RedStateEclectic

Chernobyl & Fukushima

One year ago today, one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history occurred less than 100 miles off of the north east coast of Japan. About 30 to 40 minutes after that massive movement of the earth, a series of 7 large waves rolled in from the ocean to cause massive damage along a long swath of coastline.

Barriers that were supposedly supposed to protect people and infrastructure failed dramatically, resulting in nearly 20,000 deaths, the displacement of more than 300,000 people, and the destruction of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of assets including factories, homes, roads, railroads, automobiles, and other personal possessions.

Pipelines exploded in flames, toxic materials and other refuse from an industrial society was widely distributed and at least one large oil refinery was engulfed in towering flames and billowing black smoke that did not stop until March 21, ten days later.

However, the people [...] supplying the world with titillating news [...] all decided to distract the whole world from that tragedy and to focus our attention on the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. [...]

 

The fact remains that not one single person – either in the public or in the plant work force – was exposed to enough radiation to cause more than a minor reddening of skin. [...]

We are doing a huge disservice and causing real, current, measurable harm by allowing anyone to believe that there is any doubt about the safety of small amounts of released radioactive material. We have been studying this topic for nearly 100 years. We know that small doses do not result in any health risk that is distinguishable from the risk of simply being a mortal human being living in an inherently risky world.

The source.

See also Fukushima - Level 7, including links at the bottom of the post to a large number of blog entries I published at the time of the unfolding crisis.

Anti-Capitalist Genocide - The Story of DDT

Alex Epstein tells the story of a green, anti-capitalist prejudice of genocidal proportions:

Think for a moment about the last time you had a bad case of the flu: the headaches, the chills, the vomiting, the congestion, the depressed mood, the inability to function normally for days. But imagine it felt 10 times worse, and lasted for months or years, robbing you of anything resembling a truly human life.

That is life for the hundreds of millions of people who live with–and often die from–malaria.

The malaria parasite is one of nature’s cruelest torturers. Acquired from the bite of the common Anopheles mosquito, this parasite enters the bloodstream and, left to its own devices, wreaks havoc on the lives of its human hosts.

In its milder forms, the malaria parasite leads to cycles of different symptoms including fever, sweat and chills, muscle pains, shock, and breathing problems. More dangerous variants lead to liver failure, coma, and brain damage. And, of course, there are the deaths–millions and millions of individual lives ended prematurely, usually after enough suffering to make death a relief. The most common malaria deaths afflict the most vulnerable–children under 5, pregnant women, and individuals who are already weakened by malnutrition or other diseases.

When you hear of “living in harmony” with nature, remember this: nature gives us unmitigated malaria, while human ingenuity and industry gave us the ultimate weapon against malaria–the industrial, “artificial” chemical DDT. As the National Academy of Sciences said in the 1970s, “[T]o only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT…in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.”#

Read the entire piece.

See also The Sport of Facile Killing - A Democratic Pastime.

AMA Proposes Forced Participation In Vaccine Trials

Disclaimer: I am not an anti-vaccine parent. My kids got their shots, including the new-at-the-time chicken pox vaccine. However, I think parents, and not the government, have the right to choose. It's that simple for me.

Not so much for the American Medical Association, who cite the world's most accomplished medical mind computer geek as a source in the opening sentence.  (By the way, did you know Bill Gates has a massive amount of money invested in vaccines? Not donated. Invested, As in, hoping to profit from.  )

A couple of choice quotes. 

"...relying on altruism alone to facilitate clinical trials is potentially unsustainable and ethically contentious."

Uhm, yeah. Ethically contentious. What a great phrase.

"...consensus has generally dictated that payment for volunteers’ trial involvement be modest and limited to compensation for travel, time, and inconvenience only."

So, the logical solution of paying people to test your products is, apparently, too expensive also ethically contentious. 

"Compulsory involvement in vaccine studies is one alternative solution that is not as outlandish as it might seem on first consideration."

This should be a "Heh," but it's not funny.  According to the AMA, it's unethical to simply pay people who would volunteer to be test subjects in clinical trials, but it's just peachy to use government to force them to test your product.  

Couple that with the assumption that these vaccines won't be distributed free of charge, and you can easily imagine a shiny new model of capitalism corporatism emerging -  one where we are forced into being guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical companies who will then turn around and charge a premium price to the government's new health care system for the final product.

At least PETA will be happy. 

 

 

Quote of the Day

Guess who said this (I’ll provide the answer in the comments section in a day or two):

Obamacare must be undone and replaced not merely as a matter of sound health policy, not merely because it promises to damage a staggering national economy, not merely because it will hasten the bankruptcy of the American government.  Obamacare must be undone for the even more fundamental reason that, in its essence, it demeans and diminishes the rights of the free people Americans were intended to be.

Free Market Cure For Leukemia

No, this isn't a hypothesis. It happened, and as someone who lost a family member to leukemia, I am thrilled beyond words at the chance this might give to other families. 

The treatment didn't come from corporate America. Nor did it come from the government's tax-funded National Cancer Institute. Because the procedure was deemed too risky by those entities, which seems a direct contradiction of the liberal and RINO talking point that "the market won't take the risks that the government will," a private charity founded by a private individual took on the project funding, and the initial results are promising:

In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells.  These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells.  After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients.

 

In similar past experimental treatments for several types of cancer the re-injected white cells killed a few cancer cells and then died out. But the Penn researchers inserted a gene that made the white blood cells multiply by a thousand fold inside the body. The result, as researcher June put it, is that the white blood cells became “serial killers” relentlessly tracking down and killing the cancer cells in the blood, bone marrow and lymph tissue.

(From MSNBC)

 3 people, previously deemed terminal, have received the treatment so far. Two of them now show no signs of the cancer cells in their systems, while the third patient's count is down by 70%.

 

 

The Declaration of Dependence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people should be made equal, that they are endowed by their government with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are jobs, healthcare and housing.–That to secure these rights, Governments must rule over the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the elite, –That whenever the people becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Elite to alter or to abolish it, and to institute more Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect the power and control of the elite. …We, therefore, the Representatives of the political elite, in faculty lounges, Assembled, appealing to the United Nations for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of government, solemnly publish and declare, That the American people ought to be governed by the United Nations; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Constitution, and that all political connection between them and the Founding Fathers, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as highly-taxed and dependent States, they have full Power to levy taxes, disrupt Peace, contract new departments and agencies, regulate Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which the political elite may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the establishment media, we mutually demand your Lives, your Fortunes and your sacred Honor.

Via Dan Mitchells.

Physicians and the Nanny State

Now I would be the last to suggest that too much TV and junk food for kids isn’t a problem.   But ultimately, the question is whether it’s a problem that parents ought to be dealing with, or whether it’s one that the state ought to be dealing with.

Pediatricians apparently believe that it’s a “federal issue”:

"It's all just a smokescreen anyway -- the big fast food corporations are basically interested in making money, not making good nutritional products," said Strasburger. "With billions of dollars in profits every year should come a sense of public health responsibility. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to."

McDonald's, which targets kids in much of its advertising, declined to comment.

In the meantime, Strasburger urges families to follow a few simple steps.

"Parents need to listen to the AAP guidelines which say, 'Limit your child to less than two hours of media time per day, keep the TV set and Internet out of the bedroom and avoid screen time in kids under two.'"

But cutting screen time alone isn't enough, according to Strasburger.

"We have to give kids healthy alternatives to being couch potatoes," he said. "The question is, how fat do we want people to become? Congress needs to think about that."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/06/27/us-doctors-ban-fast-food-ads-on-tv/#ixzz1QTxyd6Gw

I guess I’m getting too close to the end of Atlas Shrugged and have started reading the mindlessness of the masses into everything, but the last line of that article REALLY jumped out at me:  “The question is, how fat do we want people to become? Congress needs to think about that.”  CONGRESS needs to think about it?  Our overlords will now protect us? 

And then that first paragraph quoted—gracious, we’re supposed to believe that fast food restaurants shouldn’t be interested n making money?  And if you make money, you’re obliged to have a sense of “public health responsibility”?  In other words (as in Atlas), I guess you’re supposed give up making money in order to advance the idealistic goals of the overlords.

C’mon folks.  I understand the lure of fast food for kids—I’ve got an 8 year old who would eat every meal at Burger King or McDonalds (if I would let him)—primarily because of the kids’ meals toys, and the advertising of them on some of the channels that I occasionally let him watch (although he’s a bright kid, and can see the pictures as we drive by the restaurants, too—even without TV ads).  But PARENTS need to learn to say “no”, and quit expecting “someone else” to protect their kids.

And then there’s this: I get frustrated with the physicians (like Dr. Strasburger, quoted above), who are so willing to turn their patients’ well-being over the government.  Like the formally esteemed scientists in Atlas, who have become sycophants for the Feds, it seems to me that many of these physicians, well-intentioned though they may be, have contributed to the awful state that we’re in with respect to health care—where the free market is non-existent (except in specialty areas where insurance and the government doesn’t pay anything).

LLE

Acton U Day 2: Poverty in the Developing World - Good Intentions & Sound Economics

One of my hopes in attending Acton this year was to gain direction in how to help people as a Christian. So many times we are called to action by disaster or images of living conditions in some developing country. However, the libertarian streak in me sets off alarm bells about the effectiveness of foreign aid and whether such aid is maybe actually counterproductive. Unfortunately, you rarely see in the press what the true impact is of aid nor have the opportunity to meet people on the receiving end in Africa or Latin America.

At Acton University, one meets those who administer aid and receive it.

In brief, the foreign aid program (state to state transfers of aid) have been mostly a disaster. On rare occasions it accomplishes its mission but all too often the best of intentions causes far more problems than it solves.

Michael Miller pointed out one of the recurring themes of Acton in charity: You must have more than a heart for the poor - you need a mind for the poor as well.

Put simply, no matter your intentions, you must accept the reality of what you are doing and recognize the true impacts of whatever it is you are doing. The example he used was food relief. Developed nations like Europe and the United States unintentionally destroy markets through their aid programs.

It begins like this: 1) local farmers in Kenya grow wheat but are locked out of the US/European market with high protective tariffs and subsidies. 2) Because of the large subsidies in those developed countries, they produce large surpluses of food. 3) The developed country then takes that surplus and distributes it as 'aid' to countries like Kenya which floods its markets and further depresses the price of food for the local farmers. This snuffs out local producers.

Countless examples were used where this sort of thing happens. Someone from Ghana complained about organizations doing the same thing with shoes and shirts. This surplus dumping makes enterprise in those countries very difficult.

Miller's other point about aid is that much of the focus is on population control in the form of abortions, contraception, and (oftentimes forced) sterilization. Not only is this morally dubious but it is flawed economic thinking as there is no correlation between population and wealth. There are both densely populated rich and poor countries and sparsely populated rich and poor countries. 

Also, as a missionary from South Africa pointed out, these organizations are simultaneously funding abortions (of brown and black babies) while simultaneously providing antiretroviral drugs for AIDS patients (that usually get distributed to patients too sick to benefit).

In many respects, this is all a form of neocolonialism and it needs to stop. The question we need to ask is what makes rich countries rich and how do poor countries get there? 

The keys to effective reversal of poverty are held in four basic tenets: Private Property Rights, the Rule of Law, Free Association, and Free Exchanges. In others words, conditions which lend themselves to enterprise and recognizing the potential in people to create and better their lives and allow them to flourish.

To learn more about some of the economic fallacies, you can check out gapminder. Or visit the Acton Institute's new PovertyCure initiative. Finally, the store to listen to this or other Acton lectures can be found here (they are updating them daily so I suspect the full list of lectures won't be available until next week).

Something Has To Give

The Other McCain has a piece up that soberly points out that other nations have sacrificed their national defense capabilities in the name of national health care, and he's scored it with a familiar undertone: that we are going to all die, or at least end up with children who speak Japanese German Chinese Arabic, if we give up even a single nickel in military spending.

It's the exact same technique the left uses to protect their entitlements - scaring people into believing that we can't possibly survive without at least one wing of the government being every bit as big and as bloated as it is.

It's a pathetically intellectually dishonest argument, part of the tired old "right vs left" pretend paradigm that keeps government fat and happy. 

See, in that paradigm, there are only two choices. Somebody somewhere is going to kill us - that's a non-debatable given. We only get to decide if the infection is going to come from a damned dirty Muslim or a damned dirty needle. 

And that makes sense to some people.

Isn't that the worst part though - that people actually believe it?  These great leaders, the politically powerful philosophers who have been absolutely wrong about everything for the past 15 years, (except, of course, about how to win elections), spew this nonsense and the majority of the voters lap it up and then savagely spit it back out at anybody who dares suggest there might need to be some compromises across the spending board.  It really should make us wonder how many fellow Americans actually have at least a mild case of undiagnosed paranoia. (Ironically, I suppose that could work in favor of the national health care fear mongers - at least until the medications kick in.)

As for Europe, it's perfectly obvious that those other nations would not have had the luxury of sacrificing their militaries if we weren't so happy to let them use ours.   They get the greatest deal in the world - we subsidize their defense by putting our troops there, we subsidize their medical systems by subsidizing research and providing drugs for less than cost, and then we send them staggering amounts of financial aid when their systems start showing signs of collapse. 

Remember, we're considered the crazy loose cannons for continuing to call out a party - our party -  that pretends to be standing firm against socialism while simultaneously acting as socialism's largest enabler, because that makes sense to some people who believe that we have to fight "unseen threats." (Maybe the government should sudsidize nightlights - they seemed to work wonders on the "unseen threats" in my world.)

And now this bizarre assertion that  we have to fight socialized medicine here, so we can subsidize it abroad, especially because it works so well....Seriously, in what world does that make sense?  

There are a myriad of reasons to oppose federal control of the health care system, and I don't intend to get into that here. But if the Republicans honestly think the "don't make us give up our military to fund health care," talking point is going to win them any converts, they're even more out of touch with reality than I would have guessed, and they're going to lose Middle America, just like they did in 2006. 

And I'll be right here saying, "We told you so," because hey - I'm a snob like that.

Addicted to Government

Thomas Sowell explains how government is addicted to making the people addicted to government.

To listen to some of the defenders of entitlement programs, which are at the heart of the present financial crisis, you might think that anything the government fails to provide is something that people will be deprived of. [...]

If you fail to subsidize prescription drugs, old people will have to eat dog food in order to be able to afford their meds. [...]

The desperately poor elderly conjured up in political and media rhetoric are-- in the world of reality-- the wealthiest segment of the American population. The average wealth of older households is nearly three times the wealth of households headed by people in the 35 to 44-year-old bracket, and more than 15 times the wealth of households headed by someone under 35 years of age.

If the wealthiest segment of the population cannot pay their own medical bills, who can? The country as a whole is not any richer because the government pays our medical bills-- with money that it takes from us. [...]

[...] Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University long ago showed that you could give the poor enough money to lift them all above the official poverty line for a fraction of what it costs to support a massive welfare state bureaucracy.

We don't need to send the country into bankruptcy, in the name of the poor, by spending trillions of dollars on people who are not poor, and who could take care of themselves. The poor have been used as human shields behind which the expanding welfare state can advance.

The goal is not to keep the poor from starving but to create dependency, because dependency translates into votes for politicians who play Santa Claus.

The source.

See also my posts The Party Is Over - Entitlement Avarice Uncloaked, and The Myth Junkie Society.