A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Showing that any two-bit hack can now have a blog, here is the latest.

From Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and Judge Richard Posner

Wow. Who could have predicted this? From Posner:

"A rational decision to go to war should be based on a comparison of the costs and benefits . . . ."

[Replaced_Texan]

From the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Projected Economic Costs Due to Health Consequences of Teenagers’ Loss of Confidentiality in Obtaining Reproductive Health Care Services in Texas

• ABSTRACT
  
  Background We wanted to focus on the potential consequences of recently enacted legislation in Texas that limits adolescents’ ability to obtain confidential reproductive health care services.
  
  Objective To assess the potential economic costs that result when adolescents do not seek reproductive health care services because their confidentiality is compromised.
  
  Design We developed a cost model to estimate the projected costs of parental consent and law enforcement reporting requirements based on data from the literature, the Texas Department of Health, and publicly funded family planning clinics in Texas. Univariate and multivariate sensitivity analyses explored different scenarios.
  
  Setting The state of Texas.
  
  Participants Projected costs were estimated for all girls younger than 18 years using publicly funded reproductive health care services in Texas.
  
  Main Outcome Measures We determined the projected number of additional pregnancies, births, abortions, and untreated sexually transmitted infections and resulting pelvic inflammatory disease and calculated the associated economic costs of these projected outcomes.
  
  Results The potential costs of parental consent and law enforcement reporting requirements in Texas were estimated at $43.6 million (range, $11.8 million to $56.6 million) for girls younger than 18 years currently using publicly funded services.
  
  Conclusions As policymakers throughout the United States search for ways to curtail adolescent sexual activity and its adverse consequences, this analysis suggests that the limiting of medical confidentiality and the resulting restricted use of reproductive health care services potentially have serious health and economic consequences.

Follow the link to the full article. It's amazing how terrified we are in this country of kids having sex.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan

Follow the link to the full article. It's amazing how terrified we are in this country of kids having sex.

No, it's amazing that we think that if kids aren't able to learn about sex or obtain protection from pregnancy/STDs, they will abstain from sex.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Follow the link to the full article. It's amazing how terrified we are in this country of kids having sex.

With an appropriate disclaimer that I would give the same sex ed that you would, you're sounding like that guy who wrote "What's The Matter With Kansas", in which he says that all the red-staters voted against their own interests, but in which he made the mistake of thinking that he knew what their interests were as well as they did. I think they might say that you are judging by the wrong criteria.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
With an appropriate disclaimer that I would give the same sex ed that you would, you're sounding like that guy who wrote "What's The Matter With Kansas", in which he says that all the red-staters voted against their own interests, but in which he made the mistake of thinking that he knew what their interests were as well as they did. I think they might say that you are judging by the wrong criteria.

While I follow your general point, I think the situations are a bit different.

Unlike the Kansasan (Kansasanian?) example, here I think it's less of a leap to assume that significantly more unintended pregnancies, and their attendant costs, were either a neutral or beneficial byproduct of the legislature's goals of, ah, preventing teen sex.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
With an appropriate disclaimer that I would give the same sex ed that you would, you're sounding like that guy who wrote "What's The Matter With Kansas", in which he says that all the red-staters voted against their own interests, but in which he made the mistake of thinking that he knew what their interests were as well as they did. I think they might say that you are judging by the wrong criteria.

If your point is that many people care more about the message sent rather than its real-world effects, I agree. But there is also some truth to the idea that those people don't like to put it that way, and instead pretend that sending the right message will result in only the best of all possible worlds.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by bilmore
With an appropriate disclaimer that I would give the same sex ed that you would, you're sounding like that guy who wrote "What's The Matter With Kansas", in which he says that all the red-staters voted against their own interests, but in which he made the mistake of thinking that he knew what their interests were as well as they did. I think they might say that you are judging by the wrong criteria.

Which criteria am I judging incorrectly: The additional cost ($43.6 million)? The number of STIs (3.11 more cases of chlamydia, $980 per 100 girls, HIV wasn't included in the modelling because the incidence in 2002 was too low)? The number of pregnancies (increase of 11.45 pregnancies, 7.44 births and 2.29 abortions at $60,952 per 100 teens)?

The model that they used may be wrong, and I am not certain that they are interpreting relevant statutes correctly (at least I hope not, because otherwise I have a lot of phone calls to make to clients tomorrow who will not be happy that they're going to have to rat out their patients and patients' sexual partners to law enforcement), but I do not think that the intent of the legislation was to increase teen pregnancy and STI.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Which criteria am I judging incorrectly: The additional cost ($43.6 million)? The number of STIs (3.11 more cases of chlamydia, $980 per 100 girls, HIV wasn't included in the modelling because the incidence in 2002 was too low)? The number of pregnancies (increase of 11.45 pregnancies, 7.44 births and 2.29 abortions at $60,952 per 100 teens)?

The model that they used may be wrong, and I am not certain that they are interpreting relevant statutes correctly (at least I hope not, because otherwise I have a lot of phone calls to make to clients tomorrow who will not be happy that they're going to have to rat out their patients and patients' sexual partners to law enforcement), but I do not think that the intent of the legislation was to increase teen pregnancy and STI.

Bilmore thinks you are more interested in attacking the people who voted for the more restrictive laws than you are in the laws' actual effects in the real world.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by bilmore
With an appropriate disclaimer that I would give the same sex ed that you would, you're sounding like that guy who wrote "What's The Matter With Kansas", in which he says that all the red-staters voted against their own interests, but in which he made the mistake of thinking that he knew what their interests were as well as they did. I think they might say that you are judging by the wrong criteria.

I haven't read the book, as it seems somewhat cheesy. But I saw the author on the Daily Show (for a few minutes -- like most people, he gives a crappy interview on that show) and got the impression that he says that the "red staters" voted against their economic interests.* Not against their interests overall, or more accurately not against what they define as their interests.

Kind of what the Romans called "bread and circuses."**



*I'm not sure I agree with him on that, either. Response one would be "farm subsidies." Response 2 would be "you think the blue-staters will let the red states keep sucking on the federal teat forever if they could do anything about it?"

**Not really, but I like saying "bread and circuses." It's the ancient equivalent of tits and beer.

[SlaveNoMore]

Sidd Finch
**Not really, but I like saying "bread and circuses." It's the ancient equivalent of tits and beer.

Is that what the enlightened Bay Area folks are calling that new Hooters joint down by the Wharf?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Is that what the enlightened Bay Area folks are calling that new Hooters joint down by the Wharf?

Like the rest of Fisherman's Wharf, no self-respecting Bay Area resident would be caught dead down there.

[sgtclub]

• In an appearance before Congress in February, when the controversy over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment was at its height, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators.
  
  The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, “a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes.”
  
  
  What Powell did not reveal—apparently because he was unaware—was the source of the complaints. According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003—99.8 percent—were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group.
  
  This year, the trend has continued, and perhaps intensified.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mediaweek/h..._id=1000731656

[sgtclub]

• A top-secret classified cable from the CIA station chief in Baghdad earlier this month warned of the dangers of stateside officials leaking classified information to the media in an effort to hamper the Bush administration's foreign policy, according to excerpts of the cable obtained exclusively by The New York Times.
  
  The confidential document was initially sent through a secure channel to CIA headquarters, then disseminated widely among officials at the departments of defense and state and eventually made its way to numerous Congressional leaders who leaked it to the The New York Times, which put it on the front page.
  
  "Information is a powerful weapon of war," wrote the unnamed undercover CIA agent, "And war is, by definition, messy. Frank evaluations of current conditions from operatives in the field are crucial to commanders who must shape strategy and tactics. Yet no matter how things are going in theater, the enemy must be made to believe that he is losing and the local citizens must believe that freedom will triumph over oppression. That's why it's essential that secrecy be maintained with respect to confidential communications like this."
  
  "The alternative," he wrote, "is that we become our own worst enemies and scuttle our efforts to liberate the Iraqi people from decades of tyranny. And then American journalists can smugly celebrate the freedom of the press that Iraqi journalists will never know."
  

[sgtclub]

• Karzai Sworn In as Afghan President
  
  By John Lancaster
  Washington Post Foreign Service
  Tuesday, December 7, 2004; 6:30 AM
  
  KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 7 -- Three years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's first popularly elected president, Hamid Karzai, was sworn in Tuesday in a dignified, heavily guarded ceremony attended by hundreds of Afghan and foreign guests, including Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
  
  In a brief inaugural address, Karzai expressed his thanks to the Afghan people, who defied Taliban threats to participate in largely peaceful national elections in October, and to the United States, which led the international coalition that ousted the Islamic fundamentalist regime in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by sgtclub
A top-secret classified cable from the CIA station chief ... warned of the dangers of stateside officials leaking classified information to the media ... leaked to the The New York Times, which put it on the front page.

Tres amusant.