Myanmar's junta seized U.N. aid shipments headed for hungry and homeless survivors of last week's devastating cyclone, prompting the world body to suspend further help on Friday.
The U.N. said the aid included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits and arrived in Myanmar on Friday on two flights from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.
"All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated," U.N. World Food Program spokesman Paul Risley said. "For the time being, we have no choice but to end further efforts to bring critical needed food aid into Myanmar at this time."
Myanmar's government acknowledged taking control of the shipments and said it plans to distribute the aid "without delay by its own labor to the affected areas."
In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, government spokesman Ye Htut said the junta had "clearly stated" what it would do and denied the action amounted to a seizure.
Yeah, anyone actually believe those last two paragraphs? Now I'm hesitant to even donate to relief efforts, because the money may get wasted by the bureaucratic meddling of Myanmar's government. If they truly cared about their people's welfare, they'd let relief workers just do their job. I think the Burmese are a lot more focused on survival than staging an uprising at this point.
How ironic, that bureaucratic inefficiency leads to rather efficient mass murder. And it's happened time and again.
To grasp American immigration policy, to the extent that it can be grasped, one need only remember that the United States forbids smoking while subsidizing tobacco growers.
It just gets better from there. Do read the whole thing. I have little to add, as Fred Reed has pretty much nailed the central point: our immigration "policy" is purely theoretical. And the political rhetoric surrounding it is irrational at best.
We can keep the carrot or the stick, but it's pointless (and enormously wasteful) to have both. Choose one, and hope you've chosen wisely.
For centuries, people have stolen religious artifacts in Europe, including chunks of religious buildings, but Britain is in the midst of an accelerating crime wave that some experts call the most concerted assault on churches since the Reformation.
Instead of doctrinal differences, the motivation is the near record price that lead — the stuff many old church roofs are made of — is fetching on commodity markets.
Note that while lead is currently fetching $2,750 per ton, the damage to one church will cost $20,000 to repair.
It might even be worse on this side of the pond:
Metal scrappers have attacked churches and ransacked homes in this Midwestern city [Cleveland, OH], leaving entire neighborhoods uninhabitable.
Saint Theodosius Orthodox Cathedral here lost its insurance after a thief stole copper panels from the roof years ago. Three churches in Cleveland Heights have been stripped of copper gutters. And in the last few months, three churches in the North Collinwood neighborhood were stripped of copper downspouts.
“Our neighborhoods are being pillaged, not by Vikings or Goths, but by modern-day barbarians,” said Mike Polensek, North Collinwood’s City Council member. Even manhole covers and sewer drains are being stolen out of streets to be sold as scrap metal, Mr. Polensek said.
Houses, however, are the greatest targets of commodity scavengers in the United States. Neighborhoods depopulated by the rising tide of foreclosures make easy targets.
The punchline is that the scavengers are choosing which houses to raid by going through government foreclosure listings.
SUVs are being targeted as well, as their catalytic converters are often easily accessible. The precious metals found in trace amounts in cats command very high prices ($1,900 per ounce for platinum alone).
Of course, if you're facing foreclosure or repossession, you may just want to take the good stuff with you (HT: LewRockwell.com).
The US taxpayer is loaning Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase, Bear Stearns' acquirer, $29 billion -- just revised from $30 billion, simultaneous with JP Morgan Chase raising its acquisition price for Bear Stearns to $10/share from $2.
Without that $29 billion of taxpayer money, [Bear Stearns chairman and former CEO] Jimmy Cayne's stock would be worth $0/share, and if you multiply that by 5.66 million shares, the total would be $0.
The $29 billion taxpayer loan is almost certain to lose money as it is being used to backstop stinky assets on the Bear Stearns balance sheet -- the same assets whose plummeting fall in value catalyzed Bear Stearns' effective bankruptcy.
It is virtually certain that taxpayers are going to take some loss on that $29 billion loan.
When we do, we will have the immense satisfaction of knowing that the first $61.3 million of those losses represent a direct cash transfer from US taxpayers to Jimmy Cayne.
Note that last year, Cayne's holdings were worth nearly $1 billion when Bear Stearns' stock price hit a high of $171.50. So I guess we should still feel sorry for him.
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's hold on office seemed less certain Tuesday, as a legislative staffer said gubernatorial aides were in transition talks with the lieutenant governor and Democratic sources said Spitzer had no choice but to step down. . . .
Political opponents quickly called for Spitzer's resignation after federal investigators linked New York's Democratic governor to a high-rolling prostitution ring.
After being admonished by fellow libertarians, I will point out that no one, Spitzer included, should be called to account for the consensual non-crime of paying someone for sex. What Spitzer does with his dick and his money in his spare time is nobody's business but his.
He should not be punished for hiring a prostitute. He should be punished for all the real crimes he's committed as governor and earlier as attorney general of New York: for all the businesses he ruined in his overzealous (and sometimes extra-jurisdictional) pursuit of so-called white-collar crime; for all the people imprisoned for other victimless crimes under his watch; for his misuse of state resources to harass and damage his political opponents.
There's also Spitzer's reputation for being an arrogant, suppurating asshole (remember his "I'm a fucking steamroller" comment?). Of course, it's not illegal to be an asshole, but it sure makes it easier to take joy in his downfall.
Goodbye, Mr. Clean. You may not get the punishment you deserve, but you'll no longer be able to punish anyone else, and I can live with that.
Subject line courtesy of Lou Reed's "Strawman", from his album titled, appropriately enough, New York.
And why aren't the Colombian drug lords returning to reclaim their inventory?
"The Miskito [local Indians] are guerrillas. They have been through war. They have AK-47s and up."
The US Drug Enforcement Agency, in a report to Congress, noted: "A unique historical situation and civil conflicts have left Nicaragua with a tradition of armed rural groups and institutionalised violence that greatly complicates counter-drug enforcement."
Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal. . . .
The decision has been condemned by the Tories, who accused the Government of offering preferential treatment to a particular group, and of setting a precedent that would lead to demands for further changes in British law.
New guidelines on income support from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) state: "Where there is a valid polygamous marriage the claimant and one spouse will be paid the couple rate ... The amount payable for each additional spouse is presently £33.65."
Income support for all of the wives may be paid directly into the husband's bank account, if the family so choose. Under the deal agreed by ministers, a husband with multiple wives may also be eligible for additional housing benefit and council tax benefit to reflect the larger property needed for his family.
With this kind of precedent, it's only a matter of time before the government is paying for lightsaber lessons for all those people who declared themselves as Jedi.
Going forward, I shall refer to the day on which I prepare my family's tax return, which this year falls on January 30, as Fuck Milton Friedman Day.
Friedman, for all of his great contributions to economic theory and advocacy of the free market, was also instrumental in developing the Federal government's most efficient means of confiscating the income of Americans with a minimum of protest: the withholding tax. Prior to the 1940s, citizens paid taxes in a lump sum every March. The 1913 tax act, which was adopted following the ratification of the 16th Amendment, originally called for withholding as well, but taxpayers expressed great displeasure at money being taken out of their pay envelopes before they even received them. The withholding provision was struck a few years later.
The problem with annual lump-sum payments is that it proved very difficult for the IRS to ensure it received all of the revenue that citizens were obligated to pay. Furthermore, it hampered the government's ability to fund operations throughout the year. Imagine getting just one paycheck every year, covering your entire annual salary. You would likely budget your money very carefully to ensure it covered your expenses throughout the year. On the other hand, it would also give you the opportunity to invest some of that money so it could earn interest until you needed it to pay later expenses. In retrospect, that's probably not a bad way for government to operate as well.
The Feds seemed to realize this, so to raise revenue during the year it sold "tax anticipation notes" to taxpayers to generate interest to help pay their tax bill the following year. This allowed taxpayers to meet their tax liability using less money than if they paid out-of-pocket when the bill came due.
With the country's entrance into World War II, the government was faced with skyrocketing expenditures. Congress adjusted the tax rates from a heavily progressive system that mostly impacted the rich into more moderate brackets that imposed obligations on nearly everyone. Within three years following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the number of tax returns received by the IRS increased more than four-fold. Had the lump-sum payments continued, the entire system would have collapsed under the effort of ensuring tax obligations were met with every return. Withholding taxes at the source—by conscripting employers to serve as the government's revenue agents—was the most effective method to protect the government's revenue stream. In 1942, Friedman, then working in the Treasury Department, devised a new withholding plan. But the challenge of selling it to a public which had roundly rejected the previous scheme remained.
And like any good bureaucrats and politicians, they used the time-honored trick of snake-oil salesmen everywhere: they lied about it.
The key strategies used to obtain support for income tax withholding in 1943 all entailed political transaction-cost augmentation. Government officials artfully employed national defense language, tax-cost information, and promises of "tax forgiveness" to engineer support for a withholding system at root designed to enhance and protect government revenue for all times to come. The above-noted conflict between the government's actual objectives and its publicly promoted objectives formed only one part of a systematic pattern of transaction-cost manipulation . . .
Treasury officials repeatedly testified to Congress that such withholding of income taxes--current collection at the source--represented "no additional tax." On dozens of occasions, Treasury official Randolph Paul and other government spokesmen testified:
This collection at the source mechanism is nothing but a mechanism for collection. It is not an additional tax. ... It merely speeds up the collection (U.S. House Hearings 1942, vol. 1: 100).
It should be kept in mind that collection at the source does not in itself increase or decrease the tax liability of the taxpayer (U.S. House Hearings 1943: 11).
Given the expert witnesses' knowledge of present value, statements so seriously misleading to Congress and the public could not have been inadvertent.
Because it replaced interest-bearing notes with a pay-as-you-go system, the withholding tax did represent an additional tax on the public, by taking money before it even reached taxpayers' pockets to be used by the government. Only when taxpayers filed their returns could they determine if they paid too little (and thus would have to send even more money to the IRS) or too much (and thus receive a refund, although the Treasury did initially suggest that interest be paid on any money returned). And with future dollars worth less than the present value of the money taken by the government, taxpayers would lose even more each year.
The Treasury Department acknowledged all this in hearings before Congress, yet insisted that withholding would not only impose no additional tax burden, but was merely a convenience for patriotic Americans to meet their obligations and support the war effort. And these same obfuscations were parroted by members of Congress during floor debates. Oppose such a sensible scheme, and you allow the Huns and Japs to win.
Sixty-five years later the government still gets its loot via the withholding tax, and despite many proposals to eliminate or at least greatly simplify the process, it remains the single greatest enabler of an ever-expanding state. As Murray Rothbard wrote about Friedman in 1971:
Only the Friedmanite withholding tax has permitted the government to use every employer as an unpaid tax collector, extracting the tax quietly and silently from each paycheck. In many ways, we have Milton Friedman to thank for the present monster Leviathan State in America.
Friedman did later express his regrets at helping bring about the withholding tax, as evidenced in this interview with reason's Brian Doherty in 1995:
It was a very interesting and very challenging intellectual task. I played a significant role, no question about it, in introducing withholding. I think it's a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941-43, all of us were concentrating on the war.
I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn't found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.
Yeah, me too. And while I stand to repatriate a significant chunk of my income from the Leviathan State this year, when I click the File button in TurboTax I'll remember to honor the man who made it necessary in the first place: fuck you, Milton Friedman.
"Why have you come to our little street?" asked the ladies.
"To install high tension electrical wires," the men replied.
"Down the middle of our street?"
"Down the middle of your street."
"Like hell you will!" was the ladies' retort. And when the workmen returned to sink their poles on Monday morning, they found an angry mob of females who congregated around the various spots where holes were to be sunk and planted their bodies in the way of any work. One octogenarian brought a chair out and sat atop the digging spot, while others stood their ground and glared. At lunch time, other women came out and changed places, so no child would go without its meal.
The men retreated, not willing to spill female blood or risk their own safety further. On further investigation, it was revealed the city has not obtained the proper county permit to plant any such power line down 71st Street, so any such erection would be delayed indefinitely. And the next day, a spokesman for the work crew said, "They not only won, they routed us altogether. There'll be six feet of ice at Sixth and Broadway before some of our men venture on Seventy-first street again. We ceased operations because we are not putting up any poles or lines on any street where the people object to them. Nothing will be done unless we can come to some agreement with the women."
This amusing bit of activism of yore courtesy of 1947project.
In a move he says is necessary to trim the city’s waistline, the decidedly slim mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, has proposed charging big stores a fee when they sell sugar-sweet soda.
The proposal, which was reported by The San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, would put an as yet-to-be-defined surcharge on all drinks with high-fructose corn syrup, which puts the sweet pop in most nondiet sodas and many other food products. The syrup also puts on the pounds, something city officials say strains the health care system.
And he's right. If I had to pay for someone else's health care, I'm taking a vested interest in that person's health, if for no other reason than to protect my wallet. Any foods or activities which threaten a person's health (and thus my finances) are absolutely fair game for scrutiny. Just wait 'til these geniuses come up with an obesity tax. Hey, at least it would be progressive.
The estimates that CBO reviewed measured costs associated with providing services to unauthorized immigrants that ranged from a few million dollars in states with small unauthorized populations to tens of billions of dollars in California (currently the state with the largest population of unauthorized immigrants). Costs were concentrated in programs that make up a large percentage of total state spending—specifically, those associated with education, health care, and law enforcement. In most of the estimates that CBO examined, however, spending for unauthorized immigrants accounted for less than 5 percent of total state and local spending for those services. Spending for unauthorized immigrants in certain jurisdictions in California was higher but still represented less than 10 percent of total spending for those services.
The report also noted that about a quarter of illegals pay into Social Security, and as many as half also pay income taxes. That doesn't offset the cost of services they receive, but it doesn't appear that the extra cost of providing those services takes as big a bite out of government budgets as closed-border advocates would have you believe. For example, health care services utilized by illegals (who typically carry no insurance) accounted for as little as 1% of the total outlay for health care.
The biggest impact is on law enforcement and incarceration, particularly along border counties; San Diego, for example, spent as much as 9% of its law enforcement budget dealing with illegals. However, illegals are less likely to be jailed.
A good study would compare the costs of border enforcement to the potential savings realized by state and local governments in not having to provide services to illegals. This might be a good place to start:
Building a fence along the entire southwest border would cost roughly $9 billion—about $2.5 billion more than the total budget of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in FY 2005. . . .
The cost of making an arrest along the border has increased from $300 in 1992 to $1,700 in 2002—an increase of 467% in a decade. (For perspective, the consumer price index rose approximately 28% during this period.)
Russ Nelson also points out, in a comment on the MR post, that a lot of these costs are incurred because their immigration is illegal—not merely because they immigrate. Why is it so many people, libertarians included, condemn the cost of the War on People Who Use Drugs, but not the cost of the War on People Who Cross Borders?
Not recommended reading if you're in a good mood and would like to remain that way.
While the initiative taking shape in Colorado regarding marriage is articulated on legal grounds, what interests me is the use of the Bible that lies beneath the surface of legal debate.
The Bible is the religious-cultural touchstone that provides legitimacy to the initiative. But how is the Bible being used? Finding Bible verses that on their face sound like support? There have always been Bible verses for just about any cause and always will be. This was true for pro-slavery advocates and anti-suffrage preachers. But using a few Bible verses to defend the social status quo has rarely shown well in history.
It is not the great genius of biblical literature to preserve dominant relationship patterns reflected in a few verses. The Bible rather witnesses again and again to a process of change and transformation at the initiative of the always-creating spirit of God.
It is certainly true that the Bible never reflects the entire overthrow of abiding structure and order. But the heart and soul of the writings, the great direction and cause, is a repeated challenge to privilege and injustice in existing relationships. What does this suggest for today?
The Rev. Vern Rempel
First Mennonite Church of Denver
(emphasis mine)
From a letter to the editor in yesterday's Rocky Mountain News.
Are all Mennonites this reasonable, or is this guy facing excommunication or something? Anyway, I wish more Christians were like him.
I'm going to throw this bone out there for you to chew on: taken literally, the Bible (especially the Old Testament) contains some extraordinarily intolerant doctrine. So do, I'm speculating, many other religious texts, although I'm not familiar with them. And if some religionists choose to live in a society constructed around a strict interpretation of scripture written thousands of years ago, then it matters not to me, as long as I'm not compelled to take part in it.
Now consider the Constitution. You'll hear many libertarians say it's not a "living" document; amendments aside, it's the same document it was in 1787. Its meaning doesn't change in response to societal whims, and a judge's duty is to take the "plain meaning" of Constitutional text and apply it to a specific instance of law. As probably most of you know, this is the originalist approach to interpreting the Constitution, a method embraced by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, among others. Originalism especially rejects the ideas of "evolving standards of decency" and considering the weight of international law in forming decisions. Wikipedia summarizes this pretty well:
On an originalist interpretation, if the meaning of the Constitution is static, then any ex post facto information (such [as] what American people, American judges, or any country's judges think about the state of the world today) is inherently valueless in interpreting the meaning of the Constitution, and should not form any part of constitutional jurisprudence.
I tend to favor this approach as well. If we must have government at all, then we must define what government is (and isn't), which is why constitutions are written in the first place. And unless a constitution is amended, those definitions don't change. But if the Constitution should not be bent, folded, and spindled to fit into the shapes of evolving cultural values, why then should we expect religions to change? Don't their texts mean the same thing now as they did when they were first written? Why should our more enlightened society matter in interpreting one's faith?
Perhaps the difference is that the Bible defines how people should live, and the Constitution defines how government should function. Put another way, society serves God (or the gods), and government (ideally) serves society.
Do you agree with this? Is it hypocritical to demand that government be strictly bound to the Constitution but that religion, if it is to have a place in society, should change with the times?
One other assertion, and then you can start the flamethrowers: religiously diverse societies tend to have higher civil strife but greater personal freedoms; monoreligious societies tend to have lower civil strife but fewer personal freedoms. One notable exception is the U. S., which is both religiously diverse and relatively peaceful. What could be the reason for this?
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cluebyfour- Brian Martinez
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