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Observations on the Dobbs Decision

27 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by in Abortion, Federalism, Uncategorized

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The reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was not short on outrageous assertions and even outright lies about the legal issues at stake. I wrote the article below a few weeks after the unfortunate leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft decision. But first, with the actual decision in hand, here are a few additional observations:

  • The most vocal pro-abortionists have a remarkably weak grip on the legal issues at play. Or do they take their supporters for idiots? More informed pro-choice advocates should be embarrassed.
  • There is not and never was an explicit right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution. This was a “right” conjured entirely by the judiciary.
  • Abortion has not been banned nationwide. The decision leaves the matter to state legislatures (and voters) and subsequent court challenges, which are sure to come. This is the very essence of federalism.
  • The decision has no implication for travel across state lines to obtain an abortion.
  • Stare decisis does not mean that the Court must always uphold precedent. Certainly not if, in the view of the Court, the precedent is egregiously bad. Precedents have been reversed in the past in a variety of contexts.
  • None of the justices “lied” to anyone in the Senate during pre-confirmation interviews. A prospective justice cannot and should not pronounce how they would rule on a specific issue, particularly outside the context of a specific case and its facts. Respecting precedent does not mean that precedent must be the only consideration.
  • The Supreme Court is independent and “undemocratic” by design. It cannot make law, as it did in Roe. Instead, it serves as a check on constitutional abuses by the other branches of government. In doing so, it must be insulated from the whims of popular opinion.
  • The Court agrees that the legality of abortion should never have been decided by “nine unelected men in robes”!
  • The Court rejected the claim that had been relied upon in Roe v. Wade, namely that the Fourteenth Amendment due process right to privacy covers the decision to abort a child. Ruth Bader Ginsberg also rejected that claim (see below), as have many other legal scholars on both sides of the debate. No, Ruth didn’t send you!
  • Roe relied on so-called “substantive due process”, which in the past has been used by the Court to extend the concept of due process under the law to protection of certain unenumerated (and contested) “rights”. Justice Thomas noted in his separate concurrence that a guarantee of “process” cannot itself establish a substantive right.
  • There is a possibility of federal legislation now, or after January with the new Congress, but an outright federal ban is unlikely, especially one without exceptions or one applicable at all stages of pregnancy.
  • Future court challenges to state or federal abortion laws are likely to be based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which Ginsberg felt was the correct basis on which to establish a woman’s “right” to abort a child.
  • The U.S. Constitution protects unenumerated rights from infringement by the federal government, but it does not apply to actions taken by states because the Ninth Amendment has never been “incorporated” as applicable to infringements by state governments. Whether it should be incorporated is another matter.
  • Treating abortion as an unenumerated right of a woman is questionable at best because an unborn child is vested with competing rights. We may disagree on the stages at which vesting occur, but if you don’t believe it occurs, you are an extreme outlier (see below).
  • A pregnant woman cannot have complete bodily autonomy because she has another person’s life on board.
  • No women’s lives are threatened by the Dobbs decision. Even states with so-called “trigger laws” that now ban abortion have emergency exceptions for the life of the mother.
  • Expansive claims conflating a potential change in a woman’s life with “loss of life” are grotesque when it is almost always the child’s life at stake.
  • Pro-abortionists who give specific reference to family members and acquaintances born with disabilities, seemingly as a rationale for their position, are on dangerous ground. Their’s is a grotesque expression of regret for the birth of those individuals. It borders on suggesting that babies with Downs Syndrome should be murdered — post-birth! However, this is in keeping with the eugenicistic roots of abortion advocacy (see below).
  • The decision has no implication for the legality of contraceptives.
  • Democrats and Planned Parenthood have seemingly resisted efforts to legalize over-the-counter contraception. They should get on-board asap.
  • Post-Dobbs, abortion law in the U.S. is most assuredly not an outlier among developed nations. See the handy comparison with nations in the EU above.
  • Abortion proponents are having difficulty controlling their brethren’s use of the “N-word”, particularly when targeted at Justice Thomas. And apparently, advocating for the assassination of Thomas has been normalized among pro-abortionists.
  • The violence and histrionics of certain pro-arbortionists will not get them much sympathy. Jane’s Revenge terrorism is a good way to ruin their cause.
  • In a bit of great news, all sides now seem to agree that pregnancy and abortion are women’s issues. Breakthrough moment!

Here is the earlier post I mentioned above:

DOBBS, ROE, AND THE FREAKOUT OVER FEDERALISM

The leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has created uproars on several fronts. The opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, represented a 5-4 majority at the time of its writing, but it is a draft opinion, and the substance and the positions of other justices might change before a final decision is handed down by the Court by the end of June. The draft would essentially uphold a Mississippi law restricting abortions after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. This would overturn the Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) decisions. The former established that states could regulate abortion only beyond a certain stage of pregnancy (originally the first trimester), while the latter allowed states to regulate once a pregnancy reached the stage of fetal viability. While 24 weeks is often cited as the lower limit of viability, it is considered to be as early as 20 weeks by the World Health Organization, an estimate that could decline with future advances in prenatal and neonatal care (such as artificial wombs). In any case, viability would no longer be the standard if the draft opinion stands. Indeed, it would once again be up to states as to how they wish to regulate abortion.

Here is an update on where things stood on May 11th. Reportedly, the 5-4 majority still stood, and no other draft opinions existed in the case at that time. No news since.

Due Process and Privacy Rights

Was Roe v. Wade a good legal decision? Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not hold the opinion in high regard as a matter of the jurisprudence. Apparently, she felt that the Court should have simply struck down the restrictive Texas law in question without imposing a set of rules, which amounted to an aggressive infringement on the legislative function and the evolution of law, and case law, at the state level. Her words were:

“Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable. The most prominent example in recent decades is Roe v. Wade.”

She also felt the Court should not have leaned on the Due Process Clause of Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the denial of “life, liberty or property, without due process of law”. And she believed that relying on due process and the privacy rights of a woman and her physician made Roe vulnerable to challenge. She was probably right.

Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar, who is pro-choice, also believes the Roe decision was misguided and calls its reliance on due process “textual gibberish”. The objection to substantive due process is based on the absence of any principle establishing which “rights” not found explicitly in the Bill of Rights are valid, and which are not.

Equal Protection

In fact, Amar defends Justice Alito’s draft opinion and believes, as Ginsberg did, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a better defense of abortion rights. The contention is that unless a woman possesses the right to terminate a pregnancy, she is not on an equal footing with similarly situated men in terms of self-determination and life opportunities. Of course, none of this weighs the interests of the unborn child.

Establishment Clause

Josh Blackman has an interesting series of comments about whether the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment may be a valid defense of abortion rights. That seemingly preposterous claim relies on abortion as a right, in some cases, protected by the free exercise of religion. As Blackman sums up in his sixth point:

“… abortion rights groups should be careful what they wish for. If the Court recognizes a Free Exercise right to perform or receive an abortion, then conservatives can cook up even more aggressive religious liberty strategies. I’ll bring the bagels for the next meeting of the Temple of Automatic Weapons.”

Eugene Volokh makes several interesting points on attempts to use the Establishment Clause “to obtain exemptions from generally applicable laws”. A separate, misguided take at the Establishment Clause is that a law must be unconstitutional if it was based on religious beliefs. Volokh handily disposes of that contention here.

Judicially-Prescribed Rights vs. Constitutional Rights

Blackman has written that the Alito draft is a tour de force, addressing many constitutional principles and concerns expressed by other justices. In another post, Blackman explains a very basic rationale for a decision to overturn Roe. It is related to the objections expressed by Ginsberg and Amar, and to the many “lamentations” expressed in the Court’s abortion opinions over the years since Roe. Namely, that rule and establishment of new rights by court decision was not a mechanism intended by the framers of the Constitution, but self-government and federalist principles were:

“It is a mistake to argue that Dobbs extinguishes a right, without also acknowledging that the decision would restore another right. Overruling Roe would extinguish a judicially-created right to abortion, but it would restore a very different right: the right of the people to govern themselves.”

Personhood

Of course, none of these points are really germane to the crux of the pro-life argument to which I subscribe. However, both Roe and Casey acknowledge the state’s interest in protecting the fetus beyond some point in a pregnancy. The closer to term, the greater the interest. The implication is that a fetus gradually takes on degrees of “personhood” through the course of gestation, and that rights attach to that nascent individual at some point. Both Roe and Casey, by allowing states to regulate abortion beyond some point, offer recognition that the closer an abortion occurs to full term, the stronger the case that it may be prohibited.

The law in most European nations carries the same implication, and if anything leans more heavily in favor of fetal rights than Roe. Furthermore, there are 38 states with fetal homicide laws, which treat the fetus as a person in the case of a murder of a pregnant woman. In 29 of those states, the law applies at the earliest stages of pregnancy. This suggests that in most states, sentiments may weigh in favor of treating the fetus as a person imbued with constitutional rights.

In the end, this is not an exclusively religious argument, as the pro-abortion Left always suggests. For me, it’s purely an ethical one. At what point beyond conception are pro-abortion activists willing to concede that a human life is at stake? Apparently a heartbeat is not enough to convince them. Neither does the appearance of small fingers and toes. Nor the ability to feel pain. These are all things that happen before the child is “viable”. But even viability is not enough for some of the more radical abortion activists, who are proposing choice right up to the moment of birth. Incredibly, and despite the real limitations imposed on mid- or late-term abortions in many states (in line with Roe and Casey), some pro-choice advocates are now acting as if overturning these cases causes women to lose such an unfettered right!

Practical Matters

Anyone can obtain a variety of birth control alternatives without a prescription (and often for free). This includes emergency contraception, or the “morning after pill”. Granted, sometimes birth control measures fail, which places the prospective mother (and perhaps an involved or conscientious father) in a difficult position. Nevertheless, careful use of birth control would minimize the abortion problem and obviate much of the debate, but people are often too impulsive or careless about sex.

Late term abortions are a fairly small percentage of all abortions. The CDC reported that in 2018, 50,000 (~8%) abortions occurred after the first trimester (14+ weeks), and 6,200 (1%) took place at or beyond the point of theoretical viability (21+ weeks). This study found that of abortions at 20+ weeks, mothers tended to be younger (20 -24), discovered their pregnancies somewhat later, faced logistical and financial delays in arranging the abortion, or faced other challenging life circumstances. However, the researchers rebut a common rationale for late-term abortion when they say:

“… most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”

Eugenics and Classism

Pregnancies among black women are terminated at a disproportionately high rate. That’s consistent with the original, eugenicistic and racist goals of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. This is an outcome to top all disparate impacts. I have witnessed pro-abortion activists counter that these aborted lives would have been miserable, impoverished, and without opportunity — essentially not worth living — but these are value judgements of the most monstrous kind. I’ve also heard the pathetic argument that fiscal conservatives should be happy that abortions will reduce spending on aid programs. Of course, the plight of the would-be mother is also emphasized by pro-abortion advocates, but we should not be so eager to accept the tradeoff here: abortion gets the mother is off the hook, but a child’s life is at stake. No matter the odds of success, human beings are all endowed with potential and opportunity, and it’s not necessary to be economically secure to be happy or pursue dreams.

It’s easy to be pessimistic that public policy can ever mitigate the economic burden on impoverished women who bring unexpected or unwanted pregnancies to term, or to brighten the economic future of their children. After all, over the decades since the Great Society program was conceived, the welfare state has proven no better than a dependency treadmill. Family structure has been decimated by those programs and the destructive consequences of the failed (but ongoing) war on drugs. Likewise, public education is a disaster. However, there are also alternatives such as adoption, and there are many private individuals and organizations working to encourage prospective mothers and ease those burdens.

The Leak

The leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs is unfortunate as it compromises the ongoing integrity of the Court’s internal debates and proceedings. In addition to this institutional damage, the impropriety of staging protests outside the homes of justices and inside places of worship should be roundly condemned by people with respect for judicial integrity, privacy and free exercise. These protests are partly attempts to intimidate, and they have even been accompanied by threats of violence. The belligerent posture of these activists is unconscionable.

Long Live Federalism

Again, the Court’s final decision in Dobbs might not be the opinion in the leaked draft. However, if the Court does indeed overturn Roe, it would not outlaw abortion. Rather, it would allow voters in each state to have a voice in aligning the law with public sentiment. Some states will have more restrictive abortion laws than others, but even the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs allows abortion up through week 15, almost two weeks longer than the original Roe limitation.

The country is still deeply divided on the issue of abortion. Fundamentally, a broader acceptance of the life-and-death reality of abortion would help bring more consensus on the issue. One theory I have is that many who oppose overturning Roe would simply rather not think about that reality. In their minds, Roe keeps abortion compartmentalized, safely walled off from conscience and sometimes even spiritual convictions. They rationalize Roe based on their inability to observe the person whose life is at stake, and they accept justifications that minimize the value of that life.

A single rule imposed by the Court has not and will not resolve these differences. Indeed, Roe and Casey were failed acts of judicial activism that should be reversed. While bad legislation is regrettable, it is always subject to review and challenge by the people. In a federalist system, a bad law is contained like a single experimental treatment in a large trial with multiple arms. However, in this case, unlike a trial with random selection of subjects, one treatment group may differ from others in important respects, and the objective is not to identify one single-best solution, but different solutions that work best for different groups. That is a closer approximation to real self-government than federal legislation and especially one-size-fits-all Court rule-making.

A Fiscal Real-Bills Doctrine? No Such Thing As Painless Inflation Tax

14 Tuesday Jun 2022

Posted by in Fiscal policy, Inflation, Uncategorized

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A remarkable proposal made recently by Representative Ro Khanna (D -CA) would have the Biden Administration impose price controls, which would be bad enough. Khanna also would like the federal government to cover the inflation losses incurred by Americans by having it directly purchase certain goods and services and resell them “cheap” to consumers. In fairness, Khanna says the government should attempt to take advantage of dips in prices for oil, food commodities, and perhaps other necessities, which of course would limit or reverse downward price changes. When asked about Khanna’s proposal, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden’s Transportation Secretary, replied that there were great ideas coming out of Congress and the Administration should consider them. Anyway, the idea is so bad that it deserves a more thorough examination.

Central Planners Have No Clothes

First, such a program would represent a massive expansion in the scope of government. It would also present ample opportunities for graft and cronyism, as federal dollars filter through the administrative layers necessary to manage the purchases and distribution of goods. Furthermore, price and quantity would then be shaded by a heavy political component, often taking precedence over real demand and cost considerations. And that’s beyond the crippling “knowledge problem” that plagues all efforts at central planning.

One of the most destructive aspects of allowing government to absorb a greater share of total spending is that government is not invested with the same budgetary discipline as private buyers. Take no comfort in the notion that the government might prove expert at timing these purchases to leverage price dips. Remember that government always spends “other people’s money”, whether it comes from tax proceeds, lenders, or the printing press (and hence future consumers, who have absolutely no agency in the matter). Hence, price incentives take on less urgency, while political incentives gain prominence. The loss of price sensitivity means that government expenditures are likely to inflate more readily than private expenditures. This is all the more critical at a time when inflation is becoming embedded in expectations and pricing decisions. Khanna thus proposes an inflation “solution” that puts less price-sensitive bureaucrats in charge of actual purchases. That’s a prescription for failure.

If anyone in Biden’s White House is seriously considering a program of this kind, and let’s hope they’re not, they should at least be aware that direct subsidies for the purchase of key goods would be far more efficient. It’s also possible to hedge the risk of future price increases on commodities markets, perhaps simply distributing hedging gains to consumers when they pay off. However, having the federal government participate as a major player in commodities options and futures is probably not on the table at this point … and I shudder to think of it, but it might be more efficient than Khanna’s vision.

A Fiscal Real Bills Doctrine

Khanna’s program would almost surely cause inflation to accelerate. Inflation itself a form of taxation imposed by profligate governments, though it’s an inefficient tax since it creates greater uncertainty. Higher prices deflate the real value of most government debt (borrowed from the public), assets fixed in nominal value, and incomes. Read on, but this program would have the government pay your inflation tax for you by inflating some more. Does this sound like a vicious circle?

Khanna’s concept of inflation-relief is a fiscal reimagining of a long-discredited monetary theory called the “Real Bills Doctrine”. According to this doctrine, rising prices and costs necessitate additional money creation so that businesses have the liquidity to pay the bills associated with ongoing productive efforts. The “real” part is a reference to the link between business expenses and actual production, despite the fact that those bills are expressed in nominal terms. The result of this policy is a cycle of ever-higher inflation, as ever-more money is printed. This was the policy utilized by the Reichsbank in Weimar Germany during its hyperinflation of 1922-23. It’s really quite astonishing that anyone ever thought such a policy was helpful!

In Khanna’s version of the doctrine, the government spends to relieve cost pressure faced by consumers, so the rationale has nothing to do with productive effort.

Financing and the Central Bank Response

It’s reasonable to ask how these outlays would be financed. In all likelihood, the U.S. Treasury would borrow the funds at interest rates now at 10-15 year highs, which have risen in part to compensate investors for higher inflation.

My bet is that Khanna imagines the Fed would simply “print” money (i.e., buy the new government debt floated by the Treasury to pay for the program). This is the prescription of so-called Modern Monetary Theory, whose adherents have either forgotten or have never learned that money growth and inflation is a costly and regressive form of taxation.

Most economists would say the response of the Federal Reserve to this fiscal stimulus would bear on whether it really ignites additional inflationary pressure. Of course, rather than borrowing, Congress could always vote to levy higher taxes on the public in order to pay the public’s inflation tax burden! But then what’s the point? Well, taxing at least has the virtue of not fueling still higher inflation, and the Fed would not have a role to play.

But if the government simply borrows instead, it adds to the already bloated supply of government debt held by the public. This borrowing is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates, and the federal government’s mounting interest expense requires more financing. What then might the Fed do?

The Fed is an independent, quasi-government entity, so it would not have to accommodate the additional spending by printing money (buying the new Treasury debt). Either way, investors are increasingly skeptical that the growing debt burden will ever be reversed via future surpluses. The fiscal theory of the price level holds that something must reduce the real value of government debt (in order to satisfy the long-term fiscal budget constraint). That “something” is a higher price level. This position is not universally accepted, and some would contend that if the Fed simply set a nominal GDP growth target and stuck to it, accelerating inflation would not have to follow from Khanna’s policy. The same if the Fed could stick to a symmetric average inflation target, but they certainly haven’t been up to that task. Hoping the Fed would fully assert its independence in a fiscal hurricane is probably wishful thinking.

Conclusion

There are no choke points in the supply chain for bad ideas on the left wing of the Democratic Party, and they are dominating party centrists in terms of messaging. The answer, it seems, is always more government. High inflation is very costly, but the best policy is to rein it in, and that requires budgetary and monetary discipline. Attempts to make high inflation “painless” are misguided in the first instance because they short-circuit consumer price responses and substitution, which help restrain prices. Second, the presumption that an inflation tax can be “painless” is an invitation to fiscal debauchery. Third, expansive government brings out hoards of rent seekers instigating corruption and waste. Finally, mounting public debt is unlikely to be offset by future surpluses, and that is the ultimate admission of Modern Monetary Theory. A fiscal real bills doctrine would be an additional expression of this lunacy. To suggest otherwise is either sheer stupidity or an exercise in gaslighting. You can’t inflate away the pain of an inflation tax.

Dobbs, Roe, and the Freakout Over Federalism

25 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by in Abortion, Federalism, Uncategorized

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The leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has created uproars on several fronts. The opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, represented a 5-4 majority at the time of its writing, but it is a draft opinion, and the substance and the positions of other justices might change before a final decision is handed down by the Court by the end of June. The draft would essentially uphold a Mississippi law restricting abortions after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. This would overturn the Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) decisions. The former established that states could regulate abortion only beyond a certain stage of pregnancy (originally the first trimester), while the latter allowed states to regulate once a pregnancy reached the stage of fetal viability. While 24 weeks is often cited as the lower limit of viability, it is considered to be as early as 20 weeks by the World Health Organization, an estimate that could decline with future advances in prenatal and neonatal care (such as artificial wombs). In any case, viability would no longer be the standard if the draft opinion stands. Indeed, it would once again be up to states as to how they wish to regulate abortion.

Here is an update on where things stood on May 11th. Reportedly, the 5-4 majority still stood, and no other draft opinions existed in the case at that time. No news since.

Due Process and Privacy Rights

Was Roe v. Wade a good legal decision? Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not hold the opinion in high regard as a matter of the jurisprudence. Apparently, she felt that the Court should have simply struck down the restrictive Texas law in question without imposing a set of rules, which amounted to an aggressive infringement on the legislative function and the evolution of law, and case law, at the state level. Her words were:

“Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable. The most prominent example in recent decades is Roe v. Wade.”

She also felt the Court should not have leaned on the Due Process Clause of Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the denial of “life, liberty or property, without due process of law”. And she believed that relying on due process and the privacy rights of a woman and her physician made Roe vulnerable to challenge. She was probably right.

Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar, who is pro-choice, also believes the Roe decision was misguided and calls its reliance on due process “textual gibberish”. The objection to substantive due process is based on the absence of any principle establishing which “rights” not found explicitly in the Bill of Rights are valid, and which are not.

Equal Protection

In fact, Amar defends Justice Alito’s draft opinion and believes, as Ginsberg did, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a better defense of abortion rights. The contention is that unless a woman possesses the right to terminate a pregnancy, she is not on an equal footing with similarly situated men in terms of self-determination and life opportunities. Of course, none of this weighs the interests of the unborn child.

Establishment Clause

Josh Blackman has an interesting series of comments about whether the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment may be a valid defense of abortion rights. That seemingly preposterous claim relies on abortion as a right, in some cases, protected by the free exercise of religion. As Blackman sums up in his sixth point:

“… abortion rights groups should be careful what they wish for. If the Court recognizes a Free Exercise right to perform or receive an abortion, then conservatives can cook up even more aggressive religious liberty strategies. I’ll bring the bagels for the next meeting of the Temple of Automatic Weapons.”

Eugene Volokh makes several interesting points on attempts to use the Establishment Clause “to obtain exemptions from generally applicable laws”. A separate, misguided take at the Establishment Clause is that a law must be unconstitutional if it was based on religious beliefs. Volokh handily disposes of that contention here.

Judicially-Prescribed Rights vs. Constitutional Rights

Blackman has written that the Alito draft is a tour de force, addressing many constitutional principles and concerns expressed by other justices. In another post, Blackman explains a very basic rationale for a decision to overturn Roe. It is related to the objections expressed by Ginsberg and Amar, and to the many “lamentations” expressed in the Court’s abortion opinions over the years since Roe. Namely, that rule and establishment of new rights by court decision was not a mechanism intended by the framers of the Constitution, but self-government and federalist principles were:

“It is a mistake to argue that Dobbs extinguishes a right, without also acknowledging that the decision would restore another right. Overruling Roe would extinguish a judicially-created right to abortion, but it would restore a very different right: the right of the people to govern themselves.”

Personhood

Of course, none of these points are really germane to the crux of the pro-life argument to which I subscribe. However, both Roe and Casey acknowledge the state’s interest in protecting the fetus beyond some point in a pregnancy. The closer to term, the greater the interest. The implication is that a fetus gradually takes on degrees of “personhood” through the course of gestation, and that rights attach to that nascent individual at some point. Both Roe and Casey, by allowing states to regulate abortion beyond some point, offer recognition that the closer an abortion occurs to full term, the stronger the case that it may be prohibited.

The law in most European nations carries the same implication, and if anything leans more heavily in favor of fetal rights than Roe. Furthermore, there are 38 states with fetal homicide laws, which treat the fetus as a person in the case of a murder of a pregnant woman. In 29 of those states, the law applies at the earliest stages of pregnancy. This suggests that in most states, sentiments may weigh in favor of treating the fetus as a person imbued with constitutional rights.

In the end, this is not an exclusively religious argument, as the pro-abortion Left always suggests. For me, it’s purely an ethical one. At what point beyond conception are pro-abortion activists willing to concede that a human life is at stake? Apparently a heartbeat is not enough to convince them. Neither does the appearance of small fingers and toes. Nor the ability to feel pain. These are all things that happen before the child is “viable”. But even viability is not enough for some of the more radical abortion activists, who are proposing choice right up to the moment of birth. Incredibly, and despite the real limitations imposed on mid- or late-term abortions in many states (in line with Roe and Casey), some pro-choice advocates are now acting as if overturning these cases causes women to lose such an unfettered right!

Practical Matters

Anyone can obtain a variety of birth control alternatives without a prescription (and often for free). This includes emergency contraception, or the “morning after pill”. Granted, sometimes birth control measures fail, which places the prospective mother (and perhaps an involved or conscientious father) in a difficult position. Nevertheless, careful use of birth control would minimize the abortion problem and obviate much of the debate, but people are often too impulsive or careless about sex.

Late term abortions are a fairly small percentage of all abortions. The CDC reported that in 2018, 50,000 (~8%) abortions occurred after the first trimester (14+ weeks), and 6,200 (1%) took place at or beyond the point of theoretical viability (21+ weeks). This study found that of abortions at 20+ weeks, mothers tended to be younger (20 -24), discovered their pregnancies somewhat later, faced logistical and financial delays in arranging the abortion, or faced other challenging life circumstances. However, the researchers rebut a common rationale for late-term abortion when they say:

“… most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”

Eugenics and Classism

Pregnancies among black women are terminated at a disproportionately high rate. That’s consistent with the original, eugenicistic and racist goals of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. This is an outcome to top all disparate impacts. I have witnessed pro-abortion activists counter that these aborted lives would have been miserable, impoverished, and without opportunity — essentially not worth living — but these are value judgements of the most monstrous kind. I’ve also heard the pathetic argument that fiscal conservatives should be happy that abortions will reduce spending on aid programs. Of course, the plight of the would-be mother is also emphasized by pro-abortion advocates, but we should not be so eager to accept the tradeoff here: abortion gets the mother is off the hook, but a child’s life is at stake. No matter the odds of success, human beings are all endowed with potential and opportunity, and it’s not necessary to be economically secure to be happy or pursue dreams.

It’s easy to be pessimistic that public policy can ever mitigate the economic burden on impoverished women who bring unexpected or unwanted pregnancies to term, or to brighten the economic future of their children. After all, over the decades since the Great Society program was conceived, the welfare state has proven no better than a dependency treadmill. Family structure has been decimated by those programs and the destructive consequences of the failed (but ongoing) war on drugs. Likewise, public education is a disaster. However, there are also alternatives such as adoption, and there are many private individuals and organizations working to encourage prospective mothers and ease those burdens.

The Leak

The leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs is unfortunate as it compromises the ongoing integrity of the Court’s internal debates and proceedings. In addition to this institutional damage, the impropriety of staging protests outside the homes of justices and inside places of worship should be roundly condemned by people with respect for judicial integrity, privacy and free exercise. These protests are partly attempts to intimidate, and they have even been accompanied by threats of violence. The belligerent posture of these activists is unconscionable.

Long Live Federalism

Again, the Court’s final decision in Dobbs might not be the opinion in the leaked draft. However, if the Court does indeed overturn Roe, it would not outlaw abortion. Rather, it would allow voters in each state to have a voice in aligning the law with public sentiment. Some states will have more restrictive abortion laws than others, but even the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs allows abortion up through week 15, almost two weeks longer than the original Roe limitation.

The country is still deeply divided on the issue of abortion. Fundamentally, a broader acceptance of the life-and-death reality of abortion would help bring more consensus on the issue. One theory I have is that many who oppose overturning Roe would simply rather not think about that reality. In their minds, Roe keeps abortion compartmentalized, safely walled off from conscience and sometimes even spiritual convictions. They rationalize Roe based on their inability to observe the person whose life is at stake, and they accept justifications that minimize the value of that life.

A single rule imposed by the Court has not and will not resolve these differences. Indeed, Roe and Casey were failed acts of judicial activism that should be reversed. While bad legislation is regrettable, it is always subject to review and challenge by the people. In a federalist system, a bad law is contained like a single experimental treatment in a large trial with multiple arms. However, in this case, unlike a trial with random selection of subjects, one treatment group may differ from others in important respects, and the objective is not to identify one single-best solution, but different solutions that work best for different groups. That is a closer approximation to real self-government than federal legislation and especially one-size-fits-all Court rule-making.

On Quitting Facebook, One Year Later

25 Friday Feb 2022

Posted by in Censorship, Social Media, Uncategorized

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I’m very happy to be off Facebook, or “Meta” as it now calls itself. The platform has become, effectively, a propaganda arm of governments, and one that appears to be engaging in unconstitutional censorship. More on that below.

One year ago my profile dropped off of FB entirely. I had decided to quit in January 2021 after about 15 years. I downloaded everything from my profile and wrote a blog post called “On Quitting Facebook”. It was my last entry there, so that’s really when I quit, but it took a month before they completely deactivated me.

You have to resist the temptation to go back during that interim month or it starts all over again — a new interim period, that is — when you finally decide to get out. I knew immediately that I loved being free of it, so that part was easy. My feelings haven’t changed a bit.

F-R-Double E

I no longer have to put up with the propaganda that FB prioritizes nor the “demoted post” phenomenon. None of my posts had actually been blocked outright, but I knew “Facebook jail” was happening to users with increasing frequency, as well as post blocking and “red flags” authorized by politically-motivated FB “fact checkers”.

Free of FB, I no longer have to put up with various “frenemies” I’d somehow collected. And quitting FB allowed me to reclaim precious time I’d been wasting on an obsession that one would think avoidable: scrolling through my news feed, sometimes more than once a day, to view an assortment of photos of meals, puppies, and peoples’ lovely feet propped-up in “relax mode”, plus huge dollops of left-wing political and economic BS, often delivered with snark. But of course the lefty BS is almost everywhere in media.

There was one other disturbing anomoly on FB that became more frequent for me: friend requests from exceptionally gruesome-looking characters. I think they were fake requests, but I had tight security on my profile, so the source and motive is anyone’s guess. The increasing frequency led me to wonder whether someone had information about me, which my security settings should not have allowed. That would have meant it was partly an “inside job” on FB, perhaps designed to intimidate me in one way or another. I have no idea, but I don’t miss those requests.

So there’s a lot to like about quitting FB! It certainly brought a few disappointments and challenges. Unfortunately, I did lose touch with some good people. In what follows I elaborate on certain legal ramifications of FB’s poor conduct in hosting users both privately and within what’s purported to serve as a “public square”; the social media frustrations I’ve experienced since quitting; and my impressions of a few other platforms.

Government Censorship?

FB is a private company, so the usual libertarian position is that it can run its platform any way it wants. It is therefore no business of the government’s whether FB moderates content, bans certain users, or takes editorial positions. However, FB benefits from immunity to prosecution under Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was traditionally intended for common carriers like telephone companies. That means they can’t be held liable for anything a third party might say on their network. Say what you want on the phone, because liability-free carriers shouldn’t care. FB and other social media platforms receive this same protection. But should they?

While we can think of FB as a kind of modern public square, in some respects it looks more like a common carrier. By that I mean much of the communication that takes place on the platform is voluntary and between private contacts, or groups of “friends”. The voluntary nature of these connections is a key aspect of what Eugene Volokh calls the “hosting function”. No one is forced to look at what you post. Yet FB makes a habit of moderating the content of those posts and conversations and still receives immunity under Section 230.

In other respects, FB does resemble a public square. Content posted by one party can be shared by each contact with their own network of friends, and thus can “go viral”. But if FB moderates content, censors users, or takes political positions of its own via the “recommendation function” often exercised by social media platforms, then it is not acting purely as a public square. Indeed, in that case it is more like a publisher, which otherwise would not be immune from lawsuits.

The case against FB is even stronger than that, however. It has acted as a de facto agent of the government in several respects. A recent FOIA request has revealed a White House email showing:

“… Facebook, Merck, and the CDC Foundation, whose corporate partners includes Pfizer, have formed an alliance ‘to use social media and digital platforms to build confidence in and drive uptake of vaccines.’”

FB has also acted to delete user accounts at the behest of the U.S. and Israeli governments. And FB has partnered with a security firm called FireEye, which is funded by the CIA. There are other areas of “cooperation” between entities performing government-funded activities described at the last link.

The topic of social media giants censoring speech on behalf of the U.S. and other governments has been discussed by Vivek Ramiswamy, who notes the obvious breach of constitutional rights that it represents. It’s fine for a private firm to regulate speech on its own premises, but conducting censorship at the behest of government is equivalent to censorship by government and a flat out a violation of the First Amendment.

Moreover, FB has had the audacity to propose government “oversight” in its effort to moderate content. What, in the name of regulatory capture, could go wrong? I’d say the whole thing is Orwellian, but perhaps no more than what we’ve already seen. The best policy response, as Volokh suggests, might be to separate the hosting and conversation functions of social media from the recommendation function. The former can be treated as “common carrier” functions for the purpose of applying Section 230, with an obligation for non-discrimination and minimal content moderation, while the latter function would receive no immunity under Section 230.

My Post-FB Social Media Escapades

My blog lost a lot of readership when I quit FB. Last spring, however, I began a roughly five-month stint as a contributing blogger on a site that brought a jump in my readership. Unfortunately, it became clear, over time, that it was largely an audience unwilling to entertain more objective and sometimes technical considerations. I also became disillusioned after finding myself writing posts to debunk certain conspiratorial fantasies of other contributing bloggers on the site. I didn’t want to be associated with those writers, so I cut ties. My readership crashed again, but I’m not sure I lost many high-quality readers in that instance.

I joined various “free speech” social media platforms: first Parler (until it was taken down by Amazon, and I haven’t been back), and I’d been on MeWe, but then Gab, CloutHub, GETTR, and Telegram. MeWe, Gab, and CloutHub sponsor groups with shared interests, and I’ve made it a point to join Libertarian groups when I can find them. Those groups are not very active on CloutHub. GETTR feels a bit more like Twitter to me, and there are no group pages. Telegram is a secure messaging app with extra features. I just started a so-called “channel” there to which I can post my content. Users can view and subscribe to my channel if they wish, but I have to cross-post to other channels to find them. We’ll see how it goes, but there are a lot of people who LOVE Telegram!

A few friends from my FB days followed me to one or two of the “free speech” platforms, but only one of them seems to have maintained any presence there. Most of them became entirely inactive from what I can tell. I know some went back to FB, upon which so many people are dependent. Sometimes that’s for business reasons, which is both understandable and regrettable. Anyway, at least one of my former FB connections is still cross-posting some of my articles to FB, which is fine and I truly appreciate it.

Like FB, the alternative platforms I’ve tried are dominated by meme warriors. While a few trolls lurk there, MeWe, Gab, and CloutHub are very much echo chambers. But at least dissident voices have a place where they aren’t censored! In an ideal world we’d have diversity of thought and civility.

I’ve grown kind of numb to all the memes. I tend to scroll right past them in search of meatier fare. Memes tend to over-simplify complex issues and appeal to mood affiliations. They generally offer zero evidence in support of their messages. Even worse is their impact on attention span. It’s extremely difficult to get users to read anything longer than a meme blurb. In fact, there are people who notice the headlines on my posts and make immediate comments on that basis, as if I’m posting memes! But again, FB is very much a hall of memes, so I don’t mean to imply that there’s been any change for me in that respect … I just like to bitch about memes!

There are a few anti-semites on some of the “free-speech” sites, Gab in particular. In fact, Gab is thoroughly dominated by the religious right, so the anti-semitism is all the more striking. Excepting the Jew haters, whom I can block, I respect the religious right, and our interests are often aligned. However, a steady diet of posts with Christianity as an emphasis makes Gab less than ideal for me. Besides, every time I click on the Gab app it takes like 15 seconds to load on my phone!

I joined MeWe well before I quit FB. Nevertheless, I’ve had trouble getting traction there and I’m thinking of dropping out just to simplify my life. So far, CloutHub seems a little better in terms of generating visits to my blog.

It’s hard for a small-time blogger like me to get much notice on GETTR. There are some well-known conservative personalities there, so there are some decently informative posts. I have not been very active on Telegram, but that might change, as I said above.

I’ve been on LinkedIn for many years, but I’ve only recently decided to begin posting my articles there. I’ve lost a handful of connections as a result! That’s okay. As I like to say, eventually I’ll piss everyone off! I do get some views from LinkedIn, but users who might agree with my point of view are often too chickenshit to say so. That’s more understandable on a platform oriented toward career and professional contacts. However, I think the perception of social pressure is not very much different than the intimidation some people feel on FB.

I’ve considered joining the Truth Social platform, Donald Trump’s foray into social media. It’s billed as a “big tent”, but it will be another echo chamber, I’m sure. It’s also been a technical mess so far (not unique among new apps in that respect). I’m no Trump hater by any means, but any post that might be critical of him is almost certain to attract some hate on Truth Social (the link no is satire, btw). That’s not censorship per se, but TS might not be a great place for some of my posts.

No Going Back

Maybe the last section above was more self-assessment than anything else. As a personal decision, quitting FB was unequivocally positive for me. It hurt my blog readership, but I still hope to gain momentum on other platforms and to promote Sacred Cow Chips by placing links on other sites. In any case, I blog for myself as much as anyone else, just because I enjoy writing, thinking about issues, and occasionally doing a “deep dive” to research an issue.

The censorship occurring on the big social media platforms is simply unacceptable, and I wish more people would rise-up against it. I experienced some schadenfreude when I saw that Meta’s (Facebook’s) financials were a disappointment last quarter. The number of active users declined ever so slightly, but that was a first for FB. One can only hope it’s a trend in the making. And see this, though it might be a bit over-optimistic. Damn the censorship!

Every Gentleman Best Heed the Power of Hysterics To Censor

19 Saturday Feb 2022

Posted by in Censorship, Gender Differences, Uncategorized

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Here are the gender conventions we’ve adopted in Western society on the rules of debate:

“We accept gender double standards, and tolerate more aggression towards men than we do towards women. We also tolerate more hyper-emotionalism from women than men.”

So says Richard Hanania in an essay called “Women’s Tears Win In the Marketplace of Ideas“. Hanania is the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, and a research fellow at Defense Priorities. He offers some cogent examples of this disparate treatment, such as the Yale Halloween costume imbroglio and the “cancelling” of Ilya Shapiro at Georgetown Law School. To those we can add Eric Landers’ forced withdrawal as Joe Biden’s chief science advisor, and there are countless others. About this, Hanania says:

“What makes these cases difficult is that male versus male argumentation just has completely different rules, norms, and expectations than male versus female. … A man can’t just yell in another man’s face for 5 or 10 minutes about how he’s hurting his feelings. If a man does behave this way, bystanders are more likely to feel disgusted than join in or play the role of white knight. The man at the receiving end of the abuse is at some point going to have to escalate towards violence, or back down and say something about how this is beneath him. Depending on the situation, observers may assume violence is a distinct possibility, and get between the two sides.

None of these options are available when getting yelled at by a woman. You certainly can’t make an implicit threat of violence. Raising your voice will turn everyone against you, and even walking away can look heartless.”

I’ve witnessed a few pathetic crying jags in the workplace myself, as well as some volleys of verbal belligerence from females on social media that were pointedly anti-social. In my experience, most women can dish out barbs good-naturedly in jest and conduct themselves with dignity in debate. On the other hand, there are too many men who become hostile in debate, which most observers will find much less sympathetic if the counter-party is a woman. And there are a few men, here and there, who have trouble holding back tears in a fraught exchange, but we all know it’s not a good look.

To state the obvious, tears are a natural reaction to grief or real hurt. Anger is well-justified in response to criminal or personal wrongs. Nevertheless, it’s necessary to distinguish between these kinds of reactions and the ignoble tears or venom sometimes brought to controversial debates by neurotic partisans. As Hanania says of our disparate gender conventions, considerable censorship is instigated by an intransigent minority of women who manage to “… indulge their passions in ways that men cannot … .” Most men, anyway… and if they do, they’ve usually lost and know it.

These passionate displays are often tied to claims of individual or group victimhood. The objector could be anyone who feels an under-appreciated beef, but acting-out in order to signal “virtuous victimhood” in this way might indicate a deeper instability.

Again, as Hanania says, females have a definite advantage in the deployment of tears, confrontational rhetoric, and screams. Coincidentally, in a post to which Hanania links, Noah Carl marshals data on the extremely skewed representation of degrees awarded to women in Grievance Studies (e.g. Gender Studies and Critical Race Theory).

Too often, claims of victimhood are invoked in attempts to rebut any number of principled policy positions. For example, your views might be construed as offensive, racist, or sexist if you oppose such things as an increase in the minimum wage, racial quotas, disparate impact actions, equal pay rules, family leave mandates, and abortion. Expressing a strong and reasoned defense of many positions can foment imagined micro-aggressions or even harassment.

The real danger here is that honest debate is suppressed, and with it, very often, the truth. I acknowledge that people must be free to express or defend their views passionately, and with tears, screams, or otherwise, which the First Amendment guarantees. Our gender conventions in this matter should be revisited, however, if men and women are truly to be on equal footing.

Whether baring fangs or shedding tears, there are self-appointed arbiters of acceptable speech represented in almost all of our public and private institutions, ready to shut down debate on account of their feelings. They have more than a few sympathetic allies, male and female, at higher levels of their organizations. In the past, Hanania has discussed the over-representation of females in Human Resource departments. In these contexts, adjudication of disputes often relies on vague notions of what constitutes “hate speech” or “harassment” under Civil Rights Law. If you manage to provoke the tears of a colleague or underling, you’re probably behind the eight ball!

Hanania considers some alternative ground rules or “options” for debate:

  1. Expect everyone who participates in the marketplace of ideas to abide by male standards, meaning you accept some level of abrasiveness and hurt feelings as the price of entry.
  2. Expect everyone to abide by female standards, meaning we care less about truth and prioritize the emotional and mental well-being of participants in debates.”

Either of these options is better than the double standard we have now, and Hanania point to a number of egregious manifestations of our double standard. As he notes, #2 might be what’s meant by the “feminization of intellectual life”, but it fosters the arbitrary prohibition against discussion of any number of ideas that belong on the policy menu.

Option #1 would undoubtedly be condemned as “traditional male dominance” of public debate, but it would bar no one from participation, and obstacles perceived by females, or any sensitive soul, can be viewed as a matter of socialization. Both tearful and ferocious argumentation should be marginalized regardless of the antagonist’s gender.

Imperfect as they are, we have laws and/or social strictures against harassment, bullying, and other aggressive behavior thought to be largely associated with malcontented males. But as Hanania says:

“We haven’t even begun to think carefully about equivalent pathologies stemming from traits of the other sex.”

This problem obviously pales in comparison to the fascist tactics typical of the far Left. That includes the violent behavior of Antifa and BLM, unethical attempts blame conservatives for various, often fabricated deeds, and to threaten and punish them economically, even to the point of state-sponsored thievery and threats of harm to family members. Despite the more benign nature of the disparities discussed here, restoring gender equality to the terms of civil debate, without tears and hysterics, would be a great step forward.

Chill-Out Advisory: Pandemic to Endemic Means Live Again

13 Sunday Feb 2022

Posted by in Pandemic, Public Health, Uncategorized

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We might be just be done with the coronavirus pandemic. That is, it appears to be transitioning to a more permanent endemic phase. What follows are a few details about the Omicron wave and its current status, an attempt to put the risks of Covid in perspective, and a few public policy lessons that are now gaining broad currency but should have been obvious long ago.

What’s The Status?

The Omicron variant became the dominant U.S. strain of the coronavirus in December. Omicron outcompeted Delta, which was very good news because Omicron is far less severe. The chart below (from the CDC Data Tracker site) shows Omicron’s rapid ascendance and displacement of the Delta variant. The orange bar segments represent the proportion of cases of the Delta strain, while the purple and pink segments are Omicron sub-variants known as BA.1 and BA.2, respectively. BA.2 is even more transmissible than BA.1 and is likely to become dominant over the next month or so. However, the BA.2 sub-variant appears to be far less virulent than Delta, like BA.1.

Despite a record number of infections over a period of a month or so, the Omicron wave is tapering just as rapidly as it ramped up, as the next chart demonstrates. In fact, covidestim.org shows that cases are now receding in all states, DC, and Puerto Rico. Here are new cases per million people from Our World in Data:

Whether BA.2 causes cases to plateau for a while, or even a secondary Omicron “wavelet”, is yet to be seen. That would be consistent with the normal Hope-Simpson seasonal pattern of viral prevalence in the northern hemisphere (hat tip: HOLD2):

Data problems make the Omicron wave difficult to assess, however. We don’t know the share of incidental infections for the U.S. as a whole, but more than half of hospitalized Covid patients in Massachusetts and Rhode Island are classified with incidental infections. The proportion in the UK is estimated to be rising and approaching 30% of total cases, with much higher percentages in many regions of England, as shown below.

As I’ve emphasized in the past, case numbers should not be the primary gauge of the state of the pandemic, especially with a more highly contagious but relatively mild variant like Omicron. Hospitalizations are a better measure, but only if “incidental” infections are removed from the counts. That’s been acknowledged only recently by the public health establishment, and even the Biden Administration is emphasizing it as a matter of sheer political expediency. Another measure that might be more reliable for assessing the pandemic in the community as a whole is the number of emergency room patients presenting Covid-like symptoms. From the CDC Data Tracker:

There is no doubt that incidental infections create complications in caring for patients with other ailments. That has a bearing on the utilization of hospital capacity. Generally, however, strains on hospital capacity during the pandemic have been greatly exaggerated. This is not to diminish the hard work and risks faced by health care workers, and there have been spot shortages of capacity in certain localities. However, in general, staffed beds have been more than adequate to meet needs. This chart, like a few others below, is courtesy of Phil Kerpen:

With the more highly transmissible variants we have now, it’s not at all surprising to see a high proportion of incidental cases among inpatients. Incidental infections are likely to inflate counts of Covid deaths as well, given the exceptional and odd way in which Covid deaths are being recorded. It will be some time until we see full U.S. data on cases and deaths net of incidental infections. Moreover, many of the Covid deaths in December and January were from lingering Delta infections, which might still be a factor in the February counts.

How Are Your Odds?

The mild or asymptomatic nature of most Omicron cases, the large proportion of incidental hospitalizations, and the knowledge that Omicron is not a deep respiratory threat should offer strong reassurance to healthy individuals that the variant does not pose a great risk. According to a recent CDC report, in a sample of almost 700,000 vaccinated individuals aged 65 or less without co-morbidities, there were no Covid fatalities or ICU admissions during the 10 months from December 2020 through October 2021. There was only one fatality in the sample of healthy individuals older than 65. There were just 36 fatalities across the full sample of over 1.2 million vaccinated individuals, so COVID’s fatality risk was only about 0.3%. Of those deaths, 28 were among those with four or more risk factors (including co-morbidities and > 65 years). And this was before the advent of Omicron!

I have a few doubts about the CDC’s sample selection and vagaries around certain definitions used. Nevertheless, the results are striking. However, the study did not address risks to unvaccinated adults. Another more limited CDC study found that vaccinated patients were still less likely than the unvaccinated to require critical care during the Omicron wave.

A separate CDC study found a 91% reduction in the likelihood of death for Omicron relative to Delta. A study from the UK (see summary here) found that Omicron cases were 59% less likely than Delta cases to require hospitalization and 69% less likely to result in death within 28 days of a positive test. Omicron was far less deadly among both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, and the latter had a larger reduction in the likelihood of death. The study was stratified by age as well, with less severe outcomes for Omicron among older cohorts except in the case of death, for which there was no apparent age gradient.

Another unnecessarily contentious issue has been the risk to children during the pandemic. Based on the data, there should never have been much doubt that these risks are quite low. Apparently, however, it was advantageous for teachers’ unions to insist otherwise. Phil Kerpen soundly debunks that claim with the following chart:

Covid has been less deadly to children from infancy through 17 years than the pre-pandemic flu going back to 2012! Oh yes, but teachers FEAR transmission from the children! That claim is just as silly, since children are known to be inefficient transmitters of the virus (and see here).

Now that Omicron has relegated the Delta variant to the history books, the risks going forward seem much more manageable. Omicron is less severe, especially for the vaccinated. Levels of acquired (natural) immunity from earlier infections are now much higher against older strains, and Omicron infections seem to be protective against Delta.

In commentary about the first CDC study discussed above, John Tierney lends perspective to the odds of death from pre-Omicron Covid:

“Those are roughly the same odds that in the course of a year you will die in a fire, or that you’ll perish by falling down stairs. Going anywhere near automobiles is a bigger risk: you’re three times more likely during a given year to be killed while riding in a car, and also three times more likely to be a pedestrian casualty. The 150,000-to-1 odds of a Covid death are even longer than the odds over your lifetime of dying in an earthquake or being killed by lightning.”

Yet with all this research confirming the low odds of death induced by Omicron, why have we seen recent deaths at levels approaching previous waves? First, many of those deaths are carried over from Delta infections. That means deaths should begin to taper rapidly as February reports roll in. And remember that daily reports do not show deaths by date of death. Deaths usually occur weeks or even months before they are reported. That also means some of the deaths reported might be “harvested” from much earlier fatalities. Second, given the high levels of incidental Omicron infections, some of those deaths are misattributed to Covid, an issue that is not new by any means. Finally, while Omicron is relatively mild for most people, the high rate of transmission means that a high number of especially vulnerable individuals may be infected with severe outcomes. We have seen much more severe consequences for the unvaccinated, of course, and for those with co-morbidities.

Things We Should Have Known

I’ll try to keep this last section brief, but as an introduction I’ll just say that it’s almost as if we’ve been allowing the lunatics to run the asylum. To paraphrase one comment I saw recently, if you wonder why there is so much dissent, you ought to consider the fact the much of what our governments have done (along with many private organizations) was to prohibit things that were demonstrably safe (e.g., going outside, using swing sets, or attending schools) and to encourage things that were demonstrably harmful (e.g., deferring medical care, or masking small children).

The following facts are only now coming into focus among those who’ve been “following the politics” rather than “the science”, despite pretensions to the latter.

Grow Up and Chill Out!

Life is full of risks, and nothing has changed to alter wisdom gained in earlier pandemics. For example, this pearl from a 2006 publication on disease mitigation measures should be heeded (hat tip: Phil Kerpen):

If there is one simple message everyone needs to hear, it is to stop allowing the virus bogeyman to rule your life. It will never go away completely, and it is likely to present risks that is are comparable to the flu going forward. In fact, it might well compete with the flu, which means we won’t be dealing with endemic Covid plus historical flu averages, but some smaller union of the two case loads.

So get out, go back to work, or go have some fun! Get back truckin’ on!

The Curious Case of Unnecessary Pronoun Lists

21 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by in Gender, Identity Politics, Political Correctness, Uncategorized

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A subset of my LinkedIn connections list “preferred pronouns” after their names, but I don’t think I’ve ever had any misapprehensions about their “gender identities”. Not one of them. Their “gendentities” are obvious based on the names and/or photos they’ve chosen to use on social media. In fact, the “default” pronoun designations in the English language work pretty well that way. So, apart from the fact that LinkedIn invites its users to list pronouns, why do these people bother? Would they introduce themselves that way in person? “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Jane Smith, she / her.” Maybe on a name tag. Otherwise, unlikely.

Let’s face it: precious few of us have any doubt about our own biological sex. Do you have a penis and no vagina? Or vice versa? That settles it! But if you wish you didn’t have a penis, or wish you did, or you’re not sure… then you have a gender quandary and a pronoun problem. Still, those who decide to “take” one gender via transition will have chosen their pronouns. They typically make an effort to “present” that way as well.

There’s a tiny minority of individuals whose biological sex is ambiguous, and there are others who simply consider themselves “non-binary” or “genderqueer”. They represent three to four people out of every 1,000, if a recent survey can be believed (and surveys like this can be terribly flawed). These people are actually included in the broad definition of transgender. But again, for biological or other reasons, they identify as neither male nor female. It would be natural for these individuals to prefer gender-neutral pronouns (for example, possibilities are they / them and zi / hir, rather than he / him or she / her). That’s understandable, but: 1) using the plural “they” as a singular pronoun can lead to awkward grammar, inviting the use of the plural verb form as a fix*; and 2) remembering different pronouns for different people is a complexity to which most of us are quite unaccustomed. This is a practical issue, and social encounters with non-binaries are fairly unusual for most of us.

If tolerating the use of “he” or “she” just won’t do for this tiny minority, even as a courtesy to the “unschooled”, then it must be very important to make one’s non-binary status clear to everyone. That suggests a different problem, and one of a psychological nature. The insistence on strict adherence to alternative pronouns reflects a narcissism common to most manifestations of identity politics. And no, there is no reliable research showing that use of non-gendered pronouns reduces non-binary suicides, as one advocacy group has claimed.

I speak as one who has been called by the wrong gendered pronoun! I’m a male and I’m confident I present that way. However, I’ve worked with many Chinese over the course of my career, and gendered pronouns aren’t used in Chinese. The distinctions between “he” and “she”, or “his” and “hers”, can be as foreign to them as the pronouns “zi” and “hir” are to me. I’ve heard myself referenced by Chinese colleagues as “she”. Did it offend me? Not at all, because I knew the speaker was not fluent in the English language.

It should be easy to tolerate members of a minority who get it wrong because we empathize with their language challenge. We don’t demand their absolute conformity, but they understand their minority status and might prefer to avoid the potential embarrassment of getting it wrong. Contrary-wise, if I’m in the minority, say at a gathering of Chinese, shall I press the issue by demanding that every member of the majority distinguish between me and my wife using the correct English pronouns? I think not. But non-binary activists are so offended by gendered pronouns, which have been in common use among English speakers for centuries, that they demand the majority change the language to accommodate them. That is unreasonable. It’s okay to let others know what you prefer, but you shouldn’t feel slighted by every miscue or be a complete prig about it!

Now, if you happen to be a plain-old binary individual, what’s your excuse for listing preferred pronouns on social media? It seems completely unnecessary, so why bother? Here are a few possibilities:

  • You have transitioned to your gender and list pronouns as a courtesy to anyone who knew you before your transition.
  • You are an HR functionary having a career imperative to signal your evenhandedness.
  • You are a plaintiffs attorney chasing genderqueer discrimination business.
  • You simply like the Chinese practice and want to adopt gender-neutral pronouns. Good luck at your high school reunion!

My guess is that pecuniary and career motives are less important to most pronoun-listers than simple political correctness. Either way, it’s a virtue signal. Of course, you might have non-binary friends or relatives and wish to demonstrate to the world your unerring respect for their preferences. That’s admirable loyalty, but it’s an unnecessary compulsion.

Pronoun lists seem designed to announce support for all things LGBTQ+. I also suspect that some believe it more firmly establishes their socially progressive bona fides, that the pronoun-lister is beyond reproach no matter the nasty capitalists for whom they might toil. Therefore, announcing one’s preference for default pronouns seems both unnecessary and pretentious.

I am fairly tolerant of the notion that gender identity can transcend biology in some individuals. However, that is a controversial metaphysical assertion that many do not accept. Certainly, a decision to reject one’s biological sex should not be made hastily. In particular, these decisions should not be encouraged in children except for cases in which biological sex is ambiguous and where medical procedures might be appropriate. Yet LGBTQ+ doctrine teaches that questioning one’s gender identity should be normalized, even among impressionable children. That is highly objectionable and even abusive. Persuading straights to engage in pronoun pretensions of the kind described above is part of the LGBTQ+ crusade to normalize gender dysphoria.

Beyond all that, changing the structure of the English language to accommodate LGBTQ+ advocates requires a change in language curriculum for young children. One might object on purely grammatical grounds, but it would also raise questions as to why dual sets of pronouns are necessary. To whom do these pronouns apply? That broaches the sensitive topic of gender fluidity that many parents and taxpayers do not wish to be taught as standard curriculum in elementary or even secondary schools. I’m inclined to agree with them.

My general attitude is “whatever floats your boat, but leave me out of it”. I submit that the use of non-gendered pronouns is not “owed” to anyone. It would be easier for the rarefied non-binaries to accept the same fluidity with respect pronouns that they profess with respect to their own gender identities.

* I have occasionally used plural pronouns (they, them, and their) with plural verb forms in reference to “one”, “someone”, or “you”), who might be either male or female. In those cases, the sentence is meant to apply to both genders, but I admit it’s sloppy writing.

Scary New Variant or Omicrommon Cold?

08 Wednesday Dec 2021

Posted by in Coronavirus, Pandemic, Uncategorized

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The political motives behind the naming of the Covid Omicron variant might prove to be a huge irony. The Greek letter Xi was skipped by the World Health Organization (WHO), undoubtedly to avoid any symbolic association between Covid and the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. After all, he’s probably determined to bury discussion of the leak at the Wuhan lab that was the probable cause of this whole mess. The WHO was happy to provide cover. The irony is that the Omicron variant might well bring on a more gentle phase of the pandemic if early indications can be trusted. But in that case, my guess is Chairman Xi wouldn’t have appreciated the twist even if WHO had called it the Xi variant.

The Omicron variant was identified in the Gauteng Province of South Africa and announced by national health authorities on November 24th. The earliest known sample was taken on November 9th. The variant was subsequently diagnosed in a number of other countries, including the U.S. It has a large number of mutations, and initial reports indicated that the variant was spreading extremely fast, having suddenly outcompeted other variants to account for the majority of new cases in South Africa. It is apparently highly contagious. Moreover, Omicron has been diagnosed among the vaccinated as well as those having immunity from prior infections, which is usually more effective and durable than vaccination. Thus, it is said to have “immune escape” properties. Scary indeed!

However, Omicron seems to have been around much longer than suggested by its initial diagnosis in late November (and see this link for an extreme view). Cases in a number of countries show that it is already global; the lags involved in diagnosis as well as earlier contacts with spreaders suggest that Omicron’s origin could have been as early as late September. That means the spread has not been quite as fast as the first alarming reports suggested.

The reported symptoms of the Omicron variant have been quite mild, with fatigue being the most noteworthy. Omicron appears to have taken one mutation from the common cold, which, like Covid-19, is a type of coronavirus. And while there has been a surge in hospitalized cases in South Africa, most of these are said to be “incidental”. That is, these patients were admitted for other problems but happened to test positive for the Omicron variant. As we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, the data is not always reliable.

It’s too early to draw definite conclusions, and this variant might prove to be more dangerous with time. In fact, some say that South Africa’s experience might not be representative because of its young population and high natural immunity. It also happens to be early summer there, when higher vitamin D levels help to boost immunity. So, there is a great deal of uncertainty about Omicron (and see here). Nevertheless, I’ll risk a jinx by momentarily contemplating an outcome that’s not terribly far-fetched.

Viruses mutate in ways that help ensure their survival: they must not kill too many of their hosts, which means the usual progression is toward less lethal variants. They may become more contagious, and new variants must be contagious enough to outcompete their ancestors. Viral interference can sometimes prevent multiple viruses from having a broad coexistence. That’s the likely phenomenon we witnessed when the Covid pandemic coincided with the virtual disappearance of the flu and other respiratory viruses. More to the point, it’s the same phenomenon that occurred when the Spanish Flu was eventually outcompeted by less deadly variants.

So it’s possible that a mild Omicron will put the pandemic behind us. If it proves to be as contagious and as mild as it appears thus far, it would likely displace Delta and other variants as the first phase of a new, endemic malady. That might even cut into the severity of the current seasonal wave. The Ethical Skeptic tweets thusly:

“So was Omicron an ultra fast-mutating magic terminator variant? A gift from God, or aliens…? … Or natural virility/genetic profile derived from a previous variant conferring immunity …”

That would be a wonderful outcome, but Omicron’s arrival in the northern hemisphere just as winter gets underway contributes to the uncertainty. It’s severity during the northern winter could be far worse than what we’ve seen in South Africa. We can hope this variant isn’t one truly deserving of Chairman Xi’s name.

Climate Alarmism and Junk Science

02 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by in Climate, Research Bias, Uncategorized

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The weak methodology and accuracy of climate models is the subject of an entertaining Norman Rogers post. I want to share just a few passages along with a couple of qualifiers.

Rogers quotes Kevin Trenberth, former Head of Climate Analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, with apparent approval. Oddly, Rogers does not explain that Trenberth is a strong proponent of the carbon-forcing models used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He should have made that clear, but Trenberth actually did say the following:

“‘[None of the] models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate [of the Earth].’“

I’ll explain the context of this comment below, but it constitutes a telling admission of the poor foundations on which climate alarmism rests. The various models used by the IPCCc are all a little different and they are calibrated differently. I’ve noted elsewhere that their projections are consistently biased toward severe over-predictions of temperature trends. Rogers goes on from there:

“The models can’t properly model the Earth’s climate, but we are supposed to believe that, if carbon dioxide has a certain effect on the imaginary Earths of the many models it will have the same effect on the real earth.”

But how on earth can a modeler accept the poor track record of these models? It’s not as if the bias is difficult to detect! On this question, Rogers says:

“The climate models are an exemplary representation of confirmation bias, the psychological tendency to suspend one’s critical facilities in favor of welcoming what one expects or desires. Climate scientists can manipulate numerous adjustable parameters in the models that can be changed to tune a model to give a ‘good’ result.“

And why are calamitous projections desirable from the perspective of climate modelers? Follow the money and the status rewards of reinforcing the groupthink:

“Once money and status started flowing into climate science because of the disaster its denizens were predicting, there was no going back. Imagine that a climate scientist discovers gigantic flaws in the models and the associated science. Do not imagine that his discovery would be treated respectfully and evaluated on its merits. That would open the door to reversing everything that has been so wonderful for climate scientists. Who would continue to throw billions of dollars a year at climate scientists if there were no disasters to be prevented? “

Indeed, it has been a gravy train. Today, it is reinforced by green-preening politicians, the many billions of dollars committed by investors seeking a continuing flow of public subsidies for renewables, tempting opportunities for international redistribution (and graft), and a mainstream media addicted to peddling scare stories. The parties involved all rely on, and profit by, alarmist research findings.

Rogers’ use of the Trenberth quote above might suggest that Trenberth is a critic of the climate models used by the IPCC. However, the statement was in-line with Trenberth’s long-standing insistence that the IPCC models are exclusively for constructing “what-if” scenarios, not actual forecasting. Perhaps his meaning also reflected his admission that climate models are “low resolution” relative to weather forecasting models. Or maybe he was referencing longer-term outcomes that are scenario-dependent. Nevertheless, the quote is revealing to the extent that one would hope these models are well-calibrated to initial conditions. That is seldom the case, however.

As a modeler, I must comment on a point made by Rogers about the use of ensembles of models. That essentially means averaging the predictions of multiple models that differ in structure. Rogers denigrates the approach, and while it is agnostic with respect to theories of the underlying process generating the data, it certainly has its uses in forecasting. Averaging the predictions of two different models with statistically independent and unbiased predictions will generally produce more accurate forecasts than the individual models. Rogers may or may not be aware of this, but he has my sympathies in this case because the IPCC is averaging across a large number of models that are clearly biased in the same direction! Rogers adds this interesting tidbit on the IPCC’s use of model ensembles:

“There is a political reason for using ensembles. In order to receive the benefits flowing from predicting a climate catastrophe, climate science must present a unified front. Dissenters have to be canceled and suppressed. If the IPCC were to select the best model, dozens of other modeling groups would be left out. They would, no doubt, form a dissenting group questioning the authority of those that gave the crown to one particular model.”

Rogers discusses one more aspect of the underpinnings of climate models, one that I’ve covered several times on this blog. That is the extent to which historical climate data is either completely lacking, plagued by discontinuities or coverage, or distorted by imperfections in measurement. The data used to calibrate climate models has been manipulated, adjusted, infilled, and estimated over lengthy periods by various parties to produce “official” and unofficial temperature series. While these efforts might seem valiant as exercises in understanding the past, they are fraught with uncertainty. Rogers provides a link to the realclimatescience blog, which details many of the data shortcomings as well as shenanigans perpetrated by researchers and agencies who have massaged, imputed, or outright created these historical data sets out of whole cloth. Rogers aptly notes:

“The purported climate catastrophe ahead is 100% junk science. If the unlikely climate catastrophe actually happens, it will be coincidental that it was predicted by climate scientists. Most of the supporting evidence is fabricated.”

Break the Market, Blame It, Then Break It Some More

28 Sunday Nov 2021

Posted by in Energy, Environmental Fascism, Free markets, Uncategorized

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Much of what is labeled market failure is a consequence of government failure, or rather, failure caused by misguided public intervention, not just in individual markets but in the economy more generally. Misguided efforts to correct perceived excesses in pricing are often the problem, but there are myriad cases of regulatory overreach, ham-handed application of taxes and subsidies for various enterprises, and widespread cronyism. But it is often convenient for politicians to appear as if they are doing something, which makes activism and active blame of private enterprise a tempting path. The Biden Administration’s energy crisis offers a case in point. First, a digression on the efficiency of free markets. Skip the next two sections to get straight to Biden’s mess.

Behold the Bounty

I always spent part of the first class session teaching Principles of Economics on some incredible things that happen each and every day. Most college freshmen seem to take them for granted: the endless variety of goods that arrive on shelves each day; the ongoing flow of services, many appearing like magic at the flick of a switch; the high degree of coincidence between specific wants and all these fresh supplies; the variety and flow of raw materials and skills that are brought to bear; the fantastic array of sophisticated equipment deployed to assist in these efforts; and the massive social coordination necessary to accomplish all this. How does it all happen? Who collects all the information on what is wanted, and by whom? On the feasibility of actually producing and distributing various things? What miracle computer processes the vast set of information guiding these decisions and actions? Does some superior intelligence within an agency plan all this stuff?

The answer is simple. The seemingly infinite set of knowledge is marshaled, and all these tasks are performed, by the greatest institution of social cooperation to ever emerge: decentralized, free markets! Buying decisions are guided by individual needs and wants. Production and selling decisions are guided by resource availability and technology. And all sides react to evolving prices. Preferences, resources, and technology are in a constant state of flux, but prices react, signaling producers and consumers to make individual adjustments that correct larger imbalances. It is tempting to describe the process as the evolving solution to a gigantic set of dynamic equations.

The Impossible Conceit

No human planner or government agency is capable of solving this problem as seamlessly and efficiently as markets, nor can they hope to achieve the surplus welfare that redound to buyers and sellers in markets. Central planners or intervening authorities cannot possess the knowledge and coordinating power of the market mechanism. That doesn’t mean markets are “perfect”, of course. Things like external costs and benefits, dominant sellers, and asymmetric information can cause market outcomes to deviate from the competitive “ideal”. Inequities can arise from some of these imperfections as well.

What can be much worse is the damage to market performance caused by government policy. Usually the intent is to “correct” imperfections, and the rationale might be defensible. The knowledge to do it very well is often lacking, however. Taxes, subsidies, regulations, tariffs, quotas, capital controls, and manipulation of interest rates (and monetary and credit aggregates) are very general categories of distortion caused by the public sector. Then there is competition for resources via government procurement, which is frequently graft-ridden or price-insensitive.

Many public interventions create advantages for large sellers, leading to greater market concentration. This might best serve the private political power of the wealthy or might convey advantages to investments that happen to be in vogue among the political class. These are the true roots of fascism, which leverages coercive state power for the benefit of private interests.

Energy Vampires

Now we have the curious case of the Biden Administration and it’s purposeful disruption of energy markets in an effort to incentivize a hurried transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. As I described in a recent post on stagflation,

“… Biden took several steps to hamstring the domestic fossil fuel industry at a time when the economy was still recovering from the pandemic. This included revoking permits for the Keystone pipeline, a ban on drilling on federal lands and federally-controlled waters in the Gulf, shutting down production on some private lands on the pretext of enforcing the Endangered Species Act, and capping methane emissions by oil and gas producers. And all that was apparently just a start.

As Mark Theisen notes, when you promise to destroy a particular industry, as Joe Biden has, by taxing and regulating it to death, who wants to invest in or even maintain production facilities? Some leftists with apparent influence on the administration are threatening penalties against the industry up to and including prosecution for ‘crimes against humanity’!”

In addition to killing Keystone, there remains a strong possibility that Biden will shut down the Line 5 pipeline in Michigan, and there are other pipelines currently under federal review. Biden’s EPA also conducted a purge of science advisors considered “too friendly” to oil and gas industry. This was intertwined with a “review” of new methane rules, which harm smaller, independent oil and gas drillers disproportionately.

Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” (BBB) legislation, as clumsy in policy as it is in name, introduces a number of “Green New Deal” provisions that would further disadvantage the production and use of fossil fuels. Hart Energy provides descriptions of various tax changes that appeared in the Treasury’s so-called “Greenbook”, a collection of revenue proposals, many of which appear in the BBB legislation that recently passed in the House. These include rollbacks of various deductions for drilling costs, depletion allowances, and recovery rules, as well as hikes in certain excise taxes as well as taxes on foreign oil income. And all this while granting generous subsidies to intermittent and otherwise uneconomic technologies that happen to be in political favor. This is a fine payoff for cronies having invested significantly in these rent seeking opportunities. While the bill still faces an uphill fight in the Senate, apparently Biden has executive orders, held in abeyance, that would inflict more pain on consumers and producers of fossil fuels.

Biden’s energy policies are obviously intended to reduce supplies of oil, gas, and other fossil fuels. Prices have responded, as Green notes:

“Gas is up an average of 57% this year, with corresponding increases of 44% for diesel and a whopping 60% for fuel oil.”

The upward price pressure is not limited to petroleum: electricity rates are jumping as well. Consumers and shippers have noticed. In fact, while Biden crows about wanting “the rich” to pay for BBB, his energy policies are steeply regressive in their impact, as energy absorbs a much larger share of budgets among the poor than the rich. This is politically suicidal, but Biden’s advisors have chosen a most cynical tact as the reality has dawned on them.

Abusive Victim Blaming

Who to blame? After the predictable results of cramping domestic production and attacking fossil fuel producers, the Biden team naturally blames them for rising prices! “Price gouging” is a charge made by political opportunists and those who lack an understanding of how markets allocate scarce resources. More severe scarcity means that prices must rise to ration available quantities and to incentivize those capable of bringing forth additional product under difficult circumstances. That is how a market is supposed to function, and it mitigates scarcity!

But here comes the mendacious and Bumbling Buster Biden. He wants antitrust authorities at the FTC to investigate oil pricing. Again from Stephen Green:

“… the Biden Administration has decided to launch a vindictive legal campaign against oil producers in order to deflect blame for the results of Biden’s policies: Biden’s Solution to Rising Gas Prices Appears to Be Accusing Oil Companies of Price Gouging.”

There’s nothing quite like a threat to market participants to prevent the price mechanism from performing its proper social function. But a failure to price rationally is a prescription for more severe shortages.

Biden has also ordered the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to release 50 million barrels of oil, a move that replaces a total of 2.75 days of monthly consumption in the U.S. The SPR is supposed to be drawn upon only in the case of emergencies like natural disasters, so this draw-down is as irresponsible as it is impotent. In fact, OPEC is prepared to offset the SPR release with a production cut. Biden has resorted to begging OPEC to increase production, which is pathetic because the U.S. was a net exporter of oil not long ago … until Biden took charge.

Conclusion

Properly stated, the challenge mounted against markets as an institution is not that they fall short of “perfection”. It is that some other system would lead to superior results in terms of efficiency and/or equity. Central planning, including the kind exercised by the Biden Administration in it’s hurried and foolish effort to tear down and remake the energy economy, is not even a serious candidate on either count.

Granted, there is a long history of subsidies to the oil and gas sector. I cannot defend those, but the development of the technology (even fracking) largely preceded the fruits of the industry’s rent seeking. At this point, green fuels receive far more subsidies (despite some claims to the contrary). Furthermore, the primacy of fossil fuels was not achieved by tearing down competing technologies and infrastructure. In contrast, the current round of central planning requires destruction of entire sectors of the economy that could otherwise produce efficiently for the foreseeable future, if left unmolested.

The Biden Administration has adopted the radical green agenda. Their playbook calls for a severe tilting of price incentives in favor uneconomic, renewable energy sources, despite the economy’s heretofore sensible reliance on plentiful fossil fuels. It’s no surprise that Biden’s policy is unpopular across the economic spectrum. His natural inclination is to blame a competitive industry victimized by his policy. It’s a futile attempt to avoid accountability, as if he thinks doubling down on the fascism will help convince the electorate that oil and gas producers dreamt up this new, nefarious strategy of overcharging customers. People aren’t that dumb, but it’s typical for the elitist Left presume otherwise.