http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134907.html

From our August-September issue, Contributing Editor Greg Beato explores the meaning and popularity behind Out of the Wild, Man vs. Wild, and other survival television shows.

Read all about it here.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/134477.html

On May 31, 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 4.8 points to 10,522.33. Life was no longer as great as it had been just a few months earlier, but it was still pretty great. Code Orange threat alerts, weaponized anthrax, and toxic mortgage-backed securities had yet to bedevil the public’s imagination. Many Americans feared Al Gore more than Al Qaeda.

When Survivor made its television debut that evening, it was clearly the product of a secure, prosperous culture. In what other place, at what other time in history, could a monthlong vacation on an island paradise qualify as the ultimate test of one’s resourcefulness and mettle?

Then terrorists blew up the Twin Towers. Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. Economic swine flu swept through the banking industry. With every news cycle seeming to introduce increasingly exotic threats, the knowledge that a representative sampling of our fellow citizens can successfully endure Jeff Probst’s solemn inquisitions during tribal council no longer offered much comfort. We needed grittier, more convincing depictions of the average American’s indomitable spirit in the face of adversity. Graciously, Discovery Channel has answered the call, with Survivorman, Man vs. Wild, and most recently Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment. 

In the Out of the Wild’s second season, which aired last spring, nine adventurers embarked on a month-long, 60-mile trek across remote back-country terrain. Unlike on Survivor, there was no $1 million prize at stake or elimination votes to cast, just the opportunity to spend a few weeks with semi-frozen strangers, feast on the occasional bird heart, and battle-harden oneself for the coming apocalypse. According to the Discovery Channel, more than 100,000 people applied for a spot on the series.

No doubt their appetites were whetted by Survivorman and Man vs. Wild. In those programs, the survival-expert hosts strand themselves in remote locales with little more than the shirts on their backs. It’s a curious conceit if you think about it, because anyone who finds himself in the middle of the desert or a Costa Rican jungle without an ultra-light tent, a water purifier, or at the very least an iPhone probably doesn’t deserve the title of survival expert; it’s not as if you need Magellan-like navigation skills to find your local REI these days. But what these shows lose in missed product placement opportunities they make up for in metaphorical power. They aim to show us that even under the most extreme circumstances, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency is no longer around to give us toxic rescue trailers and even the continent’s rich reserve of Snickers bars has been depleted, it is still possible to survive.

And not just for professionals. With Out of the Wild, Discovery Channel’s doomsday optimists demonstrate that “ordinary Americans” can thrive in the end times too. Like most reality TV, the show is cast with melting-pot catholicity. There’s an Asian-American attorney from Chicago, a feisty grandma from Kentucky who works as a body piercer, three East Coast city slickers, a blonde fitness instructor who is also the reigning Miss Bikini of Southern California, an African-American customer service rep who has led “extreme eco-tours” in Costa Rica and Central America, a Maryland member of the Atlantic States Gay Rodeo Association, and a fishing outfitter from Wisconsin. After three days of off-screen survival training, this Noah’s Ark of tenderfoot explorers is provisioned with equipment, the cameras start to roll.

There are no elimination votes on Out of the Wild, but participants can remove themselves from the experiment by pushing a button on the GPS units they all carry. This summons a rescue helicopter that spirits them back to the world of running water and fast food restaurants.

In just the first four days of the expedition, three participants opted out. With no $1 million dreams to keep them warm at night, the stress and boredom of back-country life just weren’t worth it.

Those who remained looked convincingly exhausted and miserable most of the time. They got sick. They muddled around their various shelters in a collective, half-starved stupor. A few dry-goods staples such as flour and lentils were intermittently available to them, but mostly they relied on whatever berries they could gather and game they could shoot. It wasn’t much. The centerpiece of their first meal in days was a skinny mouse; a ground squirrel followed a couple days later. The cast quickly achieved that level of hunger where anything that smelled even faintly like a calorie became the most delicious thing they’d ever eaten. Not since caveman times, one suspects, has a porcupine been devoured with such lip-smacking relish.

While the lack of a $1 million carrot meant the cast of Out of the Wild had no incentive to engage in the strategic machinations that distinguish Survivor, they didn’t have the energy for intrigue either. Mere subsistence demanded their complete attention. And if they weren’t quite as entertaining as their tropical counterparts, they were far more inspiring.

Having every move shadowed by a production crew that included two helicopters didn’t make for ideal hunting conditions—but when the survivalists came across a presumably hard-of-hearing ptarmigan or porcupine, they proved to be pretty good shots. They lugged bulky, 60-pound packs for miles at a time. They crossed rushing rivers and field-dressed game with aplomb. They kept their bickering and self-pity to a minimum. Compared to experienced outdoorsmen, they may have seemed unskilled and occasionally clueless. Compared to the ordinary Americans on reality TV these days, and to the ordinary investment bankers and CEOs who appear on the business channels, the show’s cast seemed hardworking, resilient, and incredibly self-sufficient: 21st-century Pilgrims.

In contrast to Survivor, where money is always the subtext and the reigning ethos is dog-eat-dog, Out of the Wild’s post-pecuniary, group-eat-squirrel approach is fraught with enough commie overtones to send Sean Hannity into a patriotic rage. Ultimately, though, the show is really about personal autonomy. On Survivor, the tribal council is the master of your fate. On Out of the Wild, only you can pull the plug on yourself. On Survivor, government intervention is pervasive in the form of host Probst and the unseen hand of series creator Mark Burnett. The contestants’ lives are centrally planned on an hour-by-hour basis; the rules they must follow are elaborate and gratuitous.

On Out of the Wild, events are much less prescribed. The daily challenge of subsistence orders the participants’ lives, but within that context they’re free to determine their own destinies. Should they follow the map or take a shortcut? Should they spend their energies setting traps or gathering firewood? It’s all up to them. 

And thus what arose from doomsday angst begins to take on utopian tones. The world Out of the Wild presents is a downsized utopia to be sure, but it’s still an inviting one. The desire to escape the grid has been with us even when there wasn’t much of a grid to get away from.

Out of the Wild hardly romanticizes this impulse; even Thoreau might find it hard to rhapsodize about the simple virtues of some of the skeletal shacks the trekkers call home. But with each new technology we acquire, with each thick set of homeowners association rules, with every political savior planning even more entries to the Code of Federal Regulations, the desire grows stronger to light out for the territories, where we can live free from all the rules and programs that are designed to protect us, free from the complicating conveniences of modern life, amid prickly thickets of alder and surprisingly delicious rodents. If there’s a third season of Out of the Wild, the Discovery Channel probably should expect even more applications than the 100,000 it got the last time around. It doesn’t look like much fun, but apparently the experience is worth a million bucks.

Contributing Editor Greg Beato (gbeato@soundbitten.com) writes from San Francisco.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134911.html

Last week two employees of Marc Emery's Vancouver-based cannabis seed business finalized a deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle that allows them to avoid prison. Michelle Rainey and Gregory Williams, who were indicted four yours ago, will each serve two years of probation in Canada. Their former boss, a libertarian political activist and drug reform financier known as Canada's Prince of Pot, has been fighting extradition to the United States but is now expected to plead guilty. He says prosecutors have agreed to recommend a prison sentence of five years, compared to the 20 years or more he could have gotten. Because many of his customers were Americans, Emery was charged with conspiracy to cultivate marijuana in the U.S.; in Canada, by contrast, his seed business operated openly for more than a decade along with hundreds of similar operations, attracting little interest from the government, which happily accepted the tax revenue it generated.

The Seattle Times notes that Emery and his supporters "accused the Justice Department of indicting him and his employees for political reasons," an allegation that "federal prosecutors have vehemently denied." Last week a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office insisted that "we went after [Emery] for his criminal activities, not for his political views." Yet when Emery was arrested in 2005, Karen Tandy, then head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, crowed that the U.S. government had dealt "a significant blow" against "the marijuana legalization movement," bragging that "drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."     

Previous Reason coverage of the Emery case here.

[Thanks to Michelle Rainey for the tip.]

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134910.html

The plan...includes transferring 8,000 Marines now stationed on Okinawa — roughly half the Marines who are there — to Guam. When the House Armed Services Committee drew up its fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill last month, however, Democrat Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii added a provision to require that wages paid to construction workers on Guam preparing for the Marines' arrival be based not on the local scale but on wage rates in Hawaii, which are two-and-a-half times higher. Abercrombie says his provision is needed to bring skilled U.S. workers to the island, particularly unemployed Hawaiians. However, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it would add about $10 billion to the transfer's cost.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134909.html

Last week, an undercover New York City police officer participating in a drug buy shot and killed 49-year-old Shem Walker during an altercation at Walker's home in Brooklyn. Police say Walker, described by family and neighbors as an ex-con who had reformed, apparently thought the officer was a drug dealer or a vagrant. When the officer didn't respond to Walker's verbal demand to leave his property, apparently because he was wearing earphones to monitor the drug buy, Walker tried to forcibly remove him from Walker's front stoop. The two got into an altercation. A second undercover officer then joined the fight, at which point the first officer shot and killed Walker.

The tension escalated Thursday when Walker's family held a vigil on the same porch several days later. The family says that as they gathered, an NYPD officer pulled up and demanded identification. When several members refused, the officer called for backup. More officers arrived, and the vigil eventually erupted into shouting and shoving between the family and police. Police and family accounts obviously differ on who or what instigated the shoving. But it seems like a bad idea to send an officer to demand ID from participants in a vigil honoring an unarmed man who was killed by police just days earlier. Or, for that matter, putting undercover drug cops on private property in the first place.

Walker's death is reminiscent of the Isaac Singletary incident in Florida from a couple of years ago. Singletary was shot and killed by undercover officers conducting a drug buy on his front lawn. He had confronted the officers with a rifle, thinking they were drug dealers. Those officers were cleared of any wrongdoing. Singletary's family has filed a lawsuit.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134908.html

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released the results of a poll that, among other things, asked Americans what they thought of government spending on scientific research. The poll found that a majority of Americans are big believers in the efficacy of government-funded research. As the Pew Center reported:

For its part, the general public endorses the idea that government outlays for research are necessary for scientific progress. Six-in-ten (60%) say “government investment in research is essential for scientific progress”; only about half as many (29%) say “private investment will ensure that enough scientific progress is made even without government investment.”

As is often the case with opinions about the role of government, there is a substantial partisan divide in views of government investment in scientific research. Fewer than half of conservative Republicans (44%) say that government investment in research is essential for scientific progress; 48% of conservative Republicans say private investment will ensure that scientific progress is made. By comparison, 56% of moderate and liberal Republicans, 59% of independents and a much larger majority of Democrats (71%) say that government investment in research is essential.

Scientific progress is a somewhat nebulous idea, but the Pew pollsters went on to ask if Americans thought that government "investments" in science "pay off" in the long run or not?  The pollsters found:

Regardless of whether they see government investment as essential to scientific progress, large majorities say that government investments in science do pay off. Nearly three-quarters of the public (73%) say that government investments in basic scientific research pay off in the long run, while a similar percentage (74%) holds that investments in engineering and technology pay off in the long run.

Opinions about these investments vary little across political and demographic groups. Eight-in-ten Democrats (80%) say that government investments in basic science research pay off in the long run, as do 72% of independents and 68% of Republicans. Views about whether government engineering and technological investments pay off largely mirror those about basic science investments.

One way to think about how government "investments" in science might "pay off" is to ask whether or not they end up increasing the growth rate of a country's gross domestic product. However, there is some evidence that government-funded scientific research is not the engine for growth the proponents claim it is. As I reported more than a year ago:

The issue is complicated, but what evidence is available is damning. In particular, Kealey cites a 2003 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report, The Sources of Economic Growth, which finds "a marked positive effect of business-sector R&D, while the analysis could find no clear-cut relationship between public R&D activities and growth, at least in the short term." This finding mirrored a 2001 OECD working paper which showed that higher spending by industry on R&D correlates well with higher economic growth rates. In contrast to the academic truisms about the need for federal funding, the study found that "business-performed R&D...drives the positive association between total R&D intensity and output growth." The OECD researchers noted that publicly funded defense research crowded out private research, "while civilian public research is neutral with respect to business-performed R&D."

In other words, government funded civilian research didn't appear to hurt the private sector but there was not much evidence that it helped, at least in the short term. The report concluded, "Research and development (R&D) activities undertaken by the business sector seem to have high social returns, while no clear-cut relationship could be established between non-business-oriented R&D activities and growth." Economic growth associated with R&D was linked almost entirely to private sector research funding. The OECD report did allow that perhaps publicly funded research might eventually result in long-term technology spillovers, but that contention was hard to evaluate. The 2003 OECD study also noted, "Taken at face value they suggest publicly-performed R&D crowds out resources that could be alternatively used by the private sector, including private R&D."

A 1995 analysis done by American University economist Walter Parker also finds that government funding crowds out private research. "Once private research is explicitly controlled for, the direct effect of public research is weakly negative, as might be the case if public research has crowding-out effects which adversely affect private output growth," concludes Parker. 

Go here for complete Pew survey results and here for my column on "The Failure of Scientific Central Planning."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/motherjones/main/~3/9i2iTYiF42g/borrowed-time

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

"Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit; but what I saw and experienced two days ago I am sure no one else as civilized as I am will ever see. I am writing for those who shall come a long time from now."

So began "The Prophecy," a mock futuristic fantasy set after some great Cold War cataclysm, which several members of my high school graduating class collaborated on back in 1962. It was, of course, for our yearbook and made fun of the class, A to Z. It was also a classic document of the moment, written by representatives of the first generation of "teenagers" who, crouching under their school desks as the sirens of an atomic-attack drill howled outside, imagined that no one in their world might make it.

"First of all, let me introduce myself," "I" continued. "I am Thomas M. Engelhardt, world renowned historian of the late twentieth century, should that mean anything to whoever reads this account. After the great invasion, I was maintaining a peaceful, contented existence in the private shelter I had built, and was completing the ninth and final volume of my masterpiece, The Influence of the Civil War on Mexican Art of the Twentieth Century..."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134906.html

http://www.pagehalffull.com/eatenup/2009/07/20/bbq/

http://www.pagehalffull.com/eatenup/2009/07/19/bbq/

Some kebab ingredients in readiness to shish.

Flaming heart.

The threaded zucchini, mushroom, shallot, radish, peppers, apple and bok choy.

Roasting the corn.

Until we’re down to the embers

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134902.html

Here are the top five most popular Hit & Run posts from last week:

Pic of the Day (Mid-1930s' Edition): Economic Suicide Girls Get Tattooed For the NRA! by Nick Gillespie (7/14)

Is Barbara Boxer the Orville Faubus of the Climate Committee? by Michael Moynihan (7/16)

"Suffering Under Capitalism" to Be Replaced By New, Better Type of Suffering, by  Michael Moynihan (7/17)

First-Pitchgate Redux: Barack Obama, For All His Faults, Already Clearly a Better President Than Gerald Ford, by Nick Gillespie (7/15)

Sotomayor on Second Amendment Incorporation, by Damon W. Root (7/14)

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134905.html

Ignore all the hype about the alleged need for new government sponsored manned space missions. As a commemoration of the event, just enjoy the newly cleaned up video from Apollo 11's landing on the moon 40 years ago here.

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/28112/

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134893.html

Last week's confirmation hearings for Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor featured discussion of gun control, affirmative action, abortion, and gay marriage, as well as many an utterance of the phrase "wise Latina." One thing that wasn't much discussed, however, was criminal justice, at least beyond a few Democrats boasting of Sotomayor's record of ruling against criminal defendants.

Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko explains that that's because as far as most national politicians of either party are concerned, there's really only one acceptable position on crime: We need to get tougher on it.

Read all about it here.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/134889.html

Last week's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor included much of what we expected: Probing questions from Republicans on hot-button culture war issues such as abortion, gay marriage, gun control, race, and affirmative action; and deference, deflection, and fawning praise from Democrats. Almost entirely left out of the discussion was a subject you might think has some relevance to the Supreme Court: the criminal justice system.

Determining the extent of constitutional protections for suspects and defendants may well be the Supreme Court's most important task. The framers of the Constitution thought so: four of the 10 amendments that make up the Bill of Rights lay out explicit protections for criminal defendants. Yet even though the Court has addressed a number of important Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment cases in recent years, Sotomayor was never seriously challenged on her record of criminal justice jurisprudence. The few times these issues were broached at all, it was in the form of a friendly question from a Democrat, phrased to demonstrate that Sotomayor will be as tough on crime as any Republican appointee.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, noted with satisfaction in his introductory comments that over the course of her career, Sotomayor has "ruled for the government in 83% of immigration cases, in 92% of criminal cases." Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a former prosecutor, used a portion of her Q&A with Sotomayor to highlight and praise instances in which Sotomayor was willing to excuse police officers who violated the Fourth Amendment. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also brought in law enforcement officials to testify in support of Sotomayor, including former Manhattan District Attorney Henry Morgenthau, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, and a representative from the Fraternal Order of Police. Republican members didn't call a single witness to critique Sotomayor's record on crime from the right. No wonder some criminal defense attorneys are worried.

One person neither party asked to testify is Jeffrey Deskovic, who was convicted at age 17 of a rape and murder he didn't commit. In 2000, Sotomayor and another judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals issued a curt, two-page ruling that refused to even consider Deskovic's innocence claim because his attorney filed four days late (the attorney says he was given bad information by a court clerk). "We have considered all of petitioner-appellant’s remaining arguments and find them to be without merit," the opinion read. Deskovic, who had already served 10 years, went on to serve another six before DNA testing led police to the actual killer. In a moving essay earlier this month, Descovic asked to be heard.

I want my case to be a part of the national discussion. I want Senators to ask Judge Sotomayor if she stands by her ruling, and whether she would rule that way in the future. If I could I would testify at the Senate confirmation hearing, about the human impact of Judge Sotomayor's putting procedure over innocence. Thus far, however, I have gotten no response from either side on Capitol Hill.

Last month, Vice President Biden told a gathering of law enforcement organizations that Sotomayor "has got your back," a startlingly inappropriate (even for Biden) assurance about a potential Supreme Court justice. Imagine the uproar if the vice president had said the same thing to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

But Biden isn't the only one to share that assessment. Sotomayor's confirmation has been endorsed by eight major law enforcement groups. The L.A. Times reported last month that according to former colleagues, Sotomayor's time as a "zealous prosecutor" made her into "something of a law-and-order judge, especially when it comes to police searches and the use of evidence." New York criminal defense lawyer Gerald Lefcourt said Sotomayor "always seemed to be leaning toward the government," adding that she was "very police-like. Dismissive of what the defendant had to say about anything." Slate's Emily Bazelon also reported on one extraordinary case in which Sotomayor was able to convince a more conservative 2nd Circuit judge to join her in overturning a jury verdict against an off-duty police officer accused of threatening and assaulting a truck driver, on grounds that even off-duty cops have broad powers to make arrests.

If a Republican nominee had such a criminal justice track record, leftist advocacy groups would probably be up in arms—or at least concerned. And rightly so. But even criminal justice groups have been conspicuously quiet. The American Civil Liberties Union did publish a thorough review of Sotomayor's judicial record, but has maintained a sort of passive support for her nomination. Executive Director Anthony Romero said that although "the ACLU does not officially endorse or oppose US Supreme Court candidates, I have never been personally prouder of any appointment." Romero must have a short memory. The ACLU explicitly opposed Samuel Alito in 2006, and was publicly critical of John Roberts in 2005.

This is all the more troubling given the critical role Sotomayor will likely play on key criminal justice cases during her likely tenure. In the last term alone, there were six crime cases in which the defense position won on a 5-4 vote, with departing Justice David Souter casting a vote with the majority. In one of those cases, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, the Court held that the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause gives criminal defendants the right to cross-examine any forensic expert whose work is submitted as evidence, a particularly important decision given a damning report on the reliability of forensic science issued earlier this year by the National Academic of Sciences. The decision has already sent shockwaves through the criminal justice system.

But just before ending its most recent term, the Court agreed to hear a case from Virginia (PDF) that raises similar issues regarding DNA testing. This has led some Court watchers to speculate that the minority in Melendez-Diaz sees Sotomayor as a potential ally who may join them to limit the scope of—or even overturn—last term's ruling. Sen. Klobuchar did ask Sotomayor about Melendez-Diaz, but only to express her disappointment with the ruling and her hope that the Court, presumably with Sotomayor's help, will overturn it. Sotomayor gave a typical confirmaiton hearing answer, acknowleding Klobuchar's concerns, stating that Melendez-Diaz is now established law, but ultimately refraining from speculating on how or whether she might limit its impact.

The New York Times reported in January that the Court is inching ever closer to eliminating or rendering impotent the Exclusionary Rule, which bars evidence obtained through illegal searches from being admitted at trial. Chief Justice John Roberts, the paper explained, is a longtime opponent of the rule, having led a campaign to repeal it as a young attorney in the Reagan administration. Replacing Souter, a fairly reliable defender of the Exclusionary Rule, with a former prosecutor like Sotomayor will likely at least narrow the rule’s application. Wall Street Journal reporters Jess Bravin and Nathan Koppel came to a similar conclusion last month, writing that while Sotomayor "stands in the liberal mainstream on many issues, her record suggests that the Supreme Court nominee could sometimes rule with the top court's conservatives on questions of criminal justice."

Content-free as they were, last week’s hearings were a tidy composite of the national debate over criminal justice issues. Which is to say that there really isn't any such debate. By conventional wisdom, defendants’ rights have traditionally been a concern only of the left. But you'd never know that by observing national politics. Criminal justice activists are fond of saying that Republicans are evil, but Democrats are spineless. That's not entirely accurate. Democrats such as Biden have been plenty active in dismantling constitutional protections against police power. Some of today's most draconian federal crime statutes were authored by Democrats.

Even as DNA testing has exposed serious flaws in a process once believed to be mostly (or at least tolerably) just, politics still really only affords one acceptible position on crime: We need to get tougher on it.

It's possible that worries over Sotomayor’s tough-on-crime jurisprudence are misplaced. Perhaps thus far in her career, her written opinions were bound by existing case law and procedural rules, and that as a precedent-setting Supreme Court justice she'll prove to be a staunch defender of the Exclusionary Rule and the Confrontation Clause, and her sensitivity to innocence claims will be sharpened by cases like Jeffrey Deskovic's.

It's possible. The problem is that we really have no idea. Because no one bothered to ask.

Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134904.html

At the New York Times debate blog, Senior Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward mixes it up with a traffic expert, a couple of psychologists, and the head of the National Safety Council on driving while dialing, texting, chatting, or otherwise using a cellular device.

She writes:

We humans are also notably bad at comparing concentrated costs with diffuse benefits. It’s easy to tally up the costs of dialing while driving — there are accident reports and mortality figures. But it’s much harder to add up all the benefits.

Think of every carpool disaster averted, grocery list amended, or stress-relieving traffic update made possible by the use of cellphones in cars. Think of every kid who got through to his mom, every long-distance relationship maintained, every roadtrip rescued. True, these aren’t matters of life and death, but billions of tiny gains in happiness and reductions in stress are too often overlooked in public policy debates.

Read the whole debate here.

http://lupiloops.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/big-funny-reviews/

http://lupiloops.wordpress.com/?p=540

http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/07/19/review-big-funny

http://www.poopsheetfoundation.com/profiles/blogs/review-big-funny-for-those-who

Minnesota peeps, don’t forget to go see the show at Altered Esthetics

Tagged: big funny

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134899.html

Here's what you were reading last week at Reason.com:

SWAT Gone Wild in Maryland: A botched raid on a small-town Maryland mayor exposes widespread abuse by the state's SWAT teams, by Radley Balko (7/13)

Science Fiction 'Czar': The disturbing intellectual record of Obama's science czar, by David Harsanyi (7/15)

Trivial Pursuit in Washington: Do we really need federal laws governing carry-on luggage, college football, and switchblades? by Steve Chapman (7/15)

Health Care Competition: If the policy elite really wanted to cut costs, they would deregulate medicine, by John Stossel (7/16)

The 'Public Option' Health Care Scam: Why Obama's plan won't work, by Steve Chapman (7/16)

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134903.html

From the Washington Post:

Violent crime has plummeted in the Washington area and in major cities across the country, a trend criminologists describe as baffling and unexpected. 

The District, New York and Los Angeles are on track for fewer killings this year than in any other year in at least four decades. Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and other cities are also seeing notable reductions in homicides.

"Experts did not see this coming at all," said Andrew Karmen, a criminologist and professor of sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

In the District and Prince George's County, homicides are down about 17 percent this year.

Criminologists have different theories about why crime is down so much, although many agree that the common belief that crime is connected to the economy is false.

Baltimore and Dallas are two big cities that are not enjoying a drop in murders. Much of the rest of the Post article is D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier crowing about how her department's techniques are the reason for the drop, including bigger cash payouts to citizens for tips that lead to convictions, and deeper embedding of beat cops into communities.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134901.html

President Barack Obama spoke last week at a gala event celebrating the NAACP's 100th anniversary. After some words of praise for the group's history and accomplishments, his focus shifted to the youth of today:

To parents, we can't tell our kids to do well in school and fail to support them when they get home. For our kids to excel, we must accept our own responsibilities. That means putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. It means attending those parent-teacher conferences, reading to our kids, and helping them with their homework.

That certainly sounds good, but as the Cato Institute's Adam Schaeffer reminds us, Obama recently turned his back on a group of students and parents struggling to succeed in one of the country's worst school districts:

This, from the man who supports killing the DC voucher program, the ONLY education reform empirically proven to work through multiple random-assignment studies. These are thousands of young lives we are talking about.

This, from a man who sends his daughters to one of the most expensive private schools in the country, rather than the miserably failing and unsafe schools in their backyard.

Make no mistake, President Obama knows exactly what he's doing and what his action and inaction means.

Back in May, Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie and Dan Hayes spent some time with Mercedes Campbell, one of the 1,700 students in the DC voucher program that Obama effectively killed. Click below to see her side of the story.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134900.html

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait accuses Nick Gillespie and I of writing in bad faith this weekend when we urged Barack Obama to govern more like post-1994 Bill Clinton than mid-malaise Jimmy Carter: "One of the most tiresome forms of opinion commentary is bad-faith advice to a political figure from a writer who is utterly opposed to his ideological goals." For instance, we allegedly "urge Obama to abandon the platform that he ran on" when we implore him to stop "throwing money all over the economy."

I don't know much about Jon Chait's faith (aside from the fact that as of 2006 he had so much faith in John McCain that he wrote the following couplet: "Go ahead, senator, flip-flop away. I know you're with us at heart")...so let's stick to verifiable claims.

First, is "throwing money all over the economy" really the "platform" that Barack Obama ran on? No, it is not.

Here is Obama on Oct. 15, 2008, more than three weeks after George W. Bush wet his pants over the financial crisis:

What I've done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut....I have been a strong proponent of pay as you go. Every dollar [in spending] that I've proposed, I've proposed an additional cut so that it matches.

Funny, if Obama really were following in Bush's footsteps, you'd think that the few remaining defenders of the Bush legacy might be at least somewhat favorably disposed toward him, rather than railing hysterically against him.

But this is the sort of absurdity you get when people write opinion articles pretending to offer sympathetic political advice to a politician whose goals they abhor. If the Libertarian Party ever wins the White House, I promise not to write columns advising the president to raise taxes on the rich, expand health care coverage and start regulating assault weapons.

First, who the hell was being "sympathetic," and second, since when does opinion writer Jonathan Chait not write columns advising a president he doesn't agree with from making different policy decisions? I still remember the Bush administration (hell, I remember editing Jon Chait columns at the L.A. Times during the Bush administration!), and I do not recall the man sitting on his hands out of some kind of bizarre good-faith deference. Nor would I want him to.

* UPDATE: Commenter Hugh Akston points out that this could be more of a, "if their thesis was true, Karl Rove would be applauding" type of argument. Which, if true, is not a "non-sequitur," but just a weird argument (we should not be surprised that heavy political operatives oppose politicians from the opposing party, and in fact many non-apparatchik conservatives, such as David Brooks, have murmured praise in Obama's general direction).

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/motherjones/main/~3/4Ln8SQjEMX0/and-rand-played

LAST OCTOBER, three weeks before the election of Barack Obama, Helen Smith decided she'd already had enough. A forensic psychologist, wife of so-called Blogfather Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, and herself a blogger for the conservative Pajamas Media network, Smith liked what she'd heard from Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, who had questioned candidate Obama's plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000—despite being in no danger of earning anything near that much himself.

Something about the semi-employed, blue-collar media darling reminded Smith of John Galt, the mysterious industrialist hero of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged. Fed up with the federal government's confiscatory economic policies, Galt urged his fellow "producers" to go on a "strike of the mind" to starve the "looters" who were redistributing wealth to the "moochers." Smith asked her readers to come up with ways to "go John Galt"—that is, "cut back on what they need, make less money, and take it easy so that the government is starved of funds."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/motherjones/main/~3/2X_EYuyCXu8/im-rand

Angelina Jolie: "I just think [Ayn Rand] has a very interesting philosophy...You reevaluate your own life and what's important to you."

Christina Ricci: "My favorite book is The Fountainhead...I relate to it because of the idea that you're not a bad person if you don't love everyone."

Vince Vaughn: "The last book I read was the book I've been rereading most of my life—The Fountainhead."

Rob Lowe: "Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is a stupendous achievement and I just adore it."

Eva Mendes: Any potential boyfriend "has to be an Ayn Rand fan."

Mark Cuban: "I don't know how many times I have read [The Fountainhead], but it got to the point where I had to stop because I would get too fired up."

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.): Recently tweeted, "Still reading Atlas Shrugged, quite the read."

Hugh Hefner: The Fountainhead "is a compelling tribute to man's quest for personal freedom."

Billie Jean King: "Like Dagny Taggart, I had to learn how to be selfish, although selfish has the wrong connotation. As I see it, being selfish is really doing your own thing."

Jerry Lewis: The Fountainhead is "a very profound book...Makes you think!"

Brad Pitt: The Fountainhead "is so dense and complex, it would have to be a six-hour movie."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134898.html

Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. [...]

The key to understanding Obama's predicament is to realize that while he ran convincingly as a repudiation of Bush, he is in fact doubling down on his predecessor's big-government policies and perpetual crisis-mongering. From the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists to gays in the military to bailing out industries large and small, Obama has been little more than the keeper of the Bush flame. Indeed, it took the two of them to create the disaster that is the 2009 budget, racking up a deficit that has already crossed the historic $1 trillion mark with almost three months left in the fiscal year. [...]

In the same way that Bush claimed to be cutting government even while increasing real spending by more than 70 percent, Obama seems to believe that saying one thing, while doing another, somehow makes it so. His first budget was titled "A New Era of Fiscal Responsibility," even as his own projections showed a decade's worth of historically high deficits. He vowed no new taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then jacked up cigarette taxes and indicated a willingness to consider new health-care taxes as part of his reform package. He said he didn't want to take over General Motors on the day that he took over General Motors. [...]

What the new president has not quite grasped is that the American people understand both irony and cognitive dissonance. Instead, Obama has mistaken his personal popularity for a national predilection toward emergency-driven central planning.