Bruce Schneier <3's TSA

Yesterday, Bruce Schneier wrote a blog post about abolishing the Department of Homeland Security. It was based, in large part, on a CATO report calling for the same citing that

DHS has too many subdivisions in too many disparate fields to operate effectively. Agencies with responsibilities for counterfeiting investigations, border security, disaster preparedness, federal law enforcement training, biological warfare defense, and computer incident response find themselves under the same cabinet official. This arrangement has not enhanced the government's competence. Americans are not safer because the head of DHS is simultaneously responsible for airport security and governmental efforts to counter potential flu epidemics.

Schneier agrees, citing his own writing from 2003:

Our nation may actually be less secure if the Department of Homeland Security eventually takes over the responsibilities of existing agencies. [...] Security is the responsibility of everyone in government. We won't defeat terrorism by finding a single thing that works all the time. We'll defeat terrorism when every little thing works in its own way, and together provides an immune system for our society. Unless the DHS distributes security responsibility even as it centralizes coordination, it won't improve our nation's security.

But Schneier takes issue with CATO's suggestion, later in the above linked report, that the TSA should abolished. Instead, he believes

abolishing the TSA isn't a good idea. Airport security should be rolled back to pre-9/11 levels, but someone is going to have to be in charge of it. Putting the airlines in charge of it doesn't make sense; their incentives are going to be passenger service rather than security. Some government agency either has to hire the screeners and staff the checkpoints, or make and enforce rules for contractor-staffed checkpoints to follow.

It would be very easy, at this point, to attack Schneier on the basis that the TSA is a colossal failure. However, that TSA is not a failure of epic proportions is not what he is arguing. In fact, Schneier himself is the progenitor of the idea that exactly "two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers". Furthermore, just this week, he penned an article calling the TSA irrelevant. So, let's look at exactly what he did say: that airline security should return to pre-9/11 levels with the government being in charge of it, either directly (government-hired goons staffing the checkpoints) or indirectly (private contractors acting under government regulation). If we hearken back to the pre-9/11 days, we find that his statement is redundant. Prior to 9/11, the government via the FAA was in charge of airline security, and what Schneier is suggesting is exactly how we arrived -- ignoring the reason(s) for the attacks themselves -- at 9/11 in the first place.

Before addressing Schneier's claim that putting the airlines in charge of airport security doesn't make sense, let's start with why his own solution doesn't make sense. First, there is the empirical evidence. As I just pointed out, 9/11 happened on the government's watch. While I agree that airline security should be rolled back to pre-9/11 levels, putting/leaving the government in charge of it is ludicrous, and the reason for that is that the government's interests do not align with that of the traveling public. Ostensibly, both care about flight safety. But in reality, as Schneier himself points out relentlessly, the TSA fails to provide this on any level. Just last month, a Vanity Fair writer explained how Schneier helped him circumvent TSA security to meet Schneier at the gate when his flight arrived. Then there's my own personal experience: after leaving the screening area (without being screened), the TSA demanded that I return because they feared that I may have an explosive device on my person. Why would they usher me back to the most crowed area of the airport if they feared that I had explosives? In reality, the government's interest(s) lie in an ever increasing role in security. This provides, not an actual increase in security, but an ever increasing ability to funnel money to favored contractors and further ratchet up the police state apparatus for the same reason.

The other reason that having the government in charge of airline security doesn't make sense is the same reason that letting the airlines manage their own security does: the profit and loss test. The basic idea is that when a business produces a product that consumers want at a cost that is less than what consumers are willing to pay, then the business profits. If any of these conditions are not met, the business suffers a loss. If the business does not change, then it goes out of business, government intervention notwithstanding.

Let's apply this test to the government's handling of airline security. It is producing a product that consumers want, namely, security. It is producing it at a cost of approximately $8.8 billion per year according to the federal government's 2011 budget. But this is where the profit and loss test ends for the TSA or any government entity. The profit and loss test requires that consumers of a product voluntarily pay or not pay for it. The government is funded via compulsory taxation. Therefore, the government need not concern itself with whether or not it is producing a product that people want or, more importantly, in a way that they want. That the government acts in exactly this way is borne out by reality. The TSA's budget during its first full year of funding in 2003 was $4.8 billion. It's current budget, only 8 years on, is a near 100% increase from that initial budget. This comes despite repeated TSA bungles including sleeping on the job, physically harassing passengers, allowing criminal activity to bypass security, stealing from passengers... the list goes on and on. If the TSA was a private corporation, consumers would have put it out of business almost 10 years ago. Instead, its costs are higher than ever and rising with no end in sight. In fact, the TSA's only measurable goal is total security, something that requires an absolute police state. Despite the desire on the part of the traveling public for total security, I'd wager that none would actually want to pay for it in terms of money or liberty required to implement said police state.

Now we can return to Schneier's claim that putting airline security in the hands of the airlines makes no sense. He believes this because he thinks that the airlines' focus will be on passenger service instead of security. Somebody didn't think through his rationale, completely. Tsk, tsk. Security is part and parcel of the service provided by the airlines. No passenger is going to be concerned about a glass of soda and a bag of peanuts or that he didn't get a blanket and a fluffy pillow if his plane is commandeered or blown up by a terrorist. Not only that, but the loss of a plane costs an airline hugely. There is of course the capital loss of the plane and the fuel, but more than that, if the airline wants to stay in business it's not only going to have to beef up its security, but it is going to have to figure out how to prove to passengers that it had changed its ways so that they'd be willing to fly again. We see then, that the airlines' interests, unlike the government's, align perfectly with the traveling public. In addition, airlines carry insurance for their operations. This means that airlines want their operations to be safe and secure because they don't want their premiums to rise in the event of an accident, and the airlines' insurance companies have every incentive to pressure the airlines to keep their operations safe and secure lest the insurance company have to pay out a multi-million, possibly billion, dollar claim.

"We can't trust the airlines", I hear you scream. "They're greedy capitalists!" Indeed they are, and that's exactly why the system would work. The airlines, unlike the government, cannot just take consumers' money to fund their operations. They must induce consumers to voluntarily give money to them. Thus, the airlines are subject to the profit and loss test described earlier. If the airlines provide too little security, passengers won't be willing to fly. The airlines will have saved some money by skimping on security, but the lack of income will ultimately result in losses. If they provide too much security, either the costs will drive ticket prices to a level that consumers are unwilling to pay, or consumers will find alternate means of travel because they find the security required by the airlines too onerous. In either event, the airlines will again find themselves losing money. In order to make money, the airlines will have to provide enough security to satisfy their passengers' desire for safety and their insurance companies' risk tolerance while not imposing so much security that passengers seek other airlines or other modes of travel entirely to avoid the costs and hassles.

Astonishingly, a self-correcting and self-policing system like this hasn't taken hold. Part of the reason for this is human nature. Humans have demonstrated a surprising inability to correlate events with the likelihood of their occurrence. For example, very few people are concerned about choking to death on their own vomit. However, it turns out that one is 9 times more likely to die by this method than via an act of terrorism. This is a topic that Bruce Schneier has also written about repeatedly. Because of this, people always demand ever more security in the event of some kind of accident or attack. Normally, the costs of these demands would temper them somewhat, but this doesn't happen because of government involvement. This is the other reason that a free market system has not taken hold: the government provides moral hazard. The airlines prefer that the government be involved because by using government provided security and/or standards, responsibility for security failures falls on the government, not the airlines. When something tragic occurs, the airlines can point to the government as the failure. Insurance companies are likewise not terribly worried about having to pay airline claims because the government has proven willing to bail them out. Even consumers are unwitting accomplices in this system because the costs of security have been separated from the cost of a ticket. Instead, these costs are (or would normally be) imposed as taxes, but even if one went looking for them, they would be difficult to find as the government has taken to inflating the currency in order to finance its operations. The increased costs of security are found in the rising prices of everyday items like milk, rent, electricity, and gasoline.

The government's involvement in airline security is not only an abject failure but an impediment to allowing a free(d) market to discover what the people really want when it comes to airline security. Bruce Schneier is a smart guy, and he's one of the TSA's harshest critics. He's written extensively about security and the trade-offs made in its name; he's no stranger to economics, especially when it comes to security. In light of this, I can only conclude from his desire to keep the government involved in airline security that he secretly loves the TSA.

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.

Just... hold on a second

I came across a number of weird/wacky news stories this morning, and since I didn't really feel like writing very much, I was going to just post a few links with some commentary to accompany them. Then a friend of mine posted a link to an opinion piece entitled "Just Stop" over on the Mesa Democratic Club's website. Well, I loves me some politics, so I went over to read it. The article started out well enough (read: I agreed with it), but then it lost me. Since this friend of mine and I have agreed not to discuss politics over our social network of choice, I decided to write this post.

The article starts out pointing out that Sarah Palin is not a "political outsider", that the Tea Party is not an independent group, and that John McCain no longer has any discernible political positions outside of whatever it takes to get elected. These are all excellent points with which I could not agree more. It's at this point that our respective positions diverge.

Stop pretending that the deficit we’re all facing is the fault of President Obama and the Democratic Congress. During the Bush administration, we went from a surplus to a massive deficit, largely thanks to two wars that were never (until Obama) added to the federal budget—wars, in other words, fought entirely on credit. We compounded the problem with tax cuts that largely benefited the wealthy, and a huge Medicare increase, and all those were also on credit. When the economy tanked in fall 2008, Bush quickly pushed through the TARP bailout, adding to the deficit (but pulling the economy back from the cliff).

President Obama is not entirely responsible for the deficit. He is quickly adding to it, though. Yes, Obama added the wars to the federal budget, but that does not change the fact that they (along with the much of the rest of the budget) are still paid for on credit. And while Bush may have pulled the economy back from the cliff, he did not change it's direction; it is still headed that way under Obama.

Stop pretending that the near-ruinous economic crash that we’re still reeling from was Obama’s fault, too. The root causes stretch back decades, to a continued process of deregulating financial institutions, allowing them ever more leeway to prey on the vulnerable, to sell mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, and to manipulate financial products that were ultimately guaranteed to fall apart.

And stop pretending that Obama and the current Congress should have been able to fix the two above problems in 18 months, when it took eight years to create the first one and literally decades of foxes guarding financial henhouses to create the second.

Again, the author is correct that the economic crash was not caused by Obama, and that it is unrealistic to think that the government would be able to fix it (I would argue, in any amount of time). The author implicitly places the blame on the private sector, however, when he talks about mortgages and financial products. Those mortgages that people couldn't afford were promoted and backed by the government in the form of Fannie and Freddie and FHA and VA loans. Obama has continued this process with the homebuyer tax credit and the HAFA and HAMP programs. For non-mortgage related financial instruments, look no further than the Federal Reserve serving as the "lender of last resort". Even though the Fed is nominally a private entity, it's ludicrous to think that they really are, and when banks get into trouble, the Fed bails them out via the power of "printing" money, a power that Congress abdicated to it long ago.

Stop pretending that saying “No” is the same as governing. We pay our legislators good money to go to Washington and make difficult decisions that keep the country moving. By voting “No” on every bill, by refusing to negotiate in good faith, by deciding that short-term political advantage was more important than the everyday lives of Americans, the Republicans set back our recovery, made needed reforms fall short, and put our lives and our economy at unnecessary risk.

I hate the idea that governing means "doing something". Saying "no" is a legitimate act, one in which all politicians engage because nobody can agree on the exact role of government. In this way, saying "no" is doing something. That is not to say that Republicans are not being obstructionist for political gains; however, the author would be better advised to point out Republican hypocrisy on things like expanding Medicare under Bush but railing against the PPACA, now.

Stop pretending that the economy is magic. You can’t continue to give millionaires and billionaires huge tax cuts, make tiny, cosmetic cuts at the margins of things, and still reduce the deficit. You can’t create jobs without spending money. Tax cuts for millionaires and up are not stimulative because those people don’t spend the money from the cut—it’s not like you’re giving them a wad of cash and sending them to the store. When you put an unemployed person to work or give a tax cut to a poor or middle class family, that’s exactly what it’s like—they go buy things they need and those dollars flow through the economy, creating jobs and wealth everywhere they go.

I'm not sure anyone is pretending that the economy is magic; however it is far more complex than most imagine. Not only that, but the government via regulation or the Fed often arbitrarily moves the market in ways that could only be predicted by magic. The author is correct that tax cuts (to anyone) won't balance the budget. He is mistaken, though, if he thinks that tax increases will do the job, either. Federal spending is out of control, and the only way to save this country's economy, over the long term, is to start cutting Social Security, Medicare, the military, everything.

And stop talking about stimulus. It's too bad that people believe that Keynesian economics preaches deficit spending. Keynes, mistaken as I believe his theories to be, spoke of stimulative spending out of savings. Yes, it takes money to create jobs, but it also takes money to keep those jobs. To think that the government (or anyone) can throw a one-time bucket of cash at the economy to "unstick" it is ridiculous. It will only lead to the government having to throw ever increasing amounts of money at the economy. It's amazing to me that most people agree that easy credit was the proximate cause of the economic conditions in which we all now live and at the same time believe that if the government just borrows more from China that that will fix the problem. We will end up back in this very situation again, only it will be much, much worse.

The things that Pelosi and Reid have supported these past 18 months have been programs that will help America move into the 21st century. Health care reform, in spite of great efforts at pretending, is not a “government takeover” of health care—it institutionalizes, in law, the presence of the health insurance industry, and gives that industry millions of new clients.

Whoa! Stop right there! Did you catch that? The government, under Democratic control, via the coercion of law, just delivered millions of customers to the health insurance industry. It's not just the Republicans that are in bed with big business.

It will, in the long run, reduce the deficit and create a healthier nation, by allowing more people to get preventive care and long-term care and keeping the sick and impoverished from turning to emergency rooms when there’s a crisis.

This entire problem was created by the government in the first place, though.

Stop pretending that “lifelong politician” is some kind of curse. Most people who hold public office do so because they genuinely want to help people, they genuinely want to make government responsive to the needs of their fellow Americans, and they’re willing to put themselves on the line every few years to get the chance to do so.

Here's a thought experiment: If "most" people who hold public office genuinely want to help people and make government better, why hasn't it happened?

Stop pretending that “big government” is the problem. When’s the last time you were seriously inconvenienced or injured by something that big government did?

Gay rights, TSA body scanners, highway checkpoints, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretaps, extra-judicial assassinations, indefinite detentions, inflation, etc. Don't tell me that (some of) these don't affect me. When one person's rights are trampled, everybody's are, and that's just at the federal level. Not only that, but all of this ignores the fact that every year I have to fill out a number of forms figuring out, on the government's behalf, how much money they want from me, and then send them that amount under the threat of force if I either figure wrong or don't send the right amount.

Stop pretending that anybody’s going to come and take your guns away. [...] There’s no truth to it, there’s never been any truth to it, and if you actually believe it, you just might be so simple-minded that you shouldn’t be trusted with a firearm.

They may not be trying to take them away, per se, but the laws (at least in CA) are clearly not conducive to gun purchases or ownership. One must wait 10 days to purchase any gun, even if one already owns one or one hundred of them. AB962, once in effect, will make the mail-ordering of handgun ammunition illegal and require fingerprints be taken of law-abiding citizens when they do purchase ammunition. It is illegal to actually carry one's gun in a manner that would actually allow it to be used effectively in self-defense, and many counties around the state deny CCW applications to all but the wealthy and connected.

Perhaps the author can explain to me why the BATFE and the state of CA keep records of gun sales if not to retain the possibility of rounding up guns in the future. I realize that that has a bit of a "tin foil hat" sound to it, but it is a legitimate question.

The author goes off the rails at this point with a lot of name calling. He tries to bring it home at the end, though.

Finally, stop pretending that voting doesn’t matter, and don’t let the 2010 Class of Crazy take office and convince you otherwise.

A variation on the previous thought experiment I proposed is apropos here: If voting mattered, why is government the way that it is? Perhaps it's because we've gotten the very government for which we voted. Voting doesn't matter and arguably does more harm than good. A voter is statistically more likely to be killed going to or coming from his/her polling place than to cast the deciding vote in an election. I refer the reader my previous posts on voting and the nature of government.

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.