Letters to the Editor
-Mona-
Published Letters: 915 Editor's Choice: 1
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@engsoc again
[Read the article: Yesterday's ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]About this: But to hear the words "junk science" makes me shudder. You used it for the studies on second-hand smoke, and I've seen it used a handful of times by Michaels. I am a scientist, and I know that junk science is usually produced by: 1) crackpots; they normally operate by themselves and are highly unlikely to cooperate and produce something like a conspiracy to undermine the interests of
big corporations; 2) people on the payroll of some institution that has an interest in promoting some specific claim.
My background is law, and it is a huge issue in my field to worry about junk science in the courtroom. Including forensic "specialists" who claim all manner of wacky BS that gets admitted into evidence in criminal trials and ends up convicting people wrongfully. Or nuts/shills who claim this or that is a horrible allergen that is killing people and the like, so that plaintiff can prevail in civil actions. The plaintiff's tort bar LOVES them the junk scientists. Useful drugs have been removed from the market merely out of fear of a catastrophic jury award becasue some paid scientific hack and/or nut will find harm where there is none. (One of those very useful drugs, the anti-morning sickness drug Bendectin, was removed from the market for that reason, to my enormous detriment. Ironically, in the Internet age you can find your own recipe for it, but the Internet wasn't around when I needed it and it had been pulled from the market.)
More recently, the courts are getting somewhat more stringent on who they will allow to testify as an "expert" scientific witness, and it is well past time.
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@Kovie
[Read the article: Yesterday's ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But what would you call Cato's willingness to take money from these very same corporations if not "being in bed with big business in the corrupt fashion it so clearly is"?
But ALL think tanks are dependent on corporate or foundation funds. It is just the way it is. But Cato is never, ever going to lobby for tobacco subsidies. They just do agree that smoking bans are wrong, as are taxes on the product that reduce to prohibition for average people.
The anti-smoking movement is also well-funded by the Calvinists on both left and right who want to intrude on the rights of bars, restaurants & etc. to permit smoking. To that extent, everyone is corrupt. The folks who control the major foundations have their own pet biases, and the $$ they award goes to support those. And anti-smoking fanaticism leading toward government nanny-control is one of the latest manifestations of American Puritanism that Cato wishes to fight; obviously the tobacco companies are going to like any group who sees things that way.
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@DCLaw 1
[Read the article: Yesterday's ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I take your comments to mean that you agree that government should not be able to impose such restrictions on employers and businesses (constitutionally or otherwise).
Yes. The Constitution is silent on the matter. The legislature is, however, free to act. I wish the "right of privacy" the Roe Court pulled out of thin air and attributed to the Constitution was real as applied to a person's right to take whatever chemicals into their body that they choose; but it is not there, much as I so ardently hate the war on (people who use) some drugs. All the handwringing about women who might have to (gasp) travel to another state to get an abortion if Roe were overturned leaves me cold, in light of the hundreds of thousands of lives of men, women and their families that continue to be destroyed by the so-called war on drugs. But about this:
if you agree that there is no real constitutional basis for absolute economic liberty, upon what do you base a political (as you call it) claim for one's right to such freedoms? Natural rights? Economic theory?
A pragmatism-tempered view of liberty and economic theory. The BoR simply did not cover all possible contingencies. There are eventualities the Founders simply never envisioned as becoming problems that might need constitutional protection. And I don't pretend otherwise.
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@Margolis
[Read the article: Yesterday's ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe Sadly, No! said it best
I loooove Sadly, No!. And at my old blog digs whose archives are gone with the ether, one of the dudes there commented they tilt libertarian. At my new spot, we hug and kiss and link back and forth. We don't agree on everything, but we get along super.
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@Engsoc
[Read the article: Yesterday's ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]guess I could be convinced if I saw evidence that Cato has taken a position that goes contrary to the interests of some of their funders.
Cato's Robert Levy testifying to Congress:
Meanwhile, Congress should eliminate tobacco subsidies
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-bl071697.html
Cato fellows' article:
America’s agricultural policies have remained fundamentally unchanged for nearly three-quarters of a century. The U.S. government continues to subsidize the production of rice, milk, sugar, cotton, peanuts, tobacco, and other commodities, while restricting imports to maintain artificially high domestic prices. The competition and innovation that have changed the face of the planet have been effectively locked out of America’s farm economy by politicians who fear farm voters more than the dispersed consumers who subsidize them.
The time is ripe for unilaterally removing those distorting trade policies.
http://www.freetrade.org/node/493
And while I do not know that Chrysler ever gave $$ to Cato, this is Cato on the Chrysler corporate welfare bailout:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA00Aes.html