business with those groups. And here the state has admitted, in its own words, that it focused on the NRA and other groups not because of any illegal conduct, but because they engage in “gun promotion” — in other words, because they advocate a lawful activity.
Substitute Planned Parenthood or the Communist Party for the NRA, and the point is clear. If Cuomo can do this to the NRA, then conservative governors could have their financial regulators threaten banks and financial institutions that do business with any other group whose political views the governor opposes. The First Amendment bars state officials from using their regulatory power to penalize groups merely because they promote disapproved ideas.
In April 2018, the New York State Department of Financial Services sent “guidance letters” to banks and insurance companies. It wrote, “The Department encourages its insurers to continue evaluating and managing their risks, including reputational risks, that may arise from their dealings with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations… The Department encourages regulated institutions to review any relationships they have with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations, and to take prompt actions to managing these risks and promote public health and safety.”
Two weeks later, the department announced consent decrees with two insurers, imposing millions of dollars in fines and barring them from selling consumer insurance products that are endorsed by the NRA. Days later, the NRA says that its corporate insurance carrier severed ties and said it would not provide the NRA with insurance at any price.
The NRA says that it has since had serious difficulty replacing its corporate insurance because nearly every potential replacement was afraid of being investigated by the state. The NRA also says that numerous banks have withdrawn bids to provide basic financial services because the April letters from the state indicated that any association with the NRA could expose them to regulatory retaliation.
The state argues that even if all of the NRA’s claims are true, the First Amendment doesn’t apply. We disagree, and as we note in our brief, dismissing the NRA case:
would set a dangerous precedent for advocacy groups across the political spectrum. Public officials would have a readymade playbook for abusing their regulatory power to harm disfavored advocacy groups without triggering judicial scrutiny.
There are acceptable measures that the state can take to curb gun violence. But using its extensive financial regulatory authority to penalize advocacy groups because they “promote” guns isn’t one of them.
Here is an article by David Cole, ACLU's Legal Director.
-----------------------------------------
It’s no secret that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is no fan of the National Rifle Association. A mailer his campaign sent to New York voters this week proclaims, in bold letters: “If the NRA goes bankrupt, I will remember them in my thoughts and prayers.”
There’s nothing wrong with the governor singling out a political adversary for criticism, or even mockery. That’s just politics, and the NRA itself is no stranger to hardball tactics.
But in a lawsuit the NRA filed against Cuomo this spring, the organization contends that he did more than criticize it. The NRA alleges that Cuomo and top members of his administration abused their regulatory authority over financial institutions to threaten New York banks and insurers that associate with the NRA or other “gun promotion” groups, and that those threats have jeopardized the NRA’s access to basic insurance and banking services in New York.
In the ACLU’s view, targeting a nonprofit advocacy group and seeking to deny it financial services because it promotes a lawful activity (the use of guns) violates the First Amendment. Because we believe the governor’s actions, as alleged, threaten the First Amendment rights of all advocacy organizations, the ACLU on Friday filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the NRA’s right to have its day in court.
The state has asked the court to dismiss the case without even permitting discovery into the administration’s actions. Our brief supports the NRA’s right to discovery on its First Amendment claims. To be clear, the ACLU does not oppose reasonable restrictions on guns (you can read more about that here). Our position in this case has nothing to do with our opinions on the NRA’s policies — it’s about the First Amendment rights of all organizations to engage in political advocacy without fear that the state will use its regulatory authority to penalize them for doing so.
Political advocacy organizations like the NRA (or the ACLU or Planned Parenthood) need basic business services, like insurance and banking, to operate. The NRA says that the state, using its regulatory powers over those industries, is threatening financial companies that do business with the NRA.
The NRA points to both public and non-public actions taken by the Cuomo administration to penalize it for its views. State officials issued press releases and sent threatening letters to banks and insurance companies, and also allegedly communicated “backchannel threats” to companies with ties to the NRA, warning that they would face regulatory action if they failed to end their relationships with the organization.
If the NRA’s charges are true, the state’s actions would clearly violate the First Amendment. Public officials are, of course, free to criticize groups with which they disagree. But they cannot use their regulatory authority to penalize advocacy groups by threatening companies that do business with those groups. And here the state has admitted, in its own words, that it focused on the NRA and other groups not because of any illegal conduct, but because they engage in “gun promotion” — in other words, because they advocate a lawful activity.
Substitute Planned Parenthood or the Communist Party for the NRA, and the point is clear. If Cuomo can do this to the NRA, then conservative governors could have their financial regulators threaten banks and financial institutions that do business with any other group whose political views the governor opposes. The First Amendment bars state officials from using their regulatory power to penalize groups merely because they promote disapproved ideas.
In April 2018, the New York State Department of Financial Services sent “guidance letters” to banks and insurance companies. It wrote, “The Department encourages its insurers to continue evaluating and managing their risks, including reputational risks, that may arise from their dealings with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations… The Department encourages regulated institutions to review any relationships they have with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations, and to take prompt actions to managing these risks and promote public health and safety.”
Two weeks later, the department announced consent decrees with two insurers, imposing millions of dollars in fines and barring them from selling consumer insurance products that are endorsed by the NRA. Days later, the NRA says that its corporate insurance carrier severed ties and said it would not provide the NRA with insurance at any price.
The NRA says that it has since had serious difficulty replacing its corporate insurance because nearly every potential replacement was afraid of being investigated by the state. The NRA also says that numerous banks have withdrawn bids to provide basic financial services because the April letters from the state indicated that any association with the NRA could expose them to regulatory retaliation.
The state argues that even if all of the NRA’s claims are true, the First Amendment doesn’t apply. We disagree, and as we note in our brief, dismissing the NRA case:
would set a dangerous precedent for advocacy groups across the political spectrum. Public officials would have a readymade playbook for abusing their regulatory power to harm disfavored advocacy groups without triggering judicial scrutiny.
There are acceptable measures that the state can take to curb gun violence. But using its extensive financial regulatory authority to penalize advocacy groups because they “promote” guns isn’t one of them.
Friday, August 24, 2018
Further LDL Lowering in Patients With Very Low LDL Reduces Vascular Events
From www.praticeupdate.com.
-------------------------------------------------------
Reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) concentrations is one of the cornerstones of the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. In general, most estimates suggest that for every ~1 mmol/L (or 39 mg/dL) reduction in LDL-C, the relative risk of cardiovascular events is reduced by about 20%. This risk reduction is largely linear across a broad range of starting LDL-C concentrations, but the data are derived from trials of statins, and few individuals start statin trials with LDL-C less than 2 mmol/L (77 mg/dL). The advent of non-statin drugs, such as ezetimibe and the PCSK9 inhibitors, means that LDL-C concentrations far lower than the 70 mg/dL typically cited in clinical guidelines can be achieved. Here, the authors report that in this group of patients who start with low LDL-C, further reduction in LDL-C continued to offer a reduction in the relative risk for major vascular events. For statins, that risk reduction was 22% per 1 mmol/L (39 mg/dL) reduction in LDL-C, and for ezetimibe, evolocumab, and anacetrapib that reduction was 21% for the same reduction in LDL-C. While the authors saw no increase in serious adverse events, and no increase in hemorrhagic stroke or diabetes, they did not report the effects on cataracts, which have been seen at higher rates among those with very low LDL-C. The data included in the meta-analysis are from randomized trials that are, by their nature, of relatively short duration, and thus may miss adverse effects that take time to develop. Nonetheless, the data are encouraging and add to the body of evidence that lowering LDL-C concentrations to very low levels offers continued cardiovascular risk and is associated with few adverse effects.
-------------------------------------------------------
Reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) concentrations is one of the cornerstones of the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. In general, most estimates suggest that for every ~1 mmol/L (or 39 mg/dL) reduction in LDL-C, the relative risk of cardiovascular events is reduced by about 20%. This risk reduction is largely linear across a broad range of starting LDL-C concentrations, but the data are derived from trials of statins, and few individuals start statin trials with LDL-C less than 2 mmol/L (77 mg/dL). The advent of non-statin drugs, such as ezetimibe and the PCSK9 inhibitors, means that LDL-C concentrations far lower than the 70 mg/dL typically cited in clinical guidelines can be achieved. Here, the authors report that in this group of patients who start with low LDL-C, further reduction in LDL-C continued to offer a reduction in the relative risk for major vascular events. For statins, that risk reduction was 22% per 1 mmol/L (39 mg/dL) reduction in LDL-C, and for ezetimibe, evolocumab, and anacetrapib that reduction was 21% for the same reduction in LDL-C. While the authors saw no increase in serious adverse events, and no increase in hemorrhagic stroke or diabetes, they did not report the effects on cataracts, which have been seen at higher rates among those with very low LDL-C. The data included in the meta-analysis are from randomized trials that are, by their nature, of relatively short duration, and thus may miss adverse effects that take time to develop. Nonetheless, the data are encouraging and add to the body of evidence that lowering LDL-C concentrations to very low levels offers continued cardiovascular risk and is associated with few adverse effects.
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Nine-Year-Old Competitive Shooter
From Townhall.com.
Here is the link to "Meet the Nine-Year-Old Competitive Shooter Taking the World by Storm.
A predator wouldn't stand a chance against this young lady - if she was allowed to carry a concealed firearm. Nor would a school shooter if she was there with a firearm.
Here is the link to "Meet the Nine-Year-Old Competitive Shooter Taking the World by Storm.
A predator wouldn't stand a chance against this young lady - if she was allowed to carry a concealed firearm. Nor would a school shooter if she was there with a firearm.
Friday, August 17, 2018
Insight into Judge Kavanaugh
Here is a link to a video where Judge Kavanaugh's clerks discuss the kind of person he is.
Very well done - watch it.
Very well done - watch it.
Possible link between Tamsulosin (Flormax) and dementia
From www.practiceupdate.com.
This study is not a randomized trial prospective trial, hence the results may be misleading.
Roughly, tamsulosin was found to confer about a 17% higher probability of developing dementia than no medication and v.s. other drugs for treating BPH. However, the incidence rate over 19.8 months in the sample was 3.13% for tamsulosin and 2.59% for no medication. The difference is only 0.54%. Thus, it might be said, humorously, that the study shows that tamulosin association with dementia is significantly insignificant.
To put this in perspective, From age 65 to age 85, the risk of dementia with tamsulosin is about 31.7%, assuming a constant risk rate of 3.13% per 20 months and is about 27.0% for no medication - perhaps not enough difference to worry about.
Statistically significant hazard ratios are not the whole story to life.
------------------------------------------------
PURPOSE
Clinicians use tamsulosin, an α1-adrenoceptor antagonist, to manage symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Because α1-adrenoceptors are also present in the brain, the potential exists for adverse effects on cognitive functions. We explored the association between tamsulosin use and dementia risk.
METHODS
We used Medicare data (2006-2012) to conduct a cohort study among patients aged ≥65 years and diagnosed with BPH. Men taking tamsulosin (n = 253 136) were matched at a 1:1 ratio using propensity-scores to each of 6 comparison cohorts: patients who used no BPH-medication (n = 180 926), and patients who used the following alternative-BPH-medications: doxazosin (n = 28 581), terazosin (n = 23 858), alfuzosin (n = 17 934), dutasteride (n = 34 027), and finasteride (n = 38 767). Assessment began following the first fill of BPH-medication to identify incident dementia by ICD-9 diagnosis codes. We estimated hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for dementia using Cox proportional hazard regression for each of the 6 propensity-score-matched cohort-pairs.
RESULTS
The median follow-up period for all cohorts was 19.8 months. After propensity-score matching, the tamsulosin cohort had an incidence of dementia of 31.3/1000 person-years compared with only 25.9/1000 person-years in the no-BPH-medication cohort. The risk of dementia was significantly higher in the tamsulosin cohort, when compared with the no-BPH-medication cohort (HR [95% CI]: 1.17 [1.14, 1.21]) and each of the alternative-BPH-medication cohorts: doxazosin (1.20 [1.12, 1.28]), terazosin (1.11 [1.04, 1.19]), alfuzosin (1.12 [1.03, 1.22]), dutasteride (1.26 [1.19, 1.34]), and finasteride (1.13 [1.07, 1.19]). The significance of these findings persisted in sensitivity analyses.
CONCLUSION
Tamsulosin may increase the risk of dementia in older men with BPH.
This study is not a randomized trial prospective trial, hence the results may be misleading.
Roughly, tamsulosin was found to confer about a 17% higher probability of developing dementia than no medication and v.s. other drugs for treating BPH. However, the incidence rate over 19.8 months in the sample was 3.13% for tamsulosin and 2.59% for no medication. The difference is only 0.54%. Thus, it might be said, humorously, that the study shows that tamulosin association with dementia is significantly insignificant.
To put this in perspective, From age 65 to age 85, the risk of dementia with tamsulosin is about 31.7%, assuming a constant risk rate of 3.13% per 20 months and is about 27.0% for no medication - perhaps not enough difference to worry about.
Statistically significant hazard ratios are not the whole story to life.
------------------------------------------------
PURPOSE
Clinicians use tamsulosin, an α1-adrenoceptor antagonist, to manage symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Because α1-adrenoceptors are also present in the brain, the potential exists for adverse effects on cognitive functions. We explored the association between tamsulosin use and dementia risk.
METHODS
We used Medicare data (2006-2012) to conduct a cohort study among patients aged ≥65 years and diagnosed with BPH. Men taking tamsulosin (n = 253 136) were matched at a 1:1 ratio using propensity-scores to each of 6 comparison cohorts: patients who used no BPH-medication (n = 180 926), and patients who used the following alternative-BPH-medications: doxazosin (n = 28 581), terazosin (n = 23 858), alfuzosin (n = 17 934), dutasteride (n = 34 027), and finasteride (n = 38 767). Assessment began following the first fill of BPH-medication to identify incident dementia by ICD-9 diagnosis codes. We estimated hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for dementia using Cox proportional hazard regression for each of the 6 propensity-score-matched cohort-pairs.
RESULTS
The median follow-up period for all cohorts was 19.8 months. After propensity-score matching, the tamsulosin cohort had an incidence of dementia of 31.3/1000 person-years compared with only 25.9/1000 person-years in the no-BPH-medication cohort. The risk of dementia was significantly higher in the tamsulosin cohort, when compared with the no-BPH-medication cohort (HR [95% CI]: 1.17 [1.14, 1.21]) and each of the alternative-BPH-medication cohorts: doxazosin (1.20 [1.12, 1.28]), terazosin (1.11 [1.04, 1.19]), alfuzosin (1.12 [1.03, 1.22]), dutasteride (1.26 [1.19, 1.34]), and finasteride (1.13 [1.07, 1.19]). The significance of these findings persisted in sensitivity analyses.
CONCLUSION
Tamsulosin may increase the risk of dementia in older men with BPH.
Thursday, August 16, 2018
How Government reduces your standard of living and your freedom
George Will in the Washington Post.
Too many people have the quaint idea that Government licensing and regulation is designed to protect the public.
--------------------------------------------
Governments, seemingly eager to supply their critics with ammunition, constantly validate historian Robert Conquest: The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. Consider North Carolina’s intervention in the medical-devices market.
Born in India, Gajendra Singh is an American citizen and a surgeon in Winston-Salem who wants to supply something useful for which there is a strong demand. North Carolina’s government is, however, an almost insuperable impediment to his doing so.
Singh runs a medical diagnostic imaging center where patients can get X-rays, echocardiograms, ultrasounds and CT (computed tomography) scans. It cannot, however, be a full-service center without an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine, and local hospitals offering MRIs are averse to competition.
Americans with high-deductible insurance plans, which are increasingly prevalent, especially need low-cost diagnostic services. The median Winston-Salem household income is about $40,000. The average MRI at a North Carolina hospital costs $2,000. Singh charges $500 to $700 for the MRIs he does using rental machines that the state’s harassing law requires to be moved once a week. Singh wants to buy an MRI machine. North Carolina, however, has a “certificate of need” (CON) law, requiring Singh to prove to the Soviet-style central planners in the state government that Singh’s area needs another machine.
Such state and local CON laws proliferated in the 1970s as the federal government began pouring money into health care and government-funded hospitals tried to protect their revenue streams. Just for the privilege of submitting an application to buy an MRI Singh would have to pay a nonrefundable $5,000 fee and be prepared to spend $400,000 (lawyers, consultants, economists) to surmount the opposition of determined competitors. The only two providers of fixed (not mobile rental) MRIs in Singh’s county are two multibillion-dollar hospitals.
Fortunately, Singh has the support of Institute for Justice litigators, who are wielding on his behalf four provisions of North Carolina’s constitution: First, “Perpetuities and monopolies are contrary to the genius of a free state and shall not be allowed.” Second, “No person . . . is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges.” Third, “No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws.” Fourth, Singh has a due-process right to participate in the health-care market without arbitrary, irrational impediments.
There are states where aspiring entrepreneurs must pay (application fees, lawyers) just to try to surmount the opposition of established businesses in order to get a CON entitling them to open a car dealership, operate a moving company, run a food truck or enter other areas of enterprise. And the audacity of economic interests clamoring for government protection from domestic competition seems to be increasing as the Trump administration, with tariffs and import quotas, practices crony capitalism to protect favored industries and companies from foreign competition.
For example, this month a federal court, following the example of other courts that have swatted aside cases from Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Georgia, unanimously rejected this preposterous argument from Miami-Dade County, Fla., taxi owners: The U.S Constitution says private property shall not be taken for “public use” without just compensation, so the taxi owners should be compensated because the government has permitted ride-hailing services (e.g., Uber and Lyft) that have substantially reduced the value of the owners’ taxi medallions. Governments sell medallions and keep them scarce to keep prices high for the benefit of the government and past buyers.
Displaying heroic patience in the presence of meretriciousness, the court explained that the government had not given the medallion owners an entitlement to protection from competition. As a federal judge said in a similar case, “A license to operate a coffee shop doesn’t authorize the licensee to enjoin a tea shop from opening.”
There are three important lessons from North Carolina’s CON mischief. First, domestic protectionism that burdens consumers for the benefit of entrenched economic interests (e.g., occupational licensing that restricts entry to professions for no reason related to public health and safety) is even more prevalent and costly than are tariffs and import quotas that interfere with international trade. Second, the sprawling, intrusive, interventionist administrative state — a.k.a. modern government — that recognizes no limits to its competence or jurisdiction is inevitably a defender of the entrenched and hence a mechanism for transferring wealth upward. Third, only courts can arrest the marauding of the political class when, with unseemly motives, it pretends to know more than markets do about society’s needs.
Too many people have the quaint idea that Government licensing and regulation is designed to protect the public.
--------------------------------------------
Governments, seemingly eager to supply their critics with ammunition, constantly validate historian Robert Conquest: The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. Consider North Carolina’s intervention in the medical-devices market.
Born in India, Gajendra Singh is an American citizen and a surgeon in Winston-Salem who wants to supply something useful for which there is a strong demand. North Carolina’s government is, however, an almost insuperable impediment to his doing so.
Singh runs a medical diagnostic imaging center where patients can get X-rays, echocardiograms, ultrasounds and CT (computed tomography) scans. It cannot, however, be a full-service center without an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine, and local hospitals offering MRIs are averse to competition.
Americans with high-deductible insurance plans, which are increasingly prevalent, especially need low-cost diagnostic services. The median Winston-Salem household income is about $40,000. The average MRI at a North Carolina hospital costs $2,000. Singh charges $500 to $700 for the MRIs he does using rental machines that the state’s harassing law requires to be moved once a week. Singh wants to buy an MRI machine. North Carolina, however, has a “certificate of need” (CON) law, requiring Singh to prove to the Soviet-style central planners in the state government that Singh’s area needs another machine.
Such state and local CON laws proliferated in the 1970s as the federal government began pouring money into health care and government-funded hospitals tried to protect their revenue streams. Just for the privilege of submitting an application to buy an MRI Singh would have to pay a nonrefundable $5,000 fee and be prepared to spend $400,000 (lawyers, consultants, economists) to surmount the opposition of determined competitors. The only two providers of fixed (not mobile rental) MRIs in Singh’s county are two multibillion-dollar hospitals.
Fortunately, Singh has the support of Institute for Justice litigators, who are wielding on his behalf four provisions of North Carolina’s constitution: First, “Perpetuities and monopolies are contrary to the genius of a free state and shall not be allowed.” Second, “No person . . . is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges.” Third, “No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws.” Fourth, Singh has a due-process right to participate in the health-care market without arbitrary, irrational impediments.
There are states where aspiring entrepreneurs must pay (application fees, lawyers) just to try to surmount the opposition of established businesses in order to get a CON entitling them to open a car dealership, operate a moving company, run a food truck or enter other areas of enterprise. And the audacity of economic interests clamoring for government protection from domestic competition seems to be increasing as the Trump administration, with tariffs and import quotas, practices crony capitalism to protect favored industries and companies from foreign competition.
For example, this month a federal court, following the example of other courts that have swatted aside cases from Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Georgia, unanimously rejected this preposterous argument from Miami-Dade County, Fla., taxi owners: The U.S Constitution says private property shall not be taken for “public use” without just compensation, so the taxi owners should be compensated because the government has permitted ride-hailing services (e.g., Uber and Lyft) that have substantially reduced the value of the owners’ taxi medallions. Governments sell medallions and keep them scarce to keep prices high for the benefit of the government and past buyers.
Displaying heroic patience in the presence of meretriciousness, the court explained that the government had not given the medallion owners an entitlement to protection from competition. As a federal judge said in a similar case, “A license to operate a coffee shop doesn’t authorize the licensee to enjoin a tea shop from opening.”
There are three important lessons from North Carolina’s CON mischief. First, domestic protectionism that burdens consumers for the benefit of entrenched economic interests (e.g., occupational licensing that restricts entry to professions for no reason related to public health and safety) is even more prevalent and costly than are tariffs and import quotas that interfere with international trade. Second, the sprawling, intrusive, interventionist administrative state — a.k.a. modern government — that recognizes no limits to its competence or jurisdiction is inevitably a defender of the entrenched and hence a mechanism for transferring wealth upward. Third, only courts can arrest the marauding of the political class when, with unseemly motives, it pretends to know more than markets do about society’s needs.
Monday, August 13, 2018
If you want peace, prepare for war
George Will in the Washington Post.
GW is on target. His article is a welcome respite from his over-eager Trump bashing.
----------------------------------------------------
Scholars have already debated for decades, and will debate for centuries, the role U.S. policies — military, diplomatic, economic — played in bringing the Cold War to endgame and the Soviet Union to extinction. One milestone was Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative proposal, a technological challenge that could not be met by a Soviet economy already buckling under the combined weight of military spending and socialism’s ignorance. But before SDI, there was Ocean Venture ’81, approved by Reagan as president-elect.
The protracted strategy, of which this enormous operation — 15 nations’ navies, 250 ships, more than 1,000 aircraft — was a harbinger, came to be referred to by some Soviets as the “Lehman strategy.” In “Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea,” John Lehman, a Navy aviator who was secretary of the Navy during Reagan’s first six years, explains the Navy’s role in the “forward strategy” that implemented Reagan’s Cold War policy. Reagan explained the policy when asked about it in 1977: “We win and they lose, what do you think of that?”
Among Reagan’s early actions — in addition to reinstating the MX missile and B-1 bomber programs that President Jimmy Carter had suspended — was to increase by 11 percent Carter’s fiscal 1981 Navy budget, and increase by 15 percent the fiscal 1982 request. By 1980, there was rough nuclear parity, and the Soviets, with 280 divisions, had superiority of land forces. Reagan campaigned on building the U.S. Navy to 600 ships and using it for purposes beyond merely keeping sea lanes open to deliver supplies for land forces.
Those purposes included signaling U.S. confidence and ambition — what Lehman calls a “combat-credible forward naval presence” — to ratchet up psychological pressure on Soviet leaders. So, in the autumn of Reagan’s first year, Ocean Venture ’81 surged U.S. naval power into what the Soviet Union had considered its maritime domain, especially the Norwegian and Barents seas. (And eventually under the Arctic ice pack, where the Soviets had hoped to hide nuclear ballistic-missile missile submarines.) By dispersing Ocean Venture ’81 ships when Soviet satellites were overhead, the arrival of a large flotilla in northern waters was an unnerving surprise for Moscow.
This “transformative” operation, Lehman writes, “came as a thunderclap to the Soviets, who had never seen such a NATO exercise on their northern doorstep.” “In preceding years,” he says, “during the hopeful pursuit of detente and arms control by Presidents Ford and Carter, such robust NATO activity would have been unthinkable, as provocative to the Soviets.” Provocation was a risk worth running, but a real risk:
“The Soviets were particularly fearful of being attacked under cover of a forward U.S. exercise. Why? Because their own doctrine was to use military exercises to mask surprise invasions,” as they did with Poland in 1981. Soviet doctrine’s “central concept was a high-speed offensive launched [against NATO] under the cover of military exercises in East Germany and Czechoslovakia.”
Lehman says that in 1986, with Mikhail Gorbachev inching crabwise toward acknowledging the Soviet Union’s terminal sclerosis, “the most delicate period of the Reagan naval strategy began.” Reagan would continue to deploy and demonstrate the multiplying U.S. military proficiencies, but would avoid a triumphalism that might provoke an anti-Gorbachev coup by the humiliated Soviet military.
By the end of 1986, with the Soviets having learned they could not interfere with U.S. aircraft carriers operating in Norwegian fjords, the Soviet general staff told Gorbachev they could not defend the nation’s northern sector without tripling spending on naval and air forces there. Thus did the Cold War end because Reagan rejected the stale orthodoxy that the East-West military balance was solely about conventional land forces in central Europe, so NATO’s sea-power advantage was of secondary importance.
Today’s naval problems posed by a rising China, particularly in the South China Sea, are unlike the problem of hastening the Soviet decline. Today’s U.S. ships are more capable than ever, but too few for comfort, as Lehman’s reader will realize when they consider what only the Navy can do.
In the 1992 film “A Few Good Men,” a furious Col. Nathan R. Jessep (Jack Nicholson) exclaimed to his courtroom tormentors — Navy officers — words that are actually true regarding almost all civilians in this age of complex professional military establishments configured for myriad and rapidly evolving threats: “You have no idea how to defend a nation.” Lehman’s book is a rare window into that world, and a validation of the axiom that if you want peace, prepare for war.
GW is on target. His article is a welcome respite from his over-eager Trump bashing.
----------------------------------------------------
Scholars have already debated for decades, and will debate for centuries, the role U.S. policies — military, diplomatic, economic — played in bringing the Cold War to endgame and the Soviet Union to extinction. One milestone was Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative proposal, a technological challenge that could not be met by a Soviet economy already buckling under the combined weight of military spending and socialism’s ignorance. But before SDI, there was Ocean Venture ’81, approved by Reagan as president-elect.
The protracted strategy, of which this enormous operation — 15 nations’ navies, 250 ships, more than 1,000 aircraft — was a harbinger, came to be referred to by some Soviets as the “Lehman strategy.” In “Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea,” John Lehman, a Navy aviator who was secretary of the Navy during Reagan’s first six years, explains the Navy’s role in the “forward strategy” that implemented Reagan’s Cold War policy. Reagan explained the policy when asked about it in 1977: “We win and they lose, what do you think of that?”
Among Reagan’s early actions — in addition to reinstating the MX missile and B-1 bomber programs that President Jimmy Carter had suspended — was to increase by 11 percent Carter’s fiscal 1981 Navy budget, and increase by 15 percent the fiscal 1982 request. By 1980, there was rough nuclear parity, and the Soviets, with 280 divisions, had superiority of land forces. Reagan campaigned on building the U.S. Navy to 600 ships and using it for purposes beyond merely keeping sea lanes open to deliver supplies for land forces.
Those purposes included signaling U.S. confidence and ambition — what Lehman calls a “combat-credible forward naval presence” — to ratchet up psychological pressure on Soviet leaders. So, in the autumn of Reagan’s first year, Ocean Venture ’81 surged U.S. naval power into what the Soviet Union had considered its maritime domain, especially the Norwegian and Barents seas. (And eventually under the Arctic ice pack, where the Soviets had hoped to hide nuclear ballistic-missile missile submarines.) By dispersing Ocean Venture ’81 ships when Soviet satellites were overhead, the arrival of a large flotilla in northern waters was an unnerving surprise for Moscow.
This “transformative” operation, Lehman writes, “came as a thunderclap to the Soviets, who had never seen such a NATO exercise on their northern doorstep.” “In preceding years,” he says, “during the hopeful pursuit of detente and arms control by Presidents Ford and Carter, such robust NATO activity would have been unthinkable, as provocative to the Soviets.” Provocation was a risk worth running, but a real risk:
“The Soviets were particularly fearful of being attacked under cover of a forward U.S. exercise. Why? Because their own doctrine was to use military exercises to mask surprise invasions,” as they did with Poland in 1981. Soviet doctrine’s “central concept was a high-speed offensive launched [against NATO] under the cover of military exercises in East Germany and Czechoslovakia.”
Lehman says that in 1986, with Mikhail Gorbachev inching crabwise toward acknowledging the Soviet Union’s terminal sclerosis, “the most delicate period of the Reagan naval strategy began.” Reagan would continue to deploy and demonstrate the multiplying U.S. military proficiencies, but would avoid a triumphalism that might provoke an anti-Gorbachev coup by the humiliated Soviet military.
By the end of 1986, with the Soviets having learned they could not interfere with U.S. aircraft carriers operating in Norwegian fjords, the Soviet general staff told Gorbachev they could not defend the nation’s northern sector without tripling spending on naval and air forces there. Thus did the Cold War end because Reagan rejected the stale orthodoxy that the East-West military balance was solely about conventional land forces in central Europe, so NATO’s sea-power advantage was of secondary importance.
Today’s naval problems posed by a rising China, particularly in the South China Sea, are unlike the problem of hastening the Soviet decline. Today’s U.S. ships are more capable than ever, but too few for comfort, as Lehman’s reader will realize when they consider what only the Navy can do.
In the 1992 film “A Few Good Men,” a furious Col. Nathan R. Jessep (Jack Nicholson) exclaimed to his courtroom tormentors — Navy officers — words that are actually true regarding almost all civilians in this age of complex professional military establishments configured for myriad and rapidly evolving threats: “You have no idea how to defend a nation.” Lehman’s book is a rare window into that world, and a validation of the axiom that if you want peace, prepare for war.
An Ounce of Chocolate a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
From www.practiceupdate.com
----------------------------------------------
OBJECTIVE
Studies investigating the impact of chocolate consumption on cardiovascular disease (CVD) have reached inconsistent conclusions. As such, a quantitative assessment of the dose-response association between chocolate consumption and incident CVD has not been reported. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies assessing the risk of CVD with chocolate consumption.
METHODS
PubMed and EMBASE databases were searched for articles published up to 6 June 2018. Restricted cubic splines were used to model the dose-response association.
RESULTS
Fourteen publications (23 studies including 405 304 participants and 35 093 cases of CVD) were included in the meta-analysis. The summary of relative risk (RR) per 20 g/week increase in chocolate consumption was 0.982 (95% CI 0.972 to 0.992, I2=50.4%, n=18) for CVD (heart failure: 0.995 (0.981 to 1.010, I2=36.3%, n=5); total stroke: 0.956 (0.932 to 0.980, I2=25.5%, n=7); cerebral infarction: 0.952 (0.917 to 0.988, I2=0.0%, n=4); haemorrhagic stroke: 0.931 (0.871 to 0.994, I2=0.0%, n=4); myocardial infarction: 0.981 (0.964 to 0.997, I2=0.0%, n=3); coronary heart disease: 0.986 (0.973 to 0.999, n=1)). A non-linear dose-response (pnon-linearity=0.001) indicated that the most appropriate dose of chocolate consumption for reducing risk of CVD was 45 g/week (RR 0.890;95%CI 0.849 to 0.932).
CONCLUSIONS
Chocolate consumption may be associated with reduced risk of CVD at <100 g/week consumption. Higher levels may negate the health benefits and induce adverse effects associated with high sugar consumption.
----------------------------------------------
OBJECTIVE
Studies investigating the impact of chocolate consumption on cardiovascular disease (CVD) have reached inconsistent conclusions. As such, a quantitative assessment of the dose-response association between chocolate consumption and incident CVD has not been reported. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies assessing the risk of CVD with chocolate consumption.
METHODS
PubMed and EMBASE databases were searched for articles published up to 6 June 2018. Restricted cubic splines were used to model the dose-response association.
RESULTS
Fourteen publications (23 studies including 405 304 participants and 35 093 cases of CVD) were included in the meta-analysis. The summary of relative risk (RR) per 20 g/week increase in chocolate consumption was 0.982 (95% CI 0.972 to 0.992, I2=50.4%, n=18) for CVD (heart failure: 0.995 (0.981 to 1.010, I2=36.3%, n=5); total stroke: 0.956 (0.932 to 0.980, I2=25.5%, n=7); cerebral infarction: 0.952 (0.917 to 0.988, I2=0.0%, n=4); haemorrhagic stroke: 0.931 (0.871 to 0.994, I2=0.0%, n=4); myocardial infarction: 0.981 (0.964 to 0.997, I2=0.0%, n=3); coronary heart disease: 0.986 (0.973 to 0.999, n=1)). A non-linear dose-response (pnon-linearity=0.001) indicated that the most appropriate dose of chocolate consumption for reducing risk of CVD was 45 g/week (RR 0.890;95%CI 0.849 to 0.932).
CONCLUSIONS
Chocolate consumption may be associated with reduced risk of CVD at <100 g/week consumption. Higher levels may negate the health benefits and induce adverse effects associated with high sugar consumption.
Thursday, August 09, 2018
Wednesday, August 08, 2018
Population bomb?
From Science Daily.
------------------------------------------------
Key aspects of the ageing of human cells can be reversed by new compounds developed at the University of Exeter, research shows.
In a laboratory study of endothelial cells -- which line the inside of blood vessels -- researchers tested compounds designed to target mitochondria (the "power stations" of cells).
In the samples used in the study, the number of senescent cells (older cells that have deteriorated and stopped dividing) was reduced by up to 50%. The Exeter team also identified two splicing factors (a component of cells) that play a key role in when and how endothelial cells become senescent.
The findings raise the possibility of future treatments not only for blood vessels -- which become stiffer as they age, raising the risk of problems including heart attacks and strokes -- but also for other cells.
"As human bodies age, they accumulate old (senescent) cells that do not function as well as younger cells," said Professor Lorna Harries, of the University of Exeter Medical School.
"This is not just an effect of ageing -- it's a reason why we age.
"The compounds developed at Exeter have the potential to tweak the mechanisms by which this ageing of cells happens.
"We used to think age-related diseases like cancer, dementia and diabetes each had a unique cause, but they actually track back to one or two common mechanisms.
"This research focuses on one of these mechanisms, and the findings with our compounds have potentially opened up the way for new therapeutic approaches in the future.
"This may well be the basis for a new generation of anti-degenerative drugs."
Professor Harries said the goal was to help people stay healthier for longer. She added: "This is about health span and quality of life, rather than merely extending lifespan."
In a paper published last year, the team demonstrated a new way to rejuvenate old cells in the laboratory.
However, the new research looked at precisely targeting and rejuvenating mitochondria in old cells.
Each one of our genes is capable of making more than one product, and splicing factors are the genes that make the decision about which of these products are made.
In this new work, using novel chemicals, the researchers were able to very specifically target two splicing factors (SRSF2 or HNRNPD) that play a key role in determining how and why our cells change with advancing age.
"Nearly half of the aged cells we tested showed signs of rejuvenating into young cell models," said Professor Harries.
The researchers tested three different compounds, all developed at the University of Exeter, and found each produced a 40-50% drop in the number of senescent blood vessel cells.
The compounds in question -- AP39, AP123 and RT01 -- have been designed by the Exeter team to selectively deliver minute quantities of the gas hydrogen sulfide to the mitochondria in cells and help the old or damaged cells to generate the 'energy' needed for survival and to reduce senescence.
"Our compounds provide mitochondria in cells with an alternative fuel to help them function properly," said Professor Matt Whiteman, also from the University of Exeter.
"Many disease states can essentially be viewed as accelerated ageing, and keeping mitochondria healthy helps either prevent or, in many cases using animal models, reverse this.
"Our current study shows that splicing factors play a key role in determining how our compounds work."
------------------------------------------------
Key aspects of the ageing of human cells can be reversed by new compounds developed at the University of Exeter, research shows.
In a laboratory study of endothelial cells -- which line the inside of blood vessels -- researchers tested compounds designed to target mitochondria (the "power stations" of cells).
In the samples used in the study, the number of senescent cells (older cells that have deteriorated and stopped dividing) was reduced by up to 50%. The Exeter team also identified two splicing factors (a component of cells) that play a key role in when and how endothelial cells become senescent.
The findings raise the possibility of future treatments not only for blood vessels -- which become stiffer as they age, raising the risk of problems including heart attacks and strokes -- but also for other cells.
"As human bodies age, they accumulate old (senescent) cells that do not function as well as younger cells," said Professor Lorna Harries, of the University of Exeter Medical School.
"This is not just an effect of ageing -- it's a reason why we age.
"The compounds developed at Exeter have the potential to tweak the mechanisms by which this ageing of cells happens.
"We used to think age-related diseases like cancer, dementia and diabetes each had a unique cause, but they actually track back to one or two common mechanisms.
"This research focuses on one of these mechanisms, and the findings with our compounds have potentially opened up the way for new therapeutic approaches in the future.
"This may well be the basis for a new generation of anti-degenerative drugs."
Professor Harries said the goal was to help people stay healthier for longer. She added: "This is about health span and quality of life, rather than merely extending lifespan."
In a paper published last year, the team demonstrated a new way to rejuvenate old cells in the laboratory.
However, the new research looked at precisely targeting and rejuvenating mitochondria in old cells.
Each one of our genes is capable of making more than one product, and splicing factors are the genes that make the decision about which of these products are made.
In this new work, using novel chemicals, the researchers were able to very specifically target two splicing factors (SRSF2 or HNRNPD) that play a key role in determining how and why our cells change with advancing age.
"Nearly half of the aged cells we tested showed signs of rejuvenating into young cell models," said Professor Harries.
The researchers tested three different compounds, all developed at the University of Exeter, and found each produced a 40-50% drop in the number of senescent blood vessel cells.
The compounds in question -- AP39, AP123 and RT01 -- have been designed by the Exeter team to selectively deliver minute quantities of the gas hydrogen sulfide to the mitochondria in cells and help the old or damaged cells to generate the 'energy' needed for survival and to reduce senescence.
"Our compounds provide mitochondria in cells with an alternative fuel to help them function properly," said Professor Matt Whiteman, also from the University of Exeter.
"Many disease states can essentially be viewed as accelerated ageing, and keeping mitochondria healthy helps either prevent or, in many cases using animal models, reverse this.
"Our current study shows that splicing factors play a key role in determining how our compounds work."
Winston Churchill quotes
A nation that forgets its past has no future.
If you're not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
There is nothing government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.
The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
If you're not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
There is nothing government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.
The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
Free Speech - less every day - thanks to the Elite
Walter Williams at Townhall.com.
WW is on target.
Too few people value free speech to make possible its preservation. We are headed toward tyranny unless the "Elite" come to their senses - not much chance of that.
We have entered another Dark Age.
---------------------------------------------
Many of the nation's colleges have become a force for evil and a focal point for the destruction of traditional American values. The threat to our future lies in the fact that today's college students are tomorrow's teachers, professors, judges, attorneys, legislators and policymakers. A recent Brookings Institution poll suggests that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Of course, it is. Fifty-one percent of students think that it's acceptable to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. About 20 percent of students hold that it's acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking, over 50 percent say colleges should prohibit speech and viewpoints that might offend certain people. Contempt for the First Amendment and other constitutional guarantees is probably shared by the students' high school teachers, as well as many college professors.
Brainwashing and indoctrination of young people has produced some predictable results, as shown by a recent Gallup Poll. For the past 18 years, Gallup has asked adults how proud they are to be Americans. This year, only 47 percent say they are "extremely proud," well below the peak of 70 percent in 2003. The least proud to be Americans are nonwhites, young adults and college graduates. The proudest Americans are those older than 50 and those who did not graduate from college. The latter might be explained by their limited exposure to America's academic elite.
Johnetta Benton, a teacher at Hampton Middle School near Atlanta, was recorded telling her sixth-grade students, "America has never been great for minorities." In a tirade, she told her class: "Because Europeans came from Europe ... you are an immigrant. You are an illegal immigrant because you came and just took it. ... You are an immigrant. This is not your country." To exploit young, immature young people this way represents an act of supreme cowardice. The teacher should be fired, but I'm guessing that her colleagues share her sympathies. At the same school, students were given a homework assignment that required them to write a letter asking lawmakers for stricter gun control laws.
One might be tempted to argue that the growing contempt for liberty and the lack of civility stem from the election of Donald Trump. That's entirely wrong. The lack of civility and indoctrination of our young people have been going on for decades. UCLA history professor Mary Corey told her class: "Capitalism isn't a lie on purpose. It's just a lie." She added that capitalists "are swine. ... They're bastard people." An English professor at Montclair State University, in New Jersey, told his students, "Conservatism champions racism, exploitation and imperialist war." An ethnic studies professor at California State University, Northridge and Pasadena City College teaches that "the role of students and teachers in ethnic studies is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." The University of California, Santa Barbara's school of education emailed its faculty members to ask them to consider classroom options concerning the Iraq War, suggesting they excuse students from class to attend anti-war events and give them extra credit for writing about it. Rodney Swanson, a UCLA economics professor, told his class, "The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world."
There is little question that colleges stand at the forefront of an attack on America and Western values. Leftists often say that the U.S. is the world's worst country. But here are some empirical facts they might explain. According to a recent Gallup Poll, about 13 percent of the world's adults -- 630 million people -- would like to move to another country. Roughly 138 million would like to live in the U.S. -- making us the No. 1 destination, followed by the U.K., Canada and France . There's something exceptionally appealing about America and the Western world that leftists choose to ignore or lie about.
WW is on target.
Too few people value free speech to make possible its preservation. We are headed toward tyranny unless the "Elite" come to their senses - not much chance of that.
We have entered another Dark Age.
---------------------------------------------
Many of the nation's colleges have become a force for evil and a focal point for the destruction of traditional American values. The threat to our future lies in the fact that today's college students are tomorrow's teachers, professors, judges, attorneys, legislators and policymakers. A recent Brookings Institution poll suggests that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Of course, it is. Fifty-one percent of students think that it's acceptable to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. About 20 percent of students hold that it's acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking, over 50 percent say colleges should prohibit speech and viewpoints that might offend certain people. Contempt for the First Amendment and other constitutional guarantees is probably shared by the students' high school teachers, as well as many college professors.
Brainwashing and indoctrination of young people has produced some predictable results, as shown by a recent Gallup Poll. For the past 18 years, Gallup has asked adults how proud they are to be Americans. This year, only 47 percent say they are "extremely proud," well below the peak of 70 percent in 2003. The least proud to be Americans are nonwhites, young adults and college graduates. The proudest Americans are those older than 50 and those who did not graduate from college. The latter might be explained by their limited exposure to America's academic elite.
Johnetta Benton, a teacher at Hampton Middle School near Atlanta, was recorded telling her sixth-grade students, "America has never been great for minorities." In a tirade, she told her class: "Because Europeans came from Europe ... you are an immigrant. You are an illegal immigrant because you came and just took it. ... You are an immigrant. This is not your country." To exploit young, immature young people this way represents an act of supreme cowardice. The teacher should be fired, but I'm guessing that her colleagues share her sympathies. At the same school, students were given a homework assignment that required them to write a letter asking lawmakers for stricter gun control laws.
One might be tempted to argue that the growing contempt for liberty and the lack of civility stem from the election of Donald Trump. That's entirely wrong. The lack of civility and indoctrination of our young people have been going on for decades. UCLA history professor Mary Corey told her class: "Capitalism isn't a lie on purpose. It's just a lie." She added that capitalists "are swine. ... They're bastard people." An English professor at Montclair State University, in New Jersey, told his students, "Conservatism champions racism, exploitation and imperialist war." An ethnic studies professor at California State University, Northridge and Pasadena City College teaches that "the role of students and teachers in ethnic studies is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." The University of California, Santa Barbara's school of education emailed its faculty members to ask them to consider classroom options concerning the Iraq War, suggesting they excuse students from class to attend anti-war events and give them extra credit for writing about it. Rodney Swanson, a UCLA economics professor, told his class, "The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world."
There is little question that colleges stand at the forefront of an attack on America and Western values. Leftists often say that the U.S. is the world's worst country. But here are some empirical facts they might explain. According to a recent Gallup Poll, about 13 percent of the world's adults -- 630 million people -- would like to move to another country. Roughly 138 million would like to live in the U.S. -- making us the No. 1 destination, followed by the U.K., Canada and France . There's something exceptionally appealing about America and the Western world that leftists choose to ignore or lie about.
Tuesday, August 07, 2018
Government is not your friend - vote for those who would limit it
From the Heritage Foundation.
Most licensing requirements are excessive and unnecessary. They usually are put in place to limit competition - which raises prices to consumers.
The do-gooders who advocate licensing to solve the bad-apple problem do far more damage than the good from reducing the number of bad apples.
----------------------------------------
I came to this country because it offered better opportunities to start a business and make my dreams come true. But for years, Louisiana worked to keep me and my employees from making a living.”
That is how Lata Jagtiani, who emigrated from India, frames her yearslong struggle to sustain her family-owned business in Louisiana under a senseless state licensing scheme.
Now, after a two-year court battle, state regulators have cut back the needless red tape that inhibited her business.
Jagtiani opened the Threading Studio & Spa in 2012 and, as the name conveys, offered threading: a traditional Eastern hair removal technique that is in high demand in the United States.
Since 2010, the Louisiana Board of Cosmetology has required anyone who performs threading to get a state esthetician’s license. That demands hundreds of hours of instruction, three exams, and thousands of dollars. It does not teach threading.
Jagtiani’s licensed colleagues could not thread because they hadn’t learned how. To keep her threading business going, Jagtiani employed unlicensed threaders.
As a result, the board fined her and ordered her to fire the unlicensed employees.
Predictably, her business suffered.
Surely, the fired workers suffered.
With the help of the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm, Jagtiani sued the board, claiming that the licensing requirement violated the state’s constitutional protections of equal protection and due process.
Two others joined Jagtiani as plaintiffs in the case: Ushaben Chudasama, a threader who emigrated from India in 1993, and Panna Shah, a threader who emigrated from India in 2006.
According to the the Institute for Justice, “the Louisiana Supreme Court has recognized that laws that restrict the right to earn a living must be rationally related to a legitimate government interest.”
Forcing immigrants to pay thousands of dollars to spend time in classes that won’t teach a trade they already know hardly seems rational.
After a state district court last year rejected the board’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the board began to rethink its rules.
Earlier this year, the board created a threading permit to allow Jagtiani, Chudasama, Shah, and other threaders to work following a basic sanitation exam.
When the first threaders received the new permits, the Institute for Justice attorney who represented the threaders, Renée Flaherty, called it “a great day for hundreds of hardworking Louisianans who want to earn an honest living in a time-honored profession many learned as children.”
The new rule, Flaherty said, “will remove pointless and burdensome barriers to working as an eyebrow threader in Louisiana. The state’s cosmetology board has done the right thing by ending its unconstitutional licensing scheme.”
The victory in Louisiana followed another Institute for Justice case, Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (2015), where the Texas Supreme Court ruled that similar eyebrow threading licensing requirements violated the Texas state Constitution.
The Louisiana board deserves kudos for changing its policy, but many burdensome occupational licensing laws remain on the books.
These rules can be used to protect the public’s health and welfare, but too often they are employed to eliminate competition.
“Since 1950,” notes Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Paul J. Larkin Jr., “the percentage of the domestic workforce in positions subject to a licensing requirement has multiplied 500 percent and now stands at no less than 25 percent of the economy.”
Many of these rules bear no credible relationship to public health and safety—such as licenses for florists, plumbers, and motion picture projectionists—yet they cover so many different jobs that they are “now one of the nation’s principal forms of economic regulation.”
And these rules can have steep administrative, civil, and criminal penalties.
For example, Arizona requires at least 1,000 training hours and an exam before someone can use even a blow dryer to style hair. Failure to comply can result in up to six months in prison and fines.
Fortunately, state lawmakers are beginning to realize the economic and societal costs of these regulations often outweigh any purported benefit.
In fact, Louisiana lawmakers are considering a bipartisan bill that would call for a review of all state licensing schemes. House Bill 562 provides that “the right of an individual to pursue a lawful occupation is a fundamental right,” and “where the state finds it necessary to displace competition, it shall use the least restrictive regulation to protect consumers from present, significant and empirically substantiated harms threatening public health and safety.”
That would go far to protect the state’s workers from anti-competitive rules.
Virginia also has taken bipartisan steps toward reducing the regulatory burden on economic activity in the state. In March, Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, approved a three-year review of state regulations with a goal of eliminating as much as 25 percent of the net current requirements “to access government services or operate and conduct business.”
That also provides an opportunity for lawmakers to clear out the undergrowth of arbitrary licensing rules.
Hopefully other states will follow these states’ lead and reinvigorate the fundamental right to earn a living.
This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal
Most licensing requirements are excessive and unnecessary. They usually are put in place to limit competition - which raises prices to consumers.
The do-gooders who advocate licensing to solve the bad-apple problem do far more damage than the good from reducing the number of bad apples.
----------------------------------------
I came to this country because it offered better opportunities to start a business and make my dreams come true. But for years, Louisiana worked to keep me and my employees from making a living.”
That is how Lata Jagtiani, who emigrated from India, frames her yearslong struggle to sustain her family-owned business in Louisiana under a senseless state licensing scheme.
Now, after a two-year court battle, state regulators have cut back the needless red tape that inhibited her business.
Jagtiani opened the Threading Studio & Spa in 2012 and, as the name conveys, offered threading: a traditional Eastern hair removal technique that is in high demand in the United States.
Since 2010, the Louisiana Board of Cosmetology has required anyone who performs threading to get a state esthetician’s license. That demands hundreds of hours of instruction, three exams, and thousands of dollars. It does not teach threading.
Jagtiani’s licensed colleagues could not thread because they hadn’t learned how. To keep her threading business going, Jagtiani employed unlicensed threaders.
As a result, the board fined her and ordered her to fire the unlicensed employees.
Predictably, her business suffered.
Surely, the fired workers suffered.
With the help of the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm, Jagtiani sued the board, claiming that the licensing requirement violated the state’s constitutional protections of equal protection and due process.
Two others joined Jagtiani as plaintiffs in the case: Ushaben Chudasama, a threader who emigrated from India in 1993, and Panna Shah, a threader who emigrated from India in 2006.
According to the the Institute for Justice, “the Louisiana Supreme Court has recognized that laws that restrict the right to earn a living must be rationally related to a legitimate government interest.”
Forcing immigrants to pay thousands of dollars to spend time in classes that won’t teach a trade they already know hardly seems rational.
After a state district court last year rejected the board’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the board began to rethink its rules.
Earlier this year, the board created a threading permit to allow Jagtiani, Chudasama, Shah, and other threaders to work following a basic sanitation exam.
When the first threaders received the new permits, the Institute for Justice attorney who represented the threaders, Renée Flaherty, called it “a great day for hundreds of hardworking Louisianans who want to earn an honest living in a time-honored profession many learned as children.”
The new rule, Flaherty said, “will remove pointless and burdensome barriers to working as an eyebrow threader in Louisiana. The state’s cosmetology board has done the right thing by ending its unconstitutional licensing scheme.”
The victory in Louisiana followed another Institute for Justice case, Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (2015), where the Texas Supreme Court ruled that similar eyebrow threading licensing requirements violated the Texas state Constitution.
The Louisiana board deserves kudos for changing its policy, but many burdensome occupational licensing laws remain on the books.
These rules can be used to protect the public’s health and welfare, but too often they are employed to eliminate competition.
“Since 1950,” notes Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Paul J. Larkin Jr., “the percentage of the domestic workforce in positions subject to a licensing requirement has multiplied 500 percent and now stands at no less than 25 percent of the economy.”
Many of these rules bear no credible relationship to public health and safety—such as licenses for florists, plumbers, and motion picture projectionists—yet they cover so many different jobs that they are “now one of the nation’s principal forms of economic regulation.”
And these rules can have steep administrative, civil, and criminal penalties.
For example, Arizona requires at least 1,000 training hours and an exam before someone can use even a blow dryer to style hair. Failure to comply can result in up to six months in prison and fines.
Fortunately, state lawmakers are beginning to realize the economic and societal costs of these regulations often outweigh any purported benefit.
In fact, Louisiana lawmakers are considering a bipartisan bill that would call for a review of all state licensing schemes. House Bill 562 provides that “the right of an individual to pursue a lawful occupation is a fundamental right,” and “where the state finds it necessary to displace competition, it shall use the least restrictive regulation to protect consumers from present, significant and empirically substantiated harms threatening public health and safety.”
That would go far to protect the state’s workers from anti-competitive rules.
Virginia also has taken bipartisan steps toward reducing the regulatory burden on economic activity in the state. In March, Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, approved a three-year review of state regulations with a goal of eliminating as much as 25 percent of the net current requirements “to access government services or operate and conduct business.”
That also provides an opportunity for lawmakers to clear out the undergrowth of arbitrary licensing rules.
Hopefully other states will follow these states’ lead and reinvigorate the fundamental right to earn a living.
This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal
Monday, August 06, 2018
Climate change and cosmic rays
2018 update from Henrik and Jacob Svensmark and other researchers.
Here is the link.
My bet is that the climate alarmists and their models reflect agenda more than science.
Here is the link.
My bet is that the climate alarmists and their models reflect agenda more than science.
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Artificially Sweetened Beverages, Stroke, and Dementia
From www.practiceupdate.com
The high hazard ratios are impressive. However, no incidence rates are presented. If the incidence rates are very low, then the practical significance of the high hazard ratios is low. Also, this does not appear to be a prospective randomized study.
----------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Sugar- and artificially-sweetened beverage intake have been linked to cardiometabolic risk factors, which increase the risk of cerebrovascular disease and dementia. We examined whether sugar- or artificially sweetened beverage consumption was associated with the prospective risks of incident stroke or dementia in the community-based Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort.
METHODS
We studied 2888 participants aged >45 years for incident stroke (mean age 62 [SD, 9] years; 45% men) and 1484 participants aged >60 years for incident dementia (mean age 69 [SD, 6] years; 46% men). Beverage intake was quantified using a food-frequency questionnaire at cohort examinations 5 (1991-1995), 6 (1995-1998), and 7 (1998-2001). We quantified recent consumption at examination 7 and cumulative consumption by averaging across examinations. Surveillance for incident events commenced at examination 7 and continued for 10 years. We observed 97 cases of incident stroke (82 ischemic) and 81 cases of incident dementia (63 consistent with Alzheimer's disease).
RESULTS
After adjustments for age, sex, education (for analysis of dementia), caloric intake, diet quality, physical activity, and smoking, higher recent and higher cumulative intake of artificially sweetened soft drinks were associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke, all-cause dementia, and Alzheimer's disease dementia. When comparing daily cumulative intake to 0 per week (reference), the hazard ratios were 2.96 (95% confidence interval, 1.26-6.97) for ischemic stroke and 2.89 (95% confidence interval, 1.18-7.07) for Alzheimer's disease. Sugar-sweetened beverages were not associated with stroke or dementia.
CONCLUSIONS
Artificially sweetened soft drink consumption was associated with a higher risk of stroke and dementia.
The high hazard ratios are impressive. However, no incidence rates are presented. If the incidence rates are very low, then the practical significance of the high hazard ratios is low. Also, this does not appear to be a prospective randomized study.
----------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Sugar- and artificially-sweetened beverage intake have been linked to cardiometabolic risk factors, which increase the risk of cerebrovascular disease and dementia. We examined whether sugar- or artificially sweetened beverage consumption was associated with the prospective risks of incident stroke or dementia in the community-based Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort.
METHODS
We studied 2888 participants aged >45 years for incident stroke (mean age 62 [SD, 9] years; 45% men) and 1484 participants aged >60 years for incident dementia (mean age 69 [SD, 6] years; 46% men). Beverage intake was quantified using a food-frequency questionnaire at cohort examinations 5 (1991-1995), 6 (1995-1998), and 7 (1998-2001). We quantified recent consumption at examination 7 and cumulative consumption by averaging across examinations. Surveillance for incident events commenced at examination 7 and continued for 10 years. We observed 97 cases of incident stroke (82 ischemic) and 81 cases of incident dementia (63 consistent with Alzheimer's disease).
RESULTS
After adjustments for age, sex, education (for analysis of dementia), caloric intake, diet quality, physical activity, and smoking, higher recent and higher cumulative intake of artificially sweetened soft drinks were associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke, all-cause dementia, and Alzheimer's disease dementia. When comparing daily cumulative intake to 0 per week (reference), the hazard ratios were 2.96 (95% confidence interval, 1.26-6.97) for ischemic stroke and 2.89 (95% confidence interval, 1.18-7.07) for Alzheimer's disease. Sugar-sweetened beverages were not associated with stroke or dementia.
CONCLUSIONS
Artificially sweetened soft drink consumption was associated with a higher risk of stroke and dementia.
If you harass business, you lose business - and good jobs
Trump is right that if you harass business with bureaucracy, regulations and taxes, you lose business - and good jobs.
Keep in mind that regulations and bureaucracy are friction and taxing business reduces investment - vote accordingly.
Here is an excerpt from Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics".
--------------------------------------------
It is not just corruption but also sheer bureaucracy which can stifle economic activity. Even one of India's most spectacularly successful industrialists, Aditya Birla, found himself forced to look to other countries in which to expand his investments, because of India's slow-moving bureaucrats.
With all his successes, there were heartbreaks galore. One of them was the Mangalore refinery, which Delhi's bureaucrats took eleven years to clear - a record even by the standards of the Indian bureaucracy. While both of us were waiting for a court to open up at the Bombay Gymkhana one day, I asked Aditya Birla what had led him to invest abroad. He had no choice, he said, in his deep unaffected voice. There were too many obstacles in India. To begin with, he needed a license, which the government would not give because the Birlas were classified as "a large house" under the MRTP (Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices) Act. Even if he did get one miraculously, the government would decide where he should invest, what technology he must use, what was to be the size of his plant, how it was to be financed - even the size and structure of his public issue. Then he would have to battle the bureaucracy to get licenses for the import of capital goods and raw materials. After that, he faced dozens of clearances at the state level - for power, land, sales trax, excise, labor, among others. "All this takes years, and frankly, I get exhausted just thinking about it."
This head of 37 companies with combined sales in the billions of dollars - someone capable of creating many much-needed jobs in India - ended up producing fiber in Thailand, which was converted to yarn in his factory in Indonesia, after which this yarn sws exported to Belgium, where it wass woven into carpets - which were then exported to Canada. All the jobs, incomes, auxiliary business opportunities, and taxes from which India could have benefited were lost because of the country's own bureaucracies.
A survey by the World Bank found that the number of days required to start a new business ranged from less than ten in prosperous Sinngapore to 155 days in poverty-stricken Congo.
Keep in mind that regulations and bureaucracy are friction and taxing business reduces investment - vote accordingly.
Here is an excerpt from Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics".
--------------------------------------------
It is not just corruption but also sheer bureaucracy which can stifle economic activity. Even one of India's most spectacularly successful industrialists, Aditya Birla, found himself forced to look to other countries in which to expand his investments, because of India's slow-moving bureaucrats.
With all his successes, there were heartbreaks galore. One of them was the Mangalore refinery, which Delhi's bureaucrats took eleven years to clear - a record even by the standards of the Indian bureaucracy. While both of us were waiting for a court to open up at the Bombay Gymkhana one day, I asked Aditya Birla what had led him to invest abroad. He had no choice, he said, in his deep unaffected voice. There were too many obstacles in India. To begin with, he needed a license, which the government would not give because the Birlas were classified as "a large house" under the MRTP (Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices) Act. Even if he did get one miraculously, the government would decide where he should invest, what technology he must use, what was to be the size of his plant, how it was to be financed - even the size and structure of his public issue. Then he would have to battle the bureaucracy to get licenses for the import of capital goods and raw materials. After that, he faced dozens of clearances at the state level - for power, land, sales trax, excise, labor, among others. "All this takes years, and frankly, I get exhausted just thinking about it."
This head of 37 companies with combined sales in the billions of dollars - someone capable of creating many much-needed jobs in India - ended up producing fiber in Thailand, which was converted to yarn in his factory in Indonesia, after which this yarn sws exported to Belgium, where it wass woven into carpets - which were then exported to Canada. All the jobs, incomes, auxiliary business opportunities, and taxes from which India could have benefited were lost because of the country's own bureaucracies.
A survey by the World Bank found that the number of days required to start a new business ranged from less than ten in prosperous Sinngapore to 155 days in poverty-stricken Congo.
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