Quotulatiousness

March 31, 2010

The product liability crapshoot

Filed under: Law, Tools, USA, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:38

Tales of odd and unpredictable results coming out of product liability court cases are dime-a-dozen. This result is pushing to the limit of illogical: Carlos Osorio vs. One World Technologies Inc. et al.. This is the case where the court awarded the plaintiff $1.5 million because the tool manufacturer hadn’t adopted the newest safety technology, despite the plaintiff’s clear breach of common sense and safe practices in using the tool.

The accident happened on April 19, 2005, and the table saw Osorio was using was a Ryobi BTS 15, which was purchased at Home Depot on Jan. 10, 2005, for $159. At the time of the accident Osorio may have been employed at that company for two months; however, this is not clear, according to a deposition by Phat Vong, who purchased tools for the flooring company Osorio worked for.

Osorio is from Colombia, has a degree in computer science and was installing flooring as he learned English. At the time of the accident, he was trying to make a rip cut on a 2′-long, 2-1/2″-wide by 3/4″-thick piece of oak flooring, according to court records. He was attempting to cut the board “freehand” without the rip fence, according to the documents. Osorio intended to make a cut in a straight line all the way through the board. He had cut only a small portion of the workpiece when it got stuck at the blade. Osorio immediately experienced chattering and felt vibration in the workpiece. He stopped cutting and cleaned the tabletop. He then attempted to make the same cut again but the chattering continued, and he decided to push the board harder. His left hand then slipped into the spinning saw blade, according to court documents.

The saw blade height above the tabletop was set to approximately 3″ — at or near the maximum elevation, and the guarding system was not installed on the saw during the operation, documents state. The table saw was on the floor, Osorio was kneeling on one leg in front of the table saw, and his body was just to the left of the saw blade, according to a motion filed by Osorio’s lawyers.

For those of you who don’t know woodworking tools, a table saw is not something you can casually use in the same way you might use a hand drill or a sander. It’s a stationary tool with a long history of injuring the careless or unwary user: the act of pushing a piece of wood into a rapidly spinning serrated metal blade requires care and attention to avoid injuring yourself or nearby workers.

Carlos Osorio managed to do just about everything to increase the risk of injury. He removed the safety devices that are there specifically to prevent the kind of injury he sustained. He clearly didn’t understand the risks of what he was doing, and he was operating the saw in an unstable position. The only way he could have been in greater danger of injury is if he was intoxicated or blindfolded.

The only reason the saw’s manufacturer was the defendant in this case is the “deep pockets” theory of legal practice: don’t sue the responsible party (in this case, the employer who clearly failed to train Osorio in the safe use of the tool), sue the richest person or organization even peripherally involved in the case.

March 30, 2010

Policing for profit

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:46

Retired US general apologizes for smear on Dutch troops

Filed under: Europe, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

Former USMC general John Sheehan has apologized for his remarks about gay Dutch soldiers in the Srebrenica massacre:

An ex-U.S. general has apologised after saying Dutch UN troops failed to prevent the Srebrenica genocide partly because their ranks included openly gay soldiers, the Dutch defence ministry said Tuesday.

John Sheehan, a retired former NATO commander and senior Marine officer, “wrote a letter of apology,” ministry spokeswoman Anne van Pinxteren told AFP.

In it, Mr. Sheehan said he was “sorry” for remarks made at a Senate hearing earlier this month where he argued against plans by President Barack Obama to end a ban on allowing gays to serve openly in the US military.

[. . .]

Mr. Sheehan claimed that Dutch leaders, including the former chief of staff of the Dutch army General Henk van den Breemen, had told him that the presence of gay soldiers had contributed to the fall of the enclave which led to the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

There were a lot of reasons for the massacre, but the sexual orientation of individual soldiers in the Dutch contingent had nothing to do with it.

March 29, 2010

Americans to lose privacy in offshore banking

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:27

Of course, the headline assumes that they had any such privilege in the past . . .

Samuel Taliaferro is disturbed by provisions in a new law which will extend US government intervention into foreign bank business:

The name of the bill is the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (H.R. 2487) commonly known as the HIRE Act. This is the jobs incentive bill that was signed by the President on March 18th amid little fanfare.

Relatively small by Washington standards (“just” an $18 billion stimulus package) the bill was drafted to provide incentives to employers to hire more people but contains some very disturbing language concerning the ownership and transference of money to any overseas account. The truly galling part of the bill is that it attempts to require “foreign financial and non-financial institutions to withhold 30% of payments made to such institutions by U.S. individuals unless such institutions agree to disclose the identity of such individuals and report on the bank transactions”. Think about this — the U.S. government is attempting to strong arm foreign financial and non-financial institutions (think banks and law firms) to either withhold 30% of the transactions in a U.S. individual’s account (and presumably remit this to the U.S. Treasury) or disclose the account details to the U.S.. The language of the bill addresses both bank accounts and any foreign trusts (ie- Private Interest Foundations).

In other words, the US government is afraid more Americans are going to be worried about the security of their money and will look to offshore institutions to preserve their savings. The government is moving pre-emptively to deter that flow of money away from their direct control. You’d almost think they didn’t trust their own citizenry.

Costs continue to rise for F-35B aircraft

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:47

Strategy Page has more on the increasing spendiness of the F-35 program, especially the part the Navy is most concerned about:

Denmark has decided to wait, until 2014, to decide what to replace its elderly F-16 fleet with. Meanwhile, 18 of the F-16s will be retired. But the other 30 will be refurbished so that they can continue to operate for the rest of the decade. Denmark had wanted to replace the F-16s with F-35s. But the F-35s keeps getting delayed (now more than two years behind schedule), and is becoming more expensive (nearly a hundred percent over budget). The Danish F-35 buy is no longer a sure thing. The delays have lots of users concerned. The U.S. Navy has been nervously watching as the costs of the new F-35C and F-35B carrier aircraft versions go up.

It comes down to this. Currently, it costs the navy, on average, $19,000 an hour to operate its AV-8 vertical takeoff and F-18C fighter aircraft. It costs 63 percent more to operate the F-35C (which will replace the F-18C) and the F-35B (which will replace the AV-8). These costs include buying the aircraft, training and maintaining the pilots, the aircraft and purchasing expendable items (fuel, spare parts, munitions.) Like the F-22, which recently had production capped at less than 200 aircraft, the capabilities, as superior as they were, did not justify the much higher costs. The F-35, at least for the navy, is headed in the same direction. The navy can go ahead with the more recent F-18E, and keep refurbishing, or even building, the AV-8. Politics, and lobbying by the F-35 manufacturer, will probably keep the F-35 headed for fleet service, no matter what the cost.

Another ally watching the F-35B costs rise with trepidation is the Royal Navy, whose aircraft carriers are not able to handle conventional aircraft (even the two large carriers under construction won’t have catapults for launching non-STOL planes). Earlier posts on the Royal Navy’s carrier worries here and here.

March 26, 2010

The case against Jamie Oliver

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Food, Health, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:59

March 25, 2010

QotD: The all-conquering Commerce clause

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 16:50

. . . this kind of argument proves too much, since it means that everything people do or don’t do potentially qualifies as interstate commerce, once you consider substitution effects, secondary and tertiary consequences, and similar behavior by other people. If sleeping with the windows open or failing to purchase an air filter triggers people’s allergies and causes them to “purchase over-the-counter remedies,” it affects interstate commerce. By Balkin’s logic, Congress therefore could pass a law requiring everyone (or maybe just allergy sufferers) to close their windows at night or purchase air filters. Mandatory calisthenics, which would make the population fitter and thereby reduce health care costs, likewise should qualify as regulating interstate commerce, along with myriad other measures aimed at increasing health-promoting behavior or reducing health-compromising behavior: a national bed time, mandatory tooth brushing, a donut ban, a weight tax, etc.

And these are just the possibilities suggested by the government’s interest in health care. Add in the other five-sixths of the economy, and the Commerce Clause swallows pretty much everything, subject to specific limits such as those listed in the Bill of Rights. Hence Congress could not stop us from watching a particular TV show or playing a particular video game (which would violate the First Amendment), but it could prevent us from engaging in such sedentary activities for more than an hour a day in the name of improving our health and boosting our productivity, both of which would have consequences that ripple through the economy and have a cumulative effect on interstate commerce.

Jacob Sullum “Uninsured People Do Things, So They Should Be Punished”, Hit and Run, 2010-03-25

Is this the beginning of the end for “Don’t ask, don’t tell”?

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has announced some changes to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that makes it a bit less easy to force gay or lesbian service members out of the armed forces:

The Pentagon announced immediate changes on Thursday to make it more difficult for the military to kick out gay service members, an interim step while Congress debates repeal of the existing “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a news conference that the directives included raising the rank of those allowed to begin investigation procedures against suspected violators of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

If you wonder why even a small step like this has been so long in coming, this explains how deeply embedded anti-homosexual attitudes can be:

Well now we know. The reason Western forces failed to prevent the massacre in Srebrenica in 1995 is because of the gays. You see the Dutch lifted a ban on homosexuals in the armed services in 1974 and ever since then the Nancy boys have been so busy watching Sex and the City, baking flans and checking out the backsides of their hetero comrades-in-arms that the whole operation has gone to pot.

This is the theory floated with an ironically straight face by retired Marine General John Sheehan during congressional hearings on abandoning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Bill Clinton’s cowardly split-the-difference policy on gays in the service. The General’s criticism wasn’t limited to the Dutch, mind you; he thinks many European armies have gone “soft” owing to liberal social engineering projects.

General Sheehan may be more representative of attitudes at the higher levels of the armed forces than Secretary Gates. I don’t get it, but this is nothing new. As I wrote back in 2008:

As a recruiting policy, DADT is just plain dumb. As a “retention” policy, DADT is worse: gay and lesbian soldiers are pretty clearly determined to serve — in spite of the widespread anti-gay mentality pervasive in some units — and are being dismissed from the service for being honest. This, at a time when all branches of the US armed forces are struggling to maintain troop levels. It’s a stupid, dishonest policy and should be discarded ASAP.

Oh, and here:

It’s truly mind-boggling that the US military can still justify this stupid policy: being gay isn’t a crime, and is becoming “normal” across the country, yet it still counts as a reason to drum someone out of the military. This, at a time when the armed forces are finding their demands for personnel outstripping the supply.

A gay man or a lesbian woman is no more a threat to the efficient functioning of a military unit than anyone else — all things being equal — and may well be more motivated to succeed because they’ve volunteered to serve in spite of the idiotic “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

March 23, 2010

Comparing congress to prostitutes is unfair to prostitutes

Filed under: Government, Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 17:12

Scott Stein upbraids Glenn Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) for his sloppy and insulting comparison:

[P]rostitutes sell themselves for money — the most intimate part of themselves, even their souls, some opponents of legalized prostitution might say. So looked at this way, Congress is full of prostitutes. Members of Congress sell their souls (if any in Congress have such things). Principles, values, the interests of the nation, the Constitution — all of it — are up for sale to the highest bidder, and that bidder need not be offering money directly. Votes or influence in a political party will often do just fine. Of course, these lead to money and power, which is what the whores in Congress want.

But in many ways Congress is nothing like a prostitute. A prostitute only wants cash that customers actually have, and usually tells them the real price of the services being purchased. A prostitute doesn’t impose hidden fees through inflation (we don’t generally give prostitutes the power to print money, but somehow we let Congress approve stimulus packages and spend money that doesn’t exist). A prostitute doesn’t increase the national debt (in fact, it is government, by keeping prostitution illegal, that increases the deficit in yet another way, by making income from prostitution outside of the system and not taxable).

[. . .]

Yet I’ve never heard of a prostitute that had to convince constituents that they wanted to get laid. I don’t recall prostitutes having to give speeches to persuade their constituents that the sex would be good for them and worth the price. Prostitutes have willing and eager constituents. Prostitutes might proposition men, advertise their wares, but they don’t have to force themselves on johns. Prostitutes don’t have to rape anyone.

Can the same be said of Congress?

Glenn, comparing prostitutes to Congress is insulting — to the prostitutes. Perhaps you owe them an apology.

March 22, 2010

QotD: American drug warriors will fight to the last Mexican civilian

Filed under: Americas, Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 18:08

The astonishing argument from U.S. drug warriors to the violence in Juárez to this point has been: the bloodshed means we’re winning. Or put another way, “If thousands of Mexican need to die to keep Americans from getting high, by golly I, American drug war official, am willing to step up and make that sacrifice.” Now that a few Americans have been killed too, that argument will get more difficult to make.

But as O’Grady writes, don’t expect that to lead to any common sense changes in policy. To this point, the Obama administration and the leadership in Congress have made it clear that the only acceptable drug policy in Mexico is more militarization, more force, and more American funding and weapons with which to do it. If thousands more Mexicans have to die on the front lines so America’s politicians can make it marginally more difficult for Americans to ingest mind-altering substances, so be it.

Radley Balko, “Mary O’Grady on Mexico’s Drug War”, The Agitator, 2010-03-22

March 18, 2010

Compare and contrast

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:16

Andrew Coyne looks at what would have happened in the Watergate scandal (the original “-gate”) if President Nixon had the same scope of power that a Canadian Prime Minister enjoys:

As the Watergate scandal deepened, the U.S. Senate struck a committee to investigate. Headed by Sen. Sam Ervin, it had broad powers to subpoena documents and compel evidence, together with a staff of investigators and legal counsel.

On July 13, 1973, Alexander Butterfield, Richard Nixon’s deputy assistant, told committee staff that discussions in the Oval Office were routinely tape-recorded. Before long, judge John J. Sirica had launched proceedings to force the president to hand over the tapes. Nixon refused, citing executive privilege, but in the end complied with a Supreme Court ruling ordering their release, with consequences that are well known.

But suppose the U.S. Congress functioned like Canada’s Parliament, and Nixon had the powers, not of a president, but of a prime minister of Canada. The committee, uncertain of its jurisdiction and with little in the way of staff or resources, would very likely never have learned of the tapes’ existence. Had it persisted with its inquiries, Nixon could have shut down the committee, and the Congress with it. And, rather than defend his case in court, Nixon could have hired a former Supreme Court judge to “advise” him on whether to release the tapes. And that would more or less be that.

He does say that he’s not trying to draw a direct comparison between the two situations (Watergate versus the Afghan detainee issue), but to highlight the relative amount of power a “mere” prime minister wields.

Harrier replacement’s first hover test

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:49

The F-35B from Lockheed Martin is intended to replace the Hawker Harrier for the US Marine Corps and the Royal Navy. Here’s a short video of the test plane in its first test of hovering and then a slow-speed landing:

H/T to Lewis Page, who writes:

Though the F-35 had been planned to be bought in thousands by the US forces alone, suggesting good economies of scale and affordable prices for export customers down the road, critics of the programme are now alleging that costs are so far out of control that the well-known military procurement “death spiral” process has set in: higher price, less planes bought, unit cost driven up even higher, even less planes bought and so on.

However it’s important to note that if the F-35 is successful it has the potential to destroy large amounts of the present global military aerospace industry. If it does get made in large enough numbers to be offered cheaply in time, it will be more sophisticated and yet cheaper than any other combat jet on the market, in all likelihood putting several of its competitors out of business in decades to come. This is probably a major reason why so many aerospace people are desperate for it to fail.

But there are others who feel that the Western fighter jet industry is overlarge, bloated, has no real threat to confront any more and is consuming funds which might be better spent on simpler things such as infantrymen or helicopters. They might be hoping that the F-35 can resolve its problems.

Earlier posts on the F-35, particularly from the Royal Navy’s viewpoint here.

Adding “ordinary” criminals to the sex offender registry

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:00

The sex offender registry in most jurisdictions doesn’t work — at least, it doesn’t work to deter re-offence and it almost certainly doesn’t work to protect the public. What these registries do quite successfully, however, is to continue punishing the criminals long after they have served their sentences.

People who appear in these registries have a long list of prohibited activities, most frequently requiring them to stay a certain distance from schools (which often means there is little or no choice for where they can live, work, or travel, as the legallly mandated distance exceeds the average distance between schools). Ordinary ex-cons have great difficulty getting employment even in a growing economy, and the situation for identified “sex offenders” is close to impossible.

As a general rule, having your name added to the sex offender registry is as close to a life sentence as possible, but with no hope of parole and no hope of even a semblance of living a normal life.

Georgia apparently thinks this situation is not only fine, but they’d like to add non-sexual offenders to the registry too:

Georgia’s Supreme Court is upholding the government’s right to put non-sex offenders on the state’s sex-offender registry, highlighting a little-noticed (but growing) nationwide practice.

Atlanta criminal defense attorney Ann Marie Fitz estimated that perhaps thousands of convicts convicted of non-sexual crimes have been placed in sex-offender databases. Fitz represents a convict who was charged with false imprisonment when he was 18 for briefly detaining a 17-year-old girl during a soured drug deal. He unsuccessfully challenged his mandatory, lifelong sex-offender listing to the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled against him Monday.

Under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2007, the states are required to have statutes demanding sex-offender registration for those convicted of kidnapping or falsely imprisoning minors. The Georgia court ruled that the plain meaning of “sex offender” was overridden by the state’s law.

If it’s your world view that criminals should never be forgiven for their transgressions, then this sort of deliberate act is understandable. It’s morally indefensible, but it’s understandable.

March 17, 2010

Superbubble?

Filed under: China, Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:14

Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me this link, suggesting that it “gives you an opportunity to round up all of your ‘as I said about China earlier…’ [posts]”.

The world looks at China with envy. China’s economy grew 8.7 percent last year, while the world economy contracted by 2.2 percent. It seems that Chinese “Confucian capitalism” — a market economy powered by 1.3 billion people and guided by an authoritarian regime that can pull levers at will — is superior to our touchy-feely democracy and capitalism. But the grass on China’s side of the fence is not as green as it appears.

In fact, China’s defiance of the global recession is not a miracle — it’s a superbubble. When it deflates, it will spell big trouble for all of us.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m anti-Chinese, because that isn’t why I post this sort of material. I think the Chinese miracle has been to raise literally hundreds of millions out of poverty, but it hasn’t been a purely positive thing: hundreds of millions of others are supporting the uplift but being deprived of similar opportunities. It’s a fantastic achievement, but it has involved — and continues to involve — injustice and repression.

It also requires continued state control over media, and not just BBC/CBC/PBS type state funding, but actual state censorship and worse:

During the crisis, Chinese exports were down more than 25 percent, tonnage of goods shipped through railroads was down by double digits, and electricity use plummeted.

Yet Beijing insisted that China had magically sustained 6 to 8 percent growth.

China lies. It goes to great lengths to maintain appearances, including censoring media and jailing those who write antigovernment articles. That’s why we have to rely on hard data instead.

Those lies will compound the impact when the lies can’t be maintained any more:

What happens in China doesn’t stay in China. A meltdown there — or even a slowdown — would have severe consequences for the rest of the world.

It will tank the commodity markets. Demand for industrial goods will fall off the cliff. Finally, Chinese appetite for our fine currency will diminish, driving the dollar lower against the renminbi and boosting our interest rates higher. No more 5 percent mortgages and 6 percent car loans.

It will be bad for the US and the rest of the world’s economies, but it could well be catastrophic (in the full meaning of that word) for China. As the US economy contracted over the last couple of years, it revealed lots of malinvestments . . . and the companies which were most exposed to the risks took huge hits to their balance sheets and their business models. A similar shock to the Chinese economy could topple the government or raise the already-high chances of massive unrest and corresponding increased repression.

Interesting times, indeed.

As Jon suggested, you can see my previous concerns about the Chinese economy here.

Debunking “No Irish Need Apply”

Filed under: Britain, History, Religion, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:51

By way of Kathy Shaidle, a debunking of the notorious “No Irish Need Apply” era of labour:

Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming “Help Wanted — No Irish Need Apply!” No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, “No Irish Need Apply,” purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish — on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory.

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