Is This Still A Free Country?

A brief review of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, brings up several interesting thoughts, realizations and questions. (Read the Bill of Rights in full here.) 

The first is about freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the press. It should mean that people are allowed to say and write what they want within broad limits. Others can raise reasonable objections and counter arguments, or at least accept apologies. But today we find that  speakers are banned from campuses or shouted down by those who believe words are the same as weapons. We have large, powerful social media corporations expected to censor comments and pictures posted by private citizens based on arbitrary standards. We have Ellen DeGeneres scorned for attending a football game in the company of George W. Bush. Say the wrong thing, even in the form of a question and risk personal attack, silencing, losing a job or boycotts of your product.

The Second is about the right to bear arms. That really means the right to carry them not even to own them. Today arms means guns and the nation is split. Clearly the right to carry has been infringed at various levels in various places.

Some states have passed a Red Flag Law, Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO), with strong approval of the electorate. If a person is considered a danger to himself or others, authorities can show up and confiscate weapons for one week, no questions asked. A judge can extend this for up to six months where there is “good cause.” At that point the accused can finally respond at a hearing, but has no legal right to representation. In Maryland, for example, the initial complaint can come not only from law enforcement, physicians, and mental health workers, but also from family members, housemates or dating partners. The list in other states is more inclusive, and the gun owners have no recourse in cases of false accusations.

The Third is about housing soldiers without consent – no problem there.

The fourth prohibits unlawful search and seizure. This is about privacy; but with the social media-driven desire to be famous, Americans are becoming more casual about their own privacy and take for granted the idea of being constantly under surveillance. Compound that lax attitude with new technology: facial recognition software and proliferating security cameras; possible leaks through computer cameras and microphones; personal assistants listening in on conversation; ISPs and grocery stores tracking our on-line activity and purchases; and other examples – privacy is ebbing away. (For an interesting description of possible future threats, see the book, Eyes in the Sky.) 

The Fifth Amendment is well known for protection against self-incrimination and the right to due process, but the public tends to decide guilt or innocence based on news reports and political affiliation. “No comment” is often assumed to be an admission of guilt. 

Consider also the current practice of Civil Asset Forfeiture where authorities can confiscate personal property on the basis of accusation, not conviction. There are many horror stories of abuse where innocent people must fight the system to reclaim seized property.

The first part of the Sixth Amendment guarantees a speedy trial. Many of the convictions on the local news are for crimes committed in years past. The right to “be confronted with the witnesses against him” seems to fly in the face of the idea of being attacked from a distance as rumors spread on social media. Transgressors of cultural values don't even get a trial, no less a speedy one.

The Seventh, the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases seems OK, but the complexity of modern cases and the lack of economic understanding continues to result in unreasonably high awards or settlements driven by the threat of litigation in front of a "compassionate" jury. 

The Eighth prohibits excess bail, which has been a matter of some discussion lately. Excessive is not the same for everyone. Poor people who are not a flight risk can spend months behind bars waiting for a trial, a handy tool to coerce them into pleading guilty. Like Civil Asset Forfeiture, this practice is a boon to the authorities at the expense of the innocent.

Nine and Ten are instructive. The Tenth addresses the idea of “Undelegated Powers [being] Kept by the States and the People.” The word delegated implies that the states and people are in a superior position to the Federal Government. They hand down powers to them! That certainly isn’t the way it works today!

One problem with these rights is that they apply to the government not depriving people of them. That’s the excuse used when one citizen or group tries to shut up or railroad those they disagree with. That punitive attitude is true to the letter, but contrary to the spirit.

Another problem is that they are so easy to take for granted or ignore. These are not obsolete ideas; they must be respected. Freedom is always linked to responsibility.

Climate Change and Real Science

I’ve written recently how promoters of the man-made climate change concern tend to dismiss those who want to continue the debate as being unscientific and deniers. But some of the real impediments to dealing with greenhouse gases don’t come from a lack of science. The solutions are based in science but find stumbling blocks in popular trends and fear mongering.

Two or three current articles lead to this conclusion. 

The latest idea to come out of the UN to reduce our carbon footprint is to eat less meat. If everyone adopted a vegan lifestyle, putting all the cows, pigs, chickens and sheep out of work, they claim we could effect a significant change. But this Reason Magazine article crunches the numbers and the results are disappointing. “In their 2017 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, agronomists Robin White and Mary Beth Hall reached a similar conclusion [to several others], calculating that the total elimination of animal husbandry would reduce U.S. emissions by 2.6 percent.” 

In other words, nagging the public to reduce or even completely stop eating meat pursues a negligible effect on climate change. Of course, the facts should not stand in the way of the popular feel-good trend, where the burger giants are playing to the crowd by offering Impossible Whoppers and McVegans. A big pain yields little gain.

On another front, strong arguments in favor of nuclear power as a means of producing electricity without releasing carbon dioxide into the air fall on deaf ears. Increasing the number of nuclear reactors would be the ideal solution to climate change. In addition to the lack of pollution, they have a much smaller physical footprint than other sources such as wind and solar. 

But say the word nuclear and people panic. They start talking about Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island as if they were typical rather than extreme outliers. “These are the only major accidents to have occurred in over 17,000 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation in 33 countries.” The World Nuclear Association summarizes the safety by saying, “The evidence over six decades shows that nuclear power is a safe means of generating electricity. The risk of accidents in nuclear power plants is low and declining. The consequences of an accident or terrorist attack are minimal compared with other commonly accepted risks. Radiological effects on people of any radioactive releases can be avoided.”

To counter these facts the uniformed cite the problem of nuclear waste. The truth is that “all the used fuel ever produced by the commercial nuclear industry since the late 1950s would cover a football field to a depth of less than 10 yards.” That’s one single football field for the entire world. Furthermore, much of it can be processed for reuse as they do in France and “after 7,000 shipments total of used fuel by the worldwide nuclear industry since 1970, there have been no leaks of radioactive material or personal injuries.”

The biggest truth is that people refuse to consider it as an alternative due to unfounded fear. In Germany the anti-nuclear movement kicked into high gear with mass protests after Fukushima promoting a phase out of nuclear energy by 2022 while still moving off fossil fuel-based energy generation. Should America follow this wanting-my-cake-and-eating-it too philosophy?

The final piece came from an interview published at foreignpolicy.com featuring research to growing better vegetation. 

Plants naturally draw CO₂ from the atmosphere. “Every year, humanity emits 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide; photosynthetic life can process and capture nearly half of that amount.” The theory is that plants can be made a little more productive. Since the amount of carbon dioxide released naturally is so much greater, plants operating at only a 2% or 3% increase in efficiency could pick up the other half of human emissions.

One problem is that the effort to “come up with a cost-effective and efficient way of actually pulling carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere and sequestering it down into the soil—where it should be” requires genetic engineering to create this “Ideal Plant.” If breeding could do it, it would take much longer. Many people and governments would have to overcome their irrational fear of GMOs, but that should be much easier than the alternative, the standard of living hardships that would result from severe reductions in energy availability.

The answers to fighting climate change likely come from real science, not a pick and choose kind of science that follows the fear mongering and fashions of the day.

Puzzling Mail

I got some strange mail earlier in the week. It was a small postcard apparently from a group of lawyers telling me that I could be reimbursed if I bought towels made by a company called Welspun between the beginning of 2012 and last July, approximately seven and a half years. 

As I looked into it, just out of curiosity, I discovered that Welspun Group is a multinational company founded in India in 1985. It does business in over 50 countries in steel, energy, and textiles, employing about 24,000 people. 

The reason for the settlement is that they have been accused of fraud. According to Fortune, “an internal investigation revealed it misrepresented its 100% Egyptian cotton sheets.” When this came to light, several retailers including Target, Wal-Mart, Bed Bath and Beyond and J.C. Penney either had or was considering severing ties with the company. In addition, two class action lawsuits had been filed.

The postcard must have proceeded from one or both of those lawsuits. It says that the company has set aside $36 million to pay “Valid Claims.” If I have a proof of purchase, I “may receive up to $2.30 for Subject Product towels and pillowcases and up to $9.20” for all other products. Subject products are those labeled as “Egyptian Cotton” or “Pima Cotton.” If I don’t have a proof of purchase, the payments are cut in half.

Again according to the September 2016 Fortune article, “Welspun has committed to implementing new labeling practices.” Furthermore, their website boasts of many quality awards in 2018. So why does the Class Period last until July 2019? I don’t have a clue. The company has also been ordered to clean up their marketing and labeling practices.

Welspun financials show over $100 million net profit in the last 6 months reported, so the settlement shouldn’t be devastating.

After going through all that, I wondered who has really been harmed and what is the value of this entire exercise. Consumer fraud is a bad thing. Ordinarily some government agency would send out warnings or apply fines and require the company to straighten out their practices. In serious cases, some people might go to jail. But does forcing the company to provide the funds so that an administrator can reimburse customers with seven-year-old receipts $2.30 per towel make any sense at all?

 A quick shopping trip on Amazon reveals that 4-packs of 27x54 Egyptian cotton towels are on sale for $43 (regular price $60). A 4-pack of comparable 27x54 luxury towels with the same GSM (grams per square meter) sells for $28. Someone who may or may not be able to tell the difference could have paid $3.75 too much per towel. They now can reclaim some of the difference thanks to $9 million worth of attorney work. The situation is probably the same for sheets.

The whole thing leaves me wondering how expecting Egyptian cotton and getting some other kind of cotton in one’s sheets and towels can mean enough to go through all this trouble. If a company commits fraud, either intentionally or unintentionally, it should be fixed and possibly punished. In large matters consumers ought to be made whole, but for sheets and towels? – Where is the perspective?

Can You Trust Your Pharmacy?

A recurring comment in the script of an episode of an old TV Western (Maverick, 1958) was the line, “If you can’t trust your banker, who can you trust?” The modern day equivalent of that could well be, “If you can’t trust your pharmacy?” This is nothing against the pharmacists, who studied hard to be licensed. There is no evidence of them not giving accurate advice. The displays in the store itself along with some other corporate and industry practices, on the other hand, can and do imply things that aren’t true. Two recent news items act as a good reminder.

The first is about an on-line survey of 1000 Americans published in August, sponsored by the Center for Inquiry (CFI) and conducted by Lake Research Partners. The survey centered on people’s general trust in their pharmacy at Wal-Mart and CVS, and more specifically their feelings regarding homeopathic medicines at those pharmacies.

They chose these pharmacies because both corporations face a lawsuit over their practice of selling homeopathic medicine side by side with science-based remedies. CFI believes it is deceptive to imply that they are as effective as regular OTC cough, cold and other remedies, when they have “no medical benefits beyond that of a placebo.”

There is, in fact, broad agreement on this point. “After a thorough and extensive review of over 200 research papers on the subject, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) [of Australia concluded in 2015]:  “There are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective.” (For a thorough explanation of homeopathic medicines click the link.)

That survey of Wal-Mart and CVS customers asked them about how they make their purchasing decisions for cough, cold, and flu remedies at the two stores “and about their general knowledge of the basic principles of homeopathy, an 18th-century pseudoscience that has been utterly disproven.” The survey showed that exposure to this new information about the failures of homeopathy in so many independent studies led consumers to have to negative feelings about the products and the companies selling them. More than 4 in 10, “described their feelings about the purchase of a homeopathic remedy in deeply negative” terms.

Remember, one of the companies, CVS, still talks about how proud they are of the decision to discontinue tobacco products five years ago and believe it shows their concern about the health of their customers. Tobacco sales were profitable, but ultimately stood in the way of them being considered “a trusted health care provider.” According to their CEO, they strive to be in the same class of business values as TOMS shoes (which donates shoes to African countries providing unfair competition to African small businesses trying to survive by selling shoes – but that kind of unintended consequence is a topic for a different time). If they value their reputation for being a healthcare resource, one would think they would be as concerned about the accurate representation of their products.

But if you can’t trust your pharmacy about the product displays, what about the prices?

That leads to the second news item. A lawsuit filed in August by PharmacyChecker.com accuses “The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP), LegitScript, and three Pharma front groups [of] operating a coordinated campaign to suppress market competition, artificially inflate the price of prescription drugs, and spread misinformation to scare consumers away from international online pharmacies.” 

PharmacyChecker.com verifies the reliability of international online pharmacies and compares their drug prices to allow consumers to be confident about their on-line purchases and to inject competition into the prescription drug market. They allege in the lawsuit that those organizations have conspired with Google, Microsoft and others to lower their page on search results and in some cases to display a warning box when the page is opened.

Companies and industries do many things to protect their business and to make a profit. Consumers have to do many things to protect themselves. Mostly it involves research and critical thinking, especially when health and healthcare costs are concerned.

Rewards for Not Paying Attention

Should people be rewarded for not paying attention or for pretending they didn’t know about dangers that have been well publicized to the point that they are common knowledge? 

First, a less dire example of well-known information: a study hitting the Internet and the airways recently revealed that “Washing your hands under running water may be a better way to stop the spread of infections than using a hand sanitizer.” The hand sanitizer can be nearly as effective as washing hands for removing flu viruses, provided both are done properly. It just takes longer.

In laboratory experiments “it took about 30 seconds for the sanitizer to eliminate all the flu virus in the saline samples, but more than 4 minutes for the sanitizer to get rid of flu in the mucus samples.” From the lab tests they moved to a more real-life situation by putting mucus directly on people’s fingertips. When it was given time to dry (for 40 minutes), the hand sanitizer killed the flu virus within 30 seconds. But in a more realistic situation where the mucus was still moist, it took about 4 minutes of rubbing for the flu virus to be completely eliminated.

Proper hand washing removed traces of the virus in both cases in about 30 seconds, whether the participants used soap or not. The benefit is not from the soap, but from the rubbing under running water. 

No one is likely to rub the hand sanitizer for 4 minutes or alternatively to let their hands dry after sneezing for 40 minutes, but neither do many people spend half a minute scrubbing under running water. When a sink is not available the alcohol is a good option. 

That’s what we know today, but we had substantially the same information 10 years ago. From Live Science in October 2009: “Hand washing with ordinary soap and water is the most effective way to remove germs. But when you're on the go, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are tremendously effective in preventing the spread of the seasonal flu.” They gave 20 seconds for washing and 15 for the sanitizer, so the latest study just worked a little on the details. It wasn’t really news.

This is just one everyday example of how the media likes to present old news as some brand new revelation wrapped in the cloak of the latest study.

In light of that consider the opioid epidemic. Within the last two weeks, “OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP filed for bankruptcy protection…succumbing to pressure from more than 2,600 lawsuits alleging the company helped fuel the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic.” Nearly every state, numerous cities and counties and many others insist that the company “aggressively marketed prescription painkillers while misleading doctors and patients about their addiction and overdose risks.”

Any money awarded will not bring back even one of the 400,000 lives lost between 1999 and 2017, but the various levels of government hope to be able to confiscate money from drug company profits to remedy the situation rather than taking from tax payers.

My question is: what are they going to do with this money? Treatment is no doubt an option. Perhaps they will fund stocks of Naloxone (sometimes sold under the brand name Narcan). 

Of course, awareness will surely be part of the plan. But with the opioid epidemic in the news daily, with current Public Service Announcements and with the subject sure to come up in the upcoming presidential campaigns, what more can they do to get the word out? The company may have been playing fast and loose with the truth in the past, but now their website clearly states, “OXYCONTIN® exposes patients and other users to the risks of opioid addiction, abuse, and misuse, which can lead to overdose and death.” 

With so much information available, should compensation be available to everyone who becomes addicted from now on? At what point does society expect people to recognize and deal with the danger? In the case of cigarettes it has taken decades – people are still suing tobacco companies over risks that have been widely known for 50 years or more, but they claim to be victims. 

If risky or irresponsible behavior continues to be rewarded even well after the risks are known, problems will never be solved.

Climate Change: Overlooking the Details

You can’t really call it a lie, but when people who should know better spread misinformation, it feels like the same thing. The latest example came a few days ago on the national news when a reporter said the Paris Climate Accords “set global standards” for emissions. This is clearly incorrect. The agreement consists of a compilation of NDCs, Nationally Determined Contributions. They are not a global standard but targets set by each individual country, i.e., nationally determined, with no enforcement mechanism for those who fall short and no authority to reject a proposal as inadequate. (Follow this link to access all of the individual NDCs. See this link for a Washington Post article praising the “few countries” that are meeting the standards they set for themselves.)

This is a common misunderstanding of the agreement that leads to unnecessary handwringing over the fact that the United States is no longer a signatory. Despite that withdrawal, according to the EPA the green house gas emissions by the US are decreasing and are lower today than they were in 1996.

Meanwhile, while everyone is worrying about carbon dioxide, criticizing all the SUVs on the roads, a far more powerful greenhouse gas is flying under the radar of public interest. The BBC warns, “It's the most powerful greenhouse gas known to humanity, and emissions have risen rapidly in recent years.” Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a gas used by the electrical industry in the switching equipment in power stations, wind turbines and sub-stations to prevent short circuits, fires and other accidents. “In terms of warming potential, SF6 is 23,500 [times] more powerful than CO₂."

It is intended by design to remain contained within the insulator, but problems arise when leaks occur and evidence shows that they are occurring regularly as the global use of the gas “is expected to grow by 75% by 2030.” BBC puts the amount of leaking in the UK alone at the equivalent of an “extra 1.3 million cars on the road.” And the reason for the growth is a need for more of the switching equipment driven by the increase in sustainable power, such as wind and solar.

Here in the US, the EPA is aware of the problem, and Pacific Power & Gas is one of the utilities with plans to solve it. Fixing a single SF6 leak has an average cost of $25,000, so they are looking for alternatives and expect to have the problem solved in their business region by 2030.

Make no mistake; with so many more sources, carbon dioxide is still a far larger problem than SF6. But where is the balance? Why do we hear about the benefits of wind and solar while the drawbacks are ignored? Why do we hear the “dangers” of nuclear power while its remarkably  safe history is glossed over? Why are we urged to panic over unsigned Climate Accords when the truth is far more nuanced? 

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Can some people just not take a hint?

Enough Said!