Coyote Blog

Discussions about Guantanamo still seem to focus on moving the prisoners to another facility.  This is exactly the danger I warned about several years ago -- that focusing too much on Gitmo itself as a facility was missing the whole point.  The problem was indefinite detentions without due process, not the facility per se.  But since so much of the press latched onto Gitmo itself as the problem, it as allowed the administration to say that it is solving the problem by eliminating Gitmo and moving the prisoners  (either to Illinois or Afghanistan, the plan keeps changing) while still clinging to the position that it should still have the power to detain people at the President's pleasure.

Dhalia Lithwick has a good article on just what a mess we have created at Gitmo.  Are there potential, even past, terrorists there?  Probably.  But I could probably say that there are current or past criminals in any random 1000 people I might sweep off the street.  That doesn't justify locking them up  -- as a country, we have always said that it is better to free the innocent at the cost of potentially missing some of the guilty.

And please don't hammer me again in the comments with "there is a war on and these are just POW's."  Sorry, they are nothing like traditional POW's.  They were not caught on the battlefield, were not in uniform, in many cases were just turned in by other people for a bounty.  I think I would accept that maybe slightly different rules apply to these folks than to a person arrested on 5th Avenue in New York, but on the other hand supporters of their detention need to admit that some extra scrutiny needs to exist vs. traditional POW rules, as in this case their very combatant status is unclear, something that was not the case in, say, with most POW's in WWII.

I have been saying for years that some sort of due process needs to be applied to Gitmo detainees.  I am not knowledgeable enough to know if this should be a civilian trial or military tribunal or what, but just the fact that they are non-citizens does not give us the right to detain them indefinitely without due process.  Yeah, I get the POW/battlefield analogy, but one also has to reasonably admit the nature of this process today is different than in, say, the defined battlefields with combatants in uniforms in WWII.    The very question of who is a combatant is unclear, so it merits more due diligence to make sure these assertions are made correctly.

Anyway, I suppose I am happy KSM is getting some sort of due process.  But I must say I absolutely hate the precedent being set here -- no, not the one the Conservatives are worried about, bringing a terrorist to trial in a civilian court.  I don't like the precedent of a trial where the government promises that there is already a pre-determined outcome.  US Attorney General Holder seems to be saying there is no possibility of acquittal, but a trial without a possibility of acquittal is not a trial.

As both a computer geek and a WWII buff, I of course know something of Alan Turing's incredible contributions to both.  I also knew he was gay, but didn't think much about it.  What I didn't know was how horribly he was abused by the British government, actions for which the government has now appologized:

In 1952, he was convicted of "Ëœgross indecency' -- in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence -- and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison -- was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

A lot more at the link.  I am constantly amazed at how we tend to elevate the mediocre while treating the truly great so shabbily.

Postscript: The most entertaining way to learn something about Turing, albeit in fictionalized form, is to read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, one of my favorite books.  The story is good (not great, but good) but the writing is just fabulous.  Who else could entertain one for page after page on the physics of eating Cap'n Crunch cereal?

This was sent to me by a reader:  Much as looking at percentage moves in the Dow is much more meaningful than looking at nominal points moves (500 points means a lot less when the average is at 10,000 than when it is at 1,000), it is useful to look at the recent jobs report in the same way.  While 553,000 lost jobs is certainly a lot, it is only the 41st worst loss since WWII when looked at as a percentage of the workforce  (and it would be much further down the list if we had similar metrics back into the 1930's and 1920's).  Via Bespoke Investment Group:

This tends to confirm the statement I made last week, that this recession is likely worse than anything a 20-something Obama supporter can remember, but is not yet even close to some of the problem years of the 1970's, much less the 1930's.

By the way, it is interesting to see all those 1950's dates in there but no dates in the last 25 years, given there are many who have been writing about the current economy being so much riskier for workers than the 1950's.

From Eric L Muller's "Hirabayashi:  The Biggest Lie of the Greatest Generation" which studies the Supreme Court decision upholding race-based civil rights restrictions (eg curfews) in WWII.

This Article presents new archival evidence of an enormous lie that Executive Branch officials presented to the Supreme Court in the Japanese American litigation of World War II, one that impugns Hirabayashi at least as much as it does Korematsu. The lie concerns what might be termed the "external" component of the national security threat in early 1942 "“ the danger that Japanese military forces posed to the West Coast of the United States.  The government's brief in Hirabayashi did not mince words about that external threat: The "principal danger" that military officials "apprehended" was "a Japanese invasion"  which "might have threatened the very integrity of our nation."  With the Japanese "at the crest of their military fortunes," the brief maintained, military officials found it "imperative" to "take adequate protective measures against a possible invasion of the West Coast."  The nighttime curfew on Japanese Americans was one such measure.

This depiction of the external Japanese threat found a sympathetic audience in the Supreme Court in Hirabayashi. Chief Justice Stone, writing for the unanimous Court, accepted that the men "charged with the responsibility of our national defense had ample ground for concluding that they must face the danger of invasion," a danger that concurring Justice Douglas insisted was "not fanciful but real." Singling out Japanese Americans for curfew was reasonable because of their "ethnic affiliations with an invading enemy."

Archival records now make clear that all of this talk of a threatened Japanese invasion was a massive distortion of the actual military situation in the eastern Pacific in early 1942. There was at that time no danger of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast. The army and navy viewed any sort of Japanese invasion of California, Oregon, or Washington as impracticable. They were neither anticipating nor preparing for any such event. Indeed, during the key time period of early 1942, the Army was more concerned with scaling back the defense of the West Coast from land attack than with bolstering it.

Wow.  Exaggeration of a security threat as an excuse to curtail civil rights.  Gee, I'm sure glad that doesn't happen anymore.  HT:  Jonathon Adler

I think that Arizona's decision not to go on DST is a great one.  Being outside in the summer sunshine in Phoenix can be miserable, but the desert cools very quickly once the sun goes down.  The earlier the sun goes down in the summer, the better as far as I am concerned.  Within an hour or two after sunset, it is pleasant to sit and eat and play outside.

A new study seems to show that DST increases electricity use, rather than reducing it.  DST was, if my memory serves, a WWII innovation to save electricity.  It does so quite well if electricity demand is driven mainly by lighting.  It lets one read and function by sunlight in the evening hours.   However, as air conditioning has become a larger element of electricity demand, that equation is changing.  DST can lead to higher air conditioning loads in the evenings.

Our main finding is that"”contrary to the policy's intent"”DST increases
residential electricity demand. Estimates of the overall increase range
from 1 to 4 percent, but we find that the effect is not constant
throughout the DST period. There is some evidence of electricity
savings during the spring, but the effect lessens, changes sign, and
appears to cause the greatest increase in consumption near the end of
the DST period in the fall. These findings are consistent with
simulation results that point to a tradeoff between reducing demand for
lighting and increasing demand for heating and cooling. Based on the
dates of DST practice before the 2007 extensions, we estimate a cost of
increased electricity bills to Indiana households of $8.6 million per
year. We also estimate social costs of increased pollution emissions
that range from $1.6 to $5.3 million per year.

I don't know if this has made the blog rounds yet (I have been out of touch and have not gotten through me feed reader today) but this is perhaps one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.  It's a 40 second interview with a woman named Geri Punteney in Iowa about Barack Obama on the left of this page  (ironically, NPR makes you listen to a brief commercial before you hear the clip).

You really, really need to take the time to listen.  I will include an excerpt below, but you won't get the full effect of the woman absolutely in tears through the statement, crying because she had gotten to touch someone she had seen on TV.

A few weeks ago, at the home in Oelwein, Iowa, she shares with her mother, Punteney said she'd been inspired to see Obama when he came to the area.                        

"I'd seen the commercials," she said. "And he just seemed sincere, like he's for people like my mom, my brother and me."                        

Many people feel politicians may not be the first place to turn when in dire need of help. But Punteney said she was confident Obama could do something to make her feel better.                     
"I never had anyone pay attention to me and my needs "” and he held my hand," she said.

He can do something to make me feel better?  Barf.  Can it really be that my future freedom and prosperity depend on how this woman votes?  Have we really given this woman so much power over the rest of us?  Have we really throttled back the most productive in society so this woman can feel like she is keeping up?  Have I really become the sacrificial lamb to this woman's need to feel better?

And, oh by the way, in case I have not gone off on this rant in the last five minutes or so, Obama can care because he can promise you whatever you desire, and then he can force me to pay for it.  Unlike people in private life who really do care, politicians don't actually pay for their promises because they can force other people to do it for them.  Worse, politicians like Obama reap the praises of women like this for being caring, while vilifying people like me who are productive and make his caring possible.  It just makes me sick.

Oh, and how much did Obama really care?  Not much, it seems:

I brought a tape recorder to Punteney's house and played her moment
with Obama back for her "” and his suggestion that he'd write her
brother a note. He never did.                        

"He
didn't have time, I guess," she said. "I understand. You know, he was
bombarded by so many people. But just knowing he knows "” that's more
important than a note."

So here it is:  Cares enough to spend Coyote's money:  Yes.  Cares enough to actually expend some effort himself:  No way.

Indeed, Punteney seemed to get just what she wanted from Obama. She got noticed.

How about a trade, Ms. Punteney?  If I promise to get you to an Oprah show, will you promise not to ever vote?

Update: Yeah, I know, her brother has leukemia, which is sad.  The lack of portability of his health insurance is also pain, a result of WWII wage control policy and subsequent tax policy that encouraged the practice.    Sorry, but this need to be touched and noticed by a second or third term Congressman is pathetic. 

I remember in about 1978 going on a bus tour into East Berlin through checkpoint Charlie.  It is hard to describe to my kids what a creepy experience this was.  The state-run tour was clearly run by the propaganda ministry, and they really pulled out all the stops to convince you that life was great in the East.  The interesting part is that all this propaganda failed miserably.  No matter what streets they took you down, you couldn't help but notice the stark contrast in prosperity between East and West.  East Berlin was full of buildings in 1978 that still had not been rebuilt from WWII bomb damage  (this actually might have been a plus, since much of West Berlin was rebuilt in that hideous 50's European public architecture).

The most amazing statement was when the tour guide bragged, "And over 70% of everyone in the city has running water."  It was just so clueless and pathetic, to be so out of touch that what Westerners considered a statistic indicating poverty was hailed as one they thought indicated wealth.

I was reminded of this story when I read the British NHS response to an article that over 70,000 Britons a year travel abroad for health care.  Their response was:

A Department of Health official said the number of patients seeking
treatment abroad was a tiny fraction of the 13 million treated on the
NHS each year.

Waiting times had fallen. Almost half of patients
were treated within 18 weeks of seeing a GP. Most people who had
hospital care did not contract infections.

I had exactly the same response as I did to the East Berlin tour guide.  Half within 18 weeks?!  That's PATHETIC.  Again, what we Americans know to be awful service is being bragged about as a sign of excellence. 

The really creepy part, though, is that America is the last place on Earth that people understand that a medical system can do much better than 18 weeks.  But we are likely to elect a President in the next election whose goal is to bring our system down to the level of the rest of the world.  Unfortunately, someday our grandkids may not know any better.

I had eagerly awaited the first installment of Ken Burns documentary on WWII.  While it was fine, it undershot my expectations.  My expectations may be affected by the fact that, unlike the Civil War or other topics he has addressed, WWII has been done to death by documentaries.  It may also be that WWII is so sprawling, its hard to get a handle on in his timeframe.  After all, his series will be much shorter than the classic World at War and even than his own series on Baseball.

As with the Civil War, I thought the focus on a few American cities and the impact of the war worked pretty well.  However, I found the narrator (Keith David) for this particular series sleep inducing, particularly after David McCullough in the Civil War did such an outstanding job (and he was not even a professional "voice") and after the incredible cast of voice-overs in that same series.  Also, the organization seemed bizarre.  Around the 2 hour mark, they seemed to be clearly wrapping up the first episode, with summaries of dead and injured in the first part of the war.  But then all of a sudden they grafted on a short segment about Latinos and the marine raider battalion on Guadalcanal, and even a little snippet about Bougainville.  And then it just ended suddenly.  Made zero sense to me.

From Kevin Drum, who I consider one of the smarter folks on the left (but not this time):

A few days ago, during an email exchange with a
friend, I mentioned that I don't usually tout cost savings as a big
argument in favor of universal healthcare. It's true that a national
healthcare plan would almost certainly save money compared to our
current Rube Goldberg system, but I suspect the savings would be
modest. Rather, the real advantages of national healthcare are related
to things like access (getting everyone covered), efficiency (cutting down on useless -- or even deliberately counterproductive -- administrative bureaucracies), choice
(allowing people to choose and keep a family doctor instead of being
jerked around everytime their employer decides to switch health
providers), and social justice (providing decent, hassle-free healthcare for the poor).

Name one industry the government has taken over in a monopolistic fashion and subsequently increased efficiency or individual choice?  Anyone?  Buehler?  In fact, I am not sure I can name one government program that even provides the poor with decent, hassle-free services. 

Lets take the most ubiquitous government monopoly, that on K-12 education. 

• Efficiency?  My kid's for-profit secular private school has a administrator to student ratio of at least 1:15.  How many assistant principals does your public school have?  Many public schools are approaching 1 administrator for every 1 teacher.
• Choice?  That's a laugh.  The government and its unions fight choice in education tooth and nail.  In fact, in the context of education, Drum and others have effectively argued that choice is the enemy of his last point, social justice, so it is absurd to argue that government monopolistic health care will optimize both.  Yes, people may be frustrated their insurance company does not cover X procedure, but this will only get worse when the government is making the choices for us.  Oh, and by the way, about the evils of those employers running our health plans?  They do so only because of WWII wage controls and decades of federal tax policy that have provided them strong incentive to do so. 
• Decent, hassle-free service?  Ask a concerned black family in an inner-city school how good their kid's government-provided education is.  In fact, I will bet that most inner city parents get healthcare of better quality today despite the admittedly Rube Goldberg system we have (courtesy of years of silly government interventions) than the quality of education they receive from the government education monopoly.  After all, most of them walk out of the hospital today with their life, while many of their kids are walking out of worthless government schools with no life.

As to the claim that national health care would "almost certainly save money," that is hard to argue with for this reason:  The government, once in charge of health care choices, can simply start denying procedures and care ("rationing").  This is in fact how costs are managed in most socialist medical systems.  So while this statement is technically true, it would be very hard for anyone to really believe that for the same quality and quantity of care, the government could do it cheaper.

For the lack of a better term, I will call large, old-line union dominated companies "Big Rust Belt."  These are companies that tend to have strong unions and that have compensation packages most new companies eschew (e.g. defined benefit rather than defined contribution pensions).  These companies tend to be experienced rent-seekers, and usually are beneficiaries of protectionist practices.  I generally lump the big 3 auto makers (and much of their supply chain) and integrated steel manufacturers in this description.  Other industries, like traditional airlines (e.g. United but not Southwest) also fit in this description.

Already over the past several years, Big Rust Belt has been getting bailouts of their defined-benefit pension plans.  Going forward, Big Rust Belt is looking for the government to bail them out of their health care obligations as well.  Big Rust Belt began offering health benefits as part of their compensation packages in WWII, when government wage freezes made it difficult to compete for labor, and offering health benefits was a way to evade the wage laws.  Health benefits grew in popularity at a time when it seemed reasonable that your employer might still be alive and employing you forty years from now, and because Congress and the IRS made these plans tax-preferred over cash compensation.  Short-sited corporate executives began offering retirement health care in labor negotiations as a way to reduce cash wage increases, on the theory that cash wages hurt the bottom line now while retiree benefits hit the bottom line, well, on someone else's watch.

Now these health benefits are an albatross around these corporations' collective necks.  Not only are they bankrupting them, but smaller companies who were not so dumb as to make these promises to their employees are out-competing them. 

So Big Rust Belt wants at least three things:

• It wants the government to force its smaller competitors to have to offer the same health insurance it was dumb enough to promise.
• It wants the government to take on a portion of its medical obligations, particularly for retirees
• It wants to government to by law limit the procedures it has to pay for (i.e. ration care), something they have been unable to do in their union negotiations.

And, surprise surprise, given that Big Rust Belt is even better at rent-seeking than it is in running its core businesses, state and federal governments look ready to deliver on all of these.  Each of these is a feature of the governator's new plan, and all are features of various Hillarycare models discussed by Democrats in Congress.  So no one should be surprised when GM CEO Robert Lutz says:

he expects the new Democratic-controlled Congress will be more understanding on health care issues

"More understanding" means "more ready to bail Lutz and GM out of there business problems."  And remember that for Big Rust Belt, universal health care does not mean "great, now everyone can have health care";  it means "great, now we don't have to bother competing with any companies who are smarter about how they have compensated their employees."

Update:  More Big Rust Belt rent-seeking here.

I guess it's inevitable come election time, but a cottage industry has arisen of late to spread the word that the US economy is broken and that conditions for all but the rich are actually eroding.  This historically has been a winning strategy -- Remember, in late 1992 Bill Clinton campaigned with the absurd (but generally unchallenged in the media) contention that it was the worst economy since the Great Depression.  Most of the lamentations about the current condition of the poor and middle class are presented with the standard populist baggage that the economy is zero-sum, and these groups ills are somehow related to and the result of the income growth of the very rich.

Jacob Hacker of Yale now adds to the chorus, arguing that in addition to worse material fortunes, the middle class faces more risk.  As someone who gave up a good, high-paying job in corporate America for the risk roller coaster of running by own business, I have little sympathy -- after all, I am part of his trend and I happily chose my path.  And its astonishing to me in this day and age anyone can argue that we have too much of a culture of personal responsibility.  Please.

However, rather than fisking this in depth, I will leave the task to my much more capable ex-roommate from Princeton, who also happens to be a senior something-or-other at Cato, Brink Lindsey:

But if we're talking about
security from material deprivation, that's a different story. Let's
start with the biggest risk of all: that of premature death. Back in
1970, during Mr. Hacker's golden age of economic stability and
risk-sharing, the age-adjusted death rate stood at 12.2 deaths per
1,000 people. By 2002, it had fallen more than 30%, to 8.5 per 1,000.
In particular, infant mortality plummeted to 7.0 from 20.0, while the
number of Americans killed on the job dropped to three per 100,000
workers from 18.

Next, look at the two main
indicators of middle-class status: a home of one's own and a college
degree. Between 1970 and 2004, the homeownership rate climbed to 69%
from 63%, even as the physical size of the median new home grew by
nearly 60%. Back in 1970, 11% of Americans 25 years of age or older had
a college or higher degree. By 2004, the figure had risen to 28%.

As to consumer possessions, the
following comparison should suffice to make the point. In 1971, 45% of
American households had clothes dryers, 19% had dishwashers, 83% had
refrigerators, 32% had air conditioning, and 43% had color televisions.
By the mid-1990s all of these ownership rates were exceeded even by
Americans below the poverty line.

No matter how the
doom-and-gloomers torture the data, the fact is that Americans have
made huge strides in material welfare over the past generation. And
with greater wealth, as well as improved access to consumer credit and
home equity loans, they are much better prepared to deal with the
downside of increased economic dynamism.

Mr. Hacker leans heavily on his
findings that fluctuations in family income are much greater now than
in the 1970s. But research by economists Dirk Krueger and Fabrizio
Perri has shown that big increases in the dispersion of income have not
translated into equivalent increases in consumption inequality. In
other words, most Americans are able to use savings and borrowing to
maintain stable living standards even in the face of economic ups and
downs. And those standards are much higher than those of the
all-in-the-same-boat era.

Mr. Hacker, however, shows little
interest in providing such context or balance. Fully committed to what
could be called a "free market bad, big government good" narrative, he
simply ignores data that point in the other direction. Thus he
lambastes reforms such as Health Savings Accounts and Social Security
privatization for shifting risks onto individuals while failing to
mention that the policy status quo imposes massive risks of its own.

I know Brink has been finishing up his new book.  I would love to see him start blogging again.

More Thoughts:  I have a couple of thoughts of my own on the risk issue:

• Risk, I guess defined as income volatility, may be higher for the average person today that it was in 1970.  However, in a broader context, it is still drastically lower than any time in history or than in most places in the world.  Certainly pre-WWII people had substantially more risk in their income, particularly in the agricultural sector, which dominated the economy of this and other countries through most of history.  In subsistence agricultural economies, every year even the most productive and competent people face not just the risk of income loss but starvation and extinction through factors wholly beyond their control.
• The vast majority of the risk reduction people experienced in this country after WWII came from the operation of the private market economy, and not from government programs.  It was the incredible productivity growth, export growth, and technology growth of American industry that provided whatever security people might be nostalgic for.
• Further, the author worries about a risk-shift.  But in the 50's and 60's, there was very little risk in the system.  Corporations faces little risk in world markets, executives at corporations faced little risk to their jobs, and most workers faced little risk.  There has not been a risk shift -- this implies there was once some Atlas that bore the burden of all this risk and has now shrugged.  One might argue that there is more risk in the whole system - corporations are not guaranteed their market share so workers are not guaranteed their jobs.  The author tries to make it a populist argument, as if rich folks are shrugging off risk onto the poor.  The fact is that everyone faces more income volatility today, from largest corporation to lowest paid worker.  The good news, as Mr. Lindsey points out, is that this volatility is around a much higher mean.
• The costs of income security programs were always funded by workers
  themselves.  There was never a time when this security was provided by a mythical "someone else".  General revenue programs like welfare and defense over
  the last 30 years have been effectively funded by "the rich", since by
  any definition, that is who pays the income taxes.  However, programs
  like social security, Medicare, and unemployment are all based on
  payroll taxes with caps that mean that most of the tax is paid for by
  the poor and middle class themselves  (some of these are technically
  paid as a percentage of wages by the employer, but trust me that they
  have the same effect on take-home pay as if they had been deducted
  directly from the employee's check).  To the extent workers have
  security, it is only because they have been forced to buy and pay for
  an insurance policy.  So again, there can be no shift, because the workers bore the cost of the insurance themseleves.  Are they getting good value for this insurance?  I don't know --
  nobody knows.  Many reform proposals the author worries will further
  increase risk in fact are structured to put this insurance premium back
  in the hands of the worker, to let him or her decide if and how they
  want to spend it to insure themselves.
• The current obsession with this topic of risk strikes me as a case of white collar bias.  I am not sure anyone but the highest seniority workers ever had this mythological income security in the blue collar sector.  Layoffs and technology-based job obsolescence that created turmoil for blue-collar workers never seemed to touch white collar workers in the same way.  My sense is that what's new today is that middle class white collar workers are now facing these same forces of change, in many industries for the first time.  In fact, a skilled machinist is probably more secure in his job today than an account paybables clerk.  For years, the left has joined unions in criticizing companies like GM for continually cutting blue collar jobs without touching bloated white collar payrolls.  It's odd to see them jump suddenly to the other side of the issue.
• I hate to point out the obvious, but what government income-risk-management program has gone away since 1970, other than welfare reform?  Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps -- they all exist, most at levels higher than 1970.  Government-funded health care programs cover far more people for far more stuff.
• Certainly some private practices have changed that may affect employee risk.  It is interesting that the author mentioned 401K's.  To Hacker, shifting from defined benefits pensions to 401K's is an increased risk.  I am sure he would point in part to plans like Enron's where 401K holders took a bath because they were encouraged to funnel a lot of their savings into Enron stock.  But most 401K plans don't work that way, and it does not matter since defined benefit plans are even worse.  Defined benefit plans presuppose that the company you work for will remain financially solvent for decades, and they assume workers will never switch jobs, since they are not very portable.  Defined benefit plans are horrible for workers  -- it reduces their flexibility and increases their risk.  401K's are a fabulous, worker-empowering invention and are bad only for a few union leaders and large pension fund managers (e.g. Calpers) who gain political power by virtue of the money they control.
• Yes, many jobs are less stable, but there is no evidence that there are long-term unemployed people out there.  The nature of the people losing work and the job market today has changed, such that there are much better tools to find new work, and there is more work out there for their skills.  White collar workers today probably find new work easier than blue collar workers in West Virginia ever did in the 1950's and 1960's when the mines closed.  My guess is that most everyone from Enron has found a new job (or jail cell).  There are people in Appalachia who still haven't found a job 40 years after the mine closed.

One of the reasons I blog is that the act of writing helps me clarify my thinking on certain issues.  I have written a number of times about my concerns over the "war powers" this administration is taking upon itself.  Arnold Kling's article in TCS Daily helped me clarify a better framework for thinking about my issues.  I can now put my concerns in two categories:

• The administration is going too far in using the war as an excuse to circumvent a number of Constitutional protections, from habeas corpus to search and seizure.  This does not mean that I am necessarily against all new activities, but they need to be initiated within our Constitutional framework.  Take surveillance activities.  Its not unreasonable to think that terrorism demands new surveillance tools.  But the principle we have always followed for surveillance is that Congress authorizes the power and the judiciary gets some type of review of the targets and methods.  Bush seems to have become impatient with separation of powers to the point that he does not even try to engage the other arms of the government, instead using the war to claim a fiat power.  (It should be noted that even when the separation of powers is respected, as with the Patriot Act, mistakes are made and we can go too far.  However, at least we can debate it and there are Congressmen we can hold accountable).
• The second category of problem I have is with the open-ended nature of the war.  Calling this the "War on Terror" is only marginally more precise and limiting than saying we are fighting the "War against Bad Stuff."  If one asks, "Who are we fighting", the administration answers "Whoever the President says we are fighting against".  If one asks "When is it over" the administration either answers "Whenever the President says it is" or else, probably more honestly, they say "not for a long, long time."

In terms of civil liberties, the second point may be the most problematic.  Most citizens will grant the President some special war powers (as in fact the Constitution does), though we can argue whether the current administration has gone too far in defining these powers for themselves.   But if you combine this with letting the administration define exactly who the enemy is and how long the war lasts, it makes for a combination deadly to civil liberties.

Take the example of detention of enemy combatants.  Administration supporters argue that we have always been authorized to hold enemy combatants until the end of the war, as we did in WWII.  And so we did.  We were at war with Germany, so we detained German soldiers we captured until the end of the war.  Note that these are definitions that everyone at the time could agree on -- ie everyone knew what a German soldier was and everyone knew that "end of the war" meant when we marched into Berlin.  Few German detainees were held for much more than a year.  By the way, it is interesting to note that even in WWII, we abused this notion.  The administration defined "enemy combatant" as "anyone in the US of Japanese descent", so that we ended up interning innocent American citizens for years, much to our shame today.

However, in the current "war", an enemy combatant is anyone the administration says is an enemy combatant (at least in their theory) and "for the duration" means as long as the administration cares to hold them, up to and including "forever." 

Conservatives wish to argue that the "War on Terror" is a new kind of war and demands new tools to fight it, which they use to justify all kinds of secret searches and detainments.  Fine, but then it also needs new types of civil liberties checks.  Coming back to our detention example, in WWII it was not really necessary to have some kind of judicial review on the question of whether a captured German soldier was an enemy combatant;  the uniform was a pretty good giveaway.  However, such a review is necessary today, since the enemy combatants languishing at Gitmo (many of who I am willing to believe are bad guys) don't have any identifying uniforms or paperwork.

If I read him right, Kling is saying something similar:  Some security activities that were traditionally not allowed may be necessary, but for every civil liberties give-back there needs to be a countervailing new control or check on government activity:

On the whole, Posner makes a persuasive case for tilting the judicial
balance in favor of reasonable efforts to promote security rather than
strict-constructionist civil libertarianism. However, I believe that
what we need to do is re-build our civil libertarian fortresses, not
simply retreat from them. That is why I favor much stronger accountability for agencies engaged in surveillance. It is why I am proposing here a formal process for naming our enemies.

As a follow-up to this post, I wanted to take on the argument that people use against the US's health care system, arguing that it must be worse than other countries socialized approach because it costs so much more.  Well, I am the first to agree that reduced regulation and a better matching of who is paying the cash to who is receiving the services would result in huge cost savings.  However, it may also be true that you get what you pay for, as discussed in Cafe Hayek.  The key chart is shown below:

One thing I forgot to mention in the previous post was a bit of background of exactly why we have a model where health care is payed for by the employer.  This structure of company-paid health care was not a natural market evolution, but was in fact a direct result of several very distorting government regulations.

Company funded health care plans began in the 1930's and 1940's as a way for companies to try to get around government controls and freezes on wage rates, first instituted with the NRA and later during WWII.  In particular, during the incredibly tight domestic labor markets in WWII, employers struggled with government-mandated wage controls, and used the promise of employer-paid health care as a way to provide higher effective compensation to attract employees, since these non-cash benefits were not counted in the wage freeze calculation.  After the war, the government locked in this practice when the IRS and Congress agreed that company-paid health care was not taxable as regular income, meaning that such health plans were given a strong tax-preference over cash wages.

Finally, if you are not familiar with the appalling experiment in fascism that was the NRA, I wrote about it here.

Do you think you know your geography?  If so, try this quiz.  I did well on most of the other regions of the world, and even got most of the Balkans and the former Soviet republics rights, but this particular quiz is a bear.  I might have done better back in the day when I was a student of WWII.

My Vioxx post below got me thinking about choices, and in particular, how we "grade" other people's choices.

My first thought on this topic is that assessing the "right" choice for an individual, when a decision affects only that one individual, can only be made by that person.  That seems like a dumb and obvious statement, but actually its fairly relevant to public policy nowadays.  Want to ride your motorcycle without a helmet?  Sorry, we think that is a bad decision and we aren't going to let you make it.   Want to reduce excruciating pain even at the risk of future heart problems?  Sorry again, can't let you do that.  Want to let Florida State continue to use your tribe's name (Seminoles) for their mascot?  Sorry, but that is degrading to you, even if you don't know it.  Want to enjoy some french fries (maybe even some Snuffers cheese fries, for those who have ever lived in Dallas) at the risk of a future heart attack - well, you can still do that, but we're working on it.  I wrote much more on this topic here.

Beyond the moral problem I have with having the government limit our ability to make decisions for ourselves, the fact is that we are generally really bad at assessing other people's choices.  I will make the analogy using blackjack.  I remember sitting at a table in Vegas and watching some woman take a hit on 18.  For those who don't know blackjack, trust me - you are always statistically reducing your odds of winning when you hit an 18.  Anyone, the woman draws a three, for a perfect 21, the dealer reaches 20, and she wins the hand.  Several people around the table said to her "great decision to take another card".  No it wasn't!  It was stupid!  It was a bad decision that, in this particular case, she was bailed out of by good fortune, but over the long haul of hitting 18's, she's going home broke.

Lets take a second example.  I buy liability insurance for my company every year.  Because I am in a public contact business, which makes us a particular target of the litigation industry, we pay nearly $100,000 a year for the policy.  Last year, we had no claims.  Does this mean that I made a bad decision buying insurance last year, because it turned out that we had no claims?  No, of course not.  It would be irresponsible in today's litigious environment to engage in unprotected business.   The insurance is a smart decision, even in years without claims.

But juries always assess choices based on the outcomes, not on the inputs the individuals involved were facing when they made the choices.  In the hands of a good litigation attorney, a jury will always find that hitting on a 12 in blackjack and drawing a king was a bad decision, even when the dealer is showing an ace and the odds say you HAVE to draw. 

Which brings us back to Vioxx.  Lets imagine ten thousand people who have excruciating pain, pain that prevents them from actively participating in and enjoying life, that choose to take Vioxx, knowing that there is a tiny risk of heart problems.  9,999 live a better life.  One man dies.  A jury eventually decides that the one man made a bad decision (since he died).  I would argue that the man who died did not make a better or worse decision than the other 9,999.  He made what he thought was a good decision, the same decision all the others made; he just happened to be the one who came out unlucky, but they all knew going in that someone in their group would probably draw the short straw.

Postscript:  Of course, no one ever thinks its going to be them who draws the short straw.  There is a famous story from WWII about a soldier being told with his company that two out of every three of them would likely die in the coming D-Day invasion.  The soldier looked to his comrade on his left, and then the man on his right, and thought "poor bastards".

• I got tripped up today by my American expectations.  The hotel had this little breakfast buffet in the lobby.  It had some coffee and juice and a few croissants.  It was not nearly as nice as the free breakfast at a Hampton Inn or Holiday Inn Express, but it was still a quick and easy way to eat and get out the door.  OOOPPSS.  My wife and I got hit with a bill for 52 euros, or over $65, because we grabbed some coffee and pastries off the buffet.  Bummer.
• Service is a strange thing here.  I try fairly hard to submerge my ugly-American impatient tendencies.  I know to expect that meals will be paced much slower here, and have come to enjoy that pace, at least on vacation.  Shopping, though, is another story.  I still just want to get the stuff I want, pay for it, and go.  I have made the following observations about French service:  When you have a service person's attention, they will serve you for as long as you need, chatting about the product and about your life, for hours if necessary.  The problem is, that they will do this even if 10 other people are waiting to be served.  The lines here are awful, and you have to wait in them for everything.  Women in the US complain about bathroom lines at sporting events, but the women's rooms here have lines all the time, everywhere.  Even my wife the europhile is getting fed up with 45 minute transaction times
• We chose to blow it out one night, and have a top notch French meal at a top restaurant.  We ended up spending a ridiculous sum, more than half the people in the world make in a year, for one meal.  It would embarrass me to spend so much consistently (heck it embarasses me this once), especially since there are equally fine meals out there for 1/4 or less the price.  Also, we were actually nervous for the first 20 minutes - is that nuts?  But there is nothing in the world that can make an American like me who knows the McDonald's value meal numbers by heart nervous like a great French restaurant.  We eventually got into the spirit of the once in a lifetime experience, enough that we were laughing pretty loud about the little fried goldfish we got for appetizers.
• By the way, condolences for the French and the Olympics.  Paris would make a fine venue.  The only real mar in the city's beauty is that it has a real trash and dog poop problem on the streets (no scoop laws here, at least none that anyone enforces) so an Aolympics might help them clean it all up.  Maybe they need a few years of Mayor Giuliani?  Really, it is a beautiful city - did I mention that?  Perhaps the most beautiful city in Europe even before WWII, and certainly the most beautiful after given that it was spared most of the bombing and fighting other great cities faced (not too mention the horrendous 1950's architecture they were rebuilt with.  I mean, my god, look at Berlin.  It was rebuilt during the most horrid period in modern architecture).
• More later on hotels and restaurants you might visit if you come here,
  plus I will just have to post a scan of our restaurant bill from tonight

Well, it worked for Johnny Carson, why not for me?  Instead of
leaving you with dead air (photons?) while I am knocking the rust off
my beer pong skills back at Princeton, I will share with you a few of
my favorite posts from my early days of blogging.  Since most of these
posts were viewed by about 5 people, there is a certain temptation to
just recycle them without attribution, given the unlikelihood of
getting caught.  Instead, though, I will share them as my best of
Coyote...

This post was from early December, and commemorated the 60th anniversary of a facinating event in Arizona history.  Many people are familiar with the movie the Great Escape or the TV series Hogans Heroes.  Few know, though, that there was really a great escape ... by German POW's in Arizona!  Here is my post "WWII Great POW Escape -- In Phoenix?"

Many people have seen the Steve McQueen movie "the Great Escape",
about a group of 60 or so prisoners who cleverly dug a tunnel out of a
German POW camp and escaped in various directions across Europe, many
of whom where eventually recaptured.

I don't know if such an event occurred in Europe, but an almost
identical real-life POW escape (tunnel and all) occurred right here in
Phoenix, Arizona almost exactly 60 years ago.

Like many isolated western towns in WWII, Phoenix played host to a
number of German POW's, in our case about 1700 in Papago Park.
Phoenix, and in particular Papago Park, with its arid climate and red rocks, must have been quite a culture shock to the Germans.

Anyway, I won't tell the whole story, but it is fascinating and you can read it all here.  A short excerpt:

The
German prisoners asked their guards for permission to create a
volleyball courtyard. Innocently obliging, the guards provided them
with digging tools. From that point on, two men were digging at all
times during night hours. A cart was rigged up to travel along tracks
to take the dirt out. The men stuffed the dirt in their pants pockets
which had holes in the bottoms, and they shuffled the dirt out along
the ground as they walked around. In addition, they flushed a huge
amount of dirt down the toilets. They labeled their escape route Der Faustball Tunnel (The Volleyball Tunnel).

They
dug a 178 foot tunnel with a diameter of 3 feet. The tunnel went 8 to
14 feet beneath the surface, under the two prison camp fences, a
drainage ditch and a road. The exit was near a power pole in a clump of
brush about 15 feet from the Cross Cut Canal. To disguise their plans,
the men built a square box, filled it with dirt and planted native
weeds in it for the lid to cover the exit. When the lid was on the
tunnel exit, the area looked like undisturbed desert.

There
is some dispute about how many people actually escaped -- official
records say 25.  Others argue that as many as 60 escaped, but since
only 25 were recaptured, 25 was used as the official number to cover up
the fact that German POW's might be roaming about Arizona.

The prisoners who led this escape were clearly daring and inventive,
but unfortunately in Arizona lore they are better known for their one
mistake.  Coming from wet Northern European climes, the prisoners
assumed that the "rivers" marked on their map would actually have
flowing water in them.  Their map showed what looked like the very
substantial Salt River flowing down to the Colorado River and eventual
escape in Mexico.  Unfortunately, the Salt River most of the year (at
least in the Phoenix area) is pretty much a really wide flat body of dirt.  The German expressions as they carried their stolen canoes up to its banks must have been priceless.

It
never occurred to the Germans that in dry Arizona a blue line marked
"river" on a map might be filled with water only occasionally. The
three men with the canoe were disappointed to find the Salt River bed
merely a mud bog from recent rains. Not to be discouraged, they carried
their canoe pieces twenty miles to the confluence with the Gila river,
only to find a series of large puddles. They sat on the river bank, put
their heads in their hands and cried out their frustration.

I
know how they feel every summer when we go to Lake Powell and find the
water lower than the previous year.  Anyway, we shouldn't just make
light of the escapees.  Apparently the prison guards made Sargent Schultz look like Sherlock Holmes:

Although
the men left in the wee hours of Christmas Eve, the camp officials were
blissfully unaware of anything amiss until the escapees began to show
up that evening. The first to return was an enlisted man, Herbert
Fuchs, who decided he had been cold, wet and hungry long enough by
Christmas Eve evening. Thinking about his dry, warm bed and hot meal
that the men in the prison camp were enjoying, he decided his attempt
at freedom had come to an end. The 22-year old U-boat crewman hitched a
ride on East Van Buren Street and asked the driver to take him to the
sheriff's office where he surrendered. Much to the surprise of the
officers at the camp, the sheriff called and told them he had a
prisoner who wanted to return to camp.

One
of the last to be re-captured was U-boat Commander Jürgen Wattenberg,
the leader of the breakout.  Interestingly, Captain Wattenberg hid out
in the hills just a few hundred yards from my current home.

Many people have seen the Steve McQueen movie "the Great Escape", about a group of 60 or so prisoners who cleverly dug a tunnel out of a German POW camp and escaped in various directions across Europe, many of whom where eventually recaptured.

I don't know if such an event occurred in Europe, but an almost identical real-life POW escape (tunnel and all) occurred right here in Phoenix, Arizona almost exactly 60 years ago.

Like many isolated western towns in WWII, Phoenix played host to a number of German POW's, in our case about 1700 in Papago Park.  Phoenix, and in particular Papago Park, with its arid climate and red rocks, must have been quite a culture shock to the Germans.

Anyway, I won't tell the whole story, but it is fascinating and you can read it all here.  A short excerpt:

The German prisoners asked their guards for permission to create a volleyball courtyard. Innocently obliging, the guards provided them with digging tools. From that point on, two men were digging at all times during night hours. A cart was rigged up to travel along tracks to take the dirt out. The men stuffed the dirt in their pants pockets which had holes in the bottoms, and they shuffled the dirt out along the ground as they walked around. In addition, they flushed a huge amount of dirt down the toilets. They labeled their escape route Der Faustball Tunnel (The Volleyball Tunnel).

They dug a 178 foot tunnel with a diameter of 3 feet. The tunnel went 8 to 14 feet beneath the surface, under the two prison camp fences, a drainage ditch and a road. The exit was near a power pole in a clump of brush about 15 feet from the Cross Cut Canal. To disguise their plans, the men built a square box, filled it with dirt and planted native weeds in it for the lid to cover the exit. When the lid was on the tunnel exit, the area looked like undisturbed desert.

There is some dispute about how many people actually escaped -- official records say 25.  Others argue that as many as 60 escaped, but since only 25 were recaptured, 25 was used as the official number to cover up the fact that German POW's might be roaming about Arizona.

The prisoners who led this escape were clearly daring and inventive, but unfortunately in Arizona lore they are better known for their one mistake.  Coming from wet Northern European climes, the prisoners assumed that the "rivers" marked on their map would actually have flowing water in them.  Their map showed what looked like the very substantial Salt River flowing down to the Colorado River and eventual escape in Mexico.  Unfortunately, the Salt River most of the year (at least in the Phoenix area) is pretty much a really wide flat body of dirt.  The German expressions as they carried their stolen canoes up to its banks must have been priceless.

It never occurred to the Germans that in dry Arizona a blue line marked "river" on a map might be filled with water only occasionally. The three men with the canoe were disappointed to find the Salt River bed merely a mud bog from recent rains. Not to be discouraged, they carried their canoe pieces twenty miles to the confluence with the Gila river, only to find a series of large puddles. They sat on the river bank, put their heads in their hands and cried out their frustration.

I know how they feel every summer when we go to Lake Powell and find the water lower than the previous year.  Anyway, we shouldn't just make light of the escapees.  Apparently the prison guards made Sargent Schultz look like Sherlock Holmes:

Although the men left in the wee hours of Christmas Eve, the camp officials were blissfully unaware of anything amiss until the escapees began to show up that evening. The first to return was an enlisted man, Herbert Fuchs, who decided he had been cold, wet and hungry long enough by Christmas Eve evening. Thinking about his dry, warm bed and hot meal that the men in the prison camp were enjoying, he decided his attempt at freedom had come to an end. The 22-year old U-boat crewman hitched a ride on East Van Buren Street and asked the driver to take him to the sheriff's office where he surrendered. Much to the surprise of the officers at the camp, the sheriff called and told them he had a prisoner who wanted to return to camp.

One of the last to be re-captured was U-boat Commander Jürgen Wattenberg, the leader of the breakout.  Interestingly, Captain Wattenberg hid out in the hills just a few hundred yards from my current home.

UPDATE

One reason I thought of this story, beyond being close to the anniversary, was this story about new Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith.  Though I am not necesarily a supporter of Mr. Goldsmith's views, the article is a good insight into where campuses are today in terms of academic freedoms.  His conservative views and opinions are treated like some hidden scandal that was missed in his hiring and would surely have disqualified him for the position if known.  I am sympathetic not because I am conservative, but as a libertarian and defender of free markets, I was thought to be an odd duck on campus as well.

The part of the article that got me thinking about the Great Escape was this:

Before he stepped down from his post as a U.S. assistant attorney general this summer, Goldsmith penned a March draft memo arguing that Central Intelligence Agency officials could transfer Iraqi detainees out of their native country for interrogation without violating the Geneva Convention.

The memo said that detainees would still have to be treated in accordance with international humanitarian norms. But Goldsmith's position has drawn fire from human rights activists and some scholars who argue that the memo marks a dramatic reinterpretation of the 1949 treaty, which safeguards the rights of prisoners of war.

I know nothing about the 1949 treaty, but it seems odd that holding POW's in other countries would be outlawed so soon after we did so much of it ourselves in WWII.  Generally, my understanding is that detention of German prisoners in the US went very well for all concerned - in fact, the biggest problem I have ever heard about is that many Germans did not want to leave and be sent back to Germany after the war (see also here).  My guess is that such a ban may have resulted from Soviet actions in the later stages of WWII.  The Soviets sent many, many German prisoners back east, never ever to return, living out a life of slavery in Siberia and other happy locations long after the war was over.  Anyone have any other background on this?

Today, we had another $300 workers compensation claim.

First, I will begin by saying "Thank God for the workers comp system in this country". Basically the philosophy of the system is this: Workers give up their right to sue their employer over workplace injuries in return for a guarantee of medical care and a defined benefit compensation system. Yeah, some states (like Florida, in particular) have some real fraud and management problems. In California last year, before reform, I was paying $20 in workers comp premiums for every $100 in wages -- and this despite having no claims the last few years. But, given the state of the lawsuit industry in this country, imagine the effect if workers could sue over every injury, large or small. Shudder.

As an aside, this issue has greatly affected the whole asbestos litigation situation, as detailed here. It can be argued that most workers' asbestos injuries are more likely due to poor protections on the job site, rather than any product problems from the asbestos makers. Asbestos using companies, after all, have known asbestos is dangerous since before WWII. In fact, navy shipyards in WWII were some of the worst offenders in terms of not using masks, poor ventilation, etc. But, since employers generally can't get sued over injuries (and its hard to sue the feds), lawyers concentrate on the "product labeling" argument and sue the asbestos makers into bankruptcy, which explains why litigation attorney's coach their clients like this.

Anyway, in many states, workers comp needs reform. Ahnold, for example, did a nice job of attacking this issue in California, and our company got an immediate 10% discount on our rates once the legislation passed. One thing that is never discussed and frustrates the heck out of me is the issue of deductibles. We get a lot of small claims (e.g. went to emergency room, got checked out, all was OK, went home). As with any kind of insurance policy, filing a lot of small claims this year is death on premiums next year. Workers comp is worse than most, as it has an experience mod system that guarantees that for every dollar in claims that goes out this year you pay an extra $1+ next year in premiums (in the next few days Coyote Blog will be starting a new series called "things they didn't teach me in business school" and the mechanics of workers comp will be one of the first posts).

Unfortunately, many states, such as Arizona, do not allow you to have a deductible on your workers comp policy. This is not an insurance company practice that might change with new competitors, but the law. So, we keep paying out small claims that probably drive up our premiums $2 for every dollar in claims.