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Talk about “Complete Control”– Cuban punk dissident jailed

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Lauren M. Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

Spotted on Drudge:

HAVANA (AP) – Cuba has ordered jailed punk rocker Gorki Aguila, an outspoken critic of Fidel Castro and the communist government, to stand trial on Friday for “social dangerousness,” a charge that could carry up to four years in prison.

Authorities arrested the 39-year-old lead singer of Porno para Ricardo at his Havana home on Monday, shortly after the band had completed work on a new album. Cuban law defines “social dangerousness” as behavior contrary to “communist morality,” and police use it to detain offenders before they have a chance to commit a crime.

First thought:  There’s a Cuban punk scene?  And a band named “Porn for Ricardo?”  Whose dissident lead singer seems to be named after the founder of socialist realism?  That’s amusing!  (I suppose it could be a stage name, but I encountered quite a few similar Soviet namesakes when I visited formerly socialist Nicaragua a few years ago.)

According to his Wiki article, Águila attracted the attention of authorities in part because he told CNN that communism is “a failure. A total failure. Please. Leftists of the world — improve your capitalism.”  Porno para Ricardo was in the midst of finishing up their fourth album, though the Cuban government has banned their music from state radio and forbidden them from performing in public.  This makes the Clash complaining about the oppressive record industry seem a little trivial.

Kudos to the Babalu Blog–”an island on the net without a bearded dictator,” acording to its tagline–for helping get the story out.  If you’d like to hear some of Porno para Ricardo’s music (be warned, it’s en español and may be offensive even to non-Communist sensibilities), check out the video for their song “el Comandante” here.

Worth its weight in gold? Find out!

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Lauren Ruhland, MCPP Intern

From Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories:

The Monetary Density of Things

It’s a common figure of speech to say that x is worth its weight in y, where y is usually (but not always) gold. But most of us don’t buy and weigh gold very often, so how do you connect that to real life? Does “worth its weight” in pennies or $100 bills make any more sense?

We have collected here a bunch of examples for different things that represent a wide range of monetary value per unit weight, in what might make a useful calibration chart for your future idiomatic usage.

Among many other observations:  whale bile (as ambergris) is more value dense than peacock feathers, but they’re both worth more per pound than human blood.   Read the whole thing for fun charts and graphs!

Chinese Director: “human rights” interfere with Westerners’ performances

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Lauren Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

A decade ago, director Zhang Yimou’s films were acclaimed in the West but frequently censored in his native China. Since then, he’s fallen back into favor with the Chinese government and directed both the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics.  He told the Chinese press that the Beijiing ceremonies will be difficult to top by Western performers, because their pesky human rights keep getting in the way.  As reported in the Times of London, his experience with Westerners leaves him thinking them lazy and disorganized, because they aren’t willing to sacrifice themselves to the “uniformity” that “brings beauty” to his work:

“It was so troublesome,” he said. “They only work four and a half days each week. Every day there are two coffee breaks, and no-one can suffer any discomfort because of human rights.

…

“You couldn’t criticize them either. They all belong to organizations – some kind of institutions, unions. We do not have that. We can work very hard, and can put up with a lot of pain.

It was hard to pull out selections of Zhang’s interview, because it’s really the whole thing that’s so unnerving.

I’ve only seen one of Zhang’s films (1994′s To Live), but I thought it was a tragicomic indictment of the Cultural Revolution.  (So did China’s censors– the film was banned there.) The venue where I saw it explicitly included it because of its criticism of Chinese bureaucracy.  It was aesthetically pleasing and featured a beautiful story, but Zhang’s comments here are going to color my perspective of it forever.

Canadian Carpool Outlaws

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Lauren Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

Carpooling is a favored method of transit among poor college students, and gives consumers a way to minimize their carbon footprint and save money.  The clever guys at PickUp Pal decided to capitalize on this by offering an easy venue for would-be ridesharers to advertise their transportation need or availability. Their organized system has the added bonus of reputational ratings, which offer accountability not afforded to the hitchhiker with a “California or Bust!” sign.

“It is hard to see how such a thing could be anything less than a nifty social benefit of the Internet,” reads an editorial in Canada’s National Post, “but in Ontario, it is considered illegal.”  That’s right– carpooling in Ontario is only legal if it involves commuting from the suburbs to the city for work purposes, according to the Ontario Highway Transport Board’s curious definition of “public vehicle.” You see, public vehicles must be operated only by specially licensed individuals. The driving force behind the broad definition? Bus operators who fear competition!

Now PickupPal, which has an estimated 15,000 registered users in Ontario, has become popular enough to attract the attention of intercity bus firms. They claim that allowing money to change hands between consenting individuals for inter-municipal trips makes the site illegal — in essence, that it makes PickupPal a bus service.

Lest you think such silliness is confined to our neighbor to the north–think again.

Hat tip to Janet Neilson, though it’s not on her blog.

Challenging the Airlines on Oil Speculation

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–Lauren Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

The Stop Oil Speculation Now! movement has some competition– a new organization called The Airline Oil Spin.  From their site:

The U.S. Airline Industry is wracked with problems. And the airline industry is working hard to pin all of those problems on “oil speculators,” by creating pseudo-grassroots campaigns like their recent effort to push legislation to stop some kinds of oil speculation.

Check and double-check

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–Lauren M. Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern
Note to self: When setting up a business in Canada, check background of any accountants encountered through state-subsidized employment programs.

Gwen Patrick did all the accounting for Falcon Compressors Inc., the company she owned with her husband Dennis, until a medical emergency left her in a coma.  After her recovery, the couple faced no choice but to hire out their books, and they turned to a government-subsidized employment agency for assistance.

Unfortunately for Falcon, the person referred to them a year ago was Kathleen Holyoak-Marion, 36. Operating for years under a number of aliases, Holyoak had a long criminal record for fraud-related activity.

The Windsor woman had been barred by a judge’s order at the time of her Falcon hiring from holding any job involving corporate bookkeeping or accounting, part of her bail terms of release pending the latest fraud charges she was facing.

Holyoak-Marion wrote herself 111 checks and has been ordered to pay the Patricks and their clients more than $100 thousand in restitution should she ever find legitimate income, in addition to her 12-month jail sentence.

As to why the Patricks hired her in the first place:

“I was stupid. I trusted this government program,” Patrick replied.

RMGN declared unconstitutional

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–Lauren Ruhland, MCPP intern

Many of us intern bloggers are returning back to school as summer winds down, but after Josh’s fantastic coverage of the RMGN proposal (not to mention Jim’s amazing initial PowerPoint discovery) I don’t think we can ignore this:

Detroit Free Press:  “Attempt to change much of Constitution fails court test“

Detroit News: “Reform ballot proposal rejected“

AP (via Booth Newspapers’ MLive): “Appeals Court says Reform Michigan measure can’t go on ballot“

College admins raise glasses to lowered drinking age

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–Lauren M. Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

You’ve heard the arguments before– it’s simply unfair to let somebody to choose to put his life on the line for his country but prohibit him from having a beer with his buddies.  It defies logic that a young woman can make the decision to marry and start a family at 18, so long as she doesn’t sip champagne at the wedding.  Many agree that the United States’ minimum drinking age is unreasonably high given that the age of legal majority is set at 18 in most of the country.  It’s not surprising to me that a new organization is calling for a return to a minimum legal drinking age of 18, but I am surprised about the source– college presidents.

As signatories of the Amethyst Initiative, college presidents are calling on America to rethink the the current minimum drinking age.  Says the Free Press:

College presidents from about 100 of the nation’s best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State … [say] current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.

…

“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”

However, Laura Dean-Mooney, the national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, seems to want to put these college presents on Double Secret Probation.  “It’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,” she says in the Freep article above.

I don’t think you can draw Dean Wormer (couldn’t resist!) Dean-Mooney’s conclusion from the stated goals of the organization.  The administrators state on the Amethyst website “that the 21 year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses.” If these administrators were ignoring the law, they probably wouldn’t feel the need to push for a discussion of the issue– it’s more easy to simply continue turning a blind eye than to call others’ attention to their perspective.

Erin Brockovich’s Bad HPV Science

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–Lauren Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

I’m not an expert on health issues, but among the biggest projects of my academic career was a research presentation on advancements in the treatment of cervical cancer, the culmination of countless hours of research during my final semester.  In particular, my project focused on new vaccine technologies that promise protection against human papillomavirus (HPV).  HPV is a common (and incurable) STD that causes virtually all cancers of the uterine cervix.  Gardasil was the first vaccine against the disease approved by the FDA.

As with any new medical technology, there are risks to consider before getting vaccinated (or choosing to vaccinate your child.)  If it were up to Erin Brockovich, though, you wouldn’t even have to make that decision.  No, she doesn’t want to make HPV vaccines mandatory– though many state legislatures have tried to do effectively that.  Instead, Brockovich siezes on reports of a few tragic deaths that have occurred after vaccination and concludes that Gardasil manufacturer Merck is killing young girls in the pursuit of profits.

I’m taking her blog post on point-by-point, here.  It’s pretty long, so consider yourself warned.

Gardasil, as you should know by now, is an HPV vaccine sold by Merc(sic), a vaccine with a flawed marketing campaign targeting young girls.  The premise is that the vaccine will protect young girls from cervical cancer, as well as a couple of varieties of HPV.

The vaccine prevents infection with four varieties of HPV– two are associated with cervical cancer, while the other two are associated with genital warts, an unpleasant but not deadly disease.  Though there are many risk factors for cervical cancer, like tobacco use and family history, these factors are not sufficient on their own to cause the disease.  Upwards of 99% of cervical cancers are directly associated with HPV infection, though most women with HPV won’t ever get cancer.

Since young women are the most likely to be infected with HPV and the benefits of vaccination greatest for females, that’s where Merck chose to focus its research.  Because the research was conducted among this age group, the FDA has only approved the vaccine for girls and women between the ages of 11 and 27. Continue reading →

Yes, Prime Minister on School Choice

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This has already been up at Cato@Liberty and the Club for Growth, but it’s well worth posting again.  Yes, Prime Minister was a British sitcom from the mid-1980s.  This clip features a meeting with the head of the Department for Education and Science (later the Department for Education and Skills, now split into the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills), and a proposal to implement parental school choice in Britain.

At least we’re not Ohio?

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–Lauren Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

I almost feel a little guilt after my third Detroit post in three days– I don’t live or work there, and I visit maybe once a year.  However, just as NYC is many people’s first association with the Empire State, so Detroit is the face of Michigan to those with no real knowledge of the state’s geographic and cultural diversity.

That said, it’s with some reluctance that I bring up Forbes Magazine’s list of the America’s fastest-dying cities:

Canton, OH
Youngstown, OH
Flint, MI
Scranton, PA
Dayton, OH
Cleveland, OH
Springfield, MA
Buffalo, N.Y.
Detroit, MI
Charleston, WV

At least Detroit’s got Flint to keep it company.  From the article:

These [metropolitan statistical areas] face fleeing populations, painful waves of unemployment and barely growing economies. By our measure, they’ve struggled the worst of any areas in the nation in the 21st century. And they face even bleaker futures.

L’État, c’est moi (or not)

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–Lauren Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

The mayor of Michigan’s largest city has been arrested after a bond violation.  A sad, sorry day in what was once one of the Midwest’s (and America’s) greatest metropolises.

In a statement to the press, 36th District Court judge Robert Giles justified his actions by emphasizing that no man is above the law:  “If was not Kwame Kilaptrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six Pack sitting in the seat, what would I do?  That answers something. I go back to my original keep it simple.”

When it’s time to change…

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–Lauren Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

A survey conducted by the Glengariff Group last month indicates that the people of Michigan are interested in making big reforms to save the state money.  Among the findings mentioned in the Detroit News:

  • Nearly 80 percent support finding means of punishment for nonviolent offenders, other than prison. It costs $5 million a day, or $2 billion a year, to run Michigan’s prison system, but leaders in Lansing have been at odds on how to reduce costs and the inmate population — expected to top 56,000 within five years.
  • Nearly 75 percent said they would support increasing health care premiums for state employees. State employees pay between 5 percent and 10 percent of the cost of their health care premium, whereas private sector employees typically pay between 16 and 28 percent of their premiums, according to the survey.
  • About 74 percent said they support changing retirement benefits for new teachers. Michigan teachers have a defined benefit system, which requires school districts to pay a specific amount into the retirement system each year. Those surveyed favored a 401(k)-type individual contribution plan for new teachers.

Many respondents also expressed their desire for wordy ballot initiatives with the intention of creating sweeping changes in the government structure in order to shift the balance of power. (Just kidding.)

Detroit Croq(et) City

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~Lauren Ruhland, MCPP intern

A bunch of Detroit devotees of the steampunk aesthetic (think Victorian sci-fi design) decided to hold a post-apocalyptic afternoon croquet match.  This flickr album features the gang hanging around the long-abandoned Packard plant in all their Edwardian finery.  The photos seem to have been taken in the summer of 2005; since then, Detroit has lost more than 30,000 residents.  That makes the setting even eerier.

Hat tip to BoingBoing.

…but I WANT it!

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~Lauren M. Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

I’ve seen too many headlines in the format (politician) WANTS (some particular goal) lately.  These articles are invariably heavy on empty rhetoric and emotional appeals, but light on politically and economically feasible ways that we could implement the pol’s preferred system.  As a little experiment, I thought I’d take a look and see what the two major parties’ presumptive candidates have been wanting lately.  It was as easy as typing “(politician) wants” into my Google searchbar.

Barack Obama wants:
“…Michigan factories retooled for alternative energy products,” August 4.
“…U.S. to be first in space,” August 3.
“…Florida, Michigan [delegates] restored in full,” August 3.
“…More from Germany,” July 25.

John McCain wants:
“…U.S. government to go green,” June 24.
“…More Afghanistan troops,” July 15.
“…to stay out of Favre controversy,” July 31.
“…a man on Mars,” June 5.

To be fair, seating the Michigan and Florida delegates is the Democratic Party’s issue to deal with, and few people are going to choose a candidate over his position on Brett Favre–at least, few outside Wisconsin and the western U.P.  However, grand visions of space travel, top-down industrial restructuring, and major foreign policy shifts aren’t going to happen just through wanting it so.

Other presidential hopefuls have slightly more humble wants. Libertarian candidate Bob Barr “wants America to take him seriously,” while independent and former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader just wants your attention. Current Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney hasn’t been wanting lately, though in 2005 she did “want [the] government to open files on 2Pac’s life and murder.”

UPDATE:  There’s even more fun to be had if you search for “(politician’s name) pledges,” “calls for,” and “promises!”