by the Night Writer

Gerald Prante writing at the Tax Policy Blog examines a recent report published in the New England Journal of Medicine calling for a penny-per-ounce soft-drink tax to pay for the long-term health costs of obesity. According to the report’s authors, the soft-drink industry represents “market failures” — in the form of less-than-optimal production and consumption — that justify government intervention.

These failures have to do consumers not appreciating the connection between consuming sugar-sweetened drinks and their long-term health because they have a) imperfect information which leads to poor consumption decisions; b) their decisions are further distorted by advertising; c) consumers, especially children and adolescents, tend to make decisions based on immediate gratification and not on long-term consequences, and d) these consumers don’t pay the full cost of their decisions because it is passed on to the healthcare system, of which half the costs are paid by the public via Medicare and Medicaid.

Prante wonders, if those are compelling reasons to institute a soft-drink tax, why not apply the same logic to out-of-wedlock sex and tax that as well:

Based on these supposed market failures, I’d like to pose this question to the authors: If government had perfect information, would you support a tax on out-of-wedlock sexual behavior? And if we can’t do that for administrative purposes, couldn’t we impose a significant tax on nightclubs and bars as a second best scenario (kind of like how the authors of this report suggest an imperfect soda tax to fight obesity-related market failures)?

…

First, I can think of no other “market” in which imperfect information exists at such a prevalent level than that of sexual interactions. How many men and women have perfect information about their sexual partners, especially those on a random night that they meet at a nightclub or bar?

Second, I can think of no other “market” in which the problem of a person pursuing short-term gratification at the expense of possible long-term harm would exists to such a large degree as that in the area of sexual activity.

Finally, there are substantial medical costs from sexually transmitted diseases, the bulk of which persists in out-of-wedlock/multiple partner/sexually active persons. And many of these are borne by taxpayers via government health care expenditures.

And that doesn’t even take into account the costs to the public in terms of increased poverty and welfare which have been directly linked to out-of-wedlock births.

Of course, few would sit still for such a tax on one’s lifestyle, would they?

You know, we used to talk about the cost of our liberty being paid in the blood of our soldiers and citizens (and especially our citizen-soldiers); we appear to be heading into an era where our liberty will be determined by how much we cost the state.

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by the Night Writer

Somebody had the brilliant idea to create a game app for the iPhone where the objective is to shake a baby to death, and then Apple thought it was a good idea to approve and market it.

What next, a baby-seal clubbing app? Columbine as a first-person-shooter? Concentration Camp Jenga?

FAIL

It’s amazing how quickly a bad idea can get disseminated via today’s technology — and how quickly the smack-down can take place (interesting details of what happened here and here).

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by the Night Writer

If there were a road-map of my brain you’d likely see a lot of philosophical or meditative roads and perhaps not a few dead ends. Some parallel each other, others are all over the map, and some intersect (it’s an arrangement only a St. Paul city engineer could appreciate). Anyway, the other day I was idling at the intersection of Albert Jay Nock Drive and Bonhoeffer Way (see my April 9th and April 15th posts) and started wondering how similar those paths might or might not be, and could they merge?

Both men lived at the same time, and both were committed pacifists. Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis and Nock’s career essentially ended in large part due to his opposition to the U.S.’s participation in World War II. Because of their unshakable principles Nock saw the State as the natural enemy of man, while Bonhoeffer certainly saw the Nazi State, at least, in the same way. The difference between them, however, is that Nock dismissed the masses and their inevitable destructiveness in favor of preserving a “remnant” who could be taught and encouraged so they might rebuild society. Bonhoeffer was nearly the opposite, pondering and preaching on how we might live in order to serve and elevate “the Other.” Nock’s philosophy was perhaps demonstrated in the extreme by Ayn Rand’s (another contemporary) ultimate worship of the individual, while the epitome of what Bonhoeffer worshiped could be described as sainthood. It’s an interesting comparison, to me anyway, but not the point of this post.

For me, Nock may be a fascinating side-trip, but Bonhoeffer is the main drag. As a Christian, I believe that we achieve true happiness not in glorifying ourselves but in demonstrating the glory of God through our interaction with others. From God first saying “It is not fit for Adam to be alone”, to the Sermon on the Mount, to the letters of Paul, to Bonhoeffer writing “Life Together” we see it is all about relationship; it’s certainly the case for the deepest satisfactions and greatest joys in my life. I see my mission not to get people into church, but to get the Church out to the people. As I pondered these things I “coincidentally” came across a very insightful poem earlier today on Through the Illusion. It’s one that apparently has been getting emailed quite a bit and is entitled A Spiritual Conspiracy and talks about those who quietly interact with others as they “be the change they want to see.”

I think the message of the poem was intended to be ecumenical, or even humanist, but I can’t help but see it through a Christian perspective. As C.S. Lewis (another contemporary of Nock, Bonhoeffer and Rand — talk about your greatest generation!) put it, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” After reading the poem I applauded it in the Comment section of TTI, but also felt compelled to write a challenge to the sense of complacency and hubris that would undo its spirit:

There are those who want to cheer-lead for change, who belong to the right groups, show up religiously at church or the progressive book-clubs and cafes and feel deeply about things — and “do” nothing. They embrace the concept but can’t grasp the reality; they love “the people” but don’t know a person. They have little or no involvement, and therefore little affect, in individual lives of others outside their family (and sometimes even inside of it). Yet that is where the “change you want to see” happens. You change a little, you help someone else change, and you change even more. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I wrote it as a challenge to myself and not to elevate myself, though sometimes I experience elevation as I described back in February.

Yes, I’ve felt and enjoyed “elevation” in watching certain movies or reading certain books or hearing certain speakers, but I’ve also felt it most profoundly when infused by a Trinity that’s anything but pop. How ironic, it appears to me, that the learned experts can walk right up to the edge of revelation and stop themselves just short, as if it were a cliff they dare not let themselves go over.

Amazon’s editorial synopsis of Keltner’s book includes the following description (emphasis mine): “A new examination of the surprising origins of human goodness. In Born to Be Good, Dacher Keltner demonstrates that humans are not hardwired to lead lives that are ‘nasty, brutish, and short’— we are in fact born to be good. He investigates an old mystery of human evolution: why have we evolved positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and are the fabric of cooperative societies?”

Evolved? Could, perhaps, those emotions have been implanted in us by God? Could they even be the essence of what “being created in the likeness and image of” means? That is, not so much a physical likeness but a spiritual harmonic that resonates in the presence of goodness? I have been suddenly “elevated” while singing praises to God, or in the midst of praying for someone, or when a revelation crystallizes suddenly in my half-alert mind. It doesn’t happen every time I do these things; in fact it usually happens when I’m not expecting it to. In the middle of a song that we’ve sung dozens of times, for example, or in half-way through praying for someone when — whoosh elevation! (Actually, in our circles, we call it “anointing”) It seems to wait for that split-second when I stop thinking about myself to manifest itself and I know that I’ve made a different kind of connection, or been a conduit for one.

As I read the poem I was also reminded of a song by Bruce Cockburn entitled “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”:

Don’t the hours grow shorter as the days go by
You never get to stop and open your eyes
One day you’re waiting for the sky to fall
And next you’re dazzled by the beauty of it all
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

These fragile bodies of touch and taste
This vibrant skin this hair like lace
Spirits open to the thrust of grace
Never a breath you can afford to waste

{Refrain}
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight

{Refrain}

We are lovers in a dangerous time, but the darkness can and does bleed daylight.

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by the Night Writer

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition as it appears the only way to get bullets now and for the forseeable future is by divine intervention. I won’t get into what caliber gun Jesus would use (though He did say, “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” which, coincidentally, use the same bullets that I’m trying to find) but right now there is a national supply and demand issue on a scale of trying to feed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes — and the baguettes are on backorder.

Anyone who has tried to purchase handgun ammunition recently has found the shelves bare and on-line retailers embarrassed. This isn’t a case of direct government or retailer-induced artificial scarcity that typically drives most commercial shortages, though the perceived threat of government involvement appears to be a significant factor in consumer reaction, as the Utah Standard-Examinerreports:

Ammo in short supply; Dem takeover gets blame

OGDEN — With firearm dealers struggling to keep ammunition on their shelves, it seems the gun and ammunition business has been stimulated in a way few people expected.

The minute Barack Obama stepped into the White House, people scrambled to gun stores to buy as much ammunition as they could get their hands on. Now, there’s a shortage of ammunition all over the country as demand is three times the supply.

“It’s been a huge topic since the election,” said Mike Casey, vice president of Smith & Edwards in Farr West.

“Ammunition is hard to come by, and the demand isn’t getting smaller. Even with production increases, it is extremely difficult to get ammo.”

Casey has been out of several calibers of ammunition for more than six weeks now, with no expected date of delivery.

The run on ammo is one effect of an increase in gun sales, or would-be gun sales:

From Jan. 1 through the end of March, 63,348 people in Utah have gotten the background check necessary for obtaining a firearm, according to data on an FBI Web site.

In the past 10 years, the state has averaged 90,000 people a year getting those background checks. If this year continues at the same rate as its first three months, Utah would have nearly met its yearly average of background checks by the end of April.

New gun owners naturally need bullets, and existing gun owners don’t want to be caught short. As a result (emphasis mine),

One manufacturer, Winchester, has back orders for 200 million rounds of .45-caliber bullets.

The company’s machines produce 1.6 million rounds a day, which puts them more than 120 days behind.

It’s hard to imagine there’s a need for 200 million rounds of .45 caliber in the general public. Shoot, I’d be happy if I could get another 50 or 100 rounds before my CCW proficiency test, but I’m told repeatedly that September or October is the earliest to expect re-supply. And I can just about forget about loading my own as well.

And it’s getting tougher to make your own bullets, too. Reloading supplies sell out nearly as fast as they hit stores, Spencer said.

Recently, Kent Shooters Supply received a shipment of 80 pounds of gunpowder. That amount, typically a six-month supply for the store, was sold in three days.

“It’s crazy. The guy in the past who bought a pound of powder is now buying all I have on the counter,” Spencer said.

The situation is nationwide, not just in Utah as other recent stories from Milwaukee, Kansas, Virginia, Texas, Arkansas and California show.

Another source I visited reported that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) shows that background checks on the sale of firearms jumped 23.3 percent in February when compared to February 2008. The increase follows a 29 percent rise in January, a 24 percent rise in December and a 42 percent jump in November, when a record 1,529,635 background checks were performed. I checked the NICS site myself to verify this, but couldn’t find that data despite checking several categories and trying different word searches. However, I did eventually come across this article which verified the November and December numbers. Perhaps someone wiser in the ways of dealing with government opacity can find the relevant data for the first quarter of this year.

Judging by this type of activity it only seems natural to suggest that if President Obama and Congress want to save the U.S. auto industry all they have to do is threaten to ban SUVs.

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by the Night Writer

The open palm of desire, wants everything, wants everything, wants everything…
— Paul Simon, “Further to Fly”

Here’s an interesting article I read yesterday:

1 in 5 Four-Year-Olds Obese, Study Finds
Associated Press Online
Lindsey Tanner
April 07, 2009

A striking new study says almost 1 in 5 American 4-year-olds is obese, and the rate is alarmingly higher among American Indian children, with nearly a third of them obese. Researchers were surprised to see differences by race at so early an age.

Overall, more than half a million 4-year-olds are obese, the study suggests. Obesity is more common in Hispanic and black youngsters, too, but the disparity is most startling in American Indians, whose rate is almost double that of whites.

The lead author said that rate is worrisome among children so young, even in a population at higher risk for obesity because of other health problems and economic disadvantages.
(…SNIP…)
Jessica Burger, a member of the Little River Ottawa tribe and health director of a tribal clinic in Manistee, Mich., said many children at her clinic are overweight or obese, including preschoolers.

Burger, a nurse, said one culprit is gestational diabetes, which occurs during a mother’s pregnancy. That increases children’s chances of becoming overweight and is almost twice as common in American Indian women, compared with whites.

She also blamed the federal commodity program for low-income people that many American Indian families receive. The offerings include lots of pastas, rice and other high-carbohydrate foods that contribute to what Burger said is often called a “commod bod.”

“When that’s the predominant dietary base in a household without access to fresh fruits and vegetables, that really creates a better chance of a person becoming obese,” she said.

It’s a conundrum of American culture that our poorest people, regardless of age, are more prone to be overweight than those with more education and higher incomes. It’s not a new revelation, but this article jumped out at me because of something else I heard recently.

I attended a Catholic wedding and at one point the priest led a group prayer asking for God’s intervention and/or blessing in a number of areas and listed “the elimination of poverty” in the petition. The elimination of poverty? I mean it’s a fine and “Christian” sentiment, but didn’t Jesus say we would have the poor with us always? It got me to thinking about just what poverty is (or isn’t) and what exactly can be done about the symptoms and the root causes. Can you define poverty by the amount of money someone has (or hasn’t), by where he lives, by his clothing…or by his actions, attitudes and habits?

The problem in defining poverty is that it is a relative term, subject to perception; i.e., “I may not be able to tell you what poverty is but I can tell you what it looks like” (or, “I know it when I see it.”) There are people here in the U.S. that you can look at and consider themm to be “poor” — until you go to the Philippines and see a family living on (not in) a piece of cardboard in the city dump. To that Filipino family the poor man in America with an apartment, food, television and midnight basketball looks wealthy and his bag of Cheetos and Big Gulp are an excessive indulgence; meanwhile that American looks at my nice house, two cars, big yard, smells the sirloin grilling on the patio — and wonders why I’m so “lucky”. And I think that if I won $100 million in the lottery I’d still clear nearly $50 million after taxes and could buy a mansion where fresh bon-bons could be delivered twice a day.

My wife, in her training as a police chaplain, has taken a number of classes to help her understand the stresses and job hazards of police officers as well as the social issues that make up the environments in which they have to do their jobs. I think one of the most interesting for her was the series on understanding that the poor, the middle class and the wealthy all really do think differently and have a nearly “secret” way of communicating within their groups that are almost incomprehensible to outsiders. I know, I know…it sounded kind of specious to me, too, until she shared some examples that made me go, “Hmmmm.”

I won’t go into all that now as it could easily be three or four posts, but I will offer that I think attitudes, habits and actions have more to do with a person’s poverty than bad luck or conspiracy to keep one down. Recognizing that, we have several times in the past helped “poor” people out not just in money and goods, but in trying to show them where the critical decision-making points are, how our family manages things and how to have a vision for navigating to a better result. You’ve heard the old saying about giving a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish you feed him for a lifetime, right? We’ve helped people out with the equivalent of boats, equipment and fishing lessons, only to see them happily shove off and get out a little ways … and eat their bait.

That doesn’t mean that we’ll stop trying to help or stop trying to renew our own thinking so we can be better at it. It does make us very dubious, however, of the proposition that redistributing wealth is going to do anything to reduce poverty. The problem isn’t the amount of resources, it’s information and perspective. The poor people in America who are obese aren’t lacking food so much as they lack good nutrition; similarly education doesn’t help if it’s the wrong information. Look around and there’s all kinds of evidence that so-called “smart” people in all walks of life are making dumb decisions when it comes to finances, whether it’s in their own lives, in their families or — God help us — in our governments.

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by the Night Writer

I first saw this article and threw it into my drafts folder about a month ago and forgot about it. A little spring cleaning, however, brings you this snippet from the Llama Butchers:

Senator Warner wants to start a “discussion” about end-of-life issues
From The Virginian Pilot. Make no mistake about where this is headed: first it will be just ensuring that everyone has “information,” next it will be voluntary “guidelines,” and then the “guidelines” will no longer be voluntary. Translation: your friendly federal government wants to decide when to pull the plug–because it knows best

Here’s the article in question:

Sen. Warner calls for discussion of end-of-life treatment
By Dale Eisman
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 6, 2009
WASHINGTON

Two months into his term, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner has marched into the policy thicket that is health-care reform, urging a national discussion on the touchy question of how best to treat terminally ill people.

In a speech to hospital executives this week, Warner called for intensified efforts to educate individuals and families in advance about end-of-life care. With better information, many people would forgo expensive and almost-always-futile treatment for patients near death, he said.

Such measures account for more than one-fourth of Medicare payments and 10 to 12 percent of all health costs, studies suggest.

“We leave it to families to resolve these extraordinarily difficult decisions with little guidance,” Warner said. “Other industrialized nations have dealt with the end-of-life issue. It’s time we did as well.”

I’ve written here several times about just how other countries deal with end-of-life issues — and how nationalized medicine essentially leads to rationing of healthcare because of the high costs. Typically the very young and the very old are most at risk of being deemed a drain on the country if the costs of their care get too high — and then the Nanny State turns into the Bully State.

21st Century British Healthcare (Terminally Ill Can Be Starved to Death, UK Court Rules) (featuring an assist from Monty Python)

Charlotte’s Web: When the State Decides if Your Baby Shall Live or Die

An update on Charlotte Wyatt … and the state of socialized medicine

Scottish seniors aren’t dead yet: the rising cost of “free” healthcare

I think I’ll go for a walk.

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by the Night Writer

A convicted would-be bomber and accessory to murder and armed robbery has been paroled from prison in California and is returning to Minnesota.

That may be “so what?” news for folks not from around here but it has been quite a story in Minnesota since 1999 when Kathleen Soliah (now known as Sara Jane Olson), one of the FBI’s “most wanted”, was found living a politically progressive, upper-middle class life in a toney St. Paul neighborhood. Soliah/Olson, a sympathizer and likely member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (of Patty Hearst fame) in the 70s had disappeared 23 years prior to her arrest following her grand jury indictment for her role in a bank robbery that resulted in the killing of a female bank customer and for participating in two attempts to bomb police cars in retaliation for a police shoot-out that killed many of her SLA friends. During the time she was “missing”, she adopted her new identity, married a St. Paul physician, raised a family, performed in several community theater productions and became well-known in activist circles for her support various liberal causes.

Her friends in turn took up her cause after her arrest, with well-known St. Paul office-holders Andy Dawkins and Sandy Pappas especially front and center protesting that she had lived a good life in the intervening years while also introducing the novel “everyone was an anarchist bomb-thrower in those days anyway” defense. Olson, nee Soliah, for her part pretty much denied anything other than being an admirer of the SLA. A lot of people, or at least the media, seemed to be buying it, too but a couple of things happened. One, the government started releasing more details of its case against her. The second thing was 9/11.

Any indulgence or sympathy for youthful, terroristic activities began to dry up, and Olson ultimately accepted (then tried to renege on) a plea bargain on the charges of planting bombs under two California police cars. After she started serving her sentence she was also convicted of the accessory to murder charge, and seven years were added to run concurrently with her original 14-year sentence, to be served in California. A year ago she was just about to be paroled a year early due to a clerical error but this was discovered and corrected and she returned prison. The calendar has now turned, but in the days leading up to her release the respective police unions in California and Minnesota, as well as the governors of the two states, have each insisted that they didn’t want her serving her parole anywhere near them. The public statements became a political side-show in a time when there are some real issues to be dealt with. Nevertheless, Kathleen Soliah/Sara Jane Olson is back in Minnesota after serving seven years of her sentence, with three years of parole to come.

Personally, I think I’m ready to call it square.

I didn’t sympathize with her story when she was finally captured and I didn’t appreciate the local DFL’s embrace of her and their attempts to minimize the serious offenses she committed. Nor do I downplay the seriousness of her intent and participation back in the day, or discount that her actions contributed to the death of another mother who will never come home. I was satisfied, however, to see her ultimately convicted and for the political and moral equivalency smokescreens to get hosed down. I also appreciated it when the amount of time she served turned out to be greater than the “two, three years, tops” predicted by the experts at the time she plead.

The fact is, she has done a significant amount of time and absorbed a (justified) amount of public humiliation. Points have been made. Frankly, I don’t feel our community is a more dangerous place with her in it, and I don’t expect a wave of police bombings or bank robberies even though some of her comments during her trial and incarceration suggest that she still harbors more than a little resentment against “The Man”.

The possibility exists that she might become a public figure again due to her infamy, but outside of a small, hard-core group of supporters I don’t think she has the credibility or gravitas to be anything better than a distraction at best — and a liability at worst — for any cause or campaign she aligns with.

If she wants to come back here, be with her family, and live a quiet, invisible life, I’m fine with that. I don’t have any interest in following her around and I hope she will be left in peace. If she desires a more public platform then the abuse that will likely be heaped on her — as with the time she spent incarcerated — will be something she brought on herself.

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