Month: July 2014

The (leftie) internet went bonkers yesterday over
the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby  decision,
a narrow ruling that only let “closely held” corporations whose
owners had a religious objection to paying for certain kind of
contraceptives (abortifacients) off the hook from Obamacare’s
“contraceptive mandate.”  Employees, of course, would still be
free to purchase supplemental insurance to cover birth control and
to see their doctor to get a prescription for birth control. They
can’t purchase birth control over the counter but that’s not
because of the Supreme Court or employers with objections—it’s
because the federal government
prohibits the sale of birth control over the counter.

Nevertheless for a certain kind of spouter of partisan talking
points, the Supreme Court ruling—that the government could not, in
fact, bully people into doing something if those people have
religious objections—was more evidence of the “war on women”
Democrats plan to keep running on.

Meanwhile in Georgia, a new gun bill that permits lawfully
licensed residents to carry their firearms into a wide range of
“public accommodations” (like bars) and actual government buildings

goes into effect today. Opponents of the bill, generally
liberals, tend to be the same people who opposed the Hobby
Lobby ruling, while conservatives who applauded the Hobby
Lobby ruling for protecting religious liberty applaud
Georgia’s law for protecting their Second Amendment rights.

Libertarians have to laugh or they’d cry. The partisan break on
Hobby Lobby and Georgia’s gun law doesn’t make sense if
principles mattered. After all, if an employer has a right not to
be coerced by the government to purchase something for an employee,
that same employer ought to have a right not to be coerced by the
government to permit something on his property. Whether the
specific objections are religious shouldn’t even matter—either you
have a right to run your workplace and business as you please or it
belongs to the government.  For too many partisan ideologues,
liberal and conservative, the latter applies. Their political
preferences trump any lip service to principles.

Early today Ukrainian President
Petro Poroshenko declared the end of a ceasefire with the
separatist militias in the nation’s east.

Alleging that the militants “defiantly violated the ceasefire
regime more than 100 times” over the last 10 days, Poroshenko
stated
his plan going forward:

We will attack and liberate our land. Termination of ceasefire
is our response to terrorists, insurgents, marauders, everyone who
tortures civilians, paralyzes the economy of the region, disrupts
payments of salaries, pensions, scholarships, blasts the railroad,
destroys the water pipes and deprives people of normal peaceful
life.

Today’s operation includes airstrikes and artillery fire “at the
strategic points of the terrorists,” a military official
said.

The Ukrainian president also criticized Russia’s efforts to
de-escalate the situation as merely “symbolic. … We haven’t seen
tangible measures on de-escalation of the situation and enhancement
of control over the border.”

Indeed, some separatists openly say they
themselves are Chechen mercenaries on orders from Russia. Likewise,
the militants increasing firepower, such as several tanks that
crossed the border from Russia in June, leave little doubt about
who is fanning the flames. Despite the armistice, “27 Ukrainian
servicemen had been killed and 69 wounded” in the last week and a
half,
reports Reuters.

Russia blames the U.S. for the renewed combat. “The change in
Kiev’s position … could not have come about without influence
from abroad,” the nation’s foreign ministry insists.

A Pentagon press release yesterday suggested that more U.S.
troops may be sent to NATO countries near Ukraine in response
to the unresolved crisis.

Although the White House has not yet commented on today’s
developments, Secretary of State John Kerry last Thursday
threatened that Russia had only “hours, literally” to
demonstrate that it would rein in the separatists. However, the
U.S. has implemented no new sanctions or taken other actions since
then.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s
plan to give every child an iPad—at a cost of $1 billion to
taxpayers—drew universal criticism after numerous problems arose.
For one thing, when the devices were broken, lost, or stolen, it
wasn’t clear whether parents, the schools, or the kids themselves
were responsible. Tech-savy students easily broke through the
firewalls administrators had installed to keep them from using the
devices to visit social media websites. This prompted some schools
to prohibit the use of the iPads at home, when students are away
from teacher supervision, even though one of the major intended
functions of the iPad program was to give kids a homework aid.

The entire thing was an unmitigated disaster—a clear example of
real life trumping the good intentions of bureaucrats

But LAUSD has clearly learned its lesson, right?
Wrong:

Los Angeles school district officials have allowed a group of
high schools to choose from among six different laptop computers
for their students — a marked contrast to last year’s decision to
give every pupil an iPad.

Contracts that will come under final review by the Board of
Education on Tuesday would authorize the purchase of one of six
devices for each of the 27 high schools at a cost not to exceed $40
million.

This story in the Los Angeles Times
highlights that the new approach emphasizes choosing the
devices that are right for each school, rather than expecting an
iPad to be the answer to every kid’s educational needs. Still, it’s
an awfully expensive plan, given that most of the options actually
cost more than the iPad:

The initial money to pay for the technology is coming from
voter-approved bonds. Officials have not yet identified funding to
sustain the $1-billion-plus effort. Three of the laptops being
tried in the high schools are likely to cost more than the iPads. A
different style of laptop, called a Chromebook, would cost
less.

Teachers and students at the high schools sent delegations to
try out devices and meet with vendors at district headquarters.

It wasn’t a perfect process. The curriculum, for example, was
hard to assess in a process akin to speed dating, said one
participant.

If I were an LA public school student, I would be pretty excited
to get an iPad or a Chromebook or whatever. But if I were an LA
voter, I would be skeptical that such things serve a worthwhile
educational purpose and are a good use of my tax dollars.

The Centers for Disease Control
is reporting 539 cases of
measles in 17 different outbreaks around the country, the
highest rate since 2000. The agency notes, “Measles spreads through
the air by breathing, coughing or sneezing. It is so contagious
that any child who is exposed to it and is not immune will probably
get the disease.”

So far no one has died, but
ten patients have required hospitalization. Yet another study
shows that immunization for measles is
not associated with a higher risk for autism. 

Over at the New York Times, physician Pauline Chen

offers this relevant wisdom from her daughter:

One of my 11-year-old twin daughters recently came home from
school distraught. When I asked why, she lifted her foot.

There was dog poop on her sneakers.

She watched as I flicked away the doggy detritus with a twig,
then scrubbed the sole of her shoe with an old brush and hot water.
“We don’t like to pick up Buddy’s poop, either,” I could hear her
telling her sister, “but we do it because it’s gross to leave it on
the sidewalk.”

When I handed her the shoe, cleaned and as good as new, she
beamed. “Thanks, Mom,” she said, lacing up. But after a few test
twirls in the yard, she stopped.

“Didn’t that dog’s owner know he would cause so much trouble for
other people?” she asked, brow furrowing. “He might have even
caused trouble for himself if he came back and stepped in it!”

At the tender age of 11, she had seen how one person’s bad
decision could negatively affect others.

The same lesson is playing out for patients and doctors across
the country, albeit under far graver circumstances.

This year, there has been a major resurgence
of measles, a dangerous disease that for decades had been
virtually unknown in the United States. And it’s become clear that
measles has re-emerged as a public health issue in this country
because large numbers of individuals remain unvaccinated.

For more background, read Reason’s feature articles on
the
libertarian debate over mandatory vaccination.

It fills the headlines, it
chills the public, it elevates your premiums, and it dogs hopes for
decent health care coverage. That’s right, we’re talking about
Obamacare—the government scheme that refuses to die, despite every
sign that it’s doing itself in (and maybe taking us with it).
Reason writers look at the history of this policy monstrosity, the
laughable efforts by its promoters to make it palatable, and the
deep flaws in the way it has been crafted and implemented.

Even better, we look at alternative approaches and innovations
that promise better health care for the future. And we look at ways
of presenting those alternatives to a public that wants care, but
has certainly grown jaded about pie-in-the-sky promises.

Click here to visit with
the Sad Story of Obamacare. You may want to bring flowers.

Now’s not the time to re-litigate the Iraq War, we’re told
— mostly by people whose bright idea it was in the first
place. If we “spend our time debating what happened 11 or 12 years
ago,” says former Vice President Dick Cheney, we’re “missing
the boat.” Contra Cheney, argues Gene Healy, it’s important to
examine our past mistakes, lest we get snookered into repeating
them. Going back 11 or 12 years isn’t enough — it’s past time to
reevaluate the Gulf War of 1991, the “famous victory” that helped
get us into this mess.

View this article.

Last week, Senators  Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
introduced a bill aimed at cracking down on child sex
trafficking that could ultimately harm web publishers, adult
entertainers, and free speech. The bill sets up onerous and
invasive new registry requirements for those who post and host
adult service advertisements. And it holds online publishers
criminally liable not only for illegal activity facilitated though
their ad sections but also for failing to keep—and make available
to attorneys general—proper records on all adults advertising legal
or illegal erotic services. 

The “Stop
Advertising Victis of Exploitation (SAVE) Act“—crafted after a

related bill that passed the House in May—makes it a federal
crime for any content platform to host an advertisement that
“facilitates or is designed to facilitate” sex acts with anyone
under 18 years old. At first blush, that may sound unobjectionable:
Of course it should be a crime to sell minors for sex.
But, of course, that already is a crime. This bil is about holding
web platforms (like Craigslist) criminally liable for
anything that criminals may post to them. 

“This is a major liability risk for operators of user-generated
content platforms, who host high volumes of content and have little
to no control over what users decide to upload,” notes
Emma Llansó  at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
With penalties including up 10 years in prison on the line, sites
might decide just to prohibit ads of a sexual nature—including
personals, where many sexual services ads end up
running—altogether. 

The SAVE Act would also require all sites that host adult
advertising (whether paid or free/user-generated) to review ads
before publication, request a valid telephone number and credit
card number from each poster, “prohibit the use of euphemism and
codewords” in ads, and prohibit the use of prepaid debit cards or
cryptocurrencies in placing paid ads. For sites that run
paid adult advertisements, publishers would be responsible
for verifying the identity of every person who placed an adult ad
by obtaining a copy of a government-issued ID containing their
name, photo, and date of birth. The publisher would have to hold on
to these records for seven years and make them “available to the
(U.S.) Attorney General, any designee of the Attorney General, the
attorney general of a State, and any designee of the attorney
general of a State for inspection at all reasonable times.”

The bill insists that information won’t be used against
registrants in criminal proceedings unrelated to sex trafficking.
But knowing how fond government and law enforcement officials are
of privacy and keeping promises, you can see why those advertising
adult services—many of which are for perfectly legal activities,
such as phone sex lines, dominatrix services, and stripping; many
of which aren’t—may be reluctant to hand over such information.

“An online identity verification requirement would
unquestionably have a chilling effect on adults’ willingness to
engage in communications about lawful goods and services and would
be a significant intrusion into their right to privacy,” writes
Llansó. 

Similar identification requirements in the Child Online
Protection Act led to that law being struck
down due, in part, to the burden these requirements place
on speakers, listeners, and hosts of protected speech. 

Illegal immigrants and others without government issued IDs
would be barred from legal advertising online, leaving them to rely
on more dangerous methods of finding clients. Those running
organized, professional sex trafficking organizations, however, are
probably savvy enough to get and submit decent fake IDs (or simply
turn to more underground methods of advertising online themselves).
 

As adult workers shy away from placing ads, online publishers
will lose money on one of the last classified sections that’s been
making any money. Meanwhile, they’ll face a minimum fine of
$250,000 for improper record-keeping and jail time if anything
illegal slips through. Ultimately nobody wins—except the
politicians who appear to be getting tough on the child
sex trafficking “epidemic”. On his Facebook page June 30, Sen. Kirk
posted: 

Every year, 100,000 children are at risk of being trafficked
against their will in the United States. Learn more to
help: http://ift.tt/TzV1qh #NotForSale

There’s not any way to refute Kirk’s “100,000 children” claim,
because Kirk doesn’t define what “at risk of” means. Theoretically,
all children in the United States are at risk of
being trafficked. Theoretically, I’m at risk of drowning in a
bucket or getting eaten by a cannibal.

None of these things, however, are terribly likely to happen. Or
even marginally likely to happen. The likelihood of a U.S. child
being kidnapped by a stranger for any reason is incredibly
small (about 100
children each year, or 3 percent of all kidnapping cases).
 

But Sen. Kirk’s website is full of dubious
numbers and scary sounding pronouncements. “Backpage.com sells
modern day slavery,” it proclaims. In one press release, Kirk
insists that 100 percent of “dates” set up through Backpage.com are
for prostitution, “often child prostitution.” The site intersperses
videos of sad-eyed children and forlorn teen girls with statistics
about adult prostitution and adult advertisements in general. And
though he touts the SAVE Act as a way to fight child sex slavery,
he mentions nothing about who the bill actually targets or how it
actually works.  

For a more detailed look at the SAVE Act’s flaws,
check out this analysis from The Center for Democracy and
Technology. The
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has a thorough takedown
of the House version of this legislation. “Lawmaking is messy
stuff, and mistakes like this happen,” the ACLU offered charitably.
“Working to combat coerced or underage prostitution is incredibly
important; however, legislation must be carefully drafted to be
sure to protect our free speech rights online.”