The Government is here to Help.

Be thankful, the Government is on the case.  

Just got a list of new state laws effective this month in the state of Minnesota from my local Senator. Among them was this:

BODY ART TECHNICIANS REGULATIONS: In an increasing trend to license and
regulate an ever-widening array of professions, the Legislature enacted
a set of regulations and licensing procedures complete with fee
structures, for the regulation of body art technicians and
establishments. Piercing and tattoo parlors will now be subject to a
$1,000 establishment license and each tattoo or body piercing artist
will be tagged for $100 for an individual license. Guest artists may get
a temporary license for $50. Children under the age of 18 may not
receive tattoos regardless of parental consent, although most piercings
are allowed.

I was so worried, all those terrible stories I was hearing about unlicensed tattoo artists killing people and maiming babies.

I’m so glad the government was there to crush any entrepreneurial spirit from the non-conformist class. Imagine what might have happened.

(Might this make a few extra libertarian Republicans? I doubt it. A guy can dream though.)

Lincoln the Fascist?

From LINCOLN’S YARNS AND STORIES by Alexander Kelly:

SENT TO HIS “FRIENDS.”

During the Civil War, Clement L. Vallandigham, of Ohio, had shown himself, in the National House of Representatives and elsewhere, one of the bitterest and most outspoken of all the men of that class which insisted that “the war was a failure.” He declared that it was the design of “those in power to establish a despotism,” and that they had “no intention of restoring the Union.” He denounced the conscription which had been ordered, and declared that men who submitted to be drafted into the army were “unworthy to be called free men.” He spoke of the President as “King Lincoln.”

Such utterances at this time, when the Government was exerting itself to the utmost to recruit the armies, were dangerous, and Vallandigham was arrested, tried by court-martial at Cincinnati, and sentenced to be placed in confinement during the war,

General Burnside, in command at Cincinnati, approved the sentence, and ordered that he be sent to Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor; but the President ordered that he be sent “beyond our lines into those of his friends.” He was therefore escorted to the Confederate lines in Tennessee, thence going to Richmond. He did not meet with a very cordial reception there, and finally sought refuge in Canada.

Vallandigham died in a most peculiar way some years after the close of the War, and it was thought by many that his death was the result of premeditation upon his part.

Whenever I hear complaints about the “authoritarian” federal government (or Nazi-fascist-racist-Vader-evil-doers when Republicans own the presidency) I have to remind myself what real fascism looks like. A humanities professor I had once laughed and openly mocked a girl (he was very outspoken) in one of my classes after she complained about the “fascist” government after it shut down a local tobacco store in Dinkytown after it failed to pay rent and was linked to international groups that sent money to terrorists under a humanitarian guise.

This humanities professor was not conservative in any way. More accurately, he was a democratic socialist. He lived through true fascism in Nazi Germany in WWII. From his perspective, the fact people weren’t being hung in the streets was proof enough the US was not fascist.

While that’s a pretty low bar when it comes to civil liberties, it is a good perspective to take currently. Glenn Beck worrying about H1N1 flu shots being forced on people? Legitimate concern? Sure. American Liberal Fascism? Not really, Government has a legitimate role in public health. Real fascism? No.

Whenever other conservatives warn about too much government power, I generally agree. But we should be careful not to label these encroachments improperly. (I don’t know if Beck has used the f-word when it comes to Obama yet, because I don’t watch him, but he’s well on his way.)

Lincoln suspending Habeus Corpus, arresting and confining a citizen for his viewpoints, these are authoritarian and cause for concern, even in times of war.

But we’re still a long way away from fascism.

Heck, as far as forced flu shots go, we’re a long way away from Lincoln.

Seat Belts and Saving Lives

From Wikipedia:

Professor John Adams of University College London was sceptical of such claims and set out to analyse the effect of seat belt laws as then in force and assess how well they matched predictions. His findings were published in 1982 and can be found in the Society of Automotive Engineers transactions of that year[5]. His conclusion was that in the eighteen countries surveyed, accounting for approximately 80% of the world’s motoring, those countries with seat belt laws had fared no better, and in some cases (e.g. Sweden, Ireland and New Zealand) significantly worse than those without.

In summarising the paradox, Adams agreed that :

The evidence that the use of a seat belt improves a car occupant’s chances of surviving a crash is convincing. That a person travelling at speed inside a hard metal shell will stand a better chance of surviving a crash if he is restrained from rattling about inside the shell is both intuitively obvious and supported by an impressive body of empirical evidence.[6]

In order to explain the disparity between the agreed improvement in a crash and the observed results, Adams advanced the hypothesis that protecting car occupants from the consequences of bad driving encourages bad driving.

He has suggested that a number of mechanisms are in play:

-Better protected drivers take less care (risk compensation or risk homeostasis).
-Case-control studies based on voluntary use of safety aids can attribute to the aid benefits that actually come from the risk-averse nature of those likely to use them voluntarily (confounding), particularly early adopters.
-Fatality rates are subject to considerable stochastic noise and comparison of single years or short periods can be misleading.

…

In response the UK’s Department of Transport commissioned a study on the effects of seat belt laws in Sweden, West Germany, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway. This study, known as “the Isles report” after its author, used the United Kingdom and Italy as controls for no-law countries compared casualty trends for both those inside and outside cars between law and no-law states. The report predicted that, based on the experiences of the eight countries studied, a UK seat belt law would be followed by a 2.3% increase in fatalities among car occupants [10] [11].

…

The Isles report was written by a civil servant in the Department of Transport. It did not back the pre-existing and still current position of Government, and it was never published.[10] [11] It is known mainly because it was leaked to The Spectator magazine some time after the law was passed.

The law mandating the compulsory wearing of seat belts for front seat occupiers came into force on January 31, 1983 in the UK[18]. Evidential breath testing was introduced at the same time.

There was a reduction in driver fatalities and an increase in fatalities of rear passengers (not covered by the law)[19]. A subsequent study of 19,000 cyclist and 72,000 pedestrian casualties seen at the time suggests that seat belt wearing drivers were 11-13% more likely to injure pedestrians and 7-8% more likely to injure cyclists

To simplify, seat belts make people feel safer in their vehicles. The safer they feel, the more aggressively they drive. Aggressive driving leads to more accidents, more pedestrian deaths and more injuries though the the likelihood of the aggressive driver getting hurt in an accident is reduced significantly. Compulsory seat belt laws have probably had no positive effect in reducing actual traffic related deaths.

Yes, the physics of car accidents would suggest wearing seat belts is a good idea. But the psychology of human behaviour suggests seat belt wearing makes people more accepting of risks and accidents by reducing the negative consequences of bad judgment. Trying to find the psychological component of suggested laws often leads to different conclusions over what previous assumptions (and even common sense) would dictate.

So please, enough with those annoying “buckle up” commercials on TV.

102?

Rediscovered bit of Personal History

Here

Unintended Consequences

Camera enforced intersections do more harm than good:

Rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and are a ticket to higher auto insurance premiums, researchers at the University of South Florida College of Public Health conclude. The effective remedy to red-light running uses engineering solutions to improve intersection safety, which is particularly important to Florida’s elderly drivers, the researchers recommend.

“The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work,” said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health.

“Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida, cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes due to the state’s high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs.”

…

-Comprehensive studies from North Carolina, Virginia, and Ontario have all reported cameras are significantly associated with increases in crashes, as well as crashes involving injuries. The study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council also found that cameras were linked to increased crash costs.

-Some studies that conclude cameras reduced crashes or injuries contained major “research design flaws,” such as incomplete data or inadequate analyses, and were conducted by researchers with links to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS, funded by automobile insurance companies, is the leading advocate for red-light cameras. Insurers can profit from red-light cameras, since their revenues will increase when higher premiums are charged due to the crash and citation increase, the researchers say.

…

Langland-Orban said the findings have been known for some time. She cites a 2001 paper by the Office of the Majority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives, reporting that red-light cameras are “a hidden tax levied on motorists.” The report concluded cameras are associated with increased crashes, the timings at yellow lights are often set too short to increase tickets for red-light running, and most research concluding cameras are effective was conducted by one researcher from the IIHS. Since then, studies independent of the automobile insurance industry continue to find cameras are associated with large increases in crashes.

Who would have thought surveillance would produce paranoid and irrationally defensive behaviour? Once again the psychological aspects of government action come across as being very important but largely ignored. Consider this as another in a long line of safety-nazi failures.

As for the big brother aspect of this: Creating paranoia and irrationality in criminals, fine, doing the same to the public at large isn’t so good.

Via Lars Larson

No on says it better…

Than Kevin Ecker

Unintended Consequences

Political Quiz

The results of this test surprised me a little. I normally consider myself a pretty far-to-the-right kind of guy so to have John McCain come up as the “best fit” makes me wonder whether I should reconsider my membership to the vast right-wing conspiracy.

My top 3:

John McCain Score: 44

Agree:

Iraq
Immigration
Taxes
Stem-Cell Research
Health Care
Abortion
Social Security
Line-Item Veto
Energy
Marriage

Disagree:

Death Penalty

Duncan Hunter Score: 41

Agree:

Iraq
Taxes
Stem-Cell Research
Health Care
Abortion
Social Security
Line-Item Veto

Disagree:

Immigration
Energy
Marriage
Death Penalty

Fred Thompson Score: 41

Agree:

Iraq
Taxes
Stem-Cell Research
Health Care
Abortion
Social Security
Line-Item Veto

Disagree:

Immigration
Energy
Marriage
Death Penalty

I initially put myself into the McCain camp. I have since put myself into the “unaffiliated” camp ever since it was found McCain had been having fundraising problems. If McCain can get his campaign back into gear I may have to reconsider my apathy.

h/t Flash

Random Link o’ the Day:

http://www.spudtech.com/