Month: April 2018

Today in Boston we celebrate violence as a means to settling political disagreements (Patriot’s Day). Part of the celebration is running 26.2 miles in what passes for “spring” here in Boston:

KBOS 161654Z 05017KT 1 1/2SM R04R/3000VP6000FT RA BR OVC008 06/06 A2995 RMK AO2 PK WND 06029/1622 
KBOS 161619Z 05019G28KT 1 1/4SM R04R/4000VP6000FT +RA BR SCT004 OVC009 06/06 A2996 RMK AO2 PK WND 04029/1558 LTG DSNT NE
KBOS 161605Z 05023KT 2SM R04R/4500VP6000FT RA BR SCT004 OVC010 06/05 A2997 RMK AO2 PK WND 04029/1558 LTG DSNT NE
KBOS 161554Z 05021G28KT 1 1/4SM R04R/4500VP6000FT -RA BR BKN004 OVC010 06/06 A2998 RMK AO2 PK WND 05030/1505 LTG DSNT E PRESFR
KBOS 161454Z 05022G28KT 1 1/4SM R04R/3500VP6000FT -RA BR BKN004 OVC008 05/05 A3004 RMK AO2 PK WND 06029/1440
KBOS 161452Z 05021G28KT 1SM R04R/3500VP6000FT RA BR BKN004 OVC008 05/05 A3004 RMK AO2 PK WND 06029/1440

Temps around 5 degrees C, visibility of roughly one mile, rain heavy (+RA) at times. Peak winds gusting up to 30 knots. The wind direction at Logan Airport was from the northeast and therefore mostly in the runners’ faces (the course goes from west to east).

Wikipedia says that the best time ever for this race is 2:03:02. Today’s fastest time was 2:15:53 (by Yuki Kawauchi of Japan). So the truly miserable weather slowed things down by about 13 minutes.

[Separately, check out the results reporting. Here’s a sample from the New York Times:

Teeming rain, strong winds and the coldest temperatures in 30 years upended the Boston Marathon on Monday, contributing to upset finishes, including the victory of Desiree Linden, the first American woman to win the race in 33 years.

The temperature hovered at 38 degrees, and a headwind of 10 miles an hour or more blew in runners’ faces. But the conditions did not stop Linden — at 34, it was her first major marathon win — and Yuki Kawauchi, 31, of Japan, who came from behind to win the men’s race.

The runner with a time of 2:39:53 won “the race” whereas the runner with a time of 2:15:53 won “the men’s race”.

From our local Fox TV station (with help from AP):

Desiree Linden splashed her way through icy rain and a near-gale headwind to a Boston Marathon victory on Monday, the first American woman to win the race since 1985.

Japanese runner Yuki Kawauchi surged late to win men’s Boston Marathon in an unofficial time of 2 hours, 15 minutes and 58 seconds.

From the local CBS station (also with help from AP):

Desiree Linden splashed her way through icy rain and a near-gale headwind to a Boston Marathon victory on Monday, the first American woman to win the race since 1985.

Yuki Kawauchi passed defending champion Geoffrey Kirui in Kenmore Square to win the men’s race…

Any man who wants to be featured in the press as having won the overall “race” can identify as a woman: “Transgender Runners Can Race Boston Marathon Under Identified Gender” (NPR). Also potentially useful for winning $150,000 in prize money plus a $50,000 bonus if the runner can set a new record time (separate prize money is set aside for runners according to gender ID, though currently only two genders are recognized).]

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As a New Englander, let me wish all readers a Happy Patriot’s Day!

April 19, 1775 saw the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the start of the secession of British North America from Great Britain (this was virtuous and not to be confused with the traitorous secession of the southern states from the U.S. a few decades later).

The American Revolution was a great thing for some rich white people who got a lot of additional wealth and power. But celebrating the rich and white is out of fashion these days, no?

Consider the alternative fate of black Americans. Slavery in Europe had ended by 1000. Britain abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1833 (Wikipedia). Thus it seems that an entire generation of black Americans could have enjoyed freedom if the American Revolution had never occurred. (Arguably the colonists were some of the cruelest humans on the planet. They came from a place where slavery hadn’t existed for 500+ years and instituted slavery. That’s worse than growing up in a society where slavery existed, but not being an active abolitionist, no?)

How about Native Americans? A “steal land and power from Native Americans” day would not attract many public celebrants today, would it? Yet the American Revolution resulted in the elimination of Native American political power west of the Proclamation Line (see Wikipedia entry on the Indian Reserve).

What about non-rich white Americans? Hundreds of thousands might have avoided death in the Civil War.

By our current standards of vilifying the rich and white and celebrating victims, what is there to celebrate in Patriot’s Day?

Related:

• The tax rates that led American colonists to rebel

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“A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash” (nytimes) will, I hope, inspire you to send in those state and local tax checks today!

That states and cities are bleeding out due to their pension commitments is old news (see “Pensions: How states and local governments indulge in deficit-spending” from 2009, for example). What I find interesting are the reader comments. Essentially nobody wants governments to get out of the defined-benefit pension business (essentially acting like a life insurance company that offers annuities). People, presumably most of them private-sector workers with 401k and Social Security, want state and local governments to continue performing this function, but with “reforms.”

My comment on the piece:

Why would state governments be issuing defined-benefit pensions at all? Unless you are God and know exactly when people will die and/or you have a printing press for dollars (like the Federal government does), why would you be promising to send people checks until they die?

Insurance companies can afford to write annuities like this (though usually without an inflation adjustment liability) because if people live longer they won’t have to pay out so much on the life insurance side. But for an ordinary employer to do this is madness (as GM found out!).

Taxpayers should vote to amend state constitutions so that their politicians can no longer moonlight as actuaries. Government workers can have 401k plans like everyone else, plus Social Security for a defined-benefit check (backed up by the Feds, who DO have a printing press for dollars). Maybe government workers will demand higher current compensation if they can’t get a pension worth $millions, but at least the cost would be right out in the open for everyone to see, vote on, etc.

I forgot to add that, to do this right, state and local governments also need a letter from God listing what the returns on various kinds of assets are going to be for the next 50 years.

What would it take to get the American voter motivated to terminate politicians’ rights to do this to them and their children?

 

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Happy Tax Day!

You might feel that you’re paying a lot, but the nytimes says that you’re not paying enough: “Federal Budget Deficit Projected to Soar to Over $1 Trillion in 2020”.

It seems that we can’t simply vote ourselves to be richer and more efficient so that we can afford the government of our dreams.

Let’s assume that the onion of the U.S. economy is already being squeezed for as much tax revenue as can be obtained (of course rates can be cranked up higher, but then you have companies fleeing offshore physically (the pharmas) or virtually (Apple), so the net revenue may not be higher; higher tax rates for individuals may similar discourage work and/or encourage tax-avoidance investments such as captive insurance).

Let’s have a fun Tax Day exercise.

Readers: What do you think should be cut? And, for each proposed cut, how much would it save per year? (we need to get to $1 trillion total!)

I’ll go first… the government should stop purchasing opioids for non-hospitalized patients. So Medicare and Medicaid would not pay for OxyContin. Patients would have to purchase opioids with their own funds and/or obtain them from charities (who wants to start Oxy for Everyone, a 501c3?). See Who funded America’s opiate epidemic? You did. for what we’re doing now. I’ll estimate that this cuts opioid abuse in half, which boosts the economy by about $250 billion (source), of which the federal government gets $50 billion.

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Hot on the heels of “ACLU says it is okay for the government to poke around in a law office if two government workers agree” … A friend refused to increase her contributions to the ACLU because they are advocating for paid family and medical leave:

Today more women work full time than ever before, yet women continue to disproportionately bear the burden of caring for sick family members.

Without paid leave, employees are forced to risk job loss or financial ruin in order to care for their loved ones – a newborn baby, an aging parent or a sick spouse.

Paid Family and Medical Leave bills (H.2172 & S.1048) would guarantee job-protected paid leave, eliminating that cruel choice.

No worker should have to choose between their job and the health of their family. As we work to advance women’s rights, paid family and medical leave is the next critical step to creating a stronger, healthier, more equitable Massachusetts.

In her mind, this issue did not relate to free speech.

What part of the ACLU mission does relate to this? Certainly the employer is not getting more freedom of speech because he or she is being forced to write checks that otherwise might not have been written.

One area where the ACLU could make money is management consulting. In the pre-filled letter to send to politicians, the organization suggests that members write that, with this kind of law in place, “employers save money by retaining better staff”. Thus any rational employer should implement a paid leave system even in the absence of a law forcing them to do it. But profit-seeking employers are leaving money on the table, so to speak, by not paying workers to not work. So the ACLU could charge employers to educate them on the profit-enhancing technique that the ACLU knows about, but that employers don’t know about.

Readers: I’m sure that everyone can agree on the desirability of “a stronger, healthier, more equitable Massachusetts,” but how is it a “civil liberty” to get paid while not working?

[Separately, the Massachusetts resident who wants to get 23 years of paid family leave at $40,000 per year, tax-free, can do it by having sex with someone earning $250,000 per year and then getting hold of the resulting child. To get $80,000 per year, the resident can have sex twice… See the Massachusetts chapter of Real World Divorce (though marriage is not required to gain this paid leave, and, when selling an abortion at a discount to the net present value of the child support cashflow, neither is caring for a child).]

Related:

• When and why did it become necessary to pay Americans to have children?
• Paid Maternity Leave: Employers or Taxpayers should Pay?
• Paid parental leave is harmful to career women?
• Amazon and IBM parental leave

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From a recent New York Times Tesla test-drive:

so successful was Autopilot that I was tempted to let down my guard by not bothering to look in the rearview mirror.

For all its vision capabilities (including in darkness), Autopilot became confused when lanes weren’t clearly marked or split in two or at exit ramps. You can’t simply program the destination and let the car find its way. It’s reassuringly cautious about changing lanes, but in heavy traffic, I would have missed an exit while waiting for it to find a suitable opening, and had to assert manual control.

While heading south on the New Jersey Turnpike, I could see in the rearview mirror a BMW bearing down at high speed. I pushed the turn signal for a lane change, and despite its ultrasonic sensors, the Tesla seemed oblivious to the onrushing car. It started to move into its lane; the driver laid on his horn, and I had to grab control to avoid an accident.

Quite a few aviation accidents and incidents have occurred due to pilots’ confusion regarding what the autopilot was responsible for doing. One of the most famous is Asiana 214 at San Francisco. From Wikipedia:

In response, the captain selected an inappropriate autopilot mode, which, without the captain’s awareness, resulted in the autothrottle no longer controlling airspeed. … Over-reliance on automation and lack of systems understanding by the pilots were cited as major factors contributing to the accident. The NTSB further determined that the pilot’s faulty mental model of the airplane’s automation logic led to his inadvertent deactivation of automatic airspeed control.

It is extremely unlikely that the crew would have crashed the B777 if they’d simply been hand-flying and knew that they were responsible for both yoke and thrust levers.

I’m wondering if we will quickly conclude that anything more advanced than cruise control in a car is a bad idea, unless the car can drive itself under all conditions.

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Two staples of U.S. media for the past 1.5 years have been the purportedly anti-LGBTQ bias of the Trump Administration and the potential for Donald Trump to become a Hitler-style dictator.

I can’t figure out why the same folks are demanding that the Trump Administration pay government workers to go out and find all of the people living in the U.S. who say that they are LGBTQ. If you think that the government is attacking LGBTQ residents of the U.S., why would you want to give that government an electronic database with the full names and street addresses of every LGBTQ person? When the German government in 1933 did its first census to identify Jews, this turned out not to be a positive event for Jews living in Germany (see Wikipedia).

A sampling of media stories…

“Why the Trump Administration Won’t Ask About LGBT Americans on the 2020 Census” (Atlantic, March 2017)

Shortly after the bureau released its report, a new version came out. This time, the line about sexual orientation and gender identity was missing. The bureau didn’t immediately post an update about what had changed to its website or explain what had happened at length. Its “proposal” to include questions about LGBT identity on its upcoming surveys had just disappeared. LGBT advocates were outraged.

“The Census Won’t Collect L.G.B.T. Data. That’s a Problem.” (NYT, May 2017):

That’s why the Trump administration’s decision not to collect data on the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans threatens these communities in ways that are both symbolic and practical.

“After Scuffle, Census To Add Sexual Orientation Question To Marketing Survey” (NPR, September 2017) shows a “marketing survey” in which “Gay or lesbian” is the first response to “Which of the following best represents how you think of yourself?”

“2020 Census Will Ask About Same-Sex Relationships” (NPR, March 2018):

Beyond improving national statistics, many advocates of equal rights for LGBT people see the changes to the census relationship categories as a symbolic victory. … “It really normalizes our experience on an American government form so that everybody looking at it and everybody filling it out sees that we exist,” she adds.

“Will We Stop Trump Before It’s Too Late? Fascism poses a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II.” (NYT, April 2018):

Trump has attacked the judiciary, ridiculed the media, … equated mere policy disagreements with treason. He tried to undermine faith in America’s electoral process through a bogus advisory commission on voter integrity. He routinely vilifies federal law enforcement institutions. He libels immigrants and the countries from which they come.

“With Trump, don’t confuse the unthinkable with the impossible” (CNN, March 2018):

If there is one thing we have learned since Donald Trump took office is that we should not confuse the unthinkable with the impossible. That’s why we should pay attention to the President’s words in a private meeting with Republican donors when he told them he might try to become president for life. … there is also little doubt from his track record that Trump finds the checks and balances of democracy highly inconvenient. He openly admires dictators. When he speaks of other countries’ strongmen he sounds envious.

Trump’s impulses are already in the mold of an autocrat. He is restrained only by the democratic rules that still survive his tenure. Like dictators do, he hates the media…

Readers: Is it possible for a rational person simultaneously to believe that there is a significant risk of Donald Trump becoming an autocrat, that Donald Trump and his Administration are anti-LGBTQ, and that it would be a good idea to give Dictator Trump a flash drive containing the full name, street address, and phone number of every LGBTQ resident of the U.S.?

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“Trump Signs Bill Amid Momentum to Crack Down on Trafficking” (nytimes):

First, federal authorities seized the classified advertising website Backpage.com last week. Then, a 93-count indictment was unsealed, charging several of its top officials with facilitating prostitution and revealing details about victims including minors as young as 14.

Now, President Trump has signed new anti-sex-trafficking legislation into law on Wednesday. The new law, which passed Congress with near unanimous bipartisan support, will give prosecutors stronger tools to go after similar sites in the future and suspend liability protections for internet companies for the content on their sites.

Not everyone is happy about this…

After Backpage was seized on Friday, the Women’s March group said on Twitter that the result was “an absolute crisis” for sex workers seeking safe communication with clients, drawing criticism.

“Women’s March stands in solidarity with the sex workers’ rights movement,” a spokeswoman for the organization explained on Tuesday. “We believe a world is possible in which no one is trafficked or enslaved, and in which sex workers are not criminalized and ostracized by the state and our movements.”

“Shutting down websites like Craigslist and Backpage pushes sex workers and sex trafficking victims into street-based sex work where they’re at greater risk of violence,” said Ms. Raven, who said she had survived homelessness and engaged in sex to survive as a teenager.

My question, though, is what practical difference do these shutdowns make if the Internet is global? There are plenty of countries in which prostitution is legal (see “Where New York Times readers don’t want to follow Europe: Legalized prostitution”) and where Internet is both legal and available. If Americans want to meet virtually in an online forum, why would they need to do that in a U.S.-based site?

Will the U.S. need a Great Firewall and an outlawing of VPNs to enforce this new law? Or can the Federales somehow go and shut down web servers in foreign countries just as easily as they can in the U.S.?

Related:

• Stormy Daniels, prostitution, cell phone video, and the snowflake gynecologists
• Economics of legal sex work in the U.S.
• Law school graduate goes public with her participation in sex work

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Here is a selection from the New Books shelf at our local public library:

The titles:

• Semitism: Being Jewish in American in the Age of Trump, by one of the Washington editors for the New York Times (let’s hope that he is not so extreme as to advocate that Americans Jews actually observe Judaism)
• It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America (by a NYT journalist)
• The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, by 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts (safe to assume that they found a mixture of Republicans and Democrats to query?)

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Here’s an interesting article from the ACLU:

We don’t know all the reasons and circumstances for the FBI search of Cohen’s office and home. News reports suggest that the focus is on Cohen’s payments to two women, adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to suppress their stories of affairs with Donald Trump, and that these payments may have been illegal. But what is clear is that prosecutors had to overcome high hurdles to obtain the search warrant. That the warrant was issued is not a sign that the attorney-client privilege is dead. It is, on the contrary, a sign that the rule of law is alive.

Essentially, the ACLU takes the position that if two government workers (prosecutor plus judge) can agree to dislike an individual then the government can send in the FBI (not too busy thanks to hanging up on anyone offering school shooter tips, Tsarnaev brother tips, 9/11 hijacker tips, etc.) to raid the individual’s lawyer’s office.

Separately, the particular “crime” that the ACLU thinks justifies sending out the FBI on a hunting expedition, was a purported exchange of cash for sex. Back in 2014, however, the ACLU published an article saying that this kind of exchange should not be a crime:

The ACLU position holds that laws against prostitution violate “the right of individual privacy because they impose penal sanctions for the private sexual conduct of consenting adults, …

The myriad federal, state and local laws against prostitution mean that “rights for sex workers” will require more than decriminalizing sex for money or other consideration.

Sex workers are human beings with the right to self-determination. It’s time for policymakers, the courts and law enforcement to recognize they are equally deserving of the civil rights, civil liberties, and above all human rights accorded to the rest of us.

I guess there is a potentially nuanced position here. The ACLU is not objecting to whatever Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal might have received in exchange for having sex with an old guy 12 years ago, but they are objecting to Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal being paid not to talk about their supposed sexual transactions. But why? If the ACLU promotes freedom to speak, why wouldn’t they also support the freedom to profit from not speaking? And if the ACLU supports prostitution, why wouldn’t the ACLU also support prostitution with an extra fee for discretion? If the only way for an elderly American to hire a prostitute is with the understanding that the prostitute will then post a YouTube video of the encounter and/or go on TV to talk about the transaction, doesn’t that reduce demand for prostitution, an infringement of prostitutes’ economic rights?

Related:

• From an old-style ACLU member, Harvey Silverglate: “Going After Trump’s Lawyer Michael Cohen: When Pursuit Becomes A Blood Sport” (WBGH)

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