Reason Magazine - Staff

California's Egg Shortage

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:19:00 EDT

In 2004 California passed Proposition 71, allocating $3 billion to stem cell research. The same measure banned compensation for women who would provide raw materials for said research. Thus:

Facing a human egg shortage they say is preventing medical breakthroughs, scientists and biotech entrepreneurs are pushing the country's top funders of stem cell research to rethink rules that prohibit paying women for eggs.

"You need to have enough eggs to make this thing work, and when you have enough eggs it does work," said Dr. Sam Wood, chief executive of Stemagen Corp. in La Jolla (San Diego County).
The restrictions are necessary, supporters say, to avoid creating a market for human eggs that encourages women to risk their health for speculative science.

But last month, the California institute's new president, Dr. Alan Trounson, said research into therapeutic cloning was "floundering" because too few eggs are available.

The risk of death from egg donation appears to be less than that of pregnancy. Even the small numbers we have (between 1 fatality per 50,000 cycles and 1 fatality per 450,000 cycles) are probably exaggerated, since most people who experience serious complications are pregnant women who have had their own eggs removed and implanted. It's difficult to disentangle the effects of the retrieval from those of the pregnancy itself.

But let's say the risks of egg vending are found to be unacceptably high by some mysterious calculus of female danger. The authors of Prop 71 apparently believe that it is all right for women to take this extremely serious risk; it's simply unacceptable to compensate young women for putting themselves in harm's way. They're quite welcome to "risk their health for speculative science" so long as they do so out of feminine self-sacrifice. (Money would just confuse them, the poor dears.) I'm still waiting for someone to demand that we stop paying American soldiers to avoid creating a market that encourages men to risk their health for highly speculative military initiatives.

CIS: Enforcement Might Work! Or Not! But Probably!

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:47:00 EDT

The population of undocumented workers in the country seems to be declining, which one would expect with a slowing economy and moribund construction industry. Part of this may be due to raids and deportations, but it's extremely difficult to disaggregate the effects of enforcement from those of unemployment. This becomes abundantly clear while reading the Center for Immigration Studies' attempt to establish that undocumented workers are lining up to leave because the Department of Homeland Security is mindblowingly effective.

The CIS report "Homeward Bound" (Pdf) is getting a lot of play from people who seem to have misunderstood the report, which is understandable, since it's an evasive and confusing 12 pages. The strategy here seems to be to stuff the executive summary with bold speculation and follow up with a study full of to-be-sures and it-is-certainly-plausibles and it-must-be-remembered-thats and but-of-courses:

Although both legal and illegal immigrants are subject to the economic downturn, it seems that only the illegal immigrant population is declining. This is consistent with the idea that the enforcement of immigration laws is causing the decline.

Of course, less-educated workers in general are more vulnerable to hardship during an economic downturn than are more-educated individuals. This fact may also partly explain why the number of less-educated, young Hispanics immigrants fell while the rest of the adult immigrant population did not fall in the same way.

A less tortured way to put this is: "As always happens in times of economic downturn, the most transient and vulnerable immigrants leave first." The report defines the "likely illegal immigrant population" as young foreign-born Hispanics with little education. Even in the context of a good economic climate, young uneducated foreign-born men without status comprise the major demographic group least likely to stay in the United States for long periods of time. They're mobile.

The report also claims that the undocumented population began leaving before August 2007, when the country saw a jump in the unemployment rate. Thus, argue the authors, they must have been running from ICE. But as researchers at the Immigration Policy Center write in a point-by-point rebuttal, "the economic downturn in many of the industries where undocumented immigrants tend to be employed began well before August 2007."

My own (speculative!) view is that an aggressive employer sanctions law in the state of Arizona has driven out significant numbers of immigrants, who may either be returning to Mexico or moving on to less restrictionist states. Arizona has made it more difficult for unauthorized workers to find work, which distinguishes it from states that are merely subject to random ICE raids. But even in Arizona, where enforcement measures are the most severe in the country, responsible economists say they can't be completely sure why people are moving on. As always, the most surefire anti-immigrant policy is one that contributes to economic decline.

How FISA Feeds Fabulists

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:03:00 EDT

Mathematician John Allen Paulos on party games and FISA:

In [Daniel] Dennett's more interesting and suggestive game, one person, the subject, is selected from a group of people at a party and asked to leave the room. He is told that in his absence one of the other partygoers will relate a recent dream to the other party attendees. The person selected then returns to the party and, through a sequence of Yes or No questions about the dream, attempts to accomplish two things: reconstruct the dream and identify whose dream it was.

The punch line is that no one has related any dream. The individual partygoers are instructed to respond either Yes or No to the subject's questions according to some completely arbitrary rule. Any rule will do, however, and may be supplemented by a non-contradiction clause so that no answer directly contradicts an earlier one. The Yes or No requirement can be loosened as well to allow for vagueness and evasion.

The result is that the subject, impelled by his own obsessions, often constructs an outlandish and obscene dream in response to the random answers he elicits. He may think he knows whose dream it is, but then the ruse is revealed to him and he is told that the dream really has no author. In a strong sense, however, the subject himself is the dream weaver. His preoccupations dictated his questions which, even if answered negatively at first, frequently received a positive response in a later formulation to a different partygoer. These positive responses were then pursued.

What's that got to do with warrantless surveillance? Faced with random stores of information, investigators will feel driven to tease out a narrative. The wider the net, the more fertile the ground for storytelling: Delusion will be rewarded, biases confirmed.

Having so much unfiltered information (phone records, emails, internet searches, travel itineraries, financial statements, Facebook postings, credit card bills, etcetera) with which to work and having no requirement for specific focus or judicial warrant, any wild hunch or obsession can be pursued relentlessly without fear of disconfirmation.

The resulting combinatorial explosion of connections and interconnections will always provide ample raw material for the development of any investigative group's pet theory. If, for example, there are 400,000 Americans (and a million names) on the terrorist watch list, as the ACLU announced last month, then there are about 80 billion pairs of possible co-conspirators on the list and more than 10 quadrillion possible threesomes on the list. Search this large "party" diligently enough for confirmatoryYesses and ignore willfully enough disconfirmatory Noes, and who knows what will result.

Via Matt Steinglass, who has more.

Berlusconi Hides Nipple of Truth

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:49:00 EDT

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi likes the painting to the right, a Giambattista Tiepolo work called "La Verità Svelata dal Tempo." (The Truth Unveiled by Time.) He likes it so much that he gives news conferences with a reproduction of the painting as backdrop. Truth, the young woman, is front and center. She's also showing some nip. So Berlusconi's office painted on some modesty:

"It's a wonderful concept, that the passing of time will show who is right and who is wrong," said Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums. "It's the perfect choice of a message for a government."
It was retouched in recent weeks to cover an exposed breast, which "might have upset the sensitivity of some viewers," Paolo Bonaiuti, the prime minister's spokesman, told the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera over the weekend.
"That breast, that little nipple, ends up right in the shots that TVs make during press conferences," Bonaiuti said.
Bonaiuti said the touchup had been the "initiative of those who look after the prime minister's image."

Vittorio Sgarbi, a former culture minister in Mr Berlusconi's first government and the country's best known art critic, reacted forcefully to the news. "Mad. They are all mad," he said.

Don't worry, Prime Minister; John Ashcroft has your back. Personally, I think the allegory works better now.

Lipstick Libertarians

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EDT

...

"No" Means "No More Human Race"

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:16:00 EDT

Worried about global fertility decline? Blame the sexual harassment deficit!

A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.
The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.
"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.
According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

The correlation between high levels of sexual harassment and high fertility in developed countries is, um, not strong.

I argue that "periods of anxiety over 'race suicide' are rarely good times for women" here.

More Fun With Laptop Detention

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:03:00 EDT

As Mike Riggs notes below, the Department of Homeland Security now claims the right to seize your laptop "absent individualized suspicion" for as long as it deems "reasonable" whenever you dare cross an international border. Back in June, Ohio State University Law Professor Peter Swire slowly explained (pdf) the stupidity of this approach to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. First, the futility:

Laptop searches will not succeed at a technical level at preventing data from entering or leaving the United States. Computer security researcher Chris Soghoian in May posted a story called “Keep Your Data Safe at the Border. Soghoian presents an eight-point checklist for how to get your data legally across the border without being searched. The primary trick is to send encrypted files to yourself once you get to your destination country.
The Soghoian article shows the futility yet burden imposed by laptop searches at the border. Any terrorist who is even moderately well-informed can learn how to send the crucial files legally and safely across the border. In addition, a terrorist who is willing to lie to the customs agent (certainly a possibility worth considering) can use TrueCrypt or other software that does the following trick—it allows you to encrypt a secret cache of data inside your encrypted hard drive. Then, when an investigator forces you to open your encrypted files, the secret cache remains invisible to the investigator. This TrueCrypt approach requires lying to the custom agent about whether you have opened up all of your files, but it is a technical measure already available with widely available software.

The evildoers wouldn't lie to a customs agent, would they? It's always a good sign when your strategy relies on the moral integrity of terrorists. Swire's testimony also includes a list of the kind of material one might not want to share with some guy at the airport: "diaries, love letters, a lifetime of saved email, private photos, passwords, financial and medical records," trade secrets, campaign secrets, journalists' notes and so on.

As commenter "nothinghead" (not a helpful handle, but hey) mentions below, visitors headed to China are being advised to either encrypt or wipe data before flying out. Sam Brownback (R—Kan.) complains that Americans "will be subjected to invasive intelligence-gathering" by China's Public Security Bureau. Imagine that.

Via Thinkprogress.

Course Correction

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:00:00 EDT

State Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) wants to clarify what kind of content is acceptable in Arizona’s classrooms, so he has called for a ban on public school courses that are contrary to “western civilization.” Pearce’s proposal would prohibit a public school from including content deemed to “promote, assert as truth or feature as an exclusive focus any political, religious, ideological or cultural beliefs or values that denigrate, disparage or overtly encourage dissent from the values of American democracy and western civilization, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration.” The bill would also ban race-based groups, such as Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, from operating on public campuses. The legislation follows a controversy over Tucson Unified School District’s “Raza Studies” program.

“This bill basically says, ‘You’re here. Adopt American values,’ ” Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills) told The Arizona Republic. “If you want a different culture, then fine, go back to that culture.” The House Appropriations Committee approved the measure by a vote of nine to six, but Pearce told PBS the measure is probably “written too broadly” and would be revised before it goes up for a vote.

Notes on My Life Sentence of Self-Negation

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:09:00 EDT

Last week I participated in a panel discussion with three women who had, like me, exchanged some ova for cash. It was in a bar basement; everyone was drinking; and my co-panelists—Valerie Bronte, Diana Fleischman, and Marie Huber—happened to be insanely funny, smart people who changed my mind about a few aspects of the process.

I spent my allotted time explaining that my emotional response does not seem to conform to the acceptable cultural script. Reporters call and ask “How painful was it?” and “Do you regret it now?” It wasn’t painful, I reply, I’m quite happy to have had the experience. Awkward silence. They ask whether I know someone else they can talk to. I’m never quoted. In conversation I generally feel pushed to say that I feel somehow traumatized, and I have at times felt ashamed for not feeling more seriously affected by the transaction. I’ve since come to recognize this as a kind of emotional bullying, a push to elicit expected emotional responses.

Melissa Lafsky of the Huffington Post was sitting directly in front of me, listening but perhaps not quite understanding. On cue, she has written a long post criticizing three of us for not engaging the experience with the appropriate frequency of conflicted emotional fraught-ness. All those egg jokes we were cracking? Woe are we three sad, ova-selling clowns:

But when it came to the messy internal aspects -- whether or not it felt exploitative to sell a piece of their genetic material, whether or not it was humiliating, frightening, or painful to manipulate their bodies with constant drugs and surgeries, whether or not it bothered them to produce genetic offspring that they'd never know or raise -- there was nary a word. Instead, glib comments ruled the day...One woman, when asked how she felt about a child (or two, or three) made from her eggs existing unknown to her, joked that she liked the idea of climbing a mountain in 18 years and “summoning my dark army.”

We’ve reached a funny point in the whole feminism game. The new card to play is honesty, where taboos and dirty little secrets about sex, fertility, selling eggs, rape, abortion, etc. are no longer whispered behind closed doors…

I like the idea of “playing the honesty card.” You didn’t lie about being gang-raped? Stop playing the honesty card!

But somehow, all the cultural openness has taken an ironic twist. In this age of “oversharing,”… it’s still somehow unacceptable to acknowledge the feelings and emotions that inevitably accompany these things. As with the “Thinking and Drinking” debacle, women are displaying an unrealistic and dangerous rush to stamp out all those pesky emotions, toss a few gallons of denial on top, and cover the whole thing up with a joke. We bring “issues” like rape and abortion to the forefront in a show of power, but then shield ourselves in deadpan nihilism to avoid looking weak, even when we’re writing or speaking about how we were date raped, or sexually abused, or had our eggs sucked out through a needle.

It’s true that there’s no one way to react to these traumas — yes, having your eggs harvested counts as trauma, all rapier wit aside — and you can’t slap a label on them classifying the damage. Having your body invaded, your sense of control and power eliminated, is traumatic regardless of gender…. there’s a huge distinction between laughing at your abortion and laughing off your abortion, and the discrepancy can be the difference between regaining power versus a life sentence of buried self-negation.

There is nothing I can say here that won’t contribute to my life sentence of buried self-negation, but it’s worth noting that Lafsky is bounding the range of acceptable emotional responses available to half the population. (Of course you were traumatized! Don’t you know how emotional women are?) I’ve no doubt that some women, perhaps many women, are distraught after their ova retrievals. But why on earth would we all have the same reaction? Why not allow women—most human beings—to individuate emotionally? And why does Lafsky want it to have been so troubling for each and every one of us?

…It sure would have been comforting if at least one of these brilliant, self-possessed women had admitted, “Yeah, I’ve been conflicted. I’ve had strong feelings, and sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. But I chose it, and that was my choice, so if I burst into tears at the memory of the pain, or the thought that my child could be walking around the world never knowing me, well, I deal with it. And I find a way to laugh.”

This isn’t an accurate description of the panel, perhaps because the author stomped out in disgust partway through. Each of us did in fact give reasons why we felt conflicted about the experience; Bronte said that at times it felt cheapening, Huber that it was very physically painful. (See how it was painful for some of us and not for others? Almost like we’re different people?) Fleischman and I said we would much prefer women to choose adoption, a point I mentioned in my reason piece, which Lafsky links to and draws a few facts from in order to establish her expertise in the whole ugly business.

It’s worth pointing out that anyone who repeatedly lumps together rape, abortion, and IVF either thinks very little of the line between coercion and autonomy, or thinks very little, full stop. I would never dream of writing a Lafskian blog post telling women who have been raped how they all ought to feel about it. But I do understand that it will always be more subversive, more difficult, to admit a lack of emotion in these circumstances rather than an excess. To say: I had an abortion, and felt nothing; I sold my eggs, and enjoyed it; I was a sex worker, and loved it. Break taboos, and the world wants contrition. Didn't you receive your emotional marching orders?

But there I go playing the honesty card again! I’ll try to stick to script from now on, and I look forward to future posts on how I feel about my childhood, ex-boyfriends, career prospects, etc.

Immigration Judges "Certainly Capable" of Learning How to Judge Immigration Cases

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:03:00 EDT

Reflecting upon Monica Goodling's quest to populate the Department of Justice with ass-kissing straight people, Tim Rutten writes:

When the next administration and Congress begin the urgent work of sorting out precisely how and why the Bush-Cheney regime systematically undermined the rule of law, there are a couple of things that ought to be kept in mind.

One is that their efforts were essentially ideological rather than partisan.

I'm not sure that analysis makes any sense after reading parts of the report (pdf) on hiring-related shenanigans. To what ideology does a potential U.S. attorney subscribe when he answers a question like: What about George Bush makes you want to serve him? Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson also hired dozens of immigration judges, and there is no good evidence that they sought to hire judges based on anything but loyalty to the party. They simply transformed a civil service position into a political thank-you gift, giving men and women with little or no experience in immigration law the power to deport people and refuse asylum to potential refugees. (In defense of one hire with no immigraton-related experience, a former DOJ official reasoned "He is certainly capable of mastering immigration law." )

The only link among the newest crop of immigration judges is a lack of experience and a recommendation from a party member calling in a favor. Reading the report, I was afraid I'd find that Goodling had placed a bunch of restrictionists in positions of power over immigrants with few rights. She seems to have favored Republican lapdogs.

Global Scrabble Update

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:11:00 EDT

Reason intern Mike Riggs notes that Hasbro has quashed the Scrabulous menace. But will no one stop the state-backed Senegalese scrabble traffickers?

Senegal is Scrabble-mad. Street vendors all over Dakar hawk the board game and now the West African nation is the proud host of the French language Scrabble world championships.

It is one of the first things newcomers to the Senegalese capital notice with the ubiquitous street vendors who sell everything from washcloths to entire sets of china. Oddly, one of their most commonly sold items are bootleg Scrabble games, a testament to the game's popularity.

In Senegal, Scrabble is a source of national pride and the West African country has racked up nine world championship titles since 2000. One of the former champions, Ndongo Matar Sylla, is now one of president Abdoulaye Wade's close advisors.

The 37th championship even has its own official song composed by Senegalese singer Pape Diouf that proclaims "Senegal loves scrabble" and boasts that it became world champion "ahead of some 30 other countries".

This former French colony is proud of its Scrabble prowess and promotes the game in schools. Surprisingly for such a Scrabble-mad nation, the literacy rate is only 41 percent, according to World Bank figures, and most inhabitants consider Wolof rather than French their first language.

"In Africa, Scrabble is considered as a real sports discipline while in Europe, it's seen as a simple game and the government is not really interested," said Patrice Jeanneret of Switzerland, president of the International Francophone Scrabble Federation FISF.

"Here, everybody goes to school at six-years-old and Scrabble is promoted to help with developing their French and their grammar," Sega Diallo, an international Scrabble judge and part of the championship organizing committee, told AFP.

How long will it take for someone to make the connection between illicit word play and global terror?

Via Chris Blattman.

Monica Goodling Serves the President

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:51:00 EDT

The DOJ's Inspector General has released a 146-page (pdf) "Investigation of Allegations of
Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General." Via the Washington Independent comes a sampling of ways in which Goodling assessed whether lawyers were qualified to act as chief prosecutors for the United States:

The report gives eight instances where candidates who qualified for positions like counter-terrorism prosecutor and asst. U.S. attorneys were turned down by Goodling due to questions about their GOP loyalty. Goodling gave each of these employees interview questions like "Aside from the President, give us an example currently or recently of someone in public service that you admire" and "Why are you a Republican?" Several prospective employees told the inspector general that Goodling often steered the conversation to questions about abortion and gay marriage. For instance, one employee might have thought they were displaying their GOP bona fides by naming Condoleezza Rice as their most admired politician. But Goodling "frowned" and replied "but she's pro-choice."

Goodling also performed Lexis Nexis searches on prospective candidates by typing in their names in tandem with words like "abortion," "gay," and "homosexual." She also mined www.opensecrets.org for prospective employee's political contributions.

Also on the list of interview questions: "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?", which sounds like a Twilight Zone punchline. In Goodling's favor, she apparently makes excellent brownies.

Quit Using Bad Platitudes!

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:52:00 EDT

The Dongcheng District Propaganda Department has prepared a helpful list of things not to say to Olympic tourists, lest they figure out that they're in a foreign country:

Rules for Interacting With Foreigners
Don’t ask about income or expenses, don’t ask about age, don’t ask about love life or marriage, don’t ask about health, don’t ask about someone’s home or address, don’t ask about personal experience, don’t ask about religious beliefs or political views, don’t ask what someone does.

Etiquette for Interacting With Handicapped Athletes
Pay attention to avoiding taboo subjects, quit using bad platitudes, and do not use insulting or discriminatory contemptuous or derogatory terms to address the disabled. Say things such as, “You are amazing,” or “You are really great.” When chatting with the visually impaired, do not say things like “It’s up ahead,” or “It’s over there.” When chatting with athletes who are paraplectic in their upper body, do not say things like “It’s behind you.”

Via Peaceful Rise.

The Road Out of Serfdom

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:56:00 EDT

What's the largest form of wage discrimination in the world today? To answer that question, Lant Pritchett, Michael Clemens, and Claudia Montenegro have compiled this handy chart for you:

Wage gaps between observably identical Nigerian workers in the United States and Nigerian workers in Nigeria (same gender, education, work experience, etc) are... considerable. They swamp the wage gaps between men and women in the US. They swamp the gaps between whites and blacks in the US. Actually, they swamp the wage gaps between whites and blacks in the United States in 1855. For several countries, the effect of border restrictions on the wages of workers of equal productivity "is greater than any form of wage discrimination (gender, race, or ethnicity) that has ever been measured." The labor protectionism that keeps poor workers out of rich countries upholds one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market.

Who cares? You weren't planning on seeking employment in Nigeria anyway. The upshot is that even a very limited loosening of borders could do enormous, immediate good. No other poverty alleviation policy—microcredit, education, public health interventions, anti-sweatshop activism—compares with a work visa, even a temporary one. The Pritchettarians do the math:

"Simply allowing one member of a Bangladeshi household to work in the US for one month (for a gain of US$835 in present value) brings a larger increase in earnings to that household than a lifetime of microcredit (for a gain of US$683 in present value)."

"The cumulative lifetime effect of the anti-sweatshop movement on an Indonesian worker’s earnings could be earned if that person had the chance to work in the US once for a period of about 30 weeks."

"An additional year of schooling [in Bolovia] is associated with an annual wage gain of $205. The net present value of a lifetime of such additional payments is about $2250.35 which is about 21% of the annual wage gain to a Bolivian working in the US."

The paper is here, and my interview with Lant Pritchett is here. Another classic Pritchett chart can be viewed here.

Via Chris Blattman.

Attn NYC Reasonoids: Debate at Lolita

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:07:00 EDT

I'll be at Lolita Bar tonight discussing markets in reproduction with fellow ova-vendors Valerie Bronte and Diana Fleischman. The panel discussion begins at 8pm and all are welcome. More info here and here.

Support Property Rights, Hide a Non-Asylum Seeker Behind An Illegal Hedge

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:44:00 EDT

British officials looking to bust into a home or business have over 1,000 legal justifications to choose from, reports the Daily Mail. Here are a handy few:

• Invade your home to see if your pot plants have pests or do not have a 'plant passport' (Plant Health England Order 2005).
• Survey your home and garden to see if your hedge is too high (Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003).
• Check that accommodation given to asylum seekers is not being lived in by non-asylum seekers (Immigration and Asylum Act 1999).
• Raid a house to check if unlicensed gambling is taking place (Gambling Act 2005 Inspection Regulations 2007).
• Seize fridges without the correct energy rating (Energy Information Household Refrigerators and Freezers Regulations 2004).

Whole breathless article here.

Via Bitchgirls.

The Inequality That Matters

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:31:00 EDT

Global inequality is declining:

Linked to the current mood, commentators often depict an embattled and shrinking middle class, with sharply rising financial inequality. However, globally, this is simply not true. One of the most startlingly positive phenomena for many generations continues to unfold around the world. We are in the middle of an explosion of the world’s middle class.

As two of my colleagues, Dominic Wilson and Raluca Dragusanu, showed in a paper Goldman Sachs published last week (The Expanding Middle: The Exploding World Middle Class and Falling Global Inequality), about 70m people a year globally are entering this wealth group, as defined by those on incomes of between $6,000 and $30,000 (€3,800-€19,000, £3,900-£15,000), in purchasing power parity terms.

The phenomenon may continue for the next 20 years, with this global middle accelerating to 90m a year by 2030. If this happens, an astonishing 2bn people will have joined the ranks of the middle class. This demonstrates that, contrary to widespread opinion, global inequality is declining significantly, not increasing.

Andrew Leonard of Salon's excellent How the World Works says Americans don't care because "localism always prevails."

Working class voters in Ohio, for example, are unlikely to care that the world is getting richer, when in their own country, the concentration of wealth is progressively skewed towards the top end of the spectrum. For global inequality trends to make any kind of psychological difference to the psyche of those "in the west" a sense of a shared global identity is required. But we don't have that. We are riven by nationalist, cultural, and racial identity politics. We do not see ourselves as one world.

Sure, localism often trumps globalism, but who gets to define the boundaries of "local"? Coalitional solidarities are malleable. My great grandparents thought of themselves as Neapolitan, and had they stayed in Italy, they would have come to see themselves as Italian. Their great great grandchildren might well have called themselves European. Christian minorities in Northern Burma don't willingly identify with any particular nation state, but they do identify with a global religious network. The hypothetical Ohio voter probably has no way to relate to the Indian middle class right now, and he isn't going to vote differently because Goldman Sachs says standards of living are rising in China. But there is nothing necessary or permanent about that.

The Politics of Exclusion

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:00:00 EDT

...

What Women Want

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:30:00 EDT

...

Reason on Red Eye

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:14:00 EDT

I'll be on tonight with Attack of the Show's Anna David, and, presumably, some other people. The show starts at 3am on FNC.

"Either People Have Rights or They Have Uniforms."

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:45:00 EDT

At Butterflies and Wheels, Kenan Malik has a brilliant piece on the mythology of "cultural preservation." It's long and dense and well worth reading in full.

'It is in the interest of every person to be fully integrated in a cultural group’, Joseph Raz has written. But what is to be fully integrated? If a Muslim woman rejects sharia law, is she demonstrating her lack of integration? What about a Jew who doesn’t believe in the legitimacy of the Jewish State? Or a French Quebecois who speaks only English? Would Galileo have challenged the authority of the Church if he had been ‘fully integrated’ into his culture? Or Thomas Paine have supported the French Revolution? Or Salman Rushdie written The Satanic Verses? Cultures only change, societies only move forwards because many people, in Kwame Appiah’s words, ‘actively resist being fully integrated into a group’. To them ‘integration can sound like regulation, even restraint’. Far from giving voice to the voiceless, in other words, the politics of difference appears to undermine individual autonomy, reduce liberty and enforce conformity. You will speak French, you will act gay, don’t rock the cultural boat. The alternatives, the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut suggests, are simple: ‘Either people have rights or they have uniforms; either they can legitimately free themselves from oppression… or else their culture has the last word.’
A century ago intellectuals worried about the degeneration of the race. Today we fear cultural decay. Is the notion of cultural decay any more coherent than that of racial degeneration? Cultures certainly change and develop. But what does it mean for a culture to decay? Or for an identity to be lost?... As the cultural critic Walter Benn Michaels puts it, ‘In order for a culture to be lost...it must be separable from one’s actual behaviour, and in order for it to be separable from one’s actual behaviour it must be anchorable in race.’
The logic of the preservationist argument is that every culture has a pristine form, its original state. It decays when it is not longer in that form. Like racial scientists with their idea of racial type, some modern multiculturalists appear to hold a belief in cultural type. For racial scientists, a ‘type’ was a group of human beings linked by a set of fundamental characteristics which were unique to it. Each type was separated from others by a sharp discontinuity; there was rarely any doubt as to which type an individual belonged. Each type remained constant through time. There were severe limits to how much any member of a type could drift away from the fundamental ground plan by which the type was constituted. These, of course, are the very characteristics that constitute a culture in much of today’s multiculturalism talk. Many multiculturalists, like racial scientists, have come to think of human types as fixed, unchanging entities, each defined by its special essence.

The idea of "cultural preservation" is useless partly because "culture" is such a catch-all. "I fear for the totality of all learned behaviors" is not a well articulated reason to shut the border or bribe women into pregnancy. Some behavior patterns are worth cultivating, and some are not; some are interdependent, and most are not. Preservationists have trouble individuating various behaviors, as if they were all logically connected in one anthropologic house of cards. Thus, if my cashier cannot speak English, my Second Amendment rights are doomed.

Organized Labor in Russian Maternity Wards

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:00:00 EDT

When governments enact poorly planned "baby bonus" schemes, they incentivize women to artificially delay or induce births. Economist Andrew Leigh was writing about this years ago, but apparently no one told Sergei Morozov, founder of "Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia Day" and governor of Ulyanovsk. Over at Slate, Yasha Levine surveys the bumper crop of patriots:

Women who gave birth on June 12 would be guaranteed one of a variety of prizes—refrigerators, TV sets, washing machines, even cash, and one lucky family would be picked to win the grand prize: a brand-new Russian-made jeep called the UAZ-Patriot.
On June 12, while Russia enjoyed its day off, doctors all over Ulyanovsk struggled to survive the most hellish day of their professional careers. The region's maternity wards, which usually stood half-empty, were suddenly filled beyond maximum capacity. Masses of screaming pregnant women seemed to materialize out of thin air. Stressed-out and sleep-deprived doctors ran around frantically attending to patients. Most doctors were forced to work multiple shifts just to keep up with demand.
One woman recalled seeing a young mother-to-be repeatedly attempt to fake contractions in order to be admitted to the hospital, while some women who were already inside begged their doctors to perform cesarean sections. Another woman recalled thinking that many of the C-sections performed that day were rushed through unnecessarily...Another woman told me she overheard doctors talking about prescribing so many labor-inducing drugs that they ran out and had to order a new shipment. There was also a rumor that the hospital that delivered the most babies on June 12 was going to be rewarded by the regional government, possibly with cash. Only one of the women admitted, with much shame and humiliation, that her doctor pressured her to induce labor.

More ways to bribe your women into birthing here.

Survey Says: We're Doomed.

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:25:00 EDT

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spends a "substantial sum of money" trying to figure out "What to Say/Not Say on International Trade."

Instead of speaking of “globalization,” it is better to refer to “international trade.” The word globalization is “often viewed perniciously,” the survey of voter attitudes warns, and implies that business is “exploiting Third World workers in the name of cheap goods.”
Advocates should stress how free trade deals “level the playing field.” The sentiment “Our trading partners should treat us as fairly as we treat them” is a “home run statement,” according to the survey results.

Foreign affairs are also touched on. When pushing a Korean free trade pact, for example, “You must distinguish South Korea from North Korea.”

Also, advocates should never speak ill of "protectionism" because “protecting something sounds positive.”

So much for that North Korean free trade agreement we've all been pulling for.

Via Dan Ikenson.

Blumenthal Declares War on Non-Alcoholic Drinking Games

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:46:00 EDT

Sure, alcohol abuse is trending downward among human adolescents. But what about the Miis?

[Connecticut] Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced that a video game production company, in response to concerns he raised, says it will remove all alcoholic references in its “Beer Pong” game—including the name—that was unconscionably rated suitable for children as young as 13.

Blumenthal said he will closely scrutinize the revised product to assure that sufficient changes are made.

Blumenthal said that while he is pleased by JV Games’ apparent plan to alter “Beer Pong” (now called “Pong Toss”), he remains concerned that the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) rated the alcohol-laced game as suitable for young teens, and refused to change that rating to Adult, as Blumenthal requested.

“The rating T 13+—suitable for teens 13 and older—is absolutely inappropriate,” Blumenthal said. “The video game rating board is under the influence -- rating frat party video drinking games suitable for minors. Even as JV Games agrees to alter its Beer Pong video game, both it and the rating board stubbornly deny the damaging influence of alcohol depiction in video games.

“This issue is urgent because the ‘Frat Party Games’ promoted by JV Games may soon offer others in this planned series.”

I'm not sure Wii Beer Pong was ever going to fly off shelves—actual beer seems crucial here—but pause and consider Blumenthal's mindset. He demanded that JV Games change the rating to "Adult," or 18 and over, a more restrictive rating than that given to Grand Theft Auto IV (17 and over). Kids accustomed to mowing down virtual hookers would be advised to wait a year before approaching a cup of pixelated beer and a virtual ping pong ball.

Hat Tip: Ray Lehman.

Philadelphia vs. Ben Franklin's Secret Shame

khowley@reason.com (Kerry Howley) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:11:00 EDT

Speaking publicly in front of Philadelphia's Independence Hall may soon require a license.

Mayor Michael Nutter signed the law in April amid concerns that some [tour] guides were perpetuating gross inaccuracies, including false claims that Benjamin Franklin had 69 illegitimate children and that three-time widow Betsy Ross killed her husbands.
City officials say they are trying to protect the history that brings millions of tourists to Philadelphia and generates billions of dollars in revenue every year. They don't want anyone leaving town believing that Ben Franklin stands atop City Hall (it's William Penn) or that homes were once taxed based on how wide they were.
"Tourism is a major part of our local economy," said Douglas Oliver, a spokesman for the mayor. "It is reasonable to ensure that tourists are getting accurate information."

I haven't been on a tour of Philly since I was forced to go as a kid, but I'd be more inclined to go back had anyone informed me about a murder-crazed seamstress-patriot. The Institute for Justice will represent three tour operators who are suing for their right to speak freely about the right to speak freely. On the flip side, Philadelphia Daily News columnist Elmer Smith has a column entitled "Should History Ignorance Be a Protected Right?" You could read the whole column, but Trey Parker and Matt Stone have already summarized it for you.