Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Big Government

  • A thought on competition and the public sector

    Hello and welcome back to Pie ponders in which Pie tries to understand things. This is a different type of Pie ponders, in which I try to better understand what drives certain arguments with the help of crowdsourcing – that is where you bunch come in. You need to use crowdsourcing and big data and machine learning these days to stay relevant you know, basic bitch reasoning don’t cut it no more. So to proceed…

    Today I focus on the debate about private X and public – aka state managed tax funded through the lens of competition. As a libertarian I think you know where I stand. Off course, I have my biases, and I try to listen to the opposite opinion. In this case I am, as in most others, at a loss to understand the fetish some have for the concept of public and their opposition to competition. I leave it to the commenters to point out where my thoughts and arguments may be wrong.

    I need a receipt for that receiptTo generalize, we want X, and doing it requires people, materials, management, in general cash, mullah, dough. So the debate boils down to who uses these things better and I struggle to understand how some believe it is the government.

    So what are the arguments? One would be against profit, which supposedly takes away money from the actual task at hand, but this is, in itself, irrelevant. If X is accomplished better and cheaper overall while some money goes to profit than when it does not, profit is not in any way a waste. It is a cost of efficiency. Profit is, in fact, often a valuable signal. It tells a company whether they are doing what they should. In commie Romania, many factories were not driven by profit and had no competition to speak of, and yet, shockingly, were extremely inefficient, had stocks of products that no one wanted and shortages of products in demand, all of poor quality, and overall no way of knowing if the way they produce is good. In general if a company changes something and profit improves, they get the info that the change was good.

    Beyond the first argument, some people seem to have the ridiculous notion that for certain X, no one should make a profit, because that is somehow immoral. Why this is, I could never understand. Beyond money bad. There is the argument that profit incentivizes people to maximize profit instead of maximizing X, but in a market situation that is not distorted by government, most times the two things go hand in hand. And furthermore, how can one know they are maximizing X?

    In the end, all people want profit. Or better said increased satisfaction. But in the public healthcare systems of Europe, doctors who at dinner parties will claim “making a profit from healthcare is immoral” – happened to me several times – and a month later strike for higher salaries. But that is not profit somehow.

    A second observation of mine is humans overall perform better when there is competition. This should be a straightforward fact, but somehow isn’t. This has two factors. One, simply because humans can easily get complacent if there is not something to keep them on their toes. Second, if you have different concepts, ideas, methods to organize an activity, there really is no better way to see which works best except letting them compete. Due to the many complexities of the world, second and third order effects, unknown unknowns, you cannot outright say which way is better, which is what bureaucrats and governments claim to do.

    X, people will say, it is too important to be left to competition. Or competition does not work for X. Why competition would work for something else and not for X is not always clearly explained. But what is the alternative? The dream of a group of “experts” figuring out the best way, which does not work nor has it ever worked?

    The fact about X – healthcare, education, whatever – being too important is also not a valid idea. The thing about competition is that it either works or it doesn’t. It is not it works for product A but not for product B. Because the product is not the key here, the human is. The importance of X does not in any way change the fact that humans do not function efficiently without competition. You need buildings, people, and supplies. As such these are subject to the same economic laws as coffee or clothing.

    I find it strange how people believe the human perceived importance of something changes the underlying issues. If a plane is crashing, physics cares not about how important it is to the passengers to recover. If competition is necessary to make TVs, it is necessary for healthcare.

    The way I see it is this: the things that are key is not the field or product, but humans and human nature. Going from cars to medicine does not change the fact that humans are involved, and the same constraints of humanity apply in the same fashion. You still need labor, allocation of capital, decision making. There is still self-interest,  dishonesty, ego, the whole package. These do not go away because healthcare is important.

    There are many bad arguments against competition. One is someone loses. Sometimes sure, but the loser is not taken out back and shot. Yes from competing ideas, if one is better, the worse one is abandoned, that is a good thing. Unless every single thing needs to be implemented so someone does not feel bad. Another is working together is better than against each other. Which, like most things meant for children, idiots and leftists, sounds superficially good. Until you realize that cooperation has limits and it will hit the invariable issue of being unable to automatically see what works best from multiple solutions.

    Why play? Experts can just decide who would winCompetition is a race to the bottom is also popular, although what this is based on escapes me. Certainly not of the high quality of government monopoly services or the how bureaucrats strive to make things easier on the public. Not when privatizing certain services or introducing competition usually is accompanied by significant improvements in efficiency. In competitive private sectors, plenty of high quality products are made, unlike government owned businesses thorough history. So what is this race to the bottom?

    We cannot gamble with our children’s future, I heard. But what is the alternative? Sticking them all in a failing system? Or the alternative is the magic committee of experts solving all problems?

    In the end, decisions have to be made, and the general idea for some seems it is better to be made by bureaucrats than by people receiving a given service. While I do understand how this could be an issue for emergency services – cannot choose hospitals while you are unconscious, there are multiple ways to solve it in a private system.

    There have been a myriad of studies for private vs public education, healthcare and such. And the concept that public works better is simply not supported, no matter how much proponents claim. This will not be solved anytime soon given the massive bias in all studies made, by either side, the massive amount of information existing and missing, and the impossibility of controlled experiments. I will not do a literature review on this, I am trying to approach this by basic reason. Some strict empiricists will dismiss such arguments, but I do not see strict empiricism working in this case.

    A further issue is that, when you look at it, in general, bureaucrats are not always the most competent of people. Certainly, the best and brightest seldom dream of becoming civil servants. Nor are they more motivated, more caring or in general better people, and outside leftist delusions you have no reason to believe they would be. Most countries on this planet have plenty of literature and art mocking bureaucrats. So it is quite a known phenomenon.

    Rockets are phalic patriarchal and not woke, thats why they need competition But I want to give an example of what I mean. The significant innovation and cost reduction introduced in the field of space exploration. SpaceX – whatever you may think of E.M. – is quite the success. This was clear when European government audits a while back informed the European Space Agency that it will be in no way competitive in the future if it does not radically change its MO. And the ESA and Ariane and their other contractors reacted by starting to research reusable rockets, using in part SpaceX innovations, by contracting with more companies and startup, by pushing innovation. This raises the question: why did they not really do this before competition forced it? Why I think this is relevant? Because, if you want to see a field which does attract the best and brightest, this is it. These are people who are at the top of their field, the best education, and furthermore many of them do work they enjoy and are passionate about. And still, without some competition, they were complacent for years and the innovation rate quite slowed down. If in this field this happened, why expect differently for others?

  • BAH!! KILL IT!! KILL THE LIGHT RAIL!!

    One Sunday afternoon I received a call from an unknown number.  It was a local number so I answered it, as many of scam calls come from a 323 area code (CA).  I probably shouldn’t have done that, because the lady on the other line wanted to convince me to vote against Prop 105. Is this a local issue?  Yes, but quite frankly I have a platform for free speech and damnit, I’m going to use it….

    This is my review of Four Peaks Golden Lager…a refreshingly local Pilsner.

    What does this ballot measure entail?  The City of Phoenix is asking residents to allocate, or not allocate funds to extend the Phoenix light rail.  The actual proposition is below:

    What would Proposition 105 do?

    Proposition 105 would prohibit the city from spending money on development, construction, expansion, or improvement of light rail transit, with an exception for PHX Sky Train. It would allocate any revenue from the city’s 0.7% transportation sales tax that was previously allocated toward light rail development to other city infrastructure. The initiative would earmark any revenue allocated to light rail development along Central Avenue south of Washington Street specifically for infrastructure in South Phoenix. This would include the South Central Extension project. Proposition 105’s provisions reallocating revenue would apply to any collected, unspent revenue as well as future revenue.

    Proposition 105 would also add within the city charter provisions authorizing the Phoenix Citizens Transportation Committee—which is currently established through city code. The initiative would guarantee a $25,000 annual budget for the committee and task the committee with soliciting feedback from the public and advising the city council on how to spend funds reallocated by Proposition 105.

    It appears to be intentionally confusing to the average voter reading at a 4th grade level since voting “Yes” means you DO NOT want the light rail projects to continue.  Now, Forbes did a piece on the Phoenix Light Rail project that puts a lot of the ridership numbers in perspective and they make the case it was not a particularly good investment.  Granted, this was nearly a decade ago.  The light rail, (Valley Metro) and the local media have claimed the light rail since it was opened has already created $11 billion in development.  A local free market think-tank however published an analysis that disputes this claim.  Of the 344 construction projects built within 1/2 mile, cited by Valley Metro, 177 were either government subsidized, government buildings, or part of expansions/renovations at Arizona State University.  17 are also located more than 1/2 mile away (honest mistake?) from a light rail station and 2 of the cited projects were built before the light rail.

    One of the most absurd projects on Valley Metro’s list is a 2,000-space parking garage for air travelers. The garage happens to be next to a light-rail station, so Valley Metro includes it on the list. Yet this station is the closest light rail comes to Sky Harbor Airport, so no one using the parking garage would ever use the light rail to get between the garage and the airport. Many other projects on the list similarly have nothing to do with transit.

    Why would nobody use the light rail in this case?  Sky Harbor International Airport has its own rail (Sky Harbor SkyTrain) to ferry passengers between parking structures, the terminals, and the rental car complex.  The report also goes on to say there is no reason any of the other projects could be built elsewhere.  The only effect the light rail has, is in relocating where (government subsidized) businesses owners choose to open up shop.  They were going to open regardless of the rail.

    Yes, the local paper and others did make sure everybody knows this is just another Koch-funded scheme, even though the think-tank or the group initiating the ballot measure denied they received funding from them for this proposition.  The ties between the think-tank and the Koch brothers is from a disclosure of a single donation dating to 2017.  The propositions were started from a group of business owners in South Phoenix that opposed an expansion due to access to their businesses.

    Not my photo of 43rd St and Washington.

    This is a concern anybody in Phoenix can see for themselves if they ever go to a sporting event downtown.  Washington and Jefferson streets run east/west through downtown and are both one way; Chase Field, Talking Stick Arena, the convention center, and other cultural locations are located along these streets. Many of the buildings between Washington/Jefferson Street, part of an existing light rail run, are closed down primarily because they cannot be accessed by car, because you can only drive one way and access the building by crossing the light rail.  Many are also too far to walk to if you take the light rail.  The proponents of the light rail consistently argue the riders are put in a better position to make Phoenix a walking city, theoretically making Washington and Jefferson streets less congested.  Never mind the light rail effectively takes up two lanes on both streets. Finally, the high today is forecast at 109 and will likely be warmer than at noon today because of the ambient heat reflecting off both the street and the buildings.  Nobody walks anywhere in Phoenix–care to guess why?

    By the way, South Phoenix is the part of town where low to middle income families live.  They say the proposed path will inhibit local businesses ability to stay in business will therefore affect low to middle income residents. These are NOT people that own the monocle factory, who can easily relocate their business to another part of town.

    Naturally opponents of the ballot measures are citing a positive economic and environmental impact.  Others argue the areas now pushing against the expansion were not well represented in the vote for the planned expansion due to supposed voter suppression.  Which is an odd argument for them to make because the measure passed in 2015, an off-cycle election when measures are deliberately voted on because turnout is often low.

    I plan to vote yes, if you are registered to vote in Phoenix, consider voting yes if at all.

    Is this another one if those drinkable craft lager/ale things that are mass produced and sold next to other yellow beers?  Not hardly. This threads the needle between a serious Czech-style Pilsner and something non-threatening for your non-beer drinker friends gathering for a sporting event.  They even put it out seasonally.  If you are in the local area, I recommend it.  Four Peaks Golden Lager 3.5/5

     

  • Chapter 2 – The Nuremberg Code

    Members of the military are not shorn of their constitutional rights while they remain in the military service. Blackstone said: ‘. . . he puts not off the citizen when he enters the camp; but it is because he is a citizen, and would wish to continue so, that he makes himself for a while a soldier.’[i]

    After the Germans were defeated in World War II, it was not long before both an International War Crimes Tribunal was created, and a separate Military Tribunal, to try members of the German High Command and others for their “War Crimes, Crimes Against Peace and Against Humanity.”[ii] These military tribunals were held under the auspices of the four individual Zone Commanders, into which Germany had been divided at the end of the war. The Chief Prosecutor for the military tribunals in the American Zone was General Telford Taylor, U.S. Army. There were twelve separate trials held at Nuremberg by the American Military Governor, promulgated by Military Government Ordinance Number Seven, dated 25 October 1946. This ordinance was passed pursuant to the authority granted by Control Council Law Number 10, which set forth exactly who and what could be prosecuted and how the process was to occur (including that someone sentenced to death would be executed no later than 30 days after the “decision has become final”).[iii] It was in the American occupation zone that the second “series” of trials occurred in 1947 against the doctors who performed medical experiments on Jews, Poles, and other persons who were being held prisoner. These trials came to be known as the “Doctors Trials” or the “Medical Trials”. German scientists, some of them renowned in their fields, were tried as war criminals because of the experiments they had performed on behalf of the German High Command on unwilling victims.

    Some of the experiments named in the indictment against the German doctors were startlingly similar to those detailed previously in Chapter 1. For example, Count II of the indictment, entitled War Crimes, [specification] Number 6 alleges that

    Between September 1939 and April 1945 all of the defendants herein unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving medical experiments without the subjects’ consent, upon civilians and members of the armed forces of nations then at war with the German Reich and who were in the custody of the German Reich in exercise of belligerent control.[iv]

    The indictment goes on to list a number of different experiments, the most similar to American experiments of which were the lost (mustard) gas experiments. These were “[c]onducted at Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and other concentration camps for the benefit of the German Armed Forces to investigate the most effective treatment of wounds caused by Lost gas. Lost is a poison gas which is commonly known as mustard gas.”[v] One of the most horrifying aspects of the experiments was the scientific precision, and simultaneously the complete disregard for the subjects’ humanity, with which they were carried out – as if they were being conducted on mice. Many of the experiments had obvious utility for all Armed Forces. The U.S. prosecutor acknowledged as much in his opening statement.

    A sort of rough pattern is apparent on the face of the indictment. Experiments concerning high altitude, the effect of cold, and the potability of processed sea water have an obvious relation to aeronautical and naval combat and rescue problems. The mustard gas and phosphorous burn experiments, as well as those relating to the healing value of sulfanilamide for wounds, can be related to air-raid and battlefield medical problems. It is well known that malaria, epidemic jaundice, and typhus were among the principal diseases which had to be combated by the German Armed Forces and by German authorities in occupied territories.

    To some degree, the therapeutic pattern outlined above is undoubtedly a valid one, and explains why the Wehrmacht, and especially the German Air Force, participated in these experiments. Fanatically bent upon conquest, utterly ruthless as to the means or instruments to be used in achieving victory, and callous to the sufferings of people whom they regarded as inferior, the German militarists were willing to gather whatever scientific fruit these experiments might yield.[vi]

    The high altitude tests were done to determine how high pilots would be able to fly; freezing tests on human subjects were done to learn how cold a person could get before dying, as well as what the best ways were to re-heat a freezing person. This had important implications for the Germans fighting on the brutally cold Russian front. Of more specific import for the anthrax vaccine herein discussed, the Germans also conducted a number of experiments involving chemical and biological warfare.

    The most basic mustard gas tests involved simply gassing subjects and measuring its effect upon them. The Germans operated with the complete permission and authority of both their government and the society generally; the subjects weren’t even German soldiers, but captured enemy civilians or belligerents, so some of the tests went a step further and wounded some prisoners first to determine the effect the gas would have upon a wound under battlefield conditions. While it is important to state that none of the experiments involving the U.S. Department of Defense (of which we are aware) involved this kind of treatment, the ‘baseline’ experiments conducted by the German doctors were identical to the U.S. Department of Defense’s ‘man break’ tests conducted in the late Forties and Fifties. In fact, the lawyers for several of the Nazi doctors argued at trial that the German experiments were identical to the experiments conducted by the U.S. and Britain using human subjects in the period between World Wars War and Two. Of course, as has already been shown, the U.S. experiments were conducted, in most cases, AFTER the Nuremberg Trials, and in secret, and on U.S. citizens.

                                                                                                                                                                                       

    During their trial, the Nazi doctors offered several legal defenses to their actions, chief among these was that the doctors had not known that anything they were doing was wrongful because the experiments (in some cases) were no different than ones which had been regularly carried out by the Americans and Germans prior to the War. In other words, the argument is essentially a combination of challenging the war crimes tribunal’s charges as ex post facto laws, as well as a challenge to the notion of being on ‘notice’ that one’s actions are prohibited. i.e. The doctors argued that there existed no agreed-upon international common law on the use of human beings as subjects. While the world might say now, after victory, that the German doctors’ actions were wrongful, there was no law in existence prior to their actions to let them know what they were doing was criminal. This is a fundamental tenet of criminal law generally: the necessary existence of some law making the act criminal before it is committed, in order to provide notice to the actor that such acts are forbidden. This isn’t merely a matter of legal theory; while the reasons aren’t given, four of the seven defendants charged with experiments involving lost gas were acquitted.

    Two doctors who worked with the U.S. prosecution team at Nuremberg, Drs. Andrew Ivy and Leo Alexander, were concerned with the defense arguments about there being no previous international statement or standard regarding the treatment of human subjects and their consent in medical experimentation. In April 1947, Dr. Alexander submitted a memorandum to the American Counsel of six points regarding medical experimentation on human subjects. The verdict against the doctors was returned on August 19, 1947. In the verdict, each of the six points was covered and expanded into ten points under a section entitled “Permissible Medical Experiments.” This came to be known as “The Nuremberg Code.” The Nuremberg Code’s first principle was that “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” The principles of the Nuremberg Code were adopted by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1953 when the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force all adopted a memorandum entitled “Use of Human Volunteers in Experimental Research.” The first principle was verbatim from the Nuremberg Code. In 1964, the World Medical Association in its “Helsinki Declaration” adopted the Nuremberg Code. Eventually, these principles were codified in U.S. law as Title 50, section 1520a, but this didn’t happen until 1977, two years after the famous Church Committee hearings on the CIA and DoD experiments herein discussed.

    There is, however, a seminal case from the Supreme Court called The Paquete Habana, which international law professors will say stands for the proposition that international law, in the form of treaties, executive agreements, and international norms and customs, are an essential part of U.S. domestic law.[vii] If that legal proposition is true, then the DoD’s experiments on its own soldiers without their informed consent was pushing up against the propositions that had been adopted in the aftermath of the Nuremberg Trials. It is certainly clear that by 1977, Congress thought something ‘wrongful’ had happened with the CIA’s MKULTRA program. At the opening of the hearings regarding the program, Senator Inouye, presiding, stated that “[i]t is also the purpose of this hearing to address the issues raised by any additional illegal or improper activities that have emerged from the files and to develop remedies to prevent such improper activities from occurring again.”[viii] Notice, however, what is conspicuously absent from that statement: any mention of holding people accountable for those putative violations of the law.

    Admiral Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA, also seemed to believe that something illegal had happened because he conspicuously noted that (a) he was cooperating with the Attorney General, and (b) reminded the committee that MKULTRA did not occur on his watch, but was a program of another director and that the events were some 12-24 years past at the time of the hearings. MKULTRA lasted from 1953 to 1964 and was conducted in concert with the Department of the Army.[ix]

    Interestingly, no one ever stated exactly what law they believed had been broken, nor what the penalty was for this crime. There was not then, and is not now, any federal criminal statute prohibiting a person or agency from conducting experiments on military members or ordinary citizens without their informed consent. Some members of the committees invoked the  then-newly passed that was the product of a 1975 initial inquiry into these matters, but it wasn’t a criminal statute – it simply mandated informed consent with no actual punishment or remedy listed for violations. Chapter 3 delves into judicial remedies  against a government agent or agency conducting such experiments. Technically, an unconsented medical procedure would constitute a battery or an assault consummated by a battery, but there is no federal “battery” statute; criminal law is almost entirely a matter for the states.

    This raises an uncomfortable moral/ethical/legal question: which is worse, the German doctors who operated (they claimed) out of a genuine ignorance that their actions were wrong – and historically speaking they have a fair case for it – or the DoD and its doctors who clearly knew that their actions were wrongful in light of the German doctors’ trials? Someone will undoubtedly want to take me to task for comparing the CIA’s or DoD’s doctors to the Nazi doctors of World War II, however, either the principles of the Nuremberg Code are the standards of the medical profession or they are not – they cannot be called principles if they can be bent to the will of the doctor performing the particular tests, or justified and waived away after-the-fact with vague references to ‘national survival’ because short of the Revolution or the War of 1812, the U.S. has never faced the kind of military pressure against the homeland as Germany did in WW2.

    The first principle enunciated in the Nuremberg Code is that “the informed consent of the subject is absolutely essential.” There is nothing equivocal about that statement. It does not say, for example, that “the informed consent of the subject is somewhat or mostly essential.” Nor does it manifest any limitation to only Nazi doctors or doctors of defeated Axis powers. As one author has noted, “[t]here is no exception for soldiers or for wartime.”[x] Which all goes to this simple point: there is no “greater good” exception or argument against the principle, because that is exactly what the Nazi doctors said they were doing.

    Sidney Gottleib’s statement that it was considered a matter of ‘national survival’ has two dangerous flaws in it, one obvious, the other insidious. The first, obvious flaw is that it is exactly the same argument that the U.S. and other Allied powers forbade as a defense in Control Council Law Number 10. The Wehrmacht doctors certainly performed a number of experiments whose results had only one possible practical application and that was in the war effort in which they were engaged. In fact, the German doctors, involved as their country was in a losing battle against foreign powers with bombs dropping on them daily, probably had a much better claim to Gottleib’s “national survival” argument than the CIA or DoD had in the continental United States post World War II with the U.S. as one of the world’s only two (nuclear) superpowers.

    More insidious, and hidden in Gottleib’s argument, however, is a claim of moral superiority. Gottleib’s argument allows that either he, or someone else on behalf of the state, can take away the subject’s right to decide the most fundamental question of humanity: the right to live. It is an objectification of the person – the person as tool of the State. As was pointed out by Supreme Court Justice William Brennan’s dissent in the Stanley case, quoting a law review article,

    [Human experimentation authorized by the state] dramatizes the notion that the state is free to treat its nationals in the manner it chooses because it perceives itself as the source of all rights, and therefore as beyond the reach of law, rather than regarding rights as inalienable, that is, not subject to arbitrary cancellation by the State.[xi]

    This is more insidious because it sounds academic and benign, perhaps even agreeable, because, after all, doesn’t each of us owe our way of life to the state? This simple, yet bankrupt, logic, and consequent objectification of human beings can easily be turned on particular groups and yields exactly the kind of thinking that helped create the Holocaust in the first instance. I do not want to oversimplify a tragedy on the scale of the Holocaust into one short sentence; it doesn’t do it justice nor does it take into account the myriad other factors in involving anti-Semitism in Europe that help account for what happened in Europe from 1933 to 1945. It is, however, critical to recognize arguments like Gottleib’s “national survival” and follow them to their logical conclusion, otherwise tragedies like the Holocaust get put aside as historical anomalies and when programs like MKULTRA, the Tuskegee experiments, and yes, even the current DoD anthrax program are announced, apologists differentiate them because, clearly, WE are not in any way morally comparable to the (gasp!) Nazi doctors… even when government actors are violating the exact same principle in the same way.

    It may be that our government agents do not use specifically identical means that the Nazi doctors did: that is, brute force at the point of a gun. Instead, however, the CIA doctors in the MKULTRA program and the DoD doctors in the mustard and lewisite gas tests, or the Atomic Energy Commission in its radiation tests on soldiers, used deception or trickery, additionally backed by the very credible threat of future punishment (court-martial), in order to silence those who might bring their actions to light. In normal criminal trials, attempting to hide conduct is frequently admissible as “consciousness of guilt” – that is, evidence that the actor was aware of the wrongfulness of their actions. Worse than Gottleib’s public justification, however, is that in some cases, government actors consciously change history or the law: destroy documents, close test sites, classify evidence they don’t want to become public, and then offer some higher moral calling as justification – the threat of an invisible enemy, international terrorism, the ticking time bomb, etc. The end result is that these excuses either gain public acceptance, or create a sense of public indifference, to the rights of their fellow citizens.

    Lest there be any question about whether this line of reasoning was ever explored by the Army or CIA doctors at the time, internal documents that were accidentally discovered because they were mis-filed and did not get destroyed like the rest of the more direct source documents became public and put a finer point on it. In 1977 hearings in front of the Senate, internal CIA documents revealed that the CIA believed that it must “conceal these activities from the American public in general,” because public knowledge of the “unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission.”[xii]

    In a 1959 Staff Study, the United States Army Intelligence Corps (USAINTC) even more candidly explained its justification for abandoning the principles of the Nuremberg Code.

    It was always a tenet of Army Intelligence that the basic American principle of dignity and welfare of the individual will not be violated . . . In intelligence, the stakes involved and the interests of national security may permit a more tolerant interpretation of moral-ethical values, but not legal limits, through necessity . . . Any claim against the US Government for alleged injury due to EA 1729 [LSD] must be legally shown to have been due to the material. Proper security and appropriate operational techniques can protect the fact of employment of EA 1729.[xiii]

    That is to say, legal liability could be avoided by covering up the LSD experiments. If no one could prove they had been given the drug, no one on the administering side would ever have to pay the consequences for their actions.

    Putting aside the moral reprehensibility of this position, the issue of the legality of the DoD’s tests is beyond cavil: the experiments violated a slew of laws. They certainly violated the spirit and letter of the Nuremberg Code. They violated any number of state criminal battery or assault statutes: an unconsented drug in one’s drink is a battery. By common law, the person administering such a treatment would be criminally liable for whatever happened to the person taking the drug.[1] These batteries would also be actionable in a tort suit for damages were the doctors in private practice. They violated the “common rule” and accepted standards of medical practice. They violated the civil rights of U.S. citizens, yet no one was ever prosecuted for these (and other) acts; no government agent or agency was ever forced to pay a service member a dime by any court for the harms done to them. The explanation as to why is a sobering bit of legal legerdemain.

                                                                                                                                                                                       

    [1] “During the Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee investigations in 1975, the cryptonym [MKULTRA] became publicly known when details of the drug-related death of Dr. Frank Olsen were publicized. In 1953 Dr. Olsen, a civilian employee of the Army at Fort Dietrick, leaped to his death from a hotel room window in New York City about a week after having unwittingly consumed LSD administered to him as an experiment at a meeting of LSD researchers called by CIA.”  Prepared statement of Adm. Stansfield Turner, Director of the CIA, before a Senate Committee, August 3, 1977.

    [i] U.S. v. Manuel, 43 M.J. 282, 286 (C.A.A.F. 1995)(citations omitted).

    [ii] Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10., Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.

    [iii] Control Council Law No. 10, Dec. 20, 1945.

    [iv] From the indictment, U.S. v . Brandt, et al. (The Medical Case), 2 Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, (1949).

    [v] Id.

    [vi] U.S. v . Brandt, et al. (The Medical Case), 2 Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, p. 37 (1949).

    [vii] The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677 (1900).

    [viii] Project MKULTRA:  The CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification, Hearings Before the Senate Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Health and Human Resources, p. 2, August 3, 1977.

    [ix] Id. at pp. 9-14.

    [x] G.J. Annas, Changing the Consent Rules for Desert Storm, 326 New Eng. J. Med. 770 (1992).

    [xi] Bassiouni, Baffes, & Evrard, An Appraisal of Human Experimentation in International Law and Practice: The Need for International Regulation of Human Experimentation, 72 J. of Crim. L. & C. 1597, 1607 (1981).

    [xii] S. Rep. No. 94-755, Book I, p. 385 (1976)(quoting CIA Inspector General’s Survey of the Technical Services Division, p. 217 (1957)).

    [xiii] Id., at 416-417 (emphasis added)(quoting USAINTC Staff Study, Material Testing Program EA 1729, p. 26 (Oct. 15, 1959)).

     

     

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  • Chapter 1 – A Brief History, or “I’m from the government and I’m here to experiment on you.”

    I think it speaks to the undercurrent of distrust of the government and the military,” said Lt. Gen. Ronald R. Blanck, the Surgeon General of the Army, the service that oversees the [anthrax] vaccination program.  “Agent Orange. Nuclear tests in the ’50s. People say, ‘How can you say this is safe?’  Clearly, we have a credibility problem.”

    ~ Steven Lee Myers, Armed Services Opt to Discharge Those Who Refuse Vaccine, N.Y. Times, March 11, 1999.

    The United States Armed Forces has a long and not-so illustrious history of testing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons… on its own citizens. From at least the 1940’s on (and if you want to include Native Americans, we can go back a lot further!), the Department of Defense has conducted experiments on U.S. servicemembers using ‘unconventional’ weapons. A report prepared by the staff of the Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs in 1994 concluded that “[f]or at least 50 years, [the] DOD has intentionally exposed military personnel to potentially dangerous substances, often in secret[.]”[i] That report followed a Government Accounting Office inquiry into experiments conducted on servicemembers by the Department of Defense.[ii] The GAO report detailed many different programs, some of which the DoD still lists as classified, in which servicemembers were given experimental drugs and other treatments without their knowledge or consent. A few of the more stunning examples of experimentation are worth discussing in detail, not simply to attack the Department of Defense or the military establishment, but rather as context because it is against this history that the DoD’s anthrax program was launched. And it is against this background of secret experimentation and tests conducted on coerced subjects that the DoD asks members of the Armed Services to “trust us” with regards to vaccines and inoculations claimed to be safe and effective.

                                                                                                                                                                                                   

    [i] An Institute of Medicine report looking at the history of mustard and lewisite gas found the Armed Forces researching chemical warfare after World War I and up through World War II.  The report even traces some research back before the Civil War.  See Senate Report No. 103-97, at 15 (1994).

    [ii] The Government Accounting Office (GAO) is the watchdog arm of Congress that investigates government agencies.  See “Human Experimentation, An Overview on Cold War Era Programs,” U.S. General Accounting Office, September 28, 1994, GAO/T-NSIAD-94-266.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

    In the 1940’s, the Department of the Navy began soliciting volunteers to participate in a program to test protective clothing. In reality, the program was designed to test mustard and lewisite gases, chemical agents that the United States thought might be used by the desperate Axis powers at the end of World War II. There are some who claim that the tests were done simply to see what effect mustard gas had on soldiers in order to determine the offensive potential of chemical weapons. The truth is likely that these are not exclusive propositions. Either way, the program solicited potential ‘volunteers’ with the promise of two weeks of extra leave or some other similar incentive. “Due to the strategic importance of these experiments [however], the Navy deemed it inappropriate to inform potential volunteers as to the precise nature of the tests.  Instead . . . the . . . volunteers were led to believe that they would be testing uniforms for use in tropical climates.”[iii]  These ‘volunteers’ were sworn to secrecy and threatened with court-martial if they told anyone about the program for which they had just ‘volunteered.’  Of course, at this point, because no one had told them exactly what they volunteered for, it was relatively easy to extract such a promise. It is rather doubtful that most members would have agreed had they known that they were about to be experimented upon with chemical weapons.

    Nathan Schnurman was a young sailor who figured he could use the extra few days off. He had just finished boot camp and was stationed at Bainbridge, Maryland, awaiting further orders when he volunteered for the program. He was put on a bus for Anacostia, Maryland, where the experiments actually took place. Young Nathan Schnurman, along with the other volunteers, was given a bunk in a Quonset hut and some blankets for that evening. All of the volunteers were issued protective clothing, including a gas mask, given a physical, and the next morning the experiments began. The protective clothing and masks were fitted and checked and then the ten volunteers were led to the testing building. At this point, the volunteers had still only been told that they were testing clothing for tropical weather.

    The building itself was a simple structure with an entrance platform and test chamber. A single door separated the platform from the chamber and an intercom allowed for communication between the subjects inside the chamber and the corpsmen on the platform. The subjects were told that, once inside, a vapor was to be introduced into the chamber and that they were to remain in the chamber for one hour. The subjects were not told what the vapor was, but were told that it might produce a slight irritation on the subjects’ skin, similar to a sunburn. The subjects were admonished not to discuss the experiment with anyone.[iv]

    The volunteers were exposed to the vapor for the one hour, as advertised. After that, they were instructed to continue to wear the protective clothing for another four hours, to eat meals and pass the time in their Quonset hut. They later disrobed and were given physical exams to check primarily for burns on the skin. This routine repeated itself the next day. The second day’s physical was the last one that any volunteer ever received as a part of the experiment.

    The hour-long gas exposures continued on a daily basis for the next four days without incident, save the departure of a few of the subjects due to painful burns. On one of those days, just prior to the morning’s exposure, plaintiff [Schnurman] was informed by a corpsman that they would be testing mustard and lewisite gas that day.

    On the sixth test day, while inside the chambers, plaintiff’s gas mask malfunctioned and plaintiff breathed the noxious vapor being tested. The inhalation of the gas produced extreme nausea and a burning in his eyes, nose and throat. Before being helped out of the chamber, plaintiff regurgitated in his mask. Once outside the chambers and free of his mask, plaintiff continued to experience nausea and dizziness, plus an intense pain in his chest. After further vomiting, plaintiff lost consciousness. No record was made of this incident.

    Upon regaining consciousness, plaintiff was informed that he would no longer be needed for the experiment and that he could return to Bainbridge. He was not given any physical examination or treatment with the exception of local treatment for the minor burns on his skin. Plaintiff left the site of the experiment and traveled to his home in Roanoke, Virginia for a ten-day leave.[v]

    Mr. Schnurman went on with his life, experiencing long-term health problems. Sworn to secrecy, Schnurman felt that he could not tell his personal physician about the source of his ailments because of his oath and the threat of punishment. Thus, he did not provide essential information to his doctors about his health because of his fears of what would happen to him if he told. This scenario was not uncommon.

    A Mr. John T. Harrison described to a senate committee how he was sworn to secrecy in 1943 when mustard gas tests were conducted on him.[vi] Because of these vows to which the man had been sworn, it was not until much later in life that plaintiffs, such as Mr. Schnurman, (1) learned of what had been used on them, and (b) then filed lawsuits against the government.

    A very similar incident happened to a John William Allen in 1945, according to a statement before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Mr. Allen testified that the real purpose of the testing was to determine how much sulfur mustard a man could take before being overcome: these were known as ‘man-break tests.’  “He was exposed several times to sulfur mustard and was removed from further exposure on May 5, 1945, when he passed out in the gas chamber. A physical examination on May 14, 1945, revealed many wounds as the result of exposure to mustard gas.”[vii]

    It is important to understand that these are not isolated incidents.  An Institute of Medicine report in 1993 estimated that some 60,000 military members were used as human subjects in the 1940’s to test just for two particular chemical agents, mustard gas and lewisite, and the majority of these people were not informed about the nature of the experiments, nor were they given proper medical care or follow up after the research.[viii]

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

    [iii] Few things have amazed me more in my time in service than what members of the Armed Forces – even moreso Marines – will do for just a few extra days of leave or liberty. I am still not sure what that says about the military, but leave and liberty are the promise land to most servicemembers.

    [iv] Schnurman v. United States, 490 F. Supp. 429, 430 (E. D. Va. 1980).

    [v] Schnurman, at 431.

    [vi] Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans’ Health? Lessons from World War II, the Persian Gulf War, and Today, Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, 103rd Cong. May 6, 1994.

    [vii] S. Rep. 103-97, at 18 (1994).

    [viii] Veterans at Risk: The Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite, Pechura, C.M. & Rall, D.P. (Eds.) Institute of Medicine, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1993, p. 3-4, 6-8, 50-52, 224-226.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

    During the 1950’s and 60’s, the CIA and the Army engaged in experimentation on U.S. servicemembers, both with and without their knowledge. In several different experiments, the DoD caused servicemembers to unknowingly ingest hallucinogens. Most of the experiments centered around ‘mind control’ and interrogation of persons under the effects of hallucinogens. This was prompted by the perception in U.S. intelligence that China and the Soviet Union had used, and were using, hallucinogens for ‘brainwashing’ and interrogation of prisoners of war. This program was known by the code name MKULTRA. It involved giving LSD and another substance known as quinuclidinyl benzilate, a hallucinogen code-named BZ, to unsuspecting members of both the Armed Forces and civilian communities.

    In 1958, Master Sergeant James Stanley responded to a posting on Fort Knox, Kentucky, that solicited volunteers to help the Army develop methods for testing and defending against chemical weapons. Ironically, the volunteers were told they would be testing protective clothing (just as in World War II). MSgt Stanley was transferred to Aberdeen, Maryland, for the testing. He did not learn until seventeen years later that he had been unknowingly given LSD during the program. He found this out accidentally in 1975 when contacted by Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which was conducting follow-up on those who had participated in the 1958 test. Walter Reed wanted to know of any long-term health consequences to MSgt Stanley from his ingestion of the hallucinogen. MSgt Stanley in the intervening years had suffered health problems and hallucinations that he had no explanation for that eventually led to a divorce. See United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669 (1987).

    In another instance, Lloyd Gamble, who enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950, volunteered for a special program to (yet again!) test new military protective clothing in 1957.

    He was offered various incentives to participate in the program, including a liberal leave policy, family visitations, and superior living and recreational facilities. However, the greatest incentive to Mr. Gamble was the official recognition he would receive as a career-oriented noncommissioned officer, through letters of commendation and certification of participation in the program. During the 3 weeks of testing new clothing, he was given two or three water-size glasses of a liquid containing LSD to drink. Thereafter, Mr. Gamble developed erratic behavior and even attempted suicide. He did not learn that he had received LSD as a human subject until 18 years later, as a result of congressional hearings in 1975.  Even then, the Department of the Army initially denied that he had participated in the experiments, although an official DOD publicity photograph showed him as one of the valiant servicemen volunteering for “a program that was in the highest national security interest.”[ix]

    What is worth noting about these programs, beyond the experimentation on servicemembers without their informed consent, are the arguments offered by the proponents and defenders of these programs. According to Sidney Gottlieb, a doctor and former CIA officer, MKULTRA was established to investigate whether and how an individual’s behavior could be modified by covert means. Dr. Gottlieb testified before Congress that “it was felt to be mandatory and of the utmost urgency for our intelligence organization to establish what was possible in this field on a high priority basis.”[x] Although many human subjects were not informed or protected, Dr. Gottlieb’s defended these actions by stating, “. . . harsh as it may seem in retrospect, it was felt that in an issue where national survival might be concerned, such a procedure and such a risk was a reasonable one to take.”[xi]

    These attitudes persist even today. Dr. Gottleib’s responses in the 1970’s sound remarkably like the reasons offered to justify mandatory vaccination of troops today with unapproved, unlicensed, or investigational drugs. In a television appearance in 1997, Secretary of Defense Cohen held up a five-pound bag of sugar and stated that if the bag were filled with anthrax spores, it could wipe out half of the population of Washington, D.C.[xii] In a later opinion editorial appearing in Army Times, Secretary Cohen wrote that

    At least 25 countries, including Iraq and North Korea, now have – or are in the process of acquiring and developing – weapons of mass destruction . . . This is not hyperbole. It is reality . . . The race is on between our preparations and those of our adversaries. We are preparing for the possibility of a chemical or biological attack on American soil because we must. There is not a moment to lose.[xiii]

    The truth of these matters will be examined in greater detail later. The point to be made here is that Secretary Cohen’s defense of the anthrax program, and the justification for biological warfare programs generally, distilled to its essence, is nothing more than “the ends justifies the means.” Where matters of national security (Gottleib called it “national survival”) are at stake, it does not matter how we go about defending ourselves, even if it means experimenting on unsuspecting troops, because it involves ‘National Security’.

    This is a particularly dangerous path for a number of reasons, some obvious and others not as obvious. While there are any number of moral points of view about using troops in this way, one’s opinion about whether it is right or wrong to experiment on troops in this fashion depends largely on one’s view of individual liberty for the citizen-soldier and the limits of a nation state’s ability to protect ‘itself.’ These arguments inevitably devolve into philosophical debates, punctuated by twelve-letter words and citations to long-dead philosophers, spoken by people far removed from the gas chambers and vomiting victims on their hands and knees; much like Dr. Gottleib’s testimony in an air-conditioned chamber in front of politicians and cameras during the famous Church Committee hearings. More importantly, where ‘military’ or ‘national security’ matters are concerned, the academics inevitably defer to those wearing uniforms with stars on their collars.

    It would appear on the surface that this issue was decisively concluded at the end of World War II in favor of the rights of the individual. In August 1947, the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi Doctors, including those such as Karl Brandt, came to a close, resulting in the death penalty for many of the doctors who conducted such experiments on unwilling prisoners in concentration camps across Hitler’s Reich. It is there that we must turn briefly in order to understand the law of informed consent and how it applies to the military, if at all. But if it seems that the present author is ‘laying it on a little thick,’ compare Secretary Cohen’s above remark about the necessity of the mandatory anthrax vaccine program to this one:

    We are not conducting these experiments, as a matter of fact, for the sake of some fixed scientific idea, but to be of practical help to the armed forces and beyond that to the . . . people in a possible emergency.

    This is from a letter written by Doctor Wolfram Sievers, Colonel in the German Army in November, 1942, to Dr. Karl Brandt, both convicted Nazi War Criminals, excerpted from Prosecution Exhibit No. 263 at their trial.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

    [ix] Id., notes omitted.

    [x] Human Drug Testing by the CIA, 1977: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, Committee on Human Resources, U.S. Senate, September 20-21, p. 169 (1977).

    [xi] Id., pp. 169-217.

    [xii] Paul Richter, Experts Assess Risk of ‘New Terrorism’ Threat, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 7, 2000.

    [xiii] William S. Cohen, Preparing for a Grave New World, Washington Post, Jul. 26, 1999.

     

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  • Q’s Brain Toilet: Cinco de Q

    Come one, come all! Q’s traveling circus of insanity has returned to town!  See the Bearded Lady, the Human Pretzel and the world famous Flying Shitlords on the trapeze!  And now, in the center ring, the show is about to begin!

    The Deep State and Faux Accomplishment

    We often discuss the rampant and obsessive credentialism that flourishes in the permanent bureaucracy of the FedGov.  This seems to go incestuously hand-in-hand with a handful of expensive and prestigious (emphasis on expensive) educational institutions.  Entering “the civil service” has largely been considered by popular culture as a way for a skilled individual to work for the good of society rather than power and money.  As the FedGov has grown ever more bloated and infiltrated more and more of our lives, this theory has become laughable.

    The permanent bureaucracy cultivates and maintains a self-licking ice cream cone of masturbatory influence peddling amongst the chosen ones who inhabit it.  It is a pathway to great power and wealth to mediocre individuals that would otherwise be unavailable.  You see, what it takes to make it into the private club is a secret handshake consisting of the “right” credentials, the “right” connections, the “right” familial relations or some combination thereof.  To be a captain of industry, or a famous scientist or author, or a wealthy entrepreneur etc. requires real talent and tons of hard work.  Entering the permanent bureaucracy and getting gifted some minor Administration position or managerial post in an agency is a back door to the same type of “respectability” and “prestige” as any of the aforementioned accomplishments.  The fact that people with no other qualifications other than “former White House adviser” sit on boards of directors of large companies or gain endowed professorships at universities is evidence enough of that.

    I believe that a mildly competent mid-level professional is, on average, eminently more qualified for various leadership positions than even a high-level Swamp Creature; to say nothing about truly exceptional individuals occupying the heights of industry, business and applied research.  Looking from this angle, it’s evident why getting a cherry position in the Deep State is so appealing to those whose ambitions are several sizes larger than their talents.

    Male Sexual Ego, Uniqueness and the Will to Power

    The generative act is treated by many religions and philosophies as a divine act; in essence, this draws an analogue between reproduction and the act of capital-C Creation.  It’s really not all that far fetched considering that it is an ecstatic outpouring of energy resulting in a mysterious process that creates new and independent life.  A more cynical person might even say that creation myths were written ex post facto to align with human sexuality and orgasm.  However, I digress…

    Especially in Eastern religious tradition (but present in Western too) is the view that males and females channel inner god-like energy during sexual congress.  I don’t believe this is the full story, however.  Females may, in fact, channel the divine feminine during intercourse, but the true god-like aspect of the reproductive act comes later during gestation and parturition.  For the male, however, his only involvement and feeling of being akin to G-d is during the sex act itself.  This is partially why, contrary to pop culture belief, men care a great deal about getting a woman to orgasm; it’s proof of their divine abilities.

    To that end, I posit that there is nothing more horrifying to a man than the idea that he has a sexual doppelgänger.  A man can deal with the idea that the woman he’s having sex with may have had a man in past who is overall subjectively “better”.  This is almost always offset by the fact that in particular areas, he himself was deemed “better”; ie: even though man X had a smaller penis than man Y, man X was better at oral, etc.  And this is down to the judgement of the particular woman.  The principal thing here is that the man retains his uniqueness when it comes to his divine power.

    Imagine now a scenario in which man X and man Y are utterly indistinguishable.  There is no objective difference at all between how each of them have sex.  All of a sudden, they are no longer distinct beings at the most fundamental level.  Milan Kundera said (and I’m paraphrasing) that only through having sex with someone can we pierce the veil of the superficial and see their true nature.  Given that, regardless of their other qualities, man X and Y are identical, non-unique and, therefore, useless and soulless.  Looking at it this way, it makes sense why men are: 1) obsessed with sex, 2) obsessed with distinguishing themselves to their lovers and 3) very goal-oriented sexually.

    My Favorite Rare and Exotic Diseases (in no particular order)

    Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva – “an extremely rare connective tissue disease. It is a severe, disabling disease with no cure or treatment and is the only known medical condition where one organ system changes into another[…]The disease is caused by a mutation of the body’s repair mechanism, which causes fibrous tissue (including muscle, tendon, and ligament) to be ossified spontaneously or when damaged. In many cases, otherwise minor injuries can cause joints to become permanently frozen in place, as new bone forms and replaces the damaged muscle tissue.”

    Fatal Familial Insomnia – “It is a prion disease of the brain[…]Fatal insomnia has no known cure and involves progressively worsening insomnia, which leads to hallucinations, delirium, confusional states like that of dementia, and eventually death. The average survival time from onset of symptoms is 18 months.”

    Xeroderma pigmentosum – “is a genetic disorder (autosomal recessive) in which there is a decreased ability to repair DNA damage such as that caused by ultraviolet (UV) light[…]There is no cure for XP.  Treatment involves completely avoiding the sun.”

    Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis – “N. fowleri invades the central nervous system via the nose, specifically through the olfactory mucosa of the nasal tissues. This usually occurs as the result of the introduction of water that has been contaminated with N. fowleri into the nose during activities such as swimming, bathing, or nasal irrigation[…]Although infection occurs very rarely, it nearly always results in death, with a case fatality rate greater than 95%.”

    Nodding Syndrome – “Nodding disease is a disease which emerged in Sudan in the 1960s[…]Children affected by nodding disease experience a complete and permanent stunting of growth. The growth of the brain is also stunted, leading to mental handicap. The disease is named for the characteristic, pathological nodding seizure, which often begins when the children begin to eat, or sometimes when they feel cold. These seizures are brief and halt after the children stop eating or when they feel warm again. Seizures in nodding disease span a wide range of severity. Neurotoxicologist Peter Spencer, who has investigated the disease, has stated that upon presentation with food, ‘one or two [children] will start nodding very rapidly in a continuous, pendulous nod. A nearby child may suddenly go into a tonic–clonic seizure, while others will freeze.’”

    That wraps up yet another edition of Q’s Brain Toilet, while it may not be as horrific as SF’s posts, as interesting as Animal’s, as informative as MS’s, as whimsical as Banjo’s, as creative as CPRM’s, as useful as SP’s or as anti-Semitic as OMWC’s, it certainly exists!  G-d bless Glibertarians and G-d bless America!

    …and maybe Canada every once in a while too.

  • Whycome We Explode Things to Celebrate?

    “Some Swiss Servo guy is holed up in there.”

    I used to love fireworks. As a kid, that was the best part of Independence Day. Fireworks shows, shooting off bottle rockets and Roman candles…. ah.

    Then a year in NE Afghanistan went by. Came home and went to a Class A baseball game near my town, that featured a fireworks show afterward. First shot started a bit of a panicked reaction from me. (No, really Chipwooder, it did!) It was the sound, not the flash or such. I excused myself, and figured I would wait it out in the restroom. WRONG. Being a Single A park, it was cinderblock and sheetmetal…it actually amplified everything. Before I could really freak out, I got back to tell my wife, that I kind of needed to leave. As we walked back to the car, the show ended. Haven’t been a big fan since. Going to Iraq for the second half of TEH SURGE didn’t help any adjusting, I am guessing.

    Later, being a bit discomfited by my fireworks enthusiast neighbors, I wondered….why of all days, is this the one people blow stuff up to celebrate? [NOTE: by the time this started happening, I had started to transmogrify into a libertarian. No police were called, no complaints to the City, no going out and yelling at them….especially since their kids seemed to love it.]. I mean, there is some history of noisemaking on New Year’s Eve…firing off guns seems to be a tradition in many places. [When I was a prosecutor, I spent 8 months running a branch court location in a city with…a sizable Messican, um, transient population. New Year’s Eve 1998, we had 286 calls of shots fired. The next year, the cops got smart – they had a Spanish speaking officer in each car, and they would simply go the area and have the cop tell everyone…”Happy New Year. By the way. No shooting here, please. People think it is a gang war. Thank you and good night.”] But nothing on the scale of July 4.

    As with most problems in the entire world IT STARTED WITH A DEAD WHITE MALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    (Missing by only two days, due to the difference in the vote of Congress and the Declaration being dated)….John Adams explained to his wife

    “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

    OK, so I see where this started.

    And as any libertarian could tell you – what started as a sort of spontaneous celebration was slowly co-opted and somewhat smothered by the gubermint. Eventually fixed as a holiday, then an unpaid Federal Holiday…then, of course, a paid Federal Holiday. The guns, bonfires and bells got shushed or extinguished. But the fireworks remained. Until the nanny-statists started getting them banned, or taken over by the G. Some cooperation with sponsors and such has kept many a civic fireworks show going (“Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks, as seen on NBC! Chicago Navy Pier Fireworks show, brought to you by Miller Lite”). In many liberty oriented states, fireworks are legal (Hi, Indiana!) and often brought by the carload into more nanny-scold states (Illinois) and blasted away with a complete disregard for rules, laws and finger-wagging. While I may not care for it, I say “good!” At least one little bit of defiance of the Panopticon State.

    Go shoot off a Roman Candle and pack of bottle rockets for me, will you? I’ll be in the basement with the dog and some imperial stout or whisky (or both).

    May or may not be Brett L

  • This [REDACTED] is [REDACTED] as [REDACTED]

    THIS TRANSMISSION IS CLASSIFFIED;

    THAT MEANS IF THIS IS LEAKED, BAD THINGS HAPPEN;

    STOP LEAKING, ITS DANGEROUS IF THE PUBLIC FINDS OUT WHAT GOES ON IN THE WAR ROOM

    STOP LEAKING, DAMN YOU!!

    THIS TRANSMISSION IS CLASSIFIED

    Location:  US State Department, Henry Kissinger Conference Room

    “I know, I do, I P.  Me, Mike P on Iran.  That which is he, who is me.  You all got that?”  Secretary Pompeo declared.  “Iran is going to get a big steaming load of hot ass all over their Mohammadean chests, when I am done with them!”

    “This has nothing to do with Iran.  Just because we called in the Joint Chiefs, doesn’t mean we are asking you to create a war, Mr. Secretary.”  Acting SecDef Patrick Shannahan replied.  “Certainly not one with Iran.”

    “But I want to take a big shit on Iran!”  Pompeo sat down on the floor with his arms crossed.

    “That’s not why we’re here.”

    “This isn’t fair.  I want to shit on Iran.  I was promised I can go to war with Iran if I took this shit job, and damnit  I wanna war with Iran!”

    The room fell silent enough to hear the collective eye rolls from the Joint Chiefs, and Bolton’s mustache furiously fapping upon a unlit cigarette.

    “We need to brief the President on…another issue that has been making the rounds in the media.”  Shannahan explained. “Has anybody ever informed you of the DOD’s work with UFO’s?”

    “Unidentified Flying Iranian-Objects?”

    “It has nothing to do with Iran.”

    “Uhhh-ranian Flying Objects?”

    “IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IRAN.”

    “Look, it’s close enough for government work.  Let’s begin before I need another cigarette.”  A fat, awkward looking man said behind the SecDef.  He appeared to be sloppily dressed in a cheap suit and smelled of sweat, used prophylaxes, American Spirit Menthols, and possibly yellow curry.  “I don’t have a ton of time but if this shitweasel has the President’s ear then my job is done once I pass him the ball.”

    “This is Special Secret Agent Snuffy.”  Shannahann began.  “He has been tracking these anomalies since 1968.”

    “Does he work for Iran?”  Pompeo asked.

    “I don’t work for Iran.”  The fat man replied.

    “I don’t believe you.  What Iranian agency do you work for?”

    “I worked with the Shah, briefly in the 70’s, but that is irrelevant.”

    “I KNEW IT!”

    “Listen you shitweasel, SPACE SMITH has been sighted by Naval Aviators during the previous administration.  SPACE SMITH is out to rape you and the rest of the planet.”

    “Does SPACE SMITH work for Iran?”

    “No.  It’s an ancient spiritual being that transcends time and space, jumping between planetary systems after it achieves it’s objectives:  raping the planet.”

    “Does Iran possess this technology to transcend time and space?”

    “No, Iran is going to get fucked too.”

    “YES LETS FUCK IRAN”

    “Focus, you asshole.  SPACE SMITH =/= Iran.”

    “Exactly…focus…Iran…asshole…SPACE SMITH…rape Iran.  What else do I need to brief to the President?”

    “Navy and Air Force pilots have come in contact with SPACE SMITH.  Some of them have gone public, and some of the media outlets are reporting it, and not just the crackpot outlets.  They identified it moves at hypersonic speeds, and in a manner that exceeds human abilities.  We don’t think we can talk it down, but a plan does exist in the event it must scratch its quantum itch.”

    “Can Iran move at hypersonic speeds?”

    “No.”

    “Can we use this against Iran?”

    “Not really, not without getting raped ourselves.”

    “But Iran is behind SPACE SMITH.”

    “Technically its the other way around.”

    “Okay I think I have this now.  Air Force and Navy pilots have identified a new Iranian super-weapon, this ‘SPACE SMITH.’  This is why sanctions are not enough in dealing with the radical Islamic Iranian regime….”

    “Can I slap him?”

    “Mathis struck him last year.” Shannahan responded. “Pompeo accused him of being an Iranian plant.  Took a dozen men to remove Mathis dragging his balls across his face after he knocked him out.”

    “The Iranian’s sent Mathis to take me out and Tea Bag me!”

    “Jesus.”  The yellow curry scented man said.

    “What is the connection between Jesus, and Iran?”  Pompeo asked.

    “We tried.  Hopefully he tells the President.”

     

    “With the aid of their new super-weapon SPACE SMITH RAPED JESUS!  Iran converted JESUS against AMERICA, and will turn this weapon against the American people, unless we act now…..”

     

    THIS TRANSMISSION IS CLASSIFFIED;

    THAT MEANS IF THIS IS LEAKED, BAD THINGS HAPPEN;

    STOP LEAKING, ITS DANGEROUS IF THE PUBLIC FINDS OUT WHAT GOES ON IN THE WAR ROOM

    STOP LEAKING, DAMN YOU!!

    THIS TRANSMISSION IS CLASSIFIED

     

     

     

  • Hard work or luck, which is it? The pathway to prosperity.

    Setting aside every ounce of cynicism that I possibly can, I’m able to address the economic left and economic right on their stated views of prosperity.

    Specifically, the economic left assumes that extraneous factors (luck) are the driving force behind prosperity (and paucity). The economic right assumes that hard work is the driving force behind prosperity, and the lack of hard work is the driving force behind paucity.

    As is always the case, reality is somewhere in the middle. For every Jobian sob story the left trots out in their parade of horrors and for every Paris Hilton they shame, there are thousands… tens of thousands… of everyday people who have worked hard, weathered the uncertainties of life, and retired comfortably as millionaires.

    Personally, I think the economic right is closer to the truth than the economic left. As Roger Penske said, “(Good) luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”  A barista with an oppression studies degree isn’t a victim of bad luck. She’s suffering the consequences of her poor decision making. Somebody who makes a ton of money in the stock market isn’t “lucky” as much as they’re reaping the benefits of their preparation.

    This isn’t to say that I don’t think that people get royally fucked or incredibly lucky. However, my personal observation is that most “bad luck” is a result of shortsightedness and a lack of risk management. Most “good luck” is observed by an envious person who doesn’t see the hard work required to achieve good things. The one situation where my belief in personal responsibility wavers ever so slightly is in kids and teenagers. It’s a tall task to ask an 18 year old who has grown up in a financially illiterate family and a financially illiterate culture, with all of the incentives pointing in the direction of financial ruin, to grow up, make good decisions, and not fuck up.

    However, there are three reasons why government has no business getting involved. First is that when you’re the primary cause for fucking up the culture, you shouldn’t have a voice in the solution. The modern economic left fucked up a variety of American cultures’ perception of money over the past 75 years. They have no leg to stand on when they complain about the results of their own idiocy. Second is this is exactly the right place for private charity. Cutting financial illiterates a check is idiotic and amplifies the cultural defects that cause the financial illiteracy. However, private charities are much more likely to condition any financial assistance on learning financial literacy. Third is that in 21st century United States of America, you get to fuck up quite a few times financially before you’re screwed for life. People have come around at age 50 or later and still have been able to retire with dignity. An 18 year old has 40 years to have their “come to Jesus” moment and live on less than they earn, and they’ll still be able to shop in the produce section for groceries instead of the cat food section.

    “Oh, but they can’t get a decent job with a living wage.” Bullshit. First, that’s exactly the kind of “bad luck” that is actually poor decision making causing completely foreseeable consequences. If you haven’t gotten your GED, it’s not bad luck keeping from getting beyond minimum wage. Second, I’ve met people who have saved enough for a comfortable retirement as janitors, in retail, and in fast food. Y’know what they did? They lived austere lives, took very few risks, spent less than they made, and invested for decades. I remember hearing a story of a janitor who averaged less than $50k annually over his career, and retired a millionaire.

    “Oh, but the American dream is dead, you can’t do that anymore.” Bullshit, again. I think there’s a massive divide in my millennial cohort, and I think that this divide articulates why the American dream isn’t dead. Looking at my classmates from high school and college, the divide is simple. Those who learned uncommon skills are making bank and those who did not learn uncommon skills are mooching off their parents and supporting Bernie. Obviously the dividing line isn’t as stark as I’m describing it, but it’s a pretty strong difference. Classmates with education and humanities degrees are struggling to progress beyond beverage arts. Classmates with STEM and business degrees are finding career jobs.

    Where’s the luck in that? Well, I guess you could call being born to parents who cared enough to call a spade a spade good luck. I guess you could call a mathematical aptitude and a disdain for the easy way good luck. However, that massively undercredits personal agency. That’s really the issue, isn’t it? The left seems to believe that agency occurs where opportunity fates it. If you succeed, it’s because you are privileged with good fortune (in the traditional Greek conception of the term). If you fail, it’s because the fates have conspired against you. They double down on this rejection of agency for young people. They assume that a 15-20 year old (or 26 year old) is incapable of exerting control on their own life. Nevermind the fact that adolescence is a new concept, teenagers are made out as completely unequipped to make adult decisions. Much of this is the fault of a failed education system and a culture of irresponsibility, but the fact remains that the average 17 year old is treated more like their 12 year old sibling than like their 21 year old sibling.

    I often think back to my high school and college days. There were many times when I passed up fun (as a 15-20 year old) to achieve something more important. I remember getting out of bed at 5am on a Saturday to hop on a bus and drive up to Testicle State for a math competition and to hop on a bus to Rose Hulman for a robotics competition. I remember sitting in a restaurant across from the campus bars on a Tuesday night, watching the education major girls lined up for another night of drunken dancing , knowing full well that I’d pass them during their walks of shame the next morning as I walked back from then engineering lab after pulling an all-nighter. We both got fucked, them much more literally than me. I had my fun, I wasn’t anhedonic, but when the left tries to paint my millennial cohort as victims of a student loan crisis, I think back to those images burned in my memory. Are they victims of bad luck, or were they just immature idiots poorly prepared for adulthood?

    Once you cut out all the fluff, it comes down to a simple piece of introspection. Are you a victim in your personal narrative, or are you a hero? The left self-identifies as victims. The right self-identifies as heroes. As with all things in the real world, the truth is a bit of both.

  • Its finally over.

    TW:  Spoilers…sort of.

    Today is Saturday.  This means I have about 30 hours until the only adult activity in my house will involve dropping everything, turning off all the lights and….watching Game of Thrones.   I don’t hate it, but I don’t get it either.  I first came across GoT while I was living in Colorado.  I was visiting my parents who were into the show from the beginning of Season 1.  I noted the terrible effects, poorly choreographed fight scenes and the fact that Boromir finally found a universe that won’t kill him.

    This is my review of Trader Joe’s Providential Golden Belgian Ale (made by Unibroe)

    Too bad for Boromir though, he just can’t catch a break.

    I’ll show you what I can REALLY do with a bottle of Wesson Oil.

    Unfortunately, others including my wife tried getting me to read the books.  I stopped sometime around the albino wolf.  I didn’t get around to watching it until midway through this last season.  So my analysis of this show starts around the time K.I.T.T., flaming-sword guy, hilarious asshole, and freaky-eyed ginger dude, all go on the other side of Trump’s wall to capture a zombie-Mexican.  I couldn’t understand what the deal was.  They needed to capture a Mexican to convince the fake blonde, and/or evil Carol Brady they need to help the Scots defeat Mr. Freeze and his army of zombie-Mexicans?

    What was the point if the wall was made out of ice, and Northern Scotland was going to continue to be in nuclear winter for the next ten years, couldn’t they just fortify Trump’s wall with MORE ICE?  There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of SNOW and ICE in Northern Scotland–make the ICE wall stronger or something by adding more ICE.

    In the next scene we see Wee-Man giving the fake blonde excellent advice for any government figure, that sometimes the best choice is to do nothing.  Nope. We gotta do SOMETHING, so we’re saving K.I.T.T., flaming-sword guy, hilarious asshole, and freaky-eyed ginger dude.  To the Dragons!  Where they pull two classic TV mistakes of provoking the marauding horde, and staying in the LZ way longer than necessary and paid dearly for it.  Don’t they do CSAR in Northern Scotland?  Provide cover fire, land, mount up, and get the hell out of dodge.  Now they have to deal with Mr. Freeze slaying and resurrecting–a zombie dragon.

    I bet they wish they just fortified Trump’s wall now.  Nothing is stopping the zombie-Mexicans from overrunning Trump’s wall, and evil Carol Brady is just going to let them get run over.

    Now that the fearless crew have returned to the Scotland with their zombie-Mexican safely in a crate, we find out through the magic of dramatic irony that while K.I.T.T. is doing it with fake blonde–she is his aunt.  Seriously?  Is it really any wonder why incest-porn is a thing now?  Whatever, they’re royalty.

    The next season begins with Northern Scotland being ground zero for the zombie-Mexican invasion.  Northern Scotland is greeted by an enormous army of black Spartans and Turkish Mongols.  How do they deal with the logistics of three armies being in one place in the dead of winter?  Who cares, these are zombie-Mexicans due to arrive at any minute.  We also find out that fake blonde does not play well with either of K.I.T.T.’s sisters: slender ginger and wide-eyes. Its cool though, because we are further reinforced that K.I.T.T. and fake blonde are related when he mounts a dragon, and doesn’t die.  Other plot lines involving awkward moments between other characters also occur, thankfully not between siblings.

    The battle for Helm’s Deep!  I think.  I couldn’t see anything because they decided to shoot the entire episode through a camera lens coated with Wesson Oil and shot it at night.  K.I.T.T., crazy-eyed ginger dude, flaming sword guy, hilarious asshole, the Storm Trooper captain from the new Star Wars, Goldfinger (evil Carol Brady’s brother), Wee-Man–screw it.  Nobody of consequence to the story dies at Helm’s Deep, and all manage to fight off a zombie dragon, zombie-Mexicans, plus …zombie-Scots, zombie-black Spartans, and zombie Turkish-Mongols. That is, except for Mr. Freeze.  Apparently wide-eyes is some kind of super assassin who stabs him under the ribs with a dagger made by magic Romans, thus killing all the zombie Mexicans, Scots, black Spartans, Turkish-Mongols, and dragons.

    It is here we get to a point in the storyline that seems to have surprised “people” on the “internet.”  This entire time they all thought fake blonde was somebody worthy of admiration.  Even Elizabeth Warren got it wrong, granted that is par for the course for her.  They want a do-over.  I for one saw that fake blonde has been an evil, impulsive, power-hungry tyrant the entire time–they all just thought she was the candidate most likely to be a “good” leader.  —Spoiler Alert— Everyone vying for the throne is either evil or stupid.

    Everyone all seemed to miss this.  It was foreshadowed by parts like where she required everybody to bow down to her for her help.  How she didn’t purchase her army of black-Spartans, she just ordered her then toddler dragons to murder the guy selling her the army.  In fact, she pretty much burned all of her enemies to a crisp for the transgression of being against her; such as slave owners, other monarchs, the cue ball that was the only character that figured this out on his own, her brother, etc.  She told slender ginger the only goal she ever really had was to win back the throne, which she believed the entire time was rightfully hers–sort of like evil Carol Brady.

    Upon finding out she had relations with her nephew, instead of feeling slightly disgusted or acting in a manner to what any reasonable person would do (dousing themselves in Holy Water, for example) her first thought is that means K.I.T.T. technically has a claim to the throne more legitimate than hers.  Then she takes her dragons, one fresh off a fight with a zombie dragon, where he is clearly injured, and decided to attack a flotilla commanded by Captain Jack.  Predictably, Captain Jack brought that dragon down to the railroad track.

    So is the plot of last week’s episode really that surprising?  Not really.  Here’s a spoiler friendly version.

    For everyone else, they now see she is an evil, impulsive, power-hungry tyrant that will stop at nothing to achieve her objectives.  It doesn’t matter there are other people with claims to the throne that also made sacrifices towards that end.  It doesn’t matter an army surrendered and then were burned for their trouble along with an absurdly large medieval city.  It certainly doesn’t matter the throne she sought, was destroyed because she literally decided to burn the castle it was placed.

    …but this is definitely a person worthy of Elizabeth Warren’s admiration.  I’ll give you that.  Which reminds me, remember when Hillary compared herself to evil Carol Brady?

    Pepperidge Farms remembers.

    Is this beer any good?  Yes, it’s Unibroe and they make good stuff.  Since it is marketed under the Trader Joe’s brand it is a very reasonable $6.99.  It has excellent body, mild citrus notes, and overall is simply lovely.  I will go so far as to say it is better than this show, and the best part is that I can still buy it on Monday when I will be inundated with people in my office yammering on about GoT.  Trader Joe’s Providential Golden Belgian Ale:  3.9/5.

  • Lets play a game…

    I’ve been stationed in a few places while in the service, and my favorite  station was in Colorado.  Most likely because I left there a few months after they passed that ridiculous magazine law.

    This is my review of Wild Tonic Mango Ginger Kombucha

    What?  I’ll get to it.

    What piqued my interest in this was the multiple County Sheriffs in Colorado that openly denounced the new “Red Flag” Law law that went into effect recently.  While I was living there, the then local sheriff, Terry Maketa of El Paso County, declared the magazine law unenforceable and refused to even try.  As for the new law, per the Colorado Springs Gazette:

    The Democrat-sponsored law allows family, household members or law enforcement to petition a court for an “extreme risk protection order” (ERPO) to have guns seized from an owner if they believe he or she poses a threat to themselves or others.

    The gun owner will be given legal counsel and a hearing within 14 days to determine if a longer-term order should be put in place for up to 364 days. The court can order a mental health evaluation, as well as mental health treatment.

    The bill places the burden of proof on the gun owner to prove that he or she no longer poses a risk in order to get the firearms back.

    The law allows courts to start accepting requests for ERPOs on Jan. 1. In the meantime, the state Police Office Standards Board, which is under Weiser’s office, along with chiefs of police, are working on policies for law enforcement in how to implement the law.

    Let it be known that due process and presumption of innocence no longer exists.

    So we’re going to play a game called, “Gun or Cellphone?”  I scour the internet for creep-shots of people that might have a cellphone…or a handgun, but which one can it be?  I leave it to you to decide…

    Why would it matter?  Unlike the Colorado legislature all of us here are aware that no law is just going to magically make the guns disappear, and are aware of the utter lack of statistical likelihood the person next to you is mentally insane insane enough to murder everyone in the room.  We’re also much more aware if the FBI crime statistics that suggest the overwhelming number of murders with a firearm are handguns, so it seems more relevant.  So lets play…

    #1 Gun or Cellphone?
    #2 Gun or Cellphone?
    #3 Gun or Cellphone?
    #4 Gun or Cellphone?
    #5 Gun or cellphone?
    #6 Gun or cellphone?
    #7 Gun or cellphone?
    #8 Gun or cellphone?

     

    #9 Gun or cellphone?

    I don’t have an answer key…

    I should warn you about this kombucha—some of the offerings from this brand are 5.6% alcohol which means this MAY be good for stealth day drinking.  Even though those are clearly labeled, the nannies at the Glibertarians.com legal department wished me to put up the following disclaimer:  drink this at work at your own risk…