Month: June 2011

Israel's government has responded forcefully to the latest settler provocation. But this movement is news to me:

Footage taken at the mosque on Tuesday showed burned carpets, blackened walls and Hebrew graffiti on an outside wall that read “Price Tag” and “Alei Ayin.”

“Price Tag” refers to a policy adopted by some radical settlers in which they respond to attempts by the Israeli military to curb their building or actions with attacks on Palestinians. Alei Ayin is the name of an unauthorized Jewish settlement outpost in the area, where Israeli security forces demolished several illegal structures and clashed with settlers last week. Soon after the demolitions, a regional Israeli police commander’s car was set on fire.

At some point, the "facts on the ground" you emboldened can come back to haunt you.

David Brooks today argues that a bottom-up approach to healthcare cost-control is more likely to work than top-down. I sincerely wish that were the case. Alas, it seems to me that the patient-as-consumer model just doesn't work in healthcare for reasons laid out here and here. There is competition among health insurance plans now – for companies to pick from – and the result is still far, far higher costs than abroad, with no better end-results. Ezra Klein compares costs:

Atop our giant government health-care sector, we have an even more giant private health-care sector. Altogether, we’re spending about 16 percent of the GDP on health care. No other country even tops 12 percent. Which means we’ve got the worst of both worlds: huge government and high costs.

Aaron Carroll adds:

The health care systems in the chart above all employ varying levels of private insurance. What they do have in common, however, is significantly more government involvement. There’s more government regulations, more government cost controls, more government negotiation. In our country, many are pushing the other way. They want more privatization and less regulation.

Look at the chart. They’re all beating us.  They have far cheaper systems. Their outcomes are similar to ours, often better. And they cover everyone.

(Chart from Kaiser)

Check out Anderson Cooper's report tonight on CNN – and Jim Burroway's investigation – about the kid who was sent to reparative therapy for homosexual orientation and used as a poster boy for those "cured" of being gay. He tried to kill himself at 17. He succeeded at 38.

Jesse Bering explores the phenomenon of sleep-sex, or "sexsomnia", which is "simply a variant of sleepwalking, which affects 1 to 2% of adults." Robin Hanson focuses on a case of attempted sleep-rape and asks why we "should we punish harms chosen by an unconscious mind much less severely than harms chosen by a conscious mind":

To conclude … that unconscious acts should be forgiven … one must presume that unconscious mind harms are unplanned or are accidental side effects of other plans. Yet almost all conscious plans are first made unconsciously. So why should we presume unconscious acts are never planned?

Semi-related: how does one square lesser punishments for unconscious activities with disbelief in free will?

The Congressional Budget Office takes stock (pdf) of the US immigrant population:

From 1860 to 1910, between 13 percent and 15 percent of people in the United States were born somewhere else. After 1910, that share of the population began a steady decline, falling to less than 5 percent by 1970, when the trend reversed. Between 1970 and 2000, the foreign- born population increased from 9.6 million to 31.5 million. In the 1970s, the rate of increase was about 0.4 million people per year; in the 1980s, the rate was about 0.6 million people per year; and in the 1990s, the rate was about 1.1 million people per year. The rate of increase slowed slightly during the 2000s, when about 0.8 million foreign-born people were added to the U.S. population each year. By 2009, 38.5 million people were for- eign born. That group constituted roughly 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, about the same percentage as in the early part of the 20th century.

Readers continue to criticize Douthat et al:

I shouldn't be allowed to do something because these men wouldn't want their daughters doing it, really?  (If I were to apply that rationale, voting Republican would be illegal.) That kind of rationalizing is what keeps women in burkas and prohibited from driving and obtaining an education in many parts of the world.

But aside from the disgusting knee-jerk paternalism, their analyses of this moral imperative has a fatal flaw. The test of criminalizing conduct isn't simply what we should be able to prevent or stop people from doing, it's what kind of conduct should face punishment. So these men would want their daughters arrested and incarcerated and have a lifetime criminal record if their daughters became prostitutes or drug addicts or had an abortion? Such proud papas!

Another:

This is a common mistake among people who are never on the business end of the blunt instrument that is the police.

They think "we should make something illegal because then the police will help us discourage it." Uh, no. The police don't help discourage anything. They find the people who do it, and they punish them. But recidivism is a real thing, and even most of the prostitutes the police arrest and jail become prostitutes again upon their release. Prostitution has been illegal in this country forever, and we still have prostitutes in every single city in this country. So maybe prohibition isn't working, you know?

Benjamin Dueholm is on the same page:

When one is accustomed to being handled with some care and deference by the institutions of law and justice, one can well imagine a criminalized vice regime coming to the rescue of one's own kith and kin. Take away that assumption and the thought experiment changes dramatically.

This, I think, is the context in which we should view the report of a blue-ribbon panel of world leaders on the failure of the drug war and the moral and practical necessity of decriminalizing the non-violent trade and consumption of drugs. I certainly don't want my children to be heroin addicts and to that end I really don't want them to dabble in that drug or any other hard substances. But if my own moral guidance and support and the social capital I hope to provide for them does not prevent it, I most definitely don't want them to be shunted into overcrowded, abuse-ridden prisons for the sake of saving them. I would want them to get treatment. America has involved itself not only in an endless, hopeless 'war' against something that no force in the world can stamp out, it has completely confused the social costs of a vice with the practice of it.

CNN confirms that "Gay Girl In Damascus" appears to have been abducted in that murderous tyranny. I mentioned this yesterday. A reader suggests that we email the Syrian embassy to show concern for her fate. Here's the webpage. Or call (202) 232-6316.

Jillian C. York is keeping up with developments:

On Twitter, Amina's friends and supporters are tweeting in solidarity, using the hashtag  #FreeAmina, and a Facebook page has been created to urge global citizens to contact their local US Embassies, as well as journalists and other public figures. …

Amina's rise to fame was profiled in The Guardian just a few weeks ago, in an article which called her an “unlikely hero of revolt in a conservative country”.

Erickson denies. The emails exist.

An irresistible couple of comments from Marc Tracy at the Tablet.

Master skaters – at eight and six years' old respectively. I've seen Asher live at the Venice skate-park. Some kind of miracle.