Dubious support for a popular health scare

There is a substantial body of people who get their jollies out of finding "threats" to health in popular products. They obviously want to appear wiser than the rest of us poor sods.  There seems to be no accepted name for them but I call them "food & heath freaks".  They are probably best known for their unfounded demonization of salt, saturated fat and artificial sweeteners  such as Aspartame.  Sugar is their current big boogeyman.
   
A somewhat less well-known scare is about Bisphenol A, a component of many plastics.  A few molecules of BPA have been shown to leach out of plastic bottles into the liquid contained in the bottle.  For that reason plastic bably bottles have been more or less banned and glass baby bottles are mostly used instead.  Glass is of course fragile and dangerous when broken but any decrease in safety from its use in baby bottles is ignored by food & health freaks.

The question is, however, how toxic is ingested BPA?  Rats given enough of it certainly fall ill but as Paracelsus pointed out long ago, the toxicity is in the dose.  And it seems unlikely that a few molecules received from a plastic bottle are harmful.  And that is what most studies of the matter show.  Like a terrier that won't let go of a bone, however, "research" to detect harm goes on among the  food & heath freaks.

The latest stab at BPA has just come out in JAMA and I give the abstract below.  I have however read the whole article and I would summarize the results rather differently.  What they found was that the amount of BPA in the pregnant mother's blood correlated marginally significantly (p = .03) with the infant's lung function 4 years after birth but not 5 years after birth.  That is a very shaky finding indeed and shows, if anything, that BPA is safe.  They also looked at the correlation between mother-reported wheezing in the kid and BPA levels but that correlation failed to reach statistical significance (p = .11).

They do however rather desperately hang their hat on a correlation with wheeze drawn from the BPA concentration in the mother at 16 weeks.  That correlation had vanished at 26 weeks gestation however so again the results actually show that BPA is safe  -- no lasting ill-effects.

Not much there for the BPA freaks. I am not alone in that conclusion.   The abstract follows:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bisphenol A Exposure and the Development of Wheeze and Lung Function in Children Through Age 5 Years

Adam J. Spanier et al.

ABSTRACT

Importance
Bisphenol A (BPA), a prevalent endocrine-disrupting chemical, has been associated with wheezing in children, but few studies have examined its effect on lung function or wheeze in older children.

Objectives
To test whether BPA exposure is associated with lung function, with wheeze, and with pattern of wheeze in children during their first 5 years.

Design, Setting, and Participants
A birth cohort study, enrolled during early pregnancy in the greater Cincinnati, Ohio, area among 398 mother-infant dyads.
We collected maternal urine samples during pregnancy (at 16 and 26 weeks) and child urine samples annually to assess gestational and child BPA exposure.

Main Outcomes and Measures
We assessed parent-reported wheeze every 6 months for 5 years and measured child forced expiratory volume in the first second of expiration (FEV1) at age 4 and 5 years. We evaluated associations of BPA exposure with respiratory outcomes, including FEV1, child wheeze, and wheeze phenotype.

Results
Urinary BPA concentrations and FEV1 data were available for 208 children and urinary BPA concentrations and parent-reported wheeze data were available for 360 children. The mean maternal urinary BPA concentration ranged from 0.53 to 293.55 ‘g/g of creatinine. In multivariable analysis, every 10-fold increase in the mean maternal urinary BPA concentration was associated with a 14.2% (95% CI, -24.5% to -3.9%) decrease in the percentage predicted FEV1 at 4 years, but no association was found at 5 years. In multivariable analysis, every 10-fold increase in the mean maternal urinary BPA concentration was marginally associated with a 54.8% increase in the odds of wheezing (adjusted odds ratio, 1.55; 95% CI, 0.91-2.63). While the mean maternal urinary BPA concentration was not associated with wheeze phenotype, a 10-fold increase in the 16-week maternal urinary BPA concentration was associated with a 4.27-fold increase in the odds of persistent wheeze (adjusted odds ratio, 4.27; 95% CI, 1.37-13.30). Child urinary BPA concentrations were not associated with FEV1 or wheeze.

Conclusions and Relevance
These results provide evidence suggesting that prenatal but not postnatal exposure to BPA is associated with diminished lung function and the development of persistent wheeze in children.

SOURCE

***********************************

Why do so many liberals despise Christianity?

Liberals increasingly want to enforce a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. And they see alternative visions of the good as increasingly intolerable.

Liberalism seems to have an irrational animus against Christianity. Consider these two stories highlighted in the last week by conservative Christian blogger Rod Dreher.

Item 1: In a widely discussed essay in Slate, author Brian Palmer writes about the prevalence of missionary doctors and nurses in Africa and their crucial role in treating those suffering from Ebola. Palmer tries to be fair-minded, but he nonetheless expresses "ambivalence," "suspicion," and "visceral discomfort" about the fact that these men and women are motivated to make "long-term commitments to address the health problems of poor Africans," to "risk their lives," and to accept poor compensation (and sometimes none at all) because of their Christian faith.

The question is why he considers this a problem.

Palmer mentions a lack of data and an absence of regulatory oversight. But he's honest enough to admit that these aren't the real reasons for his concern. The real reason is that he doesn't believe that missionaries are capable "of separating their religious work from their medical work," even when they vow not to proselytize their patients. And that, in his view, is unacceptable - apparently because he's an atheist and religion creeps him out. As he puts it, rather wanly, "It's great that these people are doing God's work, but do they have to talk about Him so much?"

That overriding distaste for religion leads Palmer to propose a radical corollary to the classical liberal ideal of a separation between church and state - one that goes far beyond politics, narrowly construed. Palmer thinks it's necessary to uphold a separation of "religion and health care."

Item 2: Gordon College, a small Christian school north of Boston, is facing the possibility of having its accreditation revoked by the higher education commission of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, according to an article in the Boston Business Journal. Since accreditation determines a school's eligibility to participate in federal and state financial aid programs, and the eligibility of its students to be accepted into graduate programs and to meet requirements for professional licensure, revoking a school's accreditation is a big deal - and can even be a death sentence.

What has Gordon College done to jeopardize its accreditation? It has chosen to enforce a "life and conduct statement" that forbids "homosexual practice" on campus.

Now, one could imagine a situation in which such a statement might legitimately run afoul of an accreditation board or even anti-discrimination statutes and regulations - if, for example, it stated that being gay is a sign of innate depravity and that students who feel same-sex attraction should be subject to punishment for having such desires.

But that isn't the case here. At all. In accordance with traditional Christian teaching, Gordon College bans all sexual relationships outside of marriage, gay or straight, and it goes out of its way to say that its structures against homosexual acts apply only to behavior and not to same-sex desires or orientation.

The accreditation board is not so much objecting to the college's treatment of gays as it is rejecting the legitimacy of its devoutly Christian sexual beliefs.

The anti-missionary article and the story of Gordon College's troubles are both examples (among many others) of contemporary liberalism's irrational animus against religion in general and traditional forms of Christianity in particular.

My use of the term "irrational animus" isn't arbitrary. The Supreme Court has made "irrational animus" a cornerstone of its jurisprudence on gay rights. A law cannot stand if it can be shown to be motivated by rationally unjustifiable hostility to homosexuals, and on several occasions the court has declared that traditional religious objections to homosexuality are reducible to just such a motive.

But the urge to eliminate Christianity's influence on and legacy within our world can be its own form of irrational animus. The problem is not just the cavalier dismissal of people's long-established beliefs and the ways of life and traditions based on them. The problem is also the dogmatic denial of the beauty and wisdom contained within those beliefs, ways of life, and traditions. (You know, the kind of thing that leads a doctor to risk his life and forego a comfortable stateside livelihood in favor of treating deadly illness in dangerous, impoverished African cities and villages, all out of a love for Jesus Christ.)

Contemporary liberals increasingly think and talk like a class of self-satisfied commissars enforcing a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. The idea that someone, somewhere might devote her life to an alternative vision of the good - one that clashes in some respects with liberalism's moral creed - is increasingly intolerable.

That is a betrayal of what's best in the liberal tradition.

Liberals should be pleased and express gratitude when people do good deeds, whether or not those deeds are motivated by faith. They should also be content to give voluntary associations (like religious colleges) wide latitude to orient themselves to visions of the human good rooted in traditions and experiences that transcend liberal modernity - provided they don't clash in a fundamental way with liberal ideals and institutions.

In the end, what we're seeing is an effort to greatly expand the list of beliefs, traditions, and ways of life that fundamentally clash with liberalism. That is an effort that no genuine liberal should want to succeed.

What happened to a liberalism of skepticism, modesty, humility, and openness to conflicting notions of the highest good? What happened to a liberalism of pluralism that recognizes that when people are allowed to search for truth in freedom, they are liable to seek and find it in a multitude of values, beliefs, and traditions? What happened to a liberalism that sees this diversity as one of the finest flowers of a free society rather than a threat to the liberal democratic order?

I don't have answers to these questions - and frankly, not a lot hinges on figuring out how we got here. What matters is that we acknowledge that something in the liberal mind has changed, and that we act to recover what has been lost.

SOURCE

******************************

Panetta's 'Worthy Fights' Over Obama's Ego

Leon Panetta's memoir, "Worthy Fights," is causing a big stir in Washington and beyond. Panetta was a major player in the president's national security team as CIA director and then defense secretary. The release of his book couldn't be more timely, and the way it's being received by the White House and the media couldn't be more telling of the current state of affairs in the Obama administration.

When Panetta came to the administration, he already had a well-established career in Democrat politics. He had served eight terms in Congress before Bill Clinton recruited him in 1993 to run the Office of Management and Budget. Panetta then became Clinton's chief of staff, taking on the job of bringing order to the political free-for-all that was the White House during the second half of Clinton's first term. After that, he spent time doing what politicos often do when they leave office - he established a policy group, lectured and did some teaching. Then he was tapped by Obama to head the CIA in 2009, and two years later, he became Pentagon chief, wrapping up his service shortly after the beginning of Obama's second term.

For those of us who see Obama's foreign policy for the malfeasance that it is, Panetta's grocery list of national security screw-ups doesn't come as a surprise. What's interesting is how he tries to walk a tightrope of offering praise for the president while skewering him at the same time. Panetta takes pains to hail Obama's keen intellect, as so many who have served with the president often do, but his recollections actually go on to refute that flattery.

Panetta recounts through several episodes that the president lacks the passion of a leader and repeatedly exhibits "a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause." Wouldn't someone with a keen intellect recognize that leadership is crucial to achieving his goal? And, if he believed in his ideas, wouldn't he be willing to actively defend them with logic rather than petulant political attacks on the opposition?

Iraq is a prime example of Panetta's account of Obama's poor leadership. He details how Obama basically sabotaged that country's future by letting his desire to fulfill a campaign pledge - get America out of Iraq - cloud the basic fact that America's military presence was integral to keeping the country together. The White House was "so eager to rid itself of Iraq," Panetta said, "that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests."

Furthermore, Panetta wrote, "My fear, as I voiced to the President and others, was that if the country split apart or slid back into the violence that we'd seen in the years immediately following the U.S. invasion, it could become a new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S." His stance, he said, "reflected not just my views but also those of the military commanders in the region and the Joint Chiefs." So Obama's "keen intellect" won out over his knowledgeable advisers.

Indecision combined with deliberately setting unrealistic expectations for Iraq's fragile government essentially sunk the status of forces agreement that the U.S. was trying to hammer out with then-Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki. Obama pleased his constituents, but Panetta argues the end result was "a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it's out of that vacuum that [ISIL] began to breed." (Someone else warned about that too.) Now we've got boots back in the air, fighting what Panetta says should be a "long and sustained battle."

Panetta's motives aren't pure. He's obviously out to sell books, and he may even be angling for a position (secretary of state?) in a Hillary Clinton administration. But Panetta has also captured from the inside what we've been saying about Obama all along - essentially that the president is a narcissist who ignores wise advice in pursuit of his own ideological agenda. In Iraq, that's proved disastrous. And it's worth hammering home.

SOURCE

****************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

****************************

A Western Heart

Most of what I put online in my blogs is commentary and news reports written by others that I find interesting from a libertarian/conservative point of view.  So I could possibly be seen as a sort of Readers Digest for libertarian/conservatives.  In fact, however, on most days I do put up commentary somewhere on one of my blogs that I have written myself.  When such comments stretch to more than a sentence of two, therefore, I put them up on the blog A Western Heart (AWH) -- as a convenient way of keeping together my own writings  for my own reference.

The blog was originally created by a group of Australian bloggers but the rest of them all gradually burnt out -- leaving me as the only surviving blogger.  I am persistent if nothing else.

But another important reason for using AWH has to do with a certain search engine whose name begins with G.  For some reason not clear to me AWH gets a much higher priority in searches than do any of my other blogs.  If I search for some content that I have put up in more than one place, the AWH entry comes up first by far.  I don't know why but I am glad to take advantage of it

*************************

Obama



***************************

A little history, Thomas Jefferson Started A War Against Fundamentalist Islam Over 200 Years Ago

Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago,the United States had declared war on Islam, and Thomas Jefferson led the charge! At the height of the eighteenth century, Muslim pirates were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of the North Atlantic. They attacked every ship in sight, and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric treatment and wrote heart breaking letters home, begging their government and family members to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.

These extortionists of the high seas represented the Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers - collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast - and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American Republic.

Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection of Great Britain. When the U.S. declared its independence and entered into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France. However, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets. Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy.

Beginning in 1784, seventeen years before he would become president, Thomas Jefferson became America's Minister to France. That same year, the U.S. Congress sought to appease its Muslim adversaries by following in the footsteps of European nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States, rather than engaging them in war.

In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships, and the Day of Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom of $60,000. It was a plain and simple case of extortion, and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any further payments. Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of allied nations who together could force the Islamic states into peace. A disinterested Congress decided to pay the ransom.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli's ambassador to Great Britain to ask by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved American citizens, and why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

The two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

Despite this stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim nations, as well as the objections of many notable American leaders, including George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only further embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to over twenty percent of the United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Jefferson was disgusted. Shortly after his being sworn in as the third President of the United States in 1801, the Pashaof Tripoli sent him a note demanding the immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for every year forthcoming. That changed everything.

Jefferson let the Pasha know, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with his demand. The Pasha responded by cutting down the flagpole at the American consulate and declared war on the United States. Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers immediately followed suit.

Jefferson, until now, had been against America raising a naval force for anything beyond coastal defense, but having watched his nation be cowed by Islamic thuggery for long enough, decided that it was finally time to meet force with force.

PaintingOfPirateShipBurningInTripoliHarbor1804

Painting of "Pirate Ship Burning in Tripoli Harbor" 1804 .. U.S. Navy Archive

He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean and taught the Muslim of the Barbary Coast a lesson he hoped they would never forget. Congress authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli and to "cause to be done all other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war would justify".

When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American cowardice and acquiescence, saw the newly independent United States had both the will and the might to strike back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance to Tripoli.

The war with Tripoli lasted for four more years, and raged up again in 1815. The bravery of the U.S. Marine Corps in these wars led to the line "to the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Hymn. They would forever be known as "leathernecks" for the leather collars of their uniforms, designed to prevent their heads from being cut off by the Muslim scimitars when boarding enemy ships.

Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified doing in the name of their prophet and their god, disturbed Jefferson quite deeply. America had a tradition of religious tolerance; the fact that Jefferson, himself, had co-authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion the world had ever seen. A religion based on supremacism, whose holy book not only condoned but mandated violence against unbelievers was unacceptable to him. His greatest fear was that someday this brand of Islam would return and pose an even greater threat to the United States.

This should bother every American. That the Islams have brought about women-only classes and swimming times at taxpayer-funded universities and public pools; that Christians, Jews, and Hindus have been banned from serving on juries where Muslim defendants are being judged, Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers have been banned from workplaces because they offend Islamist sensibilities. Ice cream has been discontinued at certain Burger King locations because the picture on the wrapper looks similar to the Arabic script for Allah, public schools are pulling pork from their menus, on and from in the newspapers….

It's death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to it, and most Americans have no idea that this battle is being waged every day across America. By not fighting back, by allowing groups to obfuscate what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to our own culture, the United States is cutting its own throat with a politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists agenda.

Sadly, it appears that today's America would rather be politically correct than victorious.

SOURCE

Footnote:  The North African pirates were eventually wiped out when in 1830 the restored French monarchy sent 600 ships to the other side of the Mediterranean and took over North Africa.  The invasion was chaotic but the defence was feeble so the French won

*********************************

Campaign finance reform isn't about "getting money out of politics," it's about silencing political dissent

Senate Democrats recently tried to push through a constitutional amendment that would have repealed free speech protections in the First Amendment, making Congress the sole arbiter of what is and isn't political speech. Thankfully, this effort, backed by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) failed to get the two-thirds needed for a constitutional majority, killing the proposed amendment for the remainder of the 113th Congress.

Though this effort failed, there stands a good chance that Democrats will, at some point down the road, launch another attempt to repeal the First Amendment, and it will again come under the guise of the Orwellian phrase "campaign finance reform." This phrase may sound nice, but the consequence, as George Will explains in a new video, is the silencing of political speech.

"We Americans are disposed to think that the word 'reform' is a synonym for 'improvement.' But what is called 'campaign finance reform' is nothing less than a frontal assault on the first, the most fundamental of our freedoms -- the freedom to speak our mind and to participate in politics," says Will, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. "This assault is always conducted stealthily by people who pretend that they only want to regulate money, not speech. They say they are only concerned about the quantity of money in politics."

"You must remember this: People who say there is too much money in politics are necessarily saying three very sinister things. First, they're saying there is too much political speech. Second, they are saying that they know just the right amount of political speech. And third, they are saying that government should enforce the limits they want on the amount of political speech. That is, the government should regulate speech about the government," Will adds.

Despite the feel-good rhetoric Americans so frequently hear from so-called "campaign finance reformers," these efforts aren't about the presence of money in politics, but rather incumbent protection. Campaign finance laws are written by politicians to insulate themselves against criticism and accountability from constituents back home at the expense of one of our most cherished civil liberties.

SOURCE

*******************************

How Government Creates Poverty

John Stossel

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared "War on Poverty." It sounded great to me. I was taught at Princeton, "We're a rich country. All we have to do is tax the rich, and then use that money to create programs that will lift the poor out of poverty." Government created job-training programs for the strong and expanded social security for the weak.

It seemed to work. The poverty rate dropped from 17 percent to 12 percent in the programs' first decade. Unfortunately, few people noticed that during the half-decade before the "War," the rate dropped from 22 percent to 17 percent. Without big government, Americans were already lifting themselves out of poverty!

Johnson's War brought further progress, but progress then stopped. It stopped because government is not good at making a distinction between needy and lazy. It taught moms not to marry the father of their kids because that would reduce their welfare benefits. Welfare invited people to be dependent. Some people started to say, "Entry-level jobs are for suckers." Many could live almost as well without the hassle of work.

Despite spending an astonishing $22 trillion dollars, despite 92 different government welfare programs, poverty stopped declining. Government's answer? Spend more!

Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, points out that government measures "success" by the growth of programs: "based on inputs, how much money are we spending, how many programs are we creating, how many people are we putting on these programs—not on outcomes—how many people are we getting out of poverty? ... Many of these programs end up disincentivizing work, telling people it pays not to go to work because you'll lose more in benefits than you gain in earning wages."

That doesn't mean the poor are lazy. It means they respond to incentives. They are rational about choosing behaviors that, at least in the short term, pay off.

It's not only welfare that makes it harder for the poor to climb the ladder of success. Well-intended laws, such as a minimum wage, hurt, too. But most people don't understand that. Even Republicans, according to opinion polls, support a higher minimum wage. A minimum sounds compassionate. It's hard to live on $7.25 an hour.

But setting a minimum is anything but compassionate because that eliminates starter jobs. The minimum wage is why kids don't work as apprentices anymore, nor clean your windshield at gas stations. They never get hired because employers reason, "If I must pay $9, I'm not taking a chance on a beginner."

To most economists, the claim that the minimum wage kills starter jobs is not controversial. But it is among the general public. And so politicians pander.

On my TV show this week, Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Wash.) says that people like Paul Ryan and I "just want to cut the size of government. And trust the private sector to do everything."  Well ... yes. The private sector does just about everything better.

McDermott says, "This whole business about somehow raising the minimum wage causes a loss of jobs—if that's true, why don't we just drop the minimum wage altogether and let people work for a dollar a day or $1 an hour?"

OK, let's do it! It's not as if wages are set by the minimum wage. That is a great conceit of the central planners: thinking that only government prevents employers from paying workers nearly nothing. But the reason Americans don't work for $1 an hour is competition, not government minimums. Competition is what forces companies to pay workers more. It doesn't much matter that the law says they can pay as low as $7.25. Only 4 percent of American workers now make that little; 95 percent make more.

The free market will sort this out, if politicians would just let it. Left free, the market will provide the greatest benefit to workers, employers, and consumers, while allowing charity as well.

It would all happen faster if politicians stopped imagining that they are the cause of everything.

SOURCE

***************************

An alarming double standard

Beck asked: “Can you think of a reason, an honest reason, that we have not banned the flights from West Africa yet? Why we’re not stopping this?”

“No,” Levin responded. “I think this is absolute insanity. Well, it’s obviously Obama. The reasons are obvious, because he doesn’t want to appear to be conducting himself in a way that discriminates against that continent.”

“You know what’s really crazy?” Beck added. “It took him all of 30 seconds to ban flights to the state of Israel. He banned flights to Israel over a suspected rocket launch. … This time, we have actual Ebola in our own hometowns, and he’s not banning any flights. Won’t even consider it.”

More HERE

****************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

****************************

Mending Medicare Advantage

Last month the Department of Health and Human Services announced that enrollment in Medicare Advantage had reached an all-time high. This admission put the White House in an awkward position: On the one hand, Medicare Advantage is one part of the U.S. healthcare system that enjoys popular support, enabling approximately 16 million seniors to bypass traditional Medicare and instead obtain subsidized coverage through approved private insurers. On the other hand, for the past two years the Obama administration has had to back off from its threats to cut the reimbursements it pays insurers who participate in the program. The reason? President Obama might like to cut Medicare Advantage, but he knows that doing so would anger an important segment of the voting public.

“The political blowback President Obama would suffer from cutting Medicare Advantage too much would be significant,” writes health-policy expert John R. Graham, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, in an op-ed for the Daily Caller. “Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are popular for many reasons. Most importantly, they provide better care than traditional Medicare (TM).” Graham cites a recent study by two respected economists, Joseph Newhouse and Thomas McGuire, who found that MA plans “appear to offer higher value than TM” and that government policy should “move more beneficiaries into MA.”

Newhouse and McGuire’s recommendation has irritated many in the health-policy community, who complain that the government overpays Medicare Advantage plans by 6 percent and that fraud is common. Graham responds to the “fraud” criticism by noting that fraud in traditional Medicare is likely a much bigger problem. As to the “overpayment” claim, Graham urges policymakers to combat this problem by offering an alternative to business as usual: Instead of giving premium subsidies to private insurers, give it to the patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage. “As a modest first step, Medicare should give some Medicare Advantage subsidies to seniors directly, through health savings accounts, instead of handing the taxpayers’ entire contribution to insurance companies.”

SOURCE

*****************************

Amazon’s “Dark Side” Is a Bright Spot for Workers and Consumers

Jim Hightower is an old-fashioned Texas progressive, who, if memory serves, once ran unsuccessfully for the governorship of that state. He may be a great polemicist—see “The Dark Side of Amazon”—but he does not know the first thing about how markets work and how Amazon.com, like Wal-Mart, is a benefactor of consumers nationwide and worldwide.

Before the advent of Wal-Mart, rural America was a retail desert. Small shops, limited product availability and, yes, “hometown service”. But the prices of most items were high because the only alternative to shopping locally was to drive to the nearest city or order through the Sears or JC Penney catalog and depend on timely delivery by the US mail in, it was to be hoped, an undamaged package. The downside of local retail shops (limited options and high prices) fell most heavily on low-income households, which may not have had an automobile or could not afford to take time off work to shop at larger urban retailers or even at local merchants, which typically closed at 5 p.m. Wal-Mart solved both problems in one fell swoop.

Sure, local retailers suffered losses of business and some were forced into bankruptcy, but consumers (the only group whose welfare matters in a free market economy) won big-time. Amazon has generated benefits for consumers many times larger than Sam Walton ever dreamt of.

But what about the jobs that disappeared in local retail outlets as Amazon and Wal-Mart drove costs (and prices) down by inventing markedly more efficient distribution networks and negotiating lower prices with manufacturers and other suppliers on behalf of millions of consumers with little bargaining power of their own? An economic system’s chief purpose is to create prosperity (wealth), not jobs. Creating jobs—at the point of a gun, as Josef Stalin proved, or as FDR did by drafting millions of men to shoulder arms against the Axis powers—is easy; creating wealth is not. Prosperity materializes only if existing resources (land, labor and capital) can be utilized more efficiently, squeezing out “waste” and redundancy so that resources can be released from current employments and redirected by alert entrepreneurs to the production of new products that consumers may not even know they want (an iPhone ten years ago, for example) until they become available.

Hightower bemoans the working conditions in Amazon’s warehouses, a few of which literally become sweatshops during hot summer months. I am willing to bet, however, that if the people employed in one of Amazon’s “dehumanizing hives” (his phrase) were asked whether they wanted to quit their jobs, not one hand would be raised, especially so in an economy with an unemployment rate still hovering around six percent and a rate of underemployment twice that figure.

Hightower, like many before him, claims that Amazon’s ability to avoid collecting sales taxes on orders shipped out of state from the company’s Washington state headquarters or from its warehouses located around the United States gives Amazon a tax subsidy ranging “from about 4 to more than 10 percent.” That subsidy, which actually ranges from zero to more than 10 percent (four U.S. states—Delaware, New Hampshire, Montana and Oregon—impose no local or state sales taxes at all), supposedly confers a significant competitive disadvantage on brick-and-mortar retailers, who must remit sales tax receipts to the appropriate state tax authority.

But in making that claim, Hightower ignores taxes paid by FedEx and UPS, which deliver Amazon’s packages to customers’ doorsteps. Those delivery services pay, among others, state and local gasoline taxes and corporate income taxes; their employees pay state and local personal income taxes and spend some of their disposable incomes at local grocery stores and other retail outlets, purchases on which sales taxes are due. So, too, do the owners and employees of Amazon’s warehouses.

Amazon relies increasingly on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver packages to customers’ homes or places of business, especially in rural areas, a relationship that must have been seen by the beleaguered USPS as something like a lifeline thrown to someone going underwater for the third time.

It is true that, like Wal-Mart, Amazon has benefited from tax breaks (“incentives”) offered by local and state governments to lure companies to one particular geographic location rather than another. Handed out to encourage local economic development and the jobs and tax receipts associated with it, such corporate “incentives” are a national scandal, squandering taxpayers’ hard-earned money for dubious benefits. But neither Wal-Mart nor Amazon should be blamed for accepting such incentives, which are offered by politicians who want to claim credit at reelection time for attracting high-profile corporations to their home districts or states. Consumers, by and large, don’t care about the points of origin of their orders, as long as they are delivered when expected, whether from Toledo or Timbuktu.

It is someone ironic, but understandable, that Wal-Mart has joined the chorus demanding that Congress put an end to the sales-tax-free Internet retail environment. Wal-Mart has a physical presence in virtually every state and thus is obliged to collect sales taxes on almost everything it sells. Wal-Mart, of course, would benefit itself by erasing one of Amazon’s competitive advantages. But consumers would be harmed, not only by seeing prices rise by the amount of sales tax Amazon collects and then remits to the treasuries of its customers’ places of residence. Even more seriously, expunging the virtual border between the more than 3,000 separate taxing jurisdictions throughout the United States would mute the interjurisdictional tax-rate competition that makes it politically costly for any one of them to jack up its sales tax rate.

Competition can seem to be ruthless to someone who loses a small business or gets fired from a retail job, but the benefits to consumers swamp the harm done to producers. Already, Amazon is facing threats from Uber and other web-based delivery services that will pick up and deliver orders from local retailers in hours, not one or two days. Amazon could respond by getting permission from government regulators to deliver packages via drones. No one knows what the next new thing will be, but the answer cannot be found by hamstringing Amazon or any other large retailer, but by allowing free and open competition to flourish.

But a mercantilist, anti-market mindset is exactly what one would expect from a progressive defender of the Empire against Sam Walton, Jeff Bezos, and innovative rebels like them.

SOURCE

*********************************

Dr. Emanuel's death wish

by Jeff Jacoby

THE ELDERLY are such a pain, aren't they? Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel thinks so. Half of those older than 80 have "functional limitations," the prominent health policy analyst and key ObamaCare architect writes in the October issue of The Atlantic. One in three Americans 85 and up has Alzheimer's. Old people are more likely to be disabled, or at least "faltering and declining." They lose their creative mojo. They don't "contribute to work, society, the world." Instead of being regarded as "vibrant and engaged," they grow "feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic."

Especially disagreeable are old parents, who can be so irritating: "They set expectations, render judgments, impose their opinions, interfere, and are generally a looming presence for even adult children," Emanuel complains. By living too long, parents blow their chance to impart "the right memories" to their kids. Nothing could be worse, he insists, than being remembered not as we were in our prime, but as old and decrepit — "stooped and sluggish, forgetful and repetitive, constantly asking, 'What did she say?'" To leave behind memories of our frailty "is the ultimate tragedy."

And that, declares Emanuel, is "Why I Hope to Die at 75."

In his 5,000-word Atlantic essay, Emanuel — who heads the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and has an appointment at National Institutes of Health— announces that once he reaches 75, he will decline nearly all medical treatment. No more flu shots, no colonoscopies or other screenings, no pacemakers or surgery. "If I develop cancer, I will refuse treatment," he writes. He won't even take antibiotics to cure pneumonia or an infection, preferring instead to be carried off by the "quick and relatively painless" death untreated infection usually leads to.

Or so he says.

Debate over the health resources consumed by America's elderly have been ongoing for decades. As a candidate for Massachusetts governor in 1990, Boston University's John Silber famously generated sparks when he replied to a question about the surging costs of medical care for the elderly by asserting: "When you've had a long life and you're ripe, then it's time to go." President Obama has suggested the same thing, albeit far more tactfully. In 2009 he cited his grandmother's hip-replacement surgery during her final illness, publicly questioning whether such costly procedures for the terminally ill are a "sustainable model" for health care.

Over the years Emanuel has energetically weighed in on these issues, but that's not the focus of his Atlantic essay. His argument is not about dollars and cents, it's about quality of life. Death is a loss, but "living too long is also a loss" — loss of vigor, of autonomy, of productivity, of smarts, of ambition. If we're to take him at his word, he cannot bear the thought of slowing down as he ages. He recoils from the way the old gradually learn to "accommodate [their] physical and mental limitations" — retiring from a profession, taking up hobbies, doing and daring less.

"As walking becomes harder and the pain of arthritis limits the fingers' mobility, life comes to center around sitting in the den reading or listening to books on tape and doing crossword puzzles." Emanuel, whose essay is accompanied by a picture of himself and two nephews on Mount Kilimanjaro, would rather die of pneumonia than live like that. He maintains he is "certainly not scorning or dismissing people who want to live on" despite the debilities of old age. But it's hard to take that disclaimer seriously, when the whole point of his essay is that a diminished life isn't worth prolonging.

He mocks Americans who exercise, do mental puzzles, and consume "various juice and protein concoctions" in their quest to live longer. "Manic desperation," he calls it. "Misguided." "Potentially destructive." That's not scorn?

Maybe Emanuel is merely being provocative. He acknowledges that 75 is an arbitrary age to designate as the boundary between a vibrant life and a feeble one. He admits there are "myriad people I know who are over 75 and doing quite well." At the start of his essay, he claims "I am sure of my position" — yet reserves the right, at the very end, to change his mind once he reaches his 75th birthday.

Emanuel is 57 now, which gives him 18 years to reconsider his death wish, and to learn, perhaps, that the declines of advanced age can be a blessing as well as a curse. To be able to accept the pains and impediments of mortality requires a measure of courage and dignity that few of us are blessed with — or can even imagine — in our prime. Emanuel's own father, now 87, has slowed down considerably. His career is over. His son describes him as "sluggish." And yet the old man describes himself as happy.

Emanuel may dread the prospect of ending up like his father. But he's still young, and not yet wise.

 SOURCE

******************************

 ONE MORE REASON TO HOPE THE DEMOCRATS LOSE IN NOVEMBER

There are lots of good reasons to hope that the Democrats suffer a humiliating defeat in November, and this one is pretty far down the list. Still, it isn’t insignificant: as we have documented over and over, the Democrats, from the White House and Harry Reid on down, have run this year’s campaign largely against Charles and David Koch. It is rare for the Democratic Party to send out a fundraising email that fails to invoke the specter of the “Koch brothers,” who are treated essentially as bogeymen.

This is unprecedented in our history. Never before has a political party based a campaign on demonizing individual, private citizens who hold opposing beliefs and who exercise their First Amendment right to participate in the political process. In my view, it would be a very bad thing if attacks like those the Democrats have made against Charles and David Koch–which, frankly, border on the insane–were to become the norm.

On Chris Matthews’ Hardball, Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post criticized the campaign the Democrats have run this year, and said specifically that “campaigning against the Koch brothers is idiotic.”

I hope he proves to be right. If the Democrats get clobbered in November, their anti-Koch strategy will go down as a failure, and parties in the future will be unlikely to repeat it. If, on the other hand, the Democrats outperform expectations, they likely will conclude that their diversionary attack on the Kochs worked, and they are likely to try the same thing in the future, against the Kochs or others who disagree with them. Our politics are plenty dirty enough without giving the Democrats that sort of encouragement.

 SOURCE

****************************

Walmart Nixes Insurance for 30,000

Another 30,000 employees are finding out they can’t keep their insurance plans, even if they like them. The Associated Press reports, “Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for some of its part-time U.S. employees in a move aimed at controlling rising health care costs of the nation’s largest private employer.” The terminations will be effective Jan. 1 and will affect 30,000 of the company’s workforce clocking in less than 30 hours a week. “The announcement follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees,” the AP adds.

Senior vice president of benefits, Sally Welborn, defended the move, saying, “We are trying to balance the needs of (workers) as well as the costs of (workers) as well as the cost to Wal-Mart.” In other words, the retail giant is trying to keep its business afloat while also maintaining a profit margin – a tedious process every business owner faces that’s been made all the more difficult because of ObamaCare.

Then again, Walmart endorsed ObamaCare, only to turn around and do what leftists really wanted – put more people on the federal dole. Oh, and they’re offering health insurance advice, too.

 SOURCE

***************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

****************************

Lazy Google spiders

Google seems to have a very relaxed attitude to files that have been on the net for some time.  Once they have indexed a file, they seem never to look at it again.

I once had a site with a crowd called 110mb.com and I put a lot of my files up there.  Google duly noted that at the time.  A couple of years ago, however, 110mb.com deleted my account for reasons known only to them.  I was unfazed by that and simply put my files up elsewhere.  But if you do a search for any of the files Google still refers you to the long-gone page.  It amounts to a subtle form of censorship.

One would think that they would revisit every page at least once a year and take down references to pages no longer there.  There are a lot of those on the net.

My current home page is here  and you can access all my articles from there

*************************

MRC Ends Suit: Gov’t States It Isn't Enforcing Contraceptive Rule on Self-Certified Religious Group

The Media Research Center (MRC), a non-profit group that monitors liberal bias in the news media, announced today that it was ending its lawsuit to block the Obamacare contraceptive mandate because the organization is a self-certified religious entity and the federal government, through an Agreed Order of Dismissal, has affirmed “that it is not now enforcing, and has no plans to penalize or enforce the contraceptive mandate against the MRC,” reads a press release from the MRC.

“The Agreed Order of Dismissal is a major victory not only for the MRC, but any organization that believes in freedom of religion and the conscience rights of individuals to operate their enterprises free from the threat of government reprisal,” said MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell. “With this agreement, the MRC and its employees will continue to live and work according to our values and our firmly held belief that all human life is sacred.”

The regulation, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, says that nearly all companies with more than 50 employees must offer health insurance that covers contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs, such as ella and Plan B, without co-payments.

The MRC, which has about 60 employees and is the parent organization of CNSNews.com, says the contraceptive mandate violates its religious beliefs. Back in May, the non-profit group said, “For nearly three decades, the MRC has been the nation’s premier defender of pro-life views and Judeo-Christian values from attacks by the liberal media.”

Its president and other employees “practice and live by Judeo-Christian values, and believe abortion, whether through the actions of an abortionist or a drug, is the taking of innocent human life,” said the MRC.  “Under the First Amendment, the MRC and its employees have the right to practice and abide by their faith in their everyday lives including in the operations of their mission-oriented non-profit organization.”

Under the rules of the contraceptive mandate, churches, other “official” religious institutions, and “eligible organizations” are allowed to exempt themselves from the mandate through a “self-certification” process.

An employer can self-certify as an “eligible organization” if it opposes part or all of the mandate on religious grounds; operates as a non-profit; and holds itself out as a religious organization.

The MRC completed that “self-certification” but also filed suit against the HHS in April, asking the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia to formally declare that the non-profit was exempt as an “eligible organization” because it is a religious group, a ruling that would also protect the MRC from crippling fines.

If an employer is not exempt from the contraceptive regulation, it must comply or face daily fines of $100 per employee.  For the MRC, that potentially amounts to $4,562,000 a year. But the Agreed Order of Dismissal, according to the Oct. 6 press statement, “confirms that there is no imminent threat to the MRC from the government and leaves the MRC free to reopen the suit should the government challenge the MRC’s self-declared exemption in the future.”

SOURCE

************************

Government Should Target ‘Bad Guys,’ Not Entire Industries, Trade Group Says

A group representing businesses that speed monetary transactions between consumers has taken a legal stand against Operation Choke Point, the secretive Obama administration effort to financially starve industries that are politically out of favor.

The Third Party Payment Processors Association filed a legal brief Friday in support of a lawsuit that challenges the Justice Department initiative’s use of federal banking regulators to pressure banks into closing the accounts of a variety of enterprises.

“They’re using regulation-examining authorities to coerce banks into dropping relationships that are politically unfavorable,” said Marsha Jones, president of the trade association.

The lawsuit, filed by the payday lending industry, accuses three of the government’s main financial regulatory bodies—the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Bank and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency—of abusing their examination authority.

Their intent, the suit says, is “to enforce a de facto boycott” of industries the Obama administration considers objectionable.

Operation Choke Point, coordinated by the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder, works by wielding the implied threat of government audits and other investigations, critics say.

Jones told The Daily Signal the trade group wanted to speak out to prevent the Justice Department from persuading the public that it targets only disreputable enterprises such as pornography, Ponzi schemes or even payday lending:

This isn’t about [only] payday lending, this is about going after third-party payment processors because it’s faster and less costly and easier than going after the bad merchants directly.

A House report concluded that the Justice Department initiative purposefully pressures financial institutions into denying legal businesses access to the very banking system they need to survive—simply because the administration doesn’t like them.

A third-party payment processor is a business—such as PayPal or a payroll depositor—that processes payments for other companies or customers through an independent bank.

Payment processors play a vital role in the economy by easing or making possible monetary transactions among consumers, merchants and financial institutions, Jones said.

The Third Party Payment Processors Association, a 30-member group that formed in 2013, says its mission is to help processors and banks operate “efficiently and compliantly” within today’s government regulatory environment.

The Justice Department, which has declined to speak to The Daily Signal about Operation Choke Point, contends that the campaign’s goal is to combat unlawful, mass-market consumer fraud.

Jones says she not only is fine with that, she’s willing to help:

"Go after the bad guys—we’ll help you find them through creating best practices. But don’t use the components of the payment system to try to sweep entire industries out of business."

Pawn shops, payday lenders, gun sellers and payment processors are among the legal enterprises overtly targeted by regulators at Justice’s behest

The payday industry representatives filed their suit June 5 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

They asked the court to set aside “certain informal guidance documents and other unlawful regulatory actions by FDIC, the [Federal Reserve] Board and OCC on the grounds that they exceed the agencies’ statutory authority.”

In July, after coming under congressional scrutiny, the FDIC took down online lists of “high risk” businesses, citing “misunderstandings” in which its guidance led to sudden decisions by banks to close accounts with established customers that fell under one or more of the listed categories.

Jones said industry experts believe the FDIC removed the lists simply as a “legal tactic,” so the regulatory agency could argue that the suit’s claims no longer apply.  Even so, Jones said, removing the “high risk list” isn’t enough to end Operation Choke Point.

Without a court ruling against the practice, she and other critics of the government program say, banks will continue shutting out “high risk” customers to avoid government scrutiny.  Otherwise, Jones said, silence “would basically be a nod to the regulators” that they have done nothing wrong.

“Operation Choke Point continues to be the greatest threat to consumer choice and freedom this country has ever seen,” said Brian Wise, senior adviser for the U.S. Consumer Coalition, a grassroots organization leading the fight against Choke Point.

In applauding the trade group’s friend-of-the court brief, Wise said he hopes the courts “uphold the standard of due process.”

The public, Wise said, should “demand that the administration, if they want to destroy an entire industry, do it through the legislative process [and] not through unilateral executive action.”

SOURCE

*****************************

No Ebola Travel Ban: Dems Defend Obama Policy Through Silence

The UK’s Daily Mail reports that a teenager from West Africa who became sick while visiting Florida on holiday caused Jackson Memorial Hospital to go on high alert on Sunday amid fears that he may have the deadly Ebola virus.

This makes, by our count, the fourth Ebola “scare” since Liberian Thomas Duncan became the first person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola. All of these “scares” were due to allowing visitors, some of whom may have lied about their exposure to Ebola, into the United States from countries where the deadly virus is at epidemic proportions.

Yet, the Obama administration is not considering a ban on travelers from countries most affected by the deadly Ebola virus outbreak, the White House said on Monday.

"A travel ban is not something that we're currently considering," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at a daily briefing. "We feel good about the measures that are already in place," he said according to Yahoo News.

Now here’s something from The Daily Mail report that should scare every voter in Florida.

The Florida Department of Health has requested 30 additional Ebola testing kits from the CDC to ensure that all of Florida’s public hospitals 'have the ability to test patients who county health officials and the CDC believe need to be tested for Ebola,' said Florida’s Governor Rick Scott.

The Daily Mail also reports that the Florida “Health Department also requested '100 units of additional high-level personal protective equipment to ensure the state is ready to backfill any county whose medical personnel develop a future need for these supplies.'”

In other words, due to Obama’s policy of keeping the border open to travelers from countries where the Ebola epidemic is raging, Floridians can expect MORE Ebola scares, not fewer, or better yet, no Ebola scares.

A normal American government would act immediately to eliminate the existential threat of this growing world epidemic, but the Obama administration is not a normal American government.

As we noted yesterday, the practical result of Obama’s immigration policies toward the sources of Ebola, whooping cough and Enterovirus 68 is a life or death threat to America’s children.

Through their silent support for Obama’s open borders policy Democrats are more than merely complicit in this existential threat to America’s national security – they are actively helping to advance it.

North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis is the only Republican Senate candidate we can find who has grasped that protecting Americans, and especially American children, from the looming health disaster of Obama’s lawless immigration policies is an important issue in the 2014 midterm election. Tillis demanded on Thursday a nationwide travel ban from the three hardest-hit Ebola hotspots: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Tillis’ call for a travel ban shows that his campaign has grasped the political and policy implications of Obama’s disastrous failure to enforce our immigration and health security laws – it is time for the Republicans to drive the message home, close the deal with the “security Mom” vote and win the election.

SOURCE

***************************

It's happening



***************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

****************************

The terrible truth about cannabis: British expert's devastating 20-year study finally demolishes claims that smoking pot is harmless

A definitive 20-year study into the effects of long-term cannabis use has demolished the argument that the drug is safe.  Cannabis is highly addictive, causes mental health problems and opens the door to hard drugs, the study found.

The paper by Professor Wayne Hall, a drugs advisor to the World Health Organisation, builds a compelling case against those who deny the devastation cannabis wreaks on the brain. Professor Hall found:

    One in six teenagers who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it,

    Cannabis doubles the risk of developing psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia,

    Cannabis users do worse at school. Heavy use in adolescence appears to impair intellectual development

    One in ten adults who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it and those who use it are more likely to go on to use harder drugs,

    Driving after smoking cannabis doubles the risk of a car crash, a risk which increases substantially if the driver has also had a drink,

  Smoking it while pregnant reduces the baby’s birth weight.

Last night Professor Hall, a professor of addiction policy at King’s College London, dismissed the views of those who say that cannabis is harmless.  ‘If cannabis is not addictive then neither is heroin or alcohol,’ he said.

‘It is often harder to get people who are dependent on cannabis through withdrawal than for heroin – we just don’t know how to do it.’

Those who try to stop taking cannabis often suffer anxiety, insomnia, appetite disturbance and depression, he found. Even after treatment, less than half can stay off the drug for six months.

The paper states that teenagers and young adults are now as likely to take cannabis as they are to smoke cigarettes.

Professor Hall writes that it is impossible to take a fatal overdose of cannabis, making it less dangerous at first glance than heroin or cocaine. He also states that taking the drug while pregnant can reduce the weight of a baby, and long-term use raises the risk of cancer, bronchitis and heart attack.

But his main finding is that regular use, especially among teenagers, leads to long-term mental health problems and addiction.

‘The important point I am trying to make is that people can get into difficulties with cannabis use, particularly if they get into daily use over a longer period,’ he said. ‘There is no doubt that heavy users experience a withdrawal syndrome as with alcohol and heroin.

‘Rates of recovery from cannabis dependence among those seeking treatment are similar to those for alcohol.’

Mark Winstanley, of the charity Rethink Mental Illness, said: ‘Too often cannabis is wrongly seen as a safe drug, but as this review shows, there is a clear link with psychosis and schizophrenia, especially for teenagers.

‘The common view that smoking cannabis is nothing to get worked up about needs to be challenged more effectively. Instead of classifying and re-classifying, government time and money would be much better spent on educating young people about how smoking cannabis is essentially playing a very real game of Russian roulette with your mental health.’

Professor Hall last night declined to comment on the decriminalisation debate.

But in his paper, published in the journal Addiction, he wrote that the rise of medical treatment for cannabis ‘dependence syndrome’ had not been stopped by legalisation. The number of cannabis users seeking help to quit or control their cannabis use has increased during the past two decades in the United States, Europe and Australia,’ he wrote. ‘The same increase has occurred in the Netherlands, where cannabis use was decriminalised more than 40 years ago.’

SOURCE

*********************************

Is the Democratic Party more peaceful?

The list below omits Bill Clinton's bombing of the Christian Serbs in defence of the Muslim Kosovars

There is a popular cliche in American politics that holds the Democratic politicians as more peaceful than the Republicans. NagasakibombSupporters would frame it as Democrats being diplomatic versus the Republican warhawks. Opponents would frame it as Democrats being “weak on defense” versus the Republicans who are “strong on national security.” But both supporters and opponents of the Democrats agree that they are more peace-loving than the Republicans. I mean, Barack Obama and Al Gore both have Nobel Peace Prizes!

Yet as with most of the conventional wisdom concerning U.S. politics, this bit of “everyone knows” is completely wrong. Here are some inconvenient truths to fit into the standard narrative:

==> Woodrow Wilson led the U.S. into World War I. His actions before U.S. entry were so belligerent that his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, actually resigned in protest. (Bryan wanted the U.S. to stay neutral, and thought Wilson’s policies were clearly pro-British and anti-German.)

==> Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted policies that were hardly neutral and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, led the U.S. into World II. FDR was in office to oversee the Manhattan Project. After FDR’s death he was succeeded by Harry Truman, the only political ruler in human history to order atomic weapons to be used against civilians.

==> John F. Kennedy in 1961 told a NYT reporter, “Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place.” While (Republican) Dwight Eisenhower had sent 900 advisors to South Vietnam, by the time of his assassination in November 1963 Kennedy had sent 16,000 military personnel.

==> Under Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. forces in Vietnam went from 16,000 in late 1963 to 550,000 by early 1968. LBJ also approved “carpet bombing” campaigns. For example, Operation Rolling Thunder from 1965-68 involved more than 1 million sorties and 750,000 tons of bombs.

==> In August 1998 Bill Clinton launched dozens of cruise missiles at targets in the Sudan and Afghanistan, a move described in the NYT this way: “With about 75 missiles timed to explode simultaneously in unsuspecting countries on two continents, the operation was the most formidable U.S. military assault ever against a private sponsor of terrorism.” Cynics claimed the timing and boldness of the operation was to take the Monica Lewinsky scandal off the front pages. (Clinton’s grand jury testimony and nationally televised admission of guilt had occurred earlier in the month.)

==> And of course, President Obama has only escalated the “global war on terror” that mushroomed under his predecessor. His actions have been so opposite to what his supporters had hoped that we’ve got this yard sign:



So in conclusion, no, the Democrats are not the party of peace

SOURCE

************************

No, America isn’t Communist. It’s only 70% Communist

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!”

Most people remember Karl Marx’s most potent points and phrases, and the mountain of corpses his disciples left behind, especially in the 20th century. However, most forget or don’t even know the specific policies that Marx advocated.

Within his 1848 Communist Manifesto, Marx outlined a list of ten short-term demands. These, he thought, would be the precursor to the ideal stateless, classless communist society.

Ironically in today’s world, Marx’s demands look pretty much mainstream. That is because nearly every single item on the list has been implemented to varying degrees in the United States.

Think that couldn’t be possible in the Land of the Free? Just take a look. Topping Marx’s list is the abolition of private property. True, private property exists, but only until the state wants to take it. With its powers of eminent domain, the government can and does confiscate people’s property when it wants for public use. Your property isn’t unconditionally yours. Just think of property taxes, for example. If it’s actually YOUR private property, then why would you need to pay tax on it? And why do they have the authority to take it from you if you don’t pay?

Likewise, while we haven’t seen the complete abolition of inheritance (another Marx demand), the government can take up to 40% of your estate when you die. So ultimately your estate is not your own. You don’t get to control what happens to your wealth and possessions when you die. It’s just a matter of proportion.

Marx also demanded the centralization of transportation and communication. Check, and check. Try broadcasting over the airwaves in the Land of the Free without a license and special permission. Practically the entire electromagnetic spectrum is tightly controlled by the state, centralized by a handful of government agencies. Same with the network of roads and highways. Because, after all, without government, who would build the roads…

Another point of Marx is state-guided agricultural production and combination of agriculture and manufacturing. And the Land of the Free does not disappoint. Though its activities may not be as prominent in the news, the US Department of Agriculture is easily one of the busiest government departments. With a budget of $146 billion a year, and much more for subsidies, USDA tirelessly works to dictate every major and miniscule activity in the sector.

Next on the list, is equal liability of all to labor. If you have at any point wondered, as I have, why politicians are always pushing jobs for the sake of jobs, rather than value and wealth creation—now you know why. Between minimum wage laws and the constant stream of legislation that promises jobs for all, it is clear that politicians have wholly internalized this Marxian ideal.

Now, you might think that this is just a fluke, just a coincidence that some US policies resemble what’s on Marx’s list of demands. But then you see these demands, which have not only been fully implemented in the US already, but are thoroughly entrenched in the national psyche:

First, there’s free education for all children, to enable the uniformity of thought. Check.

Then there’s a heavy progressive income tax. Yep, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with this one, which has actually become so mainstream, that to have any system other than this would be considered revolutionary. Check.

Third, is the confiscation of the property of emigrants (expatriates) and rebels. Between the IRS bullying of political opposition groups and the imposition of exit taxes for those that renounce their citizenship, the United States is firmly set up to discourage dissent and escape. Check.

And last but not least, the centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank. Check. Remember, Karl Marx thought central banking was a great idea—the same guy who thought that individual success and private property were evil.

Think about that the next time the Federal Reserve comes up with a plan to help businesses and fix the economy. So now you know, America isn't communist. It's only about 70% communist. No reason to worry.

SOURCE

*******************************

That Leftist lack of consistency again



*******************************

The Income Inequality Diversion

Politicians such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio cashed in on growing concerns about income inequality by employing the rhetoric of redistribution. But such rhetoric fundamentally misconstrues the realities of the knowledge economy. Consider: If politicians were to tax away the income gains accrued over the past 35 years by the wealthiest 1 percent of American households and give that money to the other 99 percent, the latter would have $7,105 more per year. But that sum is no match for the income gains that a family headed by two college graduates enjoyed over the same period compared to a family headed by two high-school grads: $30,000.

“In other words, not going to college appears to be four times more important than anything that could be gained by taxing the rich for people in the lower half of the income distribution,” writes Independent Institute Senior Fellow John C. Goodman. A college degree helps, but even more important are the self-discipline and self-control that one can gain by pursuing academic excellence.

Such character traits are by no means exclusive to college graduates, of course, as the list of billionaires who never finished college indicates. But rather than delve into the relationship between an enterprising mindset and economic success, redistributionists would rather bemoan income inequality. Why? “That answer seems pretty clear,” Goodman continues. “Because they don’t want to talk about Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, bailouts, debt, the stimulus, the rotten cronyism of energy policy, denial of education to poor and minorities, the abject failure of their policies to help poor and middle class people, and especially sclerotic growth.”

SOURCE

**************************

How to LIMIT the US Courts

Over the past 70 years, most States have passed Laws involving Abortion and Gay Marriage and The Death Penalty.

However, in many cases, un-elected, often highly partisan US federal judges have unilaterally destroyed many of these Laws.

Fortunately, the Founders of our country anticipated this deranged SPECTACLE. Article III of the US Constitution says that Congress can limit the jurisdiction of the US federal courts with a simple majority vote.

BOTTOM-LINE: A simple majority in Congress can remove all legislation involving ABORTION and MARRIAGE and THE DEATH PENALTY from the terrifying jurisdiction of our US federal courts.

Via email

***************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

****************************

Obama attacks freedom and demands apartheid

Israel's prime minister dismissed a recent White House rebuke of Israeli settlement construction, saying in comments broadcast on Sunday that the criticism goes 'against American values.'

The tough words by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to deepen a rift with the White House over Israeli construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as parts of a future independent state.

A day earlier, an ultranationalist Jewish group said dozens of settlers would move into six apartment buildings purchased in the heart of a predominantly Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem.

In a striking public rebuke last week, the Obama administration warned Israel that the new project would distance Israel from 'even its closest allies' and raise questions about its commitment to seeking peace with Palestinians.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS's 'Face the Nation,' Netanyahu said he does not accept restrictions on where Jews could live, and said that Jerusalem's Arabs and Jews should be able to buy homes wherever they want.

He said he was 'baffled' by the American condemnation.  'It's against the American values. And it doesn't bode well for peace,' he said. 'The idea that we'd have this ethnic purification as a condition for peace, I think it's anti-peace.'

 SOURCE

******************************

Dallas Ebola Patient Was Another Visa Mistake

Look up "likely visa overstay" in the dictionary, and you should find a picture of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who is the first Ebola case diagnosed within the United States, and who is now being treated in a Dallas hospital.

This looks like another good case for the consular officers training manual of a non-immigrant visa that never should have been issued, but which could have serious public health consequences, not to mention monetary costs.

According to his Facebook page and other reports, Duncan is a 40-something, single, unemployed Liberian living in Ghana who applied sometime in the last year for a visa to visit his sister in the United States. It was reportedly his first time visiting this country.

That is six strikes against his application:

Single
Unemployed
Liberian (5th highest overstay rate of any country in the world)
Living outside country of citizenship
First time traveler to the United States
Sister living in the United States.

Together, all these factors should have weighed very heavily against the issuance of a vistor's visa to Duncan. He clearly appears unqualified.

In 2013, more than 3,500 non-immigrant visas were issued to Liberians. This number has grown steadily since 2009, when just over 1,300 were issued. Most are issued to tourists and business travelers. A relatively high percentage do not return, but settle here illegally to join a well-established Liberian community (many of whom have won green cards in the visa lottery).

The federal government has yet to disclose the details of Duncan's immigration history, but it is fair to ask why he was issued a visa in the first place? More importantly, what steps are being taken to prevent others who may be infected from entering the country?

Using 2013 non-immigrant visa issuance statistics and information on visa validity periods, I estimate that there are about 5,000 people from Sierra Leone, 5,000 people from Guinea, and 3,500 people from Liberia who have valid non-immigrant visas to enter the United States.

The president and his immigration agencies have the authority and the responsibility to deny admission to any alien that has (or cannot establish to the government's satisfaction that he or she doesn't have) a communicable disease of public health significance, such as ebola. In the midst of this severe outbreak, the government should be setting up more robust screening protocols. Reportedly, travelers to the United States are simply being questioned about their contact with infected people and are checked for a fever. In contrast, three African countries (Namibia, Kenya, and Zambia) have banned travelers from the countries that are experiencing the outbreak (Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea).

In July, a member of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson suggesting that we bar entry to any foreign travelers who have visited the three Ebola-stricken countries within 90 days of seeking entry to the United States.

But, as with the threat from terrorism and from foreign criminal cartels, the Obama administration seems reluctant to use immigration controls even to protect the homeland.

From CIS

****************************

Record 61.8 million U.S. Residents Speak Foreign Language at Home

Spanish, Chinese & Arabic speakers grew most since 2010

Nearly 62 million U.S. residents now speak a language other than English at home - an all-time high. A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies, based on recently released data from the Census Bureau's 2013 American Community Survey, shows that one in five U.S. residents over age four speaks a foreign language at home. The number of foreign language speakers grew 2.2 million since 2010. This growth was driven almost entirely by an increase in Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic speakers.

"It is important to understand that the enormous growth in foreign language use reflects past policy decisions. Allowing in over one million new legal immigrants a year and to a lesser extent tolerating illegal immigration has important implication for preserving a common language," said Steven Camarota, the Center's Director of Research and co-author of the report. "For too long we have given little consider to whether continuing this level of immigration, mostly legal, hinder the assimilation of immigrants and their children."

View the entire report  here.  Among the findings:

  In 2013 a record 61.8 million all U.S. residents (native-born, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants) spoke a language other than English at home.

  The number of foreign-language speakers increased 2.2 million between 2010 and 2013. It has grown by nearly 15 million (32 percent) since 2000 and by almost 30 million since 1990 (94 percent).

  The largest increases 2010 to 2013 were for speakers of Spanish (up 1.4 million, 4 percent growth), Chinese (up 220,000, 8 percent growth), Arabic (up 188,000, 22 percent growth), and Urdu (up 50,000, 13 percent growth). Urdu is the national language of Pakistan.

  Languages with more than a million speakers in 2013 were Spanish (38.4 million), Chinese (three million), Tagalog (1.6 million), Vietnamese (1.4 million), French (1.3 million), and Korean and Arabic (1.1million each). Tagalog is the national language of the Philippines.

  The percentage of the U.S. population speaking a language other than English at home was 21 percent in 2013, a slight increase over 2010. In 2000, the share was 18 percent; in 1990 it was 14 percent; it was 11 percent in 1980.

  Of the school age (5 to 17) nationally, more than one in five speaks a foreign language at home. It is 45 percent in California and roughly one in three students in Texas, Nevada and New York. But more surprisingly it is now one in seven students in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Nebraska and Delaware; and one out of eight students in Kansas, Utah, Minnesota and Idaho.

  Many of those who speak a foreign language at home are not immigrants. Of the nearly 62 million foreign-language speakers, 44 percent (27.2 million) were born in the United States.

  Of those who speak a foreign language at home, 25.1 million (41 percent) told the Census Bureau that they speak English less than very well.

  States with the largest share of foreign-language speakers in 2013 include: California, 44 percent; New Mexico, 36 percent; Texas 35 percent; New Jersey, 30 percent; Nevada, 30 percent; New York, 30 percent; Florida, 27 percent; Arizona, 27 percent; Hawaii, 25 percent; Illinois, 23 percent; Massachusetts, 22 percent, Connecticut, 22 percent; and Rhode Island, 21 percent.

  States with the largest percentage increases in foreign-language speakers 2010 to 2013 were: North Dakota, up 13 percent; Oklahoma, up 11 percent; Nevada, up 10 percent, New Hampshire, up 8 percent; Idaho, up 8 percent, Georgia, up 7 percent; Washington, up 7 percent; Oregon, up 6 percent; Massachusetts, up 6 percent; Kentucky, up 6 percent; Maryland, up 5 percent; and North Carolina, up 5 percent.

  Taking a longer view, states with the largest percentage increase in foreign-language speakers 2000 to 2013 were: Nevada, up 85 percent; North Carolina, up 69 percent; Georgia, up 69 percent; Washington, up 60 percent; South Carolina, up 57 percent; Virginia, up 57 percent; Tennessee, up 54 percent; Arkansas, up 54 percent; Maryland, up 52 percent; Delaware, up 52 percent; Oklahoma, up 48 percent; Utah, up 47 percent; Idaho, up 47 percent; Nebraska, up 46 percent; Florida, up 46 percent; Alabama, up 43 percent; Texas, up 42 percent; Oregon, up 42 percent; and Kentucky, up 39 percent.

From CIS

********************************

U.S. Immigrant Population Hits Record 41.3 Million

Middle Eastern, Asian, and Caribbean Immigrants Lead Growth

 A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies finds that nearly one in six adults in the U.S. is foreign-born. The report, based on newly released Census Bureau data, also found that the nation's immigrant population (legal and illegal) grew by 1.4 million from July 2010 to July 2013. The immigrant population, referred to as the foreign-born by the Census Bureau, includes all those who were not U.S. citizens at birth, including illegal immigrants.

"The new data makes clear that while Latin America and the Caribbean are still a significant source of immigration, the growth is being driven in large part by immigration from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa," observed the Center's Director of Research and lead author of the report, Steven Camarota.

View the full report  here.  Among the findings from the new data:

  The nation's immigrant population (legal and illegal) hit a record 41.3 million in July 2013, an increase of 1.4 million since July 2010. Since 2000 the immigrant population is up 10.2 million.

  The 41.3 million immigrant population (legal and illegal) in 2013 was double the number in 1990, nearly triple the number in 1980, and quadruple that in 1970, when it stood at 9.6 million.

  The sending regions with the largest increases from 2010 to 2013 were South Asia (up 373,000, 16 percent growth); East Asia (up 365,000, 5 percent growth); the Caribbean (up 223,000, 6 percent growth), the Middle East (up 208,000, 13 percent growth); and sub-Saharan Africa (up 177,000, 13 percent growth).

  The sending countries with the largest increases 2010 to 2013 were India (up 254,000, 14 percent growth); China (up 217,000, 10 percent growth); the Dominican Republic (up 112,000, 13 percent growth); Guatemala (up 71,000, 9 percent growth); Jamaica (up 55,000, 8 percent growth); Bangladesh (up 49,000, 32 percent growth); Saudi Arabia (up 44,000, 97 percent growth); Pakistan (up 43,000, 14 percent growth); and Iraq (up 41,000, 26 percent growth).

  Since the Great Recession in 2007, at least 7.5 million immigrants have settled in the country. New arrivals are offset by return-migration and deaths.

  As a share of the total population, immigrants (legal and illegal) comprised 13.1 percent of U.S. residents (about one out of every eight), the highest percentage in 93 years. As recently as 1980, 6.2 percent of the population was comprised of immigrants.

  Immigrants comprised 16 percent of the adult population (18-plus) in 2013, nearly one out of every six adults.

  Mexicans accounted for the largest immigrant population by far, with 11.6 million legal and illegal immigrants living in the United States in 2013. However, the number of Mexican immigrants in the country declined 1 percent from 2010 to 2013.

  The number of immigrants from Europe also declined.

  States where the number of immigrants grew the most since 2010 were Texas (up 227,240); California (up 160,771); Florida (up 140,019); New York (up 85,699); New Jersey (up 81,192); Massachusetts (up 62,591); Washington (up 57,402); Pennsylvania (up 57,091); Illinois (up 47,609); Arizona (up 39,647); Maryland (up 38,555); Virginia (up 37,844); North Carolina (up 30,289); Michigan (up 29,039); and Georgia (up 28,020).

  States with the largest percentage increase since 2010 were North Dakota (up 27 percent); West Virginia (up 17 percent); and Wyoming (up 14 percent). In South Dakota, Nebraska, and Idaho the immigrant population increased 10 percent. It grew 8 percent in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and 7 percent in Iowa, Delaware, and Minnesota.

From CIS

*************************

Executive Amnesty for Traffic Offenders?

Thousands of drunk drivers would be shielded from deportation

 A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines the potential public safety impact of an executive action to benefit alien traffic offenders, one of the several directives reportedly being considered by the Obama administration. Such a presidential directive would protect tens of thousands of illegal aliens from deportation each year. The analysis found that since 2004, 258,689 aliens whose most serious state or local conviction was a traffic offense were deported by ICE.

These individuals are not "harmless," as proponents of such a policy have suggested. An amnesty for those "convicted exclusively of traffic crimes" would include those convicted of drunk or drugged driving, vehicular homicide, carjacking, vehicular homicide, and joyriding.

More than half (57%) of deported traffic offenders were convicted of drunk or drugged driving. The number of illegal aliens deported after drunk or drugged driving convictions (as their most serious offense) numbered 22,740 in 2013.

View the full report here

More at CIS

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

***************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

****************************