Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World

PUBLISHED in the Boulder Daily Camera (8/1/07)
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/aug/01/no-headline---01elet/

re " Mileage standards falter" (Boulder Daily Camera editorial reprint from Washington Post, 7/30/07)
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/jul/30/mileage-standards-falter/

Contrary to your editorial of July 30th, it is clearly not “vitally important” that Congress pass CAFE legislation increasing required fuel efficiency of vehicles. First, auto emissions represent only about 20% of the total anthropogenic (caused by people) greenhouse gas emissions. Second, anthropogenic sources of CO2 represent about 5% of total CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, with over 95% being from natural sources.

So, even if you increased automobile fuel efficiency by 20% worldwide, you could be decreasing total atmospheric CO2 emissions by only about 0.2%. Even that number is wildly optimistic, however, because the real growth in greenhouse gas production is coming from China (which surpassed the US in emissions this year) and India. So, the US’s 25% total of world emissions is dropping, but even if you assume that it stays at that share and assuming that developing nations will do nothing to regulate their vehicle emissions, stringent new CAFE standards will at most lower global CO2 emissions by .05%.

Any potential benefits from changes in atmospheric CO2 which higher fuel efficiency might bring are minuscule when compared to the cost of these standards in terms of massively higher price for cars or reduced safety of cars or both. Higher CAFÉ standards are being pushed by people who simply haven’t done the math and want to be able to say or feel as if they’ve “done something for the environment” when all they’re really doing is sticking it to the American consumer.

The usually excellent Amity Shlaes recently wrote an opinion piece arguing that Republicans are making a mistake by dropping support for John McCain. Here is my note to Ms. Shlaes in which a disagree with just about every point she made in her article.

re "If McCain Is Trash, So Is His Party" (Amity Shlaes, Bloomberg News, 7/25/07)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aEY3idqnZjKs

Dear Amity,

I strongly disagree with your July 25th Bloomberg opinion piece about John McCain and the Republican Party.

[For the record, I am a registered Republican, but I tend far more libertarian than the GOP does and I have been highly critical of the GOP on my own blog at www.rossputin.com.]

McCain’s decreased popularity comes from a widening realization that he is a political opportunist, basically a statist, and despite his “war hero” status he is no better than any other politician and in many ways worse.

You are correct that McCain has taken a strong stand against pork, but that doesn’t make him unique among current Republican presidential hopefuls, and many of the others have actually done more to trim budgets than McCain has.

On immigration, you may want to argue that McCain’s position was brave, but as I often say “there’s a fine line between brave and stupid” and he (with the President) was clearly on the wrong side of that line. It was not simply far-right isolationist xenophobes who killed that bill. It offended many people’s sense of justice and good government, and like it or not the claims that it was “amnesty” were closer to true than false. I am all for immigration. I think we should add a zero…or two zeroes…to the number of visas available to immigrants or migrant workers in all skill categories. But simply giving millions of people a pass for breaking our laws was a stupid thing for anyone to propose. Then you add:

• giving in-state tuition for colleges so that someone from Wyoming has to pay $25,000 (tuition only!) to go to the University of Colorado whereas an illegal from Oaxaca could go for $6,600
• Democrats (such as Colorado’s own Ken Salazar) making it clear that they want the make it as easy as possible for current illegals to gain the right to vote
• Xenophobes on one side and union lackeys on the other working to prevent any increase in the number of visas available for workers who want to come here legally
• Economic idiots (such as Colorado’s own Ken Salazar) who will try to keep family-based immigration instead of moving toward skills-based immigration (primarily because they assume that the lower-income people who come on family-based immigration will eventually vote Democrat)

And you have a bill that nobody except Ken Salazar, Ted Kennedy, and several million non-citizens should support. Why did McCain go so far out on a limb with these socialists to support the Immigration Bill? So he could say he got something done.

Speaking of saying “at least he got something done”, you present that argument as a case in favor of McCain-Feingold. That’s the silliest argument I’ve ever heard from you. Would you say “at least Pol Pot got something done” when he outlawed people from wearing glasses? McCain-Feingold is a direct and clearly unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment. When the Founders wrote about Freedom of Speech, they were primarily referring to political speech. Now, because of McCain-Feingold and lesser similar laws, political speech is the least free and most regulated type of speech in our nation. That is not lost on Americans, or at least not on Republicans. I don’t give credit to McCain for not complaining that Obama has benefited from the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act any more than I give Bill Clinton credit for not complaining that his policies allowed North Korea to develop a nuclear weapon program. In both cases, making the complaint would simply highlight a massive failure.

Politically speaking, your claim that “McCain has the advantage of Senate incumbency” over Romney and Giuliani turns political history on its head. There is no political advantage to being able to say you wrote laws in the Senate versus managing governments as governor or mayor, especially since the job they are going for is an executive, not legislative, position. But beyond that, think about recent political history, starting with the current President and going back in time:
• George W. Bush, former governor
• Bill Clinton, former governor
• George H. W. Bush, former Vice President, CIA Director, and Ambassador, Congressman from 1967-71
• Ronald Reagan, former governor
• Jimmy Carter, former governor
• Gerald Ford, former Vice President, Congressman from 1949-1973
• Richard Nixon, former Vice President, Senator from 1950-52, Congressman from 1946-1950
• Lyndon Johnson, former Vice President, Senator from 1948-1960, Congressman from 1937-1948
• John F. Kennedy, Senator from 1952-1960, Congressman from 1946-1952

In other words, not since Richard Nixon have Americans elected to the presidency anyone who served in the Senate, and not since John F. Kennedy have we elected someone to the presidency who did not serve as Vice President after serving in the Senate. There is simply no way to argue that McCain’s being a Senator is to his advantage. Writing a law is no more likely to have McCain being held accountable than running a state or the world’s most important city. Indeed Giuliani’s job as mayor as well as Romney’s position as governor were both positions far more “accountable” than just being one of 100 senators. Basically, I think your argument about McCain’s position helping him and causing him to be accountable is about as mistaken as a political analysis could be.

Also, in terms of policy, you neglect to mention that only recently did McCain reverse his opposition to the Bush tax cuts, arguably the best, most important and most beneficial domestic policy achievement of the Bush presidency. People are skeptical of that last-minute conversion just as they are of all other politicians’ flip-flops, whether of Democrats like John Kerry or Republicans like Mitt Romney. Republicans are particularly skeptical of people who are not clearly committed to low taxes. As Robert Novak rightly put it, “I have said many times that God put the Republicans on Earth to cut taxes. If they don't cut taxes, they have no overriding rationale for existence.” In that framework, it’s not clear that there is an overriding rationale for John McCain’s political existence.

Given all this, your conclusion that the evaporating support for McCain is a sign of Republican madness is backward. What was madness was that he ever had any serious support. I suppose a first clue should have been how much mainstream media liked McCain in years past. If the New York Times likes a Republican candidate, that should be a strong warning sign, if not an outright disqualification.

Another minor point against McCain is his age. Were he to become President, he would be the oldest President ever at the time of taking office. Especially these days, the presidency is not a job to start in your seventies. It makes young men old…what would it do to an old man?

And finally, I would like to address your characterization of Republicans as “crazed to stay on top in Washington that this time”. Please keep in mind that I have not voted for a Republican candidate for President since Ronald Reagan. (Since then, I have consistently voted Libertarian.) But in 2008, I will be casting my vote for the Republican nominee because while I am not crazed to have the Republicans “stay on top”, I am terrified of the Democratic candidates, particularly given what I expect will be continued Democrat control of both houses of Congress at least through 2010. In a field of Democrats where Hillary Clinton (who wants to socialize medicine, take oil company profits, and have a village raise my children) is the conservative, the country should be very afraid. Anybody who does not want to see us adopt the failed leftist policies that countries all across Europe are abandoning after seeing their disastrous consequences should be “crazed”, if not to have a Republican in the White House, at least to keep a Democrat out..

However, just “not being a Democrat” is not enough to get a Republican elected in a political environment this unfriendly to the GOP. It takes a candidate with a real message and with a history that will not only get the vast majority of Republican voters actually motivated enough to go to the polls, but also to get the majority of independent voters because they are really the people deciding American elections now. McCain does not satisfy both of these conditions. He could be one of the few politicians out there likely to do better among independents than among his own party, but that is not enough to win the election and it is definitely not a winning position for the fund-raising race, as McCain’s recent numbers have shown.

In closing, although it may be redundant at this point, I’d just say that I disagree with your premise, your analysis, and your conclusion about John McCain and the GOP. It is a sign of “wising up”, not madness, that Republicans have realized the folly of supporting him. Rather than dumping McCain presaging the GOP as being “history” in 2008, it is probably the move with the best chance of allowing GOP success in 2008.

For your Saturday reading, allow me to recommend this interesting piece by Steven Milloy (of junkscience.com) discussing an article by a long-time leader of the Green movement who now argues that "renewables" are massively inefficient and that we should not be wasting our time (or our land) on any large-scale renewable energy projects (other than nuclear power.)

see "Junk Science: A Green Sings the Renewable Energy Blues"
Steven Milloy (Fox News, 7/27/07)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291071,00.html

Politico is reporting that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) "plans to review the Senate testimony of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito to determine if their reversal of several long-standing opinions conflicts with promises they made to senators to win confirmation."

Following is a note I sent to Senator Specter's office:

Dear Senator Specter,

If news reports are true that you intend to re-examine testimony of Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito because you believe they have not been deferential enough to precedent, I strongly encourage you to reconsider.

Precedent, while important, is not sacred, especially when it is a travesty against the rule of law. Would you have considered “re-examining” testimony of the justices who overturned Dred Scott or Plessy v. Ferguson?

Beyond your plan seeming like insufferable busy-body activity for somebody who must have real work to do, it is actually more harmful than that.

The Senate has massively overstepped its intended role in the approval of Supreme Court justices, which you probably know from reading the Federalist Papers. It is not the Senate’s job to approve or disapprove of a nominee because he or she is outside the political mainstream. Choosing the justice, as long as he or she is qualified and not corrupt, is the right of the President…something he (or maybe she, one day soon) is allowed to do because he won the election. The Senate’s attempts to micromanage judicial nominations is not only a bad idea politically, but it is also unconstitutional.

Beyond that, although it’s not likely something you care much about, your actions offer substantial political aid to the Democrats which, at least theoretically, are not your party. The last thing this country needs at this time is Republicans arguing that the best judges appointed in more than a decade are somehow unsatisfactory.

And finally, what could possibly be the point of examining testimony of someone who has life tenure in his job?

Senator Specter, I must say I have found your behavior to leave something to be desired in recent years, but your suggestion that something about Justices Roberts and Alito needs to be reexamined makes me realize that you have become infatuated with your own power as a Senator at the expense of honoring your oath to protect and defend the Constitution…something that Roberts and Alito have done admirably in their first term (although I believe they should have been far less deferential to precedent than they were.)

Following is an email I sent to the author of the opinion piece linked below, and then his response to me.

see "Bush also earns low marks for economic policy" (Baltimore Sun, 7/18/07)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-op.schaller18jul18,0,4553242.column?

Professor Schaller,

While you are correct on some facts in your article, your fundamental premise is flawed.

President Bush can not be blamed for the recession we were going into just as he was taking office...a recession which was in part due to Bill Clinton's tax hikes. Bush's tax cuts stimulated the economy out of recession and caused unemployment levels to return to near-historic lows. So, seeing the first gain in real income in 2005 is not surprising for a country that was in recession going into 2003.

Your argument sounds as if you believe everything suddenly changes when a new person takes the seat in the Oval Office. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, except for getting tax policy changed working with Congress, Presidents have very little effect on the economy. And that's a good thing, since the last thing our economy needs is more politicians who think they know best.

So, as far as that sort of economic policy goes, Bush has done about as well as could be done.

You are correct to note that spending has been horribly out of control under Bush, a serious disappointment for us fiscal conservatives and a primary reason that the GOP did so badly in the last election. (Yes, the Iraq situation is bad but if the GOP had remained true to fiscal conservative principles, I'm certain they would still control the Senate.)

As far as the American dream, we'll see how that goes in the long run. My guess is that far more Americans truly believe it than have been showing up in recent polls, in part because Iraq is really weighing on people.

However, there's one certain way to get people to come back to supporting liberty and free markets: Subject them to a few more years of Democrat economic idiocy. Democratic policy, if implemented, can only have one possible set of outcomes: recession caused by higher taxes and more regulation. The best argument against Democrats is clearly the Democrats. Now it's just up to Republicans to provide a more interesting alternative than they have in recent years because just being "not them" is usually not enough.

Regards,
Ross K
Colorado

--------------------------

Ross:

First, thanks for reading and writing. Second, I never say Bush caused the recession--you're bullying a straw man argument you just made up and assigned to me.

As for unemployment, keep in mind that after six months a person on unemployment is no longer counted as unemployed. in theory, that means if we all lost our jobs and stayed unemployed for six months, by january the unemployment rate would drop off from 100% to 0%, even though none of us was working. most economists calculate the true unemployment rate at closer to 8 or 9 percent.

moreover, if you want to get technical, the economy needs to create 150K jobs/month just to keep up with the new Americans entering the workforce after high school or college. how's bush doing on that score? well, even if you don't hold bush accountable for his first AND second year in office (you're right, and i teach in my classes, that a president's policies, especially his budgets and tax policies, do not even become law for a year or two after he takes office), still, in the past 4.5 years (starting jan 2003) fewer than HALF the months bush has been in office since the start of 2003 have there been 150K or more new jobs in a month: specifically, 26 of the past 54 months.* (we could talk about the quality of these burger-flipping jobs, which the admnistration has called "manufacturing jobs", in a laughable lie that makes reagan's deeming ketchup a vegetable seem like a far more trivial fib.)

*here's the link to the BLS chart with the data. unless i miscounted, from Jan03 forward it's 26 of 54 months:
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=CES0000000001&output_view=net_1mth

so, half of the months since 2003 bush's (and the republicans, since they controlled congress, too) created too few jobs just to tread water with the expanding share of american workers. that's not an opinion, sir, that's a fact. and one according to bush's own government's official data. and again, a lot of these are low-wage, no-benefit jobs.

cheers, tom

re "Revelations, Contradictions in Gonzales Testimony" (NPR, 7/24/07)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12205388

John Ashcroft reminded me of a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, and I was more than happy to have him replaced as Attorney General. After all, he was a fervent supporter of the unconscionable "war on drugs" and he's the guy who had statues of nudes covered before he had a press conference in front of them.

Unfortunately, in what was probably a commendable but unwise bow to loyalty which is typical of President Bush, he selected Alberto Gonzales to fill the post.

Gonzales simply doesn't have the gravitas to be the Attorney General despite that Bush had appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court. After all, Bush apparently thought Harriet Miers was qualified to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, and I think even I (who am not a lawyer) would likely be a better Justice than Miers would have.

Nor did Gonzales' prior opinions given to the President while serving as White House Counsel seem to show much respect for liberty or a system of checks and balances. He seems every bit as supporting of an "imperial presidency" as liberals often accuse Bush of being.

Then comes the firing of the US Attorneys. Clearly, those positions are political appointments, and those people serve at the pleasure of the President who can remove them when he pleases.

Yet instead of just making that very straight-forward case, Gonzales has tied himself in knots with misstatements, changes of story, and maybe outright lies.

It's no wonder that even the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee suggest that Gonzales does not have their support. Gonzales does not have the trust or support of anyone prominent beyond President Bush himself...and he doesn't even deserve that.

All else being equal, it would be an easy call for the President to suggest to Gonzales that he should resign. But all else is not equal, and if Gonzales does go that would give a huge opening to the hyperpartisan Patrick Leahy (D-VT) who would use that as an admission of guilt and an opening to try to investigate, subpoena, and generally harrass as many other high-level administration officials as possible.

In particular, he would almost certainly try to go after Karl Rove, and maybe either the President or Vice-President if there is even a thin shred of evidence with which he can weave some damaging political theater.

As long as Gonzales stays in place, the buck will basically stop with him. So, whereas in most similar situations the appointee would resign to best serve and protect his President, in this case he is doing all he can to avoid resigning in order to protect his friend, George W. Bush.

At the end of the day, it's Bush's fault for being the man responsible for the Peter Principle coming to full fruition at the White House. Gonzales was barely competent at being White House Counsel, and was then appointed to the level of his incompetence. Very similar story for Miers. Too much loyalty, too little leadership. And now we're all stuck with the nauseating consequences of having to hear Chuck Schumer drone on and on about Gonzales, and the even more frightening realization that for the first time in many months, Schumer is probably right. Gonzales and the Bush administration in general should be truly ashamed of doing or saying anything that could make Schumer, Leahy, or the RINO Arlen Specter actually be right about an issue of substance.

So, Alberto Gonzales, while I really wish you would go, it's probably best if you stay. In either case, you should apologize to the country for being, or at least appearing, so tremendously incompetent.

PUBLISHED in the Denver Post, 7/24/07
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6444996

re "Colorado Democrats move up presidential caucuses" (Denver Post, 7/21/07)
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_6432885

To the Editor:

Although Colorado does not have many electoral votes, that is not the best reason to oppose moving our caucuses or primaries earlier in the year. After all, New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada all have fewer electoral votes than Colorado.

The best reason to resist moving these events up is simply to stop the madness of the nationwide rush to do just that. Florida and California have moved their primaries, understandable given the huge number of electoral votes they carry. But similar moves by smaller states will just encourage other small states to do the same. The end result will be no increase in political importance for states like Colorado but a huge increase in the amount of time that we’ll have to spend hearing about and from politicians.

Political seasons basically bring citizens two things: Incessant requests for money (by phone, mail, email, carrier pigeon, or any other way they can think of) and the brain damage of having to hear candidates for far too long. No, Colorado, let’s keep our political seasons as short as we can. Even for this political junkie there’s more to life than politics, especially in a place as beautiful as our state.

This piece was submitted by a friend (and reader of these pages), Federico Genoese-Zerbi, who has done research on the value (or lack thereof) of sex education for young children.

Senator Obama, in his recent suggestion that sex education be provided to kindergarten aged children, was referring at least in part to child protection programs based on touch identification. Without entering the debate about whether this is a constitutional role for the federal government (it’s not) I want to review the data about these programs, now in wide use across the country. The point, and one that nobody seems to focus on, is that these programs: (a) haven’t been shown effective; (b) may be harmful; and (c) cost a lot of money. If these programs were a vaccine against child sexual abuse, the FDA would not approve them and the public would be aghast if they were used.

Touch training child protection programs were developed during the 1970s and early 1980s to combat child sexual abuse – certainly a worthwhile goal. The effectiveness of these “touch” programs is predicated on three hypotheses [1] [2]:
(1) Child based prevention programs can effectively provide information that children will retain about abusive touching;
(2) Children so trained will be able to apply their knowledge and recognize abusive touching, situations or events;
(3) Children will successfully use their training to thwart attempted sexual abuse.

In order for these programs to reduce victimization all three hypotheses must be true. Much research conducted since these programs were first introduced has therefore attempted to validate one or more of these hypotheses.

The first hypothesis has been substantially validated. [3] Children are able to mechanically retain the information presented in these programs.

Validation of the second hypothesis is less settled and (in a turn of events that should not surprise anybody) results vary by age and maturity. Consistently across all experimental scenarios, children eight years old and older are able to recognize abusive situations based on their training. [4] [5] [6] Obviously, children do not mature at an equal pace. Rather, their ability to master this material grows with their age: the older the group, the larger the percentage of children able to apply these lessons. Based on the data available it is extremely unlikely that a significant majority of children can successfully learn to apply this training before the third grade. So, training kindergarten age students (which is what sen. Obama suggested) appears irrational on this single fact.

The reality is worse; the third hypothesis is the least studied and most problematic. Those studies I reviewed show that children who are trained are no better able to avoid victimization when it is attempted [7] [8]. In fact, I could not find a single analysis showing that children who are trained are more successful at warding off abusers than children who are not. Some proponents cite a handful of anecdotal retrospective reports during follow-up interviews with trained children. Anybody with even a passing understanding of experimental technique and data analysis can tell you how weak this evidence is; its flaws include: lack of a control group, lack of comparison to non trained children, inability to generalize to a larger population, edge effects, lack of peer review, and lack of confounding factor elimination.
Of course one could hypothesize that even though the foundational assumptions for the training are invalid, the training is nevertheless effective due to some unknown mechanism. If this were the case, then given how long these programs have been around and the fact that a large percentage (over 70% as of the end of 2004) of children in our nation’s schools undergo this training, epidemiological data should show a decrease in the victimization rate of trained children (or even overall, unless the training merely shifts predator attention – see further analysis below).

There is no such epidemiological support. To the contrary, some evidence suggests that (even after correcting for methodological differences) the incidence of child sexual abuse is increasing. [9] I have found a single study suggesting positive value in these programs’ ability to reduce sexual abuse, a retrospective survey of nearly 1000 college age women.[10] This study does show a statistically significant lower rate of victimization among women who reported having been trained on a touch identification program in school. Unfortunately, the study has serious limitations. Specifically, the data were based on recollection of training, the study reviewed a single, limited demographic, and results were inconsistent with larger scale epidemiological reviews. Because of these concerns the authors themselves find the results unconvincing; they recommend additional research cutting across multiple demographic groups, verifying retrospective data and, most importantly, creating controlled groups for comparison. [11]

In addition to recommending additional research, the authors advance a hypothesis to reconcile their data with studies that show children are not able to thwart attacks. They suggest that the training itself is not effective but the mere act of having been trained changes abuser behavior to target children who have not been trained. This hypothesis (which is documented in the literature in other papers but never proven) would account for a reduction in the victimization rate for trained children while at the same time not reducing the victimization rate for the population overall (untrained children would become targets and suffer an increase in their abuse rate.)

If this hypothesis were correct (and, as I pointed out, there’s no reason to believe it is other than this circumstantial evidence) then any value of training will disappear as training coverage approaches 100%. Further, any abuse prevention program must include two features to protect children:
(1) Any documentation of which children participated and which children did not participate in training must be destroyed. Not to do so would amount to painting a virtual bull’s eye on the children known to be untrained.
(2) Content is irrelevant. Since any positive effect is not due to the training itself (but rather to changes in predator behavior in response to perceived target hardening) then any material would serve the same purpose. Show the children Looney Tunes cartoons; cheaper, more fun, and just as effective.

It is interesting but unremarkable that based on my review of all this research I concluded that child based abuse prevention programs have not been shown to be effective in reducing sexual abuse. What is remarkable is that professionals in the field generally agree with my position yet still advocate this training!

For instance, I found an article printed in the Virginia Child Protection Newsletter supporting my position but mentioning that “despite concerns raised by experts and professionals, there has been widespread support from parents…” [12] I suspect parents are not told the programs don’t work. Further, the article authors argue in favor continuing these programs (instead, say, of telling the parents that the programs don’t’ work) [13]. They cite two reasons [14]:
(1) They believe child based abuse prevention programs are harmless and may yet deliver some effectiveness that has not been documented;
(2) The cost of administering these programs is low on an absolute scale. The authors cite $7.00 per student in California.
The first reason may be false; the second reason is false and also bad public policy.

In fact, several kinds of negative, unintended, results have been documented (albeit weakly) in relation to child based prevention programs (parents, think about this when you review your children’s kindergarten and elementary school curricula). Some studies documented affective changes in trained children causing them to have negative response to touching associated with non abusive situations such as bathing and tickling [15]. Other studies have documented an increase in fear and apprehension in children who have been trained, [16] including anxiety about becoming victims of child sexual abuse and growing fear of adults. [17]

Don’t get me wrong: these data are not definitive. Nevertheless they do suggest harm and it seems irresponsible to expose children to it with no clear and convincing benefit to be gained.

The second argument advanced in the Virginia Newsletter, that these programs are cheap, must be examined in the context of limited resources. $7.00 per student may seem low, but when multiplied by millions of children nationally it becomes a significant sum that could be left to taxpayers or spent on programs known to deliver better value (for instance, improving reading skills). This is entirely too high to pay for a service which has not been shown to be effective.

In conclusion, I am shocked to find how widespread these programs are in light of such dearth of positive supporting data. I’ll reiterate the point I made in my opening paragraph: if these programs were a vaccine against sexual abuse, the FDA would never approve them and most parents would never consent to them. Instead, the great liberal [18] social engineers (whose can apparently claim sen. Obama as one of their own) have no problem administering them to the nation’s unsuspecting public; our children are their guinea pigs.

REFERENCES

[1] D. Finkelhor, A Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1986).
[2] C. Wooley and T. Gabriels, "Children's Conceptualisation of some child sexual abuse prevention concepts as taught by 'Keeping Ourselves Safe', a New Zealand Prevention Programme," The Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies 1999-1 (1999).
[3] P. Church, et al., "The Prevention of Sexual Abuse: Examination of the Effectiveness of a Program with Kindergarten-Age Children," Behavior Therapy 19 (1988): 429-35.
[4] Neil Gilbert, Protecthing Young Children from Sexual Abuse: Does Preschool Training work? (Lexington, Mass.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1989).
[5] M. De Young, "The Good Touch/Bad Touch Dilemma," Child Welfare 67 (1988): 60-68.
[6] Wooley, Supra.
[7] D. Finkelhor et al., "The effectiveness of victimization prevention instruction: an evaluation of children's responses to actual threats and assaults," Child Abuse and Neglect 19 (1995): 141-53.
[8] D. Finkelhor et al., “Victimization prevention programs for children: A follow-up,” American Journal of Public Health 85 (1995): 1684-1689.
[9] R. Bolen and M. Scannapieco, “Prevalence of child sexual abuse: A corrective metanalysis,” Social Service Review, 73 (1999): 281-313.
[10] L. Gibson et al., “Child sexual abuse prevention programs: do they decrease the occurrence of child sexual abuse?” Child Abuse & Neglect 24-9 (2000): 1115-1125.
[11] Id. at 1122, 1123
[12] ..., . "Preventing child sexual abuse." Virginia Child Protection Newsletter (Summer 2002): 1-16, at 13.
[13] Id.
[14] Id. at 16
[15] Gilbert, Supra.
[16] J. Garbarino, “Children’s response to a sexual abuse prevention program: A study of the Spiderman comic,” Child Abuse & Neglect 11 (1987): 143-48.
[17] D. Finkelhor and J. Dziuba-Leatherman, “Victimization prevention programs: A national survey of children's exposure and reactions,” Child Abuse & Neglect, 19 (1995): 129-39.
[18] By the word “liberal” I mean those driving to changes in status quo. This particular brand of snake-oil has been bought by school boards in politically liberal and conservative school districts, as well as by socially liberal and conservative organizations.

For a little light reading (ok, not so light), I recommend to you this intense piece by Robert Higgs in which he accurately describes government as essentially organized theft, and then discusses how governments use war to increase their control over the citizenry.

See "War and Leviathan: The Trick that Works Every Time"
Robert Higgs, 7/13/07
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1998

This is a truly scary story:

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_201113005.html

see "Senate panel OKs tobacco tax hike to help insure kids"
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kids20jul20,0,1563983.story?

The Senate Finance Committee voted 17-4 yesterday to reapprove SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) and finance it with a massive tax increase on cigarettes and cigars.

Not only does the cigarette tax represent a complete misunderstanding of the proper role of government, but it is also a ridiculously regressive choice of tax to fund a program for the poor.

On the other hand, is it really a program for the poor?

SCHIP is generally supposed to provide public insurance for children in families which are below twice the federally-defined poverty level.

But what is happening with too much regularity is that states are using SCHIP to implement HillaryCare by stealth. At least nine states allow enrollment for families which earn 300% of the federal poverty level or more, and Congress is considering allowing SCHIP enrollment up to 400% of the poverty level, or nearly $80,000 of income. Are these the people that a plan to cover impoverished children should be subsidizing? At least as ridiculously, fifteen states use SCHIP to cover adults. (What part of "Children's" don't they understand?)

Furthermore, a recent study estimates a 60% "crowd-out effect" although I have generally heard numbers closer 30%, implying that for every 10 people going on taxpayer-funded insurance, between 3 and 6 of them dropped out of private insurance to get there. For them, it appears there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Funding government through cigarette taxes has the perverse effect of getting government addicted to tobacco. An interesting piece by the Heritage Foundation posits that because people will buy fewer cigarettes due to higher prices and general trends away from smoking, Congress will need over 20 million new smokers in a decade in order to be able to fund SCHIP without having to revert to substantial income tax increases or program cuts. If it came to that, which choice do you think is more likely?

All in all, we must hope that President Bush is as good as his word and that he vetoes this legislation if it gets to his desk. Even if he does, there are enough frightened Republicans in "moderate" states who might vote to override the veto so they can't be accused of hating poor children.

SCHIP is nothing more than the camel's nose of socialized medicine getting into the tent of federal and state governments. There is nothing that can come from it other than more massive bloated bureaucracy, huge budget deficits, and demands from politicians that we must all give more of our income to fund their vote-buying schemes and their utter lack of both fiscal discipline and respect for our Constitution.

see "Sex Ed for Kindergarteners 'Right Thing to Do,' Says Obama" (ABC News, 7/18/07)
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/07/sex-ed-for-kind.html

Much has been made in recent hours about Senator Barack Obama’s call for sex education for kindergarteners which he made at a Planned Parenthood event on Tuesday. But of the several notable position statements made by Obama during his presentation, that was probably the least objectionable.

Obama qualified his support for sex education by calling for it to be “age appropriate” which for 6-year old children might be as simple as pointing out that there is such thing as “inappropriate touching” or that “babies do not come from the stork”. While I would make every effort to ensure that such life lessons reach my children via good parenting rather than Big Nanny schooling and while the suggestion for this sort of education represents yet another example of Democrats’ belief that it takes a village rather than it takes a parent, it is at least not patently unconstitutional or dangerous to our Republic’s foundation as a nation of laws.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Obama’s two other deep thoughts on Tuesday were in fact unconstitutional and dangerous.

First, Obama called for universal health care including government-funded abortion (after Elizabeth Edwards, speaking for her husband, initiated that suggestion in front of the audience.) Obama simply called it “reproductive-health services”, but, according to the Chicago Tribune, a spokesman for Obama said that included abortion.

Let me be very clear here, particularly for people who do not read my writing on a regular basis: I am not a social conservative and I am pro-choice. But the idea of government-funded abortion is perilously close to aborting our constitution…and a very messy late-term abortion at that.

There is no constitutional right to health care, nor any federal authority to provide health care. I am not naïve; I realize that most of what the federal government does it does not have authority to do. But most of what it does also does not have a better than 50% chance of actually bankrupting the government. For those of you not paying close attention, the already existing item which will bankrupt the government if massive changes are not made is Medicare (which makes Social Security’s problems look miniscule.) So the government’s initial foray into health care which is theoretically only for a fraction of the population is already going to destroy our nation’s finances if it is not cut back tremendously. President Bush’s unconscionable prescription drug benefit only made the problem worse; it created the single largest unfunded mandate in our history.

I often think that Democrat elites are truly out of touch with the American people, though I may just be projecting since they are clearly out of touch with me. But do they truly believe that the majority of Americans want socialized medicine? Just a couple small statistics which should be enough to convince even the “rationally ignorant” electorate that we don’t need to import British medical policy: For a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, the chance of dying from the disease is more than twice as high in England as in the US. Similar statistics exist for most cancers and other major diseases. Tens of thousands of medical procedures are cancelled annually in England because by the time the patient is able to get the procedure, he or she has gotten too sick to be able to risk the surgery or to be helped by it. And doctors in England report very low levels of job satisfaction, to the surprise of no American doctor but apparently to the surprise of every Democratic candidate for President. How much do you yearn to be treated by a doctor who hates his job?

Including government-funded abortion as a campaign plank is a travesty. Although I do not believe abortion is murder, a substantial percentage of Americans do. It is simply unacceptable to force so many to pay for something they consider to be a sin. Furthermore, government-funded abortion is unnecessary, and particularly from the federal government. States, or more preferably private charities, are more than capable of funding such activities for those who truly can not afford it themselves. And if an anti-abortion person lives in a state which uses tax dollars to fund abortion, it is much easier for him or her to move to another state than it is to move to another country.

The other frightening statement made by Obama was on the subject of Supreme Court justice nominations. According to a Reuters story, “Obama said he would look into the heart of a potential Supreme Court nominee. ‘We need somebody who's got the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teen-aged mom,’ he said.”

Let me get this straight: Obama wants to appoint to what is conceivably the most important political/judicial body in the world someone whose primary qualifications must include being able to think like an ignorant, reckless, irresponsible, and possibly accident-prone person who is not old enough to drive or to vote. Hmmmm….imagine the quality of majority opinion written by that person. Well, we might not have to imagine too hard since we do have Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer for whom “empathy” seems to trump both logic and the rule of law. They could be like the big sister and big brother of the 15-year-old-intellectual-equivalent Obama selection. Like the wise 17-year old, full of life experience, telling the younger sibling how not to get caught drinking daddy’s beer in the back seat of the car steaming up the windows. There is a reason neither of these characters is given adult responsibilities, much less thought of as a role model for the Supreme Court of the United States.

I suppose it is not surprising that a man who repeatedly demonstrates a complete and utter lack of the meaning and importance of the Constitution does not care about appointing Supreme Court justices capable of honoring their (and Obama’s) oaths to protect and defend that Constitution. What will be surprising if Americans are politically stupid and economically suicidal enough to elect someone as fundamentally anti-American (due to his obvious ignorance of all that America truly is) as Barack Obama.

Here's an enjoyable short article from Australia's Daily Telegraph newspaper discussing the coldest June in well over 50 years down under...while clearly noting (the way global alarmists don't) that it's a bit silly to talk about short term data as evidence for or against a hypothesized long-term trend.

See "Fear of a global 'coldening'", Daily Telegraph (AU), 7/14/07
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,22069080-5001031,00.html

Last week, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times disagreeing with one Cindy Richards on her socialist view of health care.

My friend and regular reader "The Freak" also wrote a letter to Ms. Richards. It's worth reading.

Is it my imagination or is it ironic that the socialized medicine's web site is "doh"?

Dear Ms. Richards,

I am a resident of the United Kingdom and have lived in other countries with universal health (Italy, Greece) as well as the United States. Before advocating any universal system, I recommend you try it for a while. In the meantime, avoid Michael Moore's poisoned drink; your health care might not be sufficient to give you an antidote.

Universal health coverage is certainly appealing and most people in countries that provide it are thrilled with it. Sadly, most people in countries that provide it are healthy (and thus not in a position to compare real quality). Additionally, the real costs of universal health are hidden. Costs are more than the direct costs of procedures or equipment and must be taken to include delays and employment loss. Finally, comparisons of outcomes famously miss intangibles that impact quality of life.

Here in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) does a decent job of dealing with daily routine care. They fail in anything beyond that. I won't bore you with a stream of statistics or anecdotes, but point out that the NHS are honest enough to publicize their delays: check out:
http://www.performance.doh.gov.uk/waitingtimes/index.htm
and http://www.performance.doh.gov.uk/rtt/

I suggest that if hospitals in the United States were to provide this type of care, they would be vigorously sued (with good reason). Delays imply high cost (lost productivity) as well as adverse outcomes (check out the BBC's own report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1678779.stm).

Remember, too, that outcome statistics mask real consequences. When I was in Greece, one of my employees suffered a horrific car accident that crushed his leg. Standard treatment in the public hospital he was admitted to was amputation. It was only when the company we worked for offered to pay for private treatment that we discovered advanced vascular surgery could be employed to save his limb. Both treatments would have led to the same outcome (he would have lived) but I suggest keeping his leg was much preferable.

You see, in the end, resources are limited and any system will have to make trade-offs. The NHS has made the trade-off in favor of delays (and other unsavory consequences). The Greek system determined (for instance) that amputations are cheaper than sophisticated vascular operations and equally effective in preserving people's lives. In the United States, patients have the liberty to make the trade-off whether to invest in coverage, whether to spend their own money on treatment, or whether to live with risk. Truly poor people are covered by Medicaid (which coverage, I assure you, provides better care than they would receive here).

I, for one, appreciate the private health policy I carry (even in this universal health paradise run by the NHS) that will fly me to the United States should I need serious care in a hurry.

Freedom has value.

Cheers.

As I mentioned in a posting about a week ago, I believed there was substantial political risk to Pakistan's President Musharraf, and thus to US interests in Pakistan, if he stormed the Red Mosque to kill the fanatics holed up in there...though they surely needed killing.

The mosque was stormed and a leader of the fanatics killed, following which, according to this report from BBC News, pro-Taliban islamofascists in the area of northwestern Pakistan which borders Afghanistan have terminated their cease-fire with the government and have killed over 60 people and wounded many more.

Quoting from the BBC article: "The government has sent thousands of new troops to the north-west fearing there could be a new "holy war" in revenge" (for the storming of the mosque in Islamabad.)

While the Red Mosque events were coming to a close, Stratfor made an interesting argument that Musharraf's actions have put al Qaede leadership, presumed to be hiding out in Pakistan, in a very difficult spot because Musharraf is now likely forced to take a more aggressive position against all terrorists or likely terrorists in his country simply in order to protect his own power.

Although these battles are in some of the world's most remote places, they are not remote from the long-term interests of the US or the West. They are the front lines of the real war on terror, which is the war on radical, violent, murderous Islamists.

The region is dominated by tribal warlords with no loyalty to anyone but their own tribe, and who have some affection for the Taliban and al Qaeda. To the extent that they do not support our enemies, they also generally do not oppose them. They make the region a petri dish, so that a small deposit of virulent islamists rapidly grows into a serious infestation which could turn into an even bigger contagion into the surrounding region.

As just one example of what countries which catch this disease turn into, I refer you to this other BBC story, "Iran to intensify dress crackdown":

Iran will intensify a crackdown on women flouting Islamic dress laws, a senior policeman has told local media.

Tehran police chief Ahmad Reza Radan said from 23 July twice as many police will tackle "immoral behaviour".

Hundreds of women have already been arrested and some beaten by police since the drive began in April, human rights groups say.

And that's the least of the harmful we can expect from Islamic regimes like Iran and the former Taliban. At worst, we can expect that people who truly believe we are "The Great Satan" will continue to be willing to die in order to hurt or kill us.

What makes the situation in Pakistan particularly frightening is the combination of a weak President and a country that already has nuclear weapons. If Pakistan's government were to fall, the risk to the world could suddenly be greater than that from Iran, at least for the short term, and the US could be thrust into an exceptionally difficult situation.

For the world's sake, we must hope that Musharraf can handle the problem, but I am not highly optimistic.

The many liberals, Democrat contenders for the presidency, and Black leaders assailing the recent Supreme Court decision disallowing the use of race alone to assign students to public schools are missing the point…and a very important public policy implication of the decision.

All but the most muddle-headed who consider public schooling issues should realize that diversity, while possibly a worthy goal, must rate a distant second to the goal of actually providing a good education to America’s youth. The quality of our population’s education will be the single most important factor in the long-term competitiveness of our economy in an ever more global world economy.

While some of the “diversity” crowd also hate globalization, our integration with the wider world is a fact of life. That Pandora’s Box can not be unopened. And while many think of “economic competitiveness” as buzzwords spoken by Republicans and oh-so-menacing multinational corporations, what it really represents is whether we will continue to be a country of highly productive workers earning, on average, good wages and enjoying a good quality of life or whether we will end up becoming to China, India, and Mexico what they are to us today.

On a more individual level, a good education represents the opportunity for a person to improve his or her quality of life and that of his or her family. It can be the difference between “having a better life than my parents” or being stuck in a vicious cycle of poor education and low income and passing that cycle on to one’s children.

A brief review of the two school districts which were the subject of the recent Supreme Court case, Seattle, Washington and Jefferson County, Kentucky, shows that not only have they substantially failed in meeting their No Child Left Behind improvement goals, but also that the school systems are substantially failing African-American students despite the integration policies that the Supreme Court just invalidated.

What jumps out immediately from the 2006 NCLB report for Jefferson County, Kentucky is that in all the racial/cultural groups identified, the only group that did not meet its “annual measurable objectives” was African-American. That was for both reading and math, with every other racial/cultural group meeting its objectives.

The 2006 NCLB report for Seattle schools is disturbingly similar. 25 out of the district’s 30 schools are on the federal “needs improvement” list and not meeting all 2006 goals. Among the 12 schools which show any breakdown by race/culture, 11 show math improvement among Blacks not meeting goals, two show Hispanics not meeting goals, and none show Asians or Whites not meeting goals.

It appears that whether Blacks are a majority or a minority within a school, they far more than any other group do not show the improvement necessary to allow the schools with the now unconstitutional student selection policies to get off the “needs improvement” list.

There is a compelling argument to be made that these results represent factors outside the school districts’ control, such as poor parenting. But the critical fact is that whether because of the school’s actions or because of their inability to counteract other factors, Blacks are not succeeding educationally as they should despite hopes that intensive integration might alter that outcome.

Instead of bemoaning this as “overturning 50 years of progress”, people who actually care about Black kids’ educations (which excludes teachers’ unions …how can a group who fights against schools being able to fire bad teachers be taken seriously as a force for progress?) should, if not cheer the ruling, at least recognize it as their best chance to make a radical change in education policy…a change which could actually help those Americans who most need such a change.

One obvious possible change is the wider introduction of school choice and vouchers. Because of the relative newness of choice programs around the country, data is still thin on how much improvement has come from them. Early results range from no significant improvement to measurable improvement but in no case are voucher outcomes worse than the pre-voucher situations. Additionally, there is substantially increased parent satisfaction which should at least marginally increase parental involvement in kids’ educations, possibly the single most important factor in a successful education in K-12 years, especially for those who most need a high school diploma to get out of the ghetto or barrio.

Improving education for African-Americans will not be easy. Whatever factors keep Black kids from succeeding in the same schools where other kids do succeed will not magically go away. And there is also political opposition. The Democratic Party’s fealty to teachers’ unions causes the Party to oppose the educational reforms that their loyal African-American voters most need. Until Blacks begin to abandon the Democratic Party in substantial numbers, the Party will continue to spout its baseless arguments against vouchers because their real goal is to keep the teachers’ unions as rich and powerful as possible, knowing union power and money will be used to aid Democrats in elections. (The National Taxpayers Union reported that from 1990 through 2002, the National Education Association was the nation’s second biggest political donor and that 95% of that money went to Democrats.) It is the height of Democrat hypocrisy to market themselves to African-Americans as the party that cares about them while opposing many policy changes or experiments which would most benefit Blacks, Hispanics, and low-income Americans of all cultures and colors.

In these days when fundamental civil rights for African-Americans are no longer in question, the focus must not be on “integration” and “diversity” but on creating the best possible education for all Americans. By opening the window for Americans, and African-Americans in particular, to refocus on the real goal of schooling, the Supreme Court deserves our thanks.

re "A stereotype that's all talk" (Baltimore Sun, 7/6/07)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-te.talk06jul06,0,4697892.story?

The new study in the journal Science which purports that women do not talk more than men defies standards for well-structured research as well as common sense.

The study comprised a total of 400 people, a fairly small sample for this sort of study, but even worse they were all university students. So, not only are they a self-selected group of people who are likely to be talkative as they are deeply involved in learning, which requires communication, but they are all also in a very narrow age band.

But beyond the study sample casting real doubt on its results, the conclusion doesn’t jibe with our daily experience. Anybody who has been living on earth for at least a double digit number of years has noticed the obvious differences between how much less adult men tend to speak than women. And, does anybody out there believe that a guy speaks as much after marriage as before? We don’t dare! Sorry, Dr. Pennebaker, but your study results strike this male as obviously wrong, and your study methods explain why. (I’ll stop writing here…if you want more thoughts on the subject, ask my wife.)

While I am not one to give the benefit of the doubt to tyrannical, evil regimes, and while I have often argued that hints by Iran and North Korea of willingness to work with the west in dealing with their nuclear ambitions have been smoke screens, a pair of stories today begin to sound like something real may be happening.

First, the IAEA reports that Iran has lifted its ban on inspections of its primary nuclear facility at Arak. This is a good step, if a baby step. My primary concern here is that Iran has moved some of the more aggressive and offensive work to other locations. However, if the inspectors are any good, and given that they've been to Arak before, they may be able to detect that sort of artifice by what is not visible as much as by what is visible.

Second, a news article this morning reports that "North Korea's military wants talks with the US." This is another very dicey situation. Recent talks with North Korea have implied that they are going to shut down their plutonium-generating reactor, but their public statements (likely meant more for domestic consumption but still disconcerting) remain belligerent and paranoid.

If the Administration can get either of these problems dealt with, at least for the medium term, it will have accomplished something important. If it is Korea, we probably won't hear about it much in the news. If Iran, we'll hear more, but I'm sure Bush still won't get any credit.

On a related note: One of the primary arguments made for keeping US troops in Iraq is that if we pull out, it means al Qaeda wins, with the implication being that middle eastern regimes (Iran in particular) will no longer fear us as they had. I believe this thinking is wrong in an important way. Where it is probably right is in how individual jihadists might feel. They might feel as if al Qaeda and friends outlasted the great Satan. And while that might help their recruiting efforts, our diminished presence would somewhat offset that as they wouldn't regularly be reminded of "the infidel" on their land.

More importantly, however, is Iran. If we pull out of Iraq in any substantial way, Iran's fear of us will substantially increase, not decrease, as they realize we are now much more flexible and more able to deploy troops and bombs elsewhere, such as Arak, Natanz, or Iran's very limited oil refining capacity. (Despite being a huge oil producer, Iran is a massive gasoline importer.)

My regular readers know that I am quite torn about the right thing to do in Iraq right now, in no small part because continuing on this path is likely to give us another President Clinton, or even worse (if you can imagine anything worse) a President Obama. My best guess at this time is that we should strongly support the "surge" for the balance of this year, and then begin substantial troop withdrawals in the first half of next year. This sort of plan is the most likely way to get the Iraqis to realize that they must step up to handle their own country (which I believe is already happening better than it has in the past). It is the most likely to scare Iran into behaving better. It is the most likely way to avoid a socialist president. The only political downside is that the Democrats will claim that the pullout happened because of their pressure, but we'll just have to live with that and make the obvious arguments against it.

In any case, while Iraq is going very badly, I think there is still a chance that it can end up in some way that isn't a total disaster. And the specter of our pulling back from Iraq applies some very helpful psychological pressure on other enemies.

Following is an email I sent to Glenn Beck after hearing him foam at the mouth for too long about "corporate greed"...

Glenn,

One of the few areas in which you are consistently disappointing is when you discuss "corporate greed". It is the job of corporations to earn profits for their shareholders. To the extent that you want to call profit seeking "greed", then greed is the raison d'etre for corporations, and there is nothing wrong with that as long as they're not trampling peoples' property rights (such as through pollution of public property or water) in the process.

You must remember that corporations can only satisfy their "greedy" goals by providing a product or service that will cause consumers to voluntarily part with some money in return for that product or service. A corporation thus can only generate profits (except in monopoly or quasi-monopoly situations) by voluntary transaction with a consumer who believes he is getting at least as much value from the purchase as the cash he is giving up for it.

Greed is the reason corporations provide us with food, clothing, and shelter.

You also massively overstate the short-term nature of the American economic system. Remember a couple of decades ago when everybody wanted to mimic the Japanese and their so-called long-term focus? We ate their lunch. Our corporations might not want to disappoint in the next quarter but that doesn't mean they're sacrificing the long term for it. Your approach implies that corporate executives are essentially idiots.

I don't believe for a minute that greed causes corporations to "hurt themselves in the long run" as you suggest, and I don't believe you have any evidence to support your position, which is rather odd for a guy who is usually so evidence-based. Maybe that