Month: August 2009

Three from the Mises Institute

Those wacky free-marketeers down in Auburn, Alabama. But first, enjoy this little image accompaning the third story:

Now, to the articles. First up, What Libertarianism Is[*1] (notable in part for the use of the rather amusing word grundnorm[*2] ):

. . . libertarians maintain that the only way to violate rights is by initiating force — that is, by committing aggression. (Libertarianism also holds that, while the initiation of force against another person’s body is impermissible, force used in response to aggression — such as defensive, restitutive, or retaliatory/punitive force — is justified.)

Without property rights, there is always the possibility of conflict over contestable (scarce) resources. By assigning an owner to each resource, legal systems make possible conflict-free use of resources, by establishing visible boundaries that nonowners can avoid. Libertarianism does not endorse just any property assignment rule, however. It favors self-ownership over other-ownership (slavery).

Thus, the libertarian position on property rights is that, in order to permit conflict-free, productive use of scarce resources, property titles to particular resources are assigned to particular owners. As noted above, however, the title assignment must not be random, arbitrary, or particularistic; instead, it has to be assigned based on “the existence of an objective, intersubjectively ascertainable link between owner” and the resource claimed. As can be seen from the considerations presented above, the link is the physical transformation or embordering of the original homesteader, or a chain of title traceable by contract back to him.

Thus, if civilized man is he who seeks justification for the use of violence, the libertarian is he who is serious about this endeavor. He has a deep, principled, innate opposition to violence, and an equally deep commitment to peace and cooperation.

Next, The Republic becomes the Empire[*3] :

How much does the younger half of this generation reflect upon the fact that in its own time a complete revolution has taken place in the relations between government and people? It may be doubted that one college student in a thousand could even state it clearly. The first article of our inherited tradition, implicit in American thought from the beginning until a few years ago, was this: Government is the responsibility of a self-governing people. That doctrine has been swept away; only the elders remember it.

Now, in the name of democracy, it is accepted as a political fact that people are the responsibility of government. The forms of republican government survive; the character of the state has changed. Formerly the people supported government and set limits to it and minded their own lives.

Now they pay for unlimited government, whether they want it or not, and the government minds their lives — looking to how they are fed and clothed and housed; how they provide for their old age; how the national income, which is the product of their own labor, shall be divided among them; how they shall buy and sell; how long and how hard and under what conditions they shall work, and how equity shall be maintained between the buyers of food who dwell in the cities and the producers of food who live on the soil. For the last named purpose it resorts to a system of subsidies, penalties and compulsions, and assumes with medieval wisdom to fix the just price.

This is the Welfare State. It rose suddenly within the form. It is legal because the Supreme Court says it is. The Supreme Court once said no and then changed its mind and said yes, because meanwhile the President who was the architect of the Welfare State had appointed to the Supreme Court bench men who believed in it.

Emphasis in original.

Third, What Soviet medicine teaches us[*4] :

Being a People’s Deputy in the Moscow region from 1987 to 1989, I received many complaints about criminal negligence, bribes taken by medical apparatchiks, drunken ambulance crews, and food poisoning in hospitals and child-care facilities. I recall the case of a fourteen-year-old girl from my district who died of acute nephritis in a Moscow hospital. She died because a doctor decided that it was better to save “precious” X-ray film (imported by the Soviets for hard currency) instead of double-checking his diagnosis. These X-rays would have disproven his diagnosis of neuropathic pain.

Instead, the doctor treated the teenager with a heat compress, which killed her almost instantly. There was no legal remedy for the girl’s parents and grandparents. By definition, a single-payer system cannot allow any such remedy. The girl’s grandparents could not cope with this loss and they both died within six months. The doctor received no official reprimand.

Not surprisingly, government bureaucrats and Communist Party officials, as early as 1921 (three years after Lenin’s socialization of medicine), realized that the egalitarian system of healthcare was good only for their personal interest as providers, managers, and rationers — but not as private users of the system.

So, as in all countries with socialized medicine, a two-tier system was created: one for the “gray masses” and the other, with a completely different level of service, for the bureaucrats and their intellectual servants. In the USSR, it was often the case that while workers and peasants were dying in the state hospitals, the medicine and equipment that could save their lives was sitting unused in the nomenklatura system.

That should feed your deep-thought needs for the day.

Adventures in Weight Loss

A couple of weeks of food.

It has begun!

Regular readers of Medary.com probably realize that I don’t really write a lot about my personal life. Scandanivian reticence, perhaps, or maybe I’m just a really, really, really private person. Maybe those two things are the same thing. Anyway, much of what I write about is external to me–things that are happening in the world around me, and not so much what is happening to me personally.

Well, let’s shift gears for a little while.

I’m overweight. Obese, actually. Not the kind of spherical obese on display at the low-rent buffet restaurants, as I’ve been blessed with a rather large skeletal frame. People are always amazed that I weigh as much as I do–279 pounds at last official measurement. That’s too much, by about 70 pounds, according to the doctor.

I’ve finally had enough of carrying around that extra 70 pounds. I’ve got one really bad knee and another that complains on occasion. I’ve snapped one achilles tendon, and have had bunion surgeries on both feet. My wheels are hurtin’.

This February, I promised to my Snookums that I’d get down to 230 lbs by her next birthday in February, 2010. With the shoulder surgery (rotator cuff) and the achilles surgery I’ve had this year, that’s been on hold for too long.

I finally decided I needed some professional guidance. On the KCMO Morning Show[*1] , host Chris Stigall sings the praises of a place called the Center for Nutrition[*2] , a short drive away in Lenexa, Kansas. The stars came into alignment, my promise to my wife intersected with my determination to–this time–lose the weight and make it stick–so I called and made an appointment.

They sent me an extensive questionnaire about my health history, which I dutifully filled in before my first meeting. The first meeting features a body composition analysis–one of those devices that sends a low-level electrical current through your body and measures your fat vs. lean body content, and from that, figures out your basal metabolic rate–the number of calories your body should run on.

Well, I’m fat. I knew that. But I also have lots and lots of lean muscle mass. Underneath all the blubber, I’m a studly guy! Woo-hoo! My basal metabolic rate is 2107 kcal, and my current target weight, according the the machine, is 209 lbs. The nutritionist at the first meeting utterly failed to scare me off–not that she tried all that hard, so I came back a couple of days letter for the blood draw for the medical lab tests, plus an EKG (NOT an EEG–that was a typo that I just fixed!). Other than the half-hour drive to and from the clinic, no problems, so far.

A week after the first meeting, Snookums and I are back in the office, talking to Dr. Rick Tague, the Guy behind the Center for Nutrition. Again, no big surprises. My labs are generally good, but show that I have a Vitamin D[*3] deficiency (I guess that’s actually pretty common), I’ve got Metabolic Syndrome[*4] (otherwise known as insulin resistance–basically a pre-diabetic condition), and a possibly slightly underactive thyroid[*5] . My white blood cell count–the neutrophils[*6] , to be specific, are also a touch on the low side.

Dr. Tague’s basic message is: “we can fix that!” I get the “Rapid Reduction Weight Loss Phase” right off the bat. That’s the picture you see up at the top of this article. Special low-carbohydrate, low-fat foods (if you do the verbal math there, you figure out that it’s a protein diet) and lots and lots of supplements to make up the nutritional difference between the diet foods and what humans are really supposed to eat–whatever that is. Anyway, my target weight loss goal is 3-5 pounds per week, until I get down within shouting range of 220 pounds.

In order to do that, my goal is to take in about 1,100 calories a day–about 142 grams of protein daily. AND, up the exercise level, to get in at least 4,000 steps per day as measured by a pedometer, in addition to 20-35 minutes 4-5 times a week of getting my heart rate up into the 94-129 beat per minute range. Lots of numbers.

I can do this.

But kids, don’t try this at home without medical supervision. It can mess you up. Srsly[*7] .

Next time: The journey begins.

Michael Ledeen, Enemy of the (Iranian) People

Who is Michael Ledeen, and why is he being demonized by the mad Iranian mullahs? Washington Times:

Defendants in the show trials under way in Tehran are being given the third degree over their links to foreign masterminds. The chief prosecutor is asking defendants questions such as, “Were you sent by Michael Ledeen? What did Michael Ledeen tell you to do?” Another was told flat out, “You are an agent of Michael Ledeen!” The universal response has been, “Michael who?”
“You have to understand – these are crazy people,” Mr. Ledeen told The Washington Times yesterday. He is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department and the Defense Department. He has published widely on Iranian matters, and his tag line “faster, please” — referring to the need to accelerate the pace of change in Iran — is well-known among those who follow the issue closely. Mr. Ledeen is one of three public intellectuals implicated by the Iranians, the others being Ambassador Mark Palmer and political science professor Abbas Milani at Stanford University. Why these three? “I have no idea,” Mr. Ledeen said. “We mostly agree on the issues, but we’ve never worked as a group.”

Who’s ‘Turfing Who?

Some enlightening figures, courtesy Jacob Sullum[*1] at Reason Hit & Run points out this inconvenient fact from the New York Times[*2] :

Supporters of Mr. Obama’s plan to overhaul the system have outspent opponents, with $24 million worth of advertising, compared with $9 million from opponents. An additional $24 million has been broadly spent in support of overhauling the system without backing a specific plan.

That’s $48 million for reform supporters, $9 millon for their opponents. That’s a 5:1 spending ratio, and yet the more that people learn about what Obama and the Democrats are actually planning, the greater becomes the majority of Americans opposing health care reform.

Black is White–on MSNBC

At least, when MSNBC turns a black gun owner at an anti-government-health-plan rally into–I guess–a white guy. The story at Newsbusters[*1] :

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: “A man at a pro-health care reform rally…wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip….there are questions about whether this has racial overtones….white people showing up with guns.” Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.
Following Brewer’s report, which occurred on the Morning Meeting program, host Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued: “…there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president….we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that.” Ratigan agreed: “…then they get the variable of a black president on top of all these other things and that’s the move – the cherry on top, if you will, to the accumulated frustration for folks.”
Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black. The man appeared at a health care rally outside of President Obama’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Arizona.

Because black gun-owners opposing Obama doesn’t fit the narrative, I guess. There’s a word for this behavior by MSNBC . . . let’s see . . . what could it be . . .
Maybe . . . LIAR?

MSNBC already had no credibility with anyone with an IQ above room temperature. They are oblivious to the First Rule of Holes: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Quoting the Bible

Since the emergence of the Religious Left to browbeat their fellow citizens into acquiescing in the forced transfer of wealth from one to another–to assuage the guilt and feelings of the aforementioned Religious Left–let’s ponder some other Biblical quotes:

Thou shall not steal.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: God, I thank you that I am not like all other men–robbers, evildoers, adulterers–or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I collect. But the tax collector stod at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

That’s enough for starters. Who, exactly, is placing themselves above others here? Who are the rulers–the powerful, and who are not? Who is doing the judging, and the condemning? Who are concerned not primarily about their own behavior, but seek to change by force the behavior of others?

Update: Here’s why David Harsanyi does this for money, and I don’t[*1] :

Yes, it’s finally come to this. We’ve dragged the Almighty Lord into the debate. It’s Yahweh or the highway.