Father(land) knows best

Here in California, a slew of new laws went into effect yesterday, and many of them seem to have to do with children. New laws add additional regulations to what children can eat (child care centers, which serve up to 1.2 million children, can provide only unflavored nonfat or low-fat milk and beverages that lack added sweeteners), where they can spend their money (people under the age of 18 cannot use ultraviolet tanning devices (even with parents' permission)), and how they can travel:

Many young car passengers, meanwhile, will have to get back in the booster seat Sunday under legislation signed in October.  

The law requires kids to be in booster seats until they are at least 8 years old or 4 feet, 9 inches or taller. Since 2002, children have had to ride in booster seats until they are 6 years old or 60 pounds.

Note the first sentence... "will have to get back into the booster seat". Yes, that's right, a 6 or 7 year old who graduated from the nanny state's previous overbearing protection, who has safely ridden with a regular seat belt for possibly a year or more, has suddenly found him/herself in grave danger. Overnight, without warning, and by state decree, the world has once again become unsafe. What was legal (and safe) yesterday is illegal (and unsafe) today. Funny how that works, isn't it?

What's even more interesting is that SB 929 was signed by the same man who, only three months earlier, vetoed SB 105, saying, "Not every human problem deserves a law." For those unaware, SB 105 would have criminalized the act of skiing or snowboarding by a minor without a helmet. Given the intellectual inconsistency between the passage of SB 929 and the veto of SB 105, one might be given to believe that companies like Bell and Giro simply missed their opportunity to "grease the palm" of government. Fortunately, companies like Graco and Britax can rest easy knowing that the state is coercing consumers via the force of law into buying their products for at least two more years.

It's amazing to me that people will cry out when forced to purchase health insurance at the end of a government gun but see no trouble with imposing the purchase of car seats in the same manner. It's for the children, though! I mean, isn't it? Maybe not. For 7 years, at least, the data have been staring everyone in the face:

The answer can be found in a trove of government data called the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which compiles police reports on all fatal crashes in the U.S. since 1975. These data include every imaginable variable in a crash, including whether the occupants were restrained and how. 

Even a quick look at the FARS data reveals a striking result: among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts. There are many reasons, of course, that this raw data might be misleading. Perhaps kids in car seats are, on average, in worse wrecks. Or maybe their parents drive smaller cars, which might provide less protection. 

But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don't change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes -- rear-enders, for instance -- car seats actually perform worse.)

If you're still not convinced that these laws serve no useful purpose except to enrich the companies that make the products that consumers are compelled to buy, then you need look no further than an earlier excerpt from the same article:

Perhaps the single most compelling statistic about car seats in the NHTSA manual was this one: ''They are 54 percent effective in reducing deaths for children ages 1 to 4 in passenger cars.'' 

But 54 percent effective compared with what? The answer, it turns out, is this: Compared with a child's riding completely unrestrained.

You read that right; in order to scare you into compliance, the government compares the effectiveness of child car seats, not against the effectiveness of seat belts, but against that of riding in a car completely unrestrained! The data show that car seats are no more effective than seat belts for children over 2 and in some cases can actually be worse. Why then is the government pushing car seats onto the populace for another 6 years?! Whether totalitarianism or corporatism, I'll leave for you to decide. One thing is for certain, however; it is not for your benefit.

An ounce of prevention

I don't like the TSA. I think what it does is an affront to liberty, to moral sensibilities, and certainly to the Constitution that supposedly defines U.S. federal power. That is not to say that I oppose transportation security; I just happen believe that the damage done by the TSA to the aforementioned list of things far outweighs whatever benefit it might be providing. As such, I would characterize it as useless. That much is probably obvious to anyone reading this, either because you've read my other writings or because you're aware of my run-in with the TSA. What is probably unknown to most is that my encounter with the TSA has turned me off to reading about it and, even more so, to writing about it. Being a bit of a news junkie, I tend to remain "aware" of most major occurrences involving the TSA, but I don't, as I imagine most people believe, go out of my way to keep up on every little detail concerning it. In fact, I tend to ignore most of the stories I see about the TSA because I get a very "resistance is futile" feeling whenever I do.

Part of the this feeling comes simply from the fact that no matter what the TSA does, no matter how badly it screws up, the (government) solution has been and will always be to throw more money at the problem. Why people accept this situation is completely incomprehensible to me. Just from a purely economic perspective, it's preposterous. The TSA is a monopoly, and its parent, the federal government, openly and actively uses its monopoly position and power to not only prevent but prohibit competition. This is something that that same federal government makes illegal in the private sector. Moreover, the TSA continues to fail to carry out its own mission statement in which it claims that it "protects the Nation’s transportation systems ...". The TSA has racked up a number of high profile failures on this front including the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the loaded gun that cleared screening, and the failures of its own internal tests. The TSA can't even design tests for itself that it can pass (even after the 4th or 5th try depending on which story you read). If the TSA was a private company, it's stock would be worthless, and it would be out of business.

But the continued influx of money, increase even, allows the TSA to continue to fail to uphold the second half of its mission statement as well: "... to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce". The TSA's website expands on this principle stating that it is composed of "people who conduct ourselves [sic] in an honest, trustworthy and ethical manner at all times". This stands in sharp contrast with reality.

Freedom? I certainly wasn't "free" to move about the country, no pun intended. My "freedom of movement" was conditioned on being groped by a thug in a government-issued costume (h/t William Grigg for that phrase; he likes to call them tax-feeders instead of thugs). It's very fitting that the very first definition of freedom is "the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint" because that is exactly the opposite of what the TSA offers. And what happened to me is, by no means, an isolated incident. The TSA recently went so far as to screen passengers (read: violate their freedom) after they had disembarked from an Amtrak train in Savannah. TSA's "Blogger Bob" tried to explain this away as a Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) operation but then, at the end of the explanation, says that "this particular VIPR operation should have ended by the time these folks were coming through the station". Not only does the TSA's right hand not know what the left is doing, but its explanation that "disembarking passengers did not need to enter the station" and therefore willfully submitted themselves to the search is at odds with a first-hand account stating that "[T]here were about 14 agents pulling people inside the building and coralling [sic] everyone in a roped area".

Honest and trustworthy? Ethical? Finding stories about the TSA stealing from passengers is not a difficult task. A quick search turned up this blog post on the TSA's website in which the TSA talks about the theft for which it is responsible. That post is from early 2008. In late 2008, TSA screener Pythias Brown was arrested after "appropriating" over $200,000 from airline passengers. Long aware of its problems, the TSA has yet to do anything about them. Theft is still a problem for the TSA, but it's not just at the lowest levels as even managers have been found to be accepting "kickbacks" in return for "looking the other way". The TSA has also become very adept at lying to the traveling public as one commenter at the TSA's blog points out. In November of last year, the TSA said that those under 12 years of age would receive a modified pat-down when extra screening was required. Today, the TSA said that the pat down it gave to a 6 year old, in which the agent used the front of her hands for the majority of the pat down and even put her hands inside the child's waistband and shirt collar, is standard operating procedure just like for those over 12. And, of course, there's still the "debate" about exactly how much radiation you get from the TSA's AIT machines and whether or not they can store pictures.

Yet, the TSA remains in business, which brings me to the other reason that I don't typically follow stories about the TSA. Initially, the response to my encounter was very positive (for/to me and the cause of liberty). But as my story reached more and more people, I was subjected to very visceral reactions to what had happened. Many called me an attention-whore, claiming that the whole thing was set up. Some suggested that instead of blaming the government for trying to feel me up, I should blame the terrorists who made the whole thing necessary. But the majority, in various colorful ways, simply said that it was this way or the highway. That is, get felt up or get blown up, and this is the reason that I don't like hearing about the TSA. People are so afraid that they accept the TSA as a given. It makes me angry to read stories or responses along these lines knowing that no amount of rational discussion can be had about what the TSA does (or doesn't do) because the thinking behind those stories and responses is based on fear. No rational or logical discussion can be had with someone who is arguing from a place of fear.

It's a funny thing, emotion. In spite of seemingly infinite documentation of TSA abuses and screw-ups; in spite of the evidence that one is more likely to die in a car on the way to the airport than on the plane or that the odds of getting a fatal cancer from one of the TSA's AIT machines is roughly equivalent to a terrorist attack on a plane, we continue to allow the TSA to go on about its business in the name of "prevention". In fact, I would argue that more liberties are lost (or given up) in the name of prevention of some "terrible" event than any other cause. Guns are taken away and demonized to prevent crime. Gay marriage is outlawed lest it lead to the decay of society. Drugs are prohibited on the grounds that people might overdose and hurt themselves. Gambling is made illegal because people might overindulge and lose their money. Parents aren't allowed to pack their children's lunches because they may not be healthy "enough". Privacy and due process are lost in the name of preventing terrorism. The list goes on and on.

What happens when the prevention, the supposed "cure", becomes worse than the disease, though? Statistics show that guns save more lives than they take. Drug policy actually leads to poor quality drugs and criminal violence. Our government carries out due process free assassinations, and when we find out about it we only dare to question the secrecy of the operation not the legitimacy of the killing. Most damning of all, though, is the article that I found at the end of a link embedded in the story about the 6 year old girl that was patted down this week. TIME asked a child psychologist to explain how to make TSA pat-downs less traumatic for children. What is wrong with us when we're so afraid of our own shadows that we're willing to let government goons touch our children? Have we really come (read: regressed) so far? We're willing to accept the (false) choice: see our children naked or touch them all over. I really hate to play the "think of the children" card here as it is an appeal to emotion and not rationality, but I think it is in order. We've regressed so far that we're even once again willing to accept the "following orders" defense. Says a TSO:

I come to work to do my job. It is not up to me to decide policy, it is up to me to carry out my duties as dictated by the Transportation Security Administration. People fail to understand that neither of us are happy about the intrusive pat down I am carrying out. I am polite, I am professional [...]

And we eat it up. There was no end to the number of people who told me that I was a jerk during my encounter and that the TSO was very professional. I can only assume that the logic, if there is any, behind such an argument is that we should willingly give up our liberty if the government simply asks nicely enough.

And liberty is exactly what this should all be about. Our federal government was instituted to protect our liberty, to "prevent" infringements of it. But "infringe" is exactly what it does. Each of those preventions I mentioned is, in reality, an infringement of liberty. For example, gun ownership is not an aggressive act against another. Gay couples don't infringe anyone's liberty by loving each other, nor does a drug user in his use of drugs. Each of these acts does not, in and of itself, constitute an infringement of liberty, but our government restricts, if not outlaws, each of them which clearly is an infringement. And so 1984 is upon us as the government has taught us all to master the art of doublethink. We simultaneously believe that government protects our liberty while at the same time believing that "prevention" is a valid form of that protection, and if we allow it to continue then something is wrong with us, indeed.

Crappy Meals

I think this clip speaks for itself. The insanity really kicks in at about 3:02.

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Men are not angels

For those who didn't pick up on the title of this post, it is a reference to a post from last week entitled "If Men Were Angels". That post's title and most of its content were shamelessly lifted from an article of the same name which itself gets the phrase from James Madison's writing in Federalist No. 51. The same day on which that article was posted, news of an excerpt from a book by former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Clinton and then Bush, General Hugh Shelton, hit the Interwebs. This news was unfortunately buried by virtue of its coming out on a Friday.

In the book, the general relates a story of a conversation he had with a Clinton cabinet member during one of their weekly breakfasts.

At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, "Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?"

The general doesn't explicitly say with whom he was speaking at the time, but the general consensus seems to be that it was the same person who gave this interview.

I was actually really surprised to hear of someone as far back as the Clinton administration suggesting something like allowing one of our own to be shot down in order to provoke war. To be honest, this is something I would have expected to hear come out of the Bush/Cheney White House. Not only was this person willing to purposely send one of our own to die, but he/she was willing to do so to enable the killing of probably tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more. It really is regrettable that stories like this don't get more play. I think it is imperative that people understand that this is what the State is capable of. Even if one is unwilling to accept the premise that such behavior is commonplace or routine and instead believes that false flag operations are the things of spy novels, it should be a very sobering thought that people at the highest levels of government are even capable of suggesting such a thing out loud and with a straight face.

Let's give credit where credit is due, though.

The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, "Of course we can ..." which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.

"You can?" was the excited reply.

"Why, of course we can," I countered. "Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go."

Brav-o! The military, in some circles, gets a bad rap for being a bunch of warmongers and killers, and I don't know much about this particular general's career, but for this show of cojones, he earns a gold star in my book. I am in constant fear, though, that over time people like this will disappear or lose their sway within government. This quote, attributed to Edmund Burke, looms large:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Free Range Kids

I recently posted a link to the "Why FreeRange?" page of Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids blog on my wife's Facebook page.

Our child is still less than a year old, but my wife and I already disagree (don't worry, they're only minor disagreements) about how much we should "baby" our child. For instance, when he tries to pull himself up to a standing position and even when he reaches the standing position, my wife will hover over him to prevent his falling back to the ground. I, on the other hand, am constantly telling her to let him fall. The chances that he'll get hurt (he would most likely fall back onto his rear end, and at worst fall all the way back and hit his head on the carpet) are extremely low. Moreover, in the event that he does get hurt, the chances of him getting anything more than a small bump are so remote as to not cause me even a bit of worry.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not some kind of sadist who enjoys seeing his kid get hurt. In fact, it breaks my heart every time my child sheds even a single tear whether he's hungry, hurt, or just wants to be held. I don't, however, believe that it is my role as a parent to prevent anything and everything that could go wrong in my child's life. Eventually, he's going to have to stand on his own two feet (literally and figuratively), and I see letting him learn by failing as a way to help him achieve that goal, even at such an early age.

Back to the real point of this post, though. In response to the link on my wife's Facebook page, one of our good friends, herself, the mother of two teenage girls, responded that she'd prefer "her children living instead of visiting 'Fairhaven' every week" and referred to the number of attempted abductions, rapes, and gropings in the news this week as well as the recent deaths of Amber Dubois and Chelsea King. I have to admit that I don't understand the reference to "Fairhaven", but I took the entire statement to mean that if our friend has to be a bit overprotective to prevent her children from becoming victims, then so be it.

I hope that friend of ours, should she read this, doesn't take any of what I've written or what follows as an of indictment of or negative statement about the way she has raised and continues to raise her children. I think that her daughters are two of the nicest, most respectful and well behaved children I've ever met, and I should be so lucky to have my child(ren) grow up to be the same. Rather, this post is intended to defend the idea of "Free Range Kids".

Most of what this friend of ours wrote was the reason that "Free Range Kids" came about. As the news media becomes ever more accessible, we are able to hear about every crime and attempted crime all over the country. The media also tend to focus on stories that will grab people's attention and keep them engaged (read: reading, watching, and ultimately, paying). Since the news tends to focus on these types of stories, over time, people tend to regard such events as commonplace, when in reality, they are not.

According to census estimates over the last three years, there were approximately 80 million people aged 19 years or under in the U.S. According to this study, released in 2002, there were just under 60,000 "nonfamily abductions" during the year-long study. Of these, 115 were considered "stereotypical" kidnappings, and of those, approximately 40% were killed. Examples of abductions and kidnappings as defined in the study can be found here.

Now let's look at the numbers for the year of the study:

• Number of children in the U.S.: 70,000,000 (rounded down to exclude 18-19 year olds)
• Number of "stereotypical" kidnappings: 115, .0002% or 1 in 5,000
• Number of deaths from kidnappings: 46, .0001% or 1 in 10,000

To put these events in perspective, the yearly odds of dying in a car crash are 1 in 6,500. That is, they're just not that common. So, the point of all of this is not to persuade or dissuade you, necessarily, from what you're already doing. Rather, it is to help dispel the idea that children are in danger every minute of every day or that today's children are in any more danger than you or I were. This post, by the way, does not address the less quantifiable benefits of "free ranging" your kids. For that, you can visit FreeRangeKids.

P.S.: The New York Times (whatever you may think of it) endorsed this book today.