On the sexual (and political) exploitation of children

Police Statism, Private Crime
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Jerry SanduskyOf all the child sex abuse allegations levied against retired Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, none perhaps is more disturbing than the report that he used his non-profit foundation Second Mile to gain access to young boys — not only for himself, but for donors to his organization.  Sexually assaulting children is by itself a monstrous act to contemplate; the idea that they may be pimped out to others is nearly unfathomable.

Yet to hear the mainstream media report it might lead one to believe that the problem of child sexual slavery is reaching horrifying levels in the U. S., and while it’s certainly not something to be ignored, it’s also not the “epidemic” the alarmists — and especially law enforcement — have portrayed it as.

One example of this media-fueled hysteria is a report released in September 2010 by the Women’s Funding Network, which earned them a national spotlight, not to mention an invitation from a House subcommittee, before which WFN chief program officer Deborah Richardson breathlessly warned that child prostitution was “exploding” in the U. S. — anywhere from 20 percent in New York to 65 percent in Minnesota.  Lock up your daughters!

The study focused in particular on classified ad sites such as Backpage.com and Craigslist, whose adult sections, it claimed, were enabling the rapid expansion of the child sex trade.  Craigslist succumbed to pressure brought by numerous U. S. Attorneys and closed its adult section, but The Village Voice, whose parent company owns Backpage, decided to do its own review of the study, and found it was based on looking at the pictures of girls in sex ads on the Internet — and making assumptions that a certain percentage of those ads must be for underage sex workers.  There was nothing remotely scientific about the data acquisition or methodology; the research group almost literally made up most of the data.

Craigslist sex adDespite its questionable methods and conclusions, the study’s findings blew across the media landscape like a summer wildfire.  Its numbers were reported without any critical analysis in papers such as USA Today and the Detroit Free Press, and cited by actress (and sex trafficking activist) Demi Moore, whose Web site still links to the WFN study.

None of this means that the child sex trade doesn’t exist, or that there aren’t a lot more Jerry Sanduskys lurking out there.  But it does mean that publicizing bogus studies without any critical context can lead to bad policy decisions by lawmakers and law enforcement agencies.  And we end up with Megan’s Law and Jessica’s Law and the Adam Walsh Act and other ill-conceived laws, all named after dead kids to make them seem critical to civilization’s continued existence, and not the further expansion of state power that they really are.

The air had barely escaped an Orlando courtroom following the Casey Anthony trial, in which she was found not guilty of murdering her two-year-old daughter, before an activist began pushing for a “Caylee’s Law”, which would have made it a felony for parents not to report a missing child within 24 hours.  It is precisely during these times of high emotion, when sensationalized cases of crimes against children make headlines and inflame radio personalities, that such laws should not be considered.  For they often serve only to increase the power of the police state without doing much to protect their intended beneficiaries.  Politically popular and emotionally resonant they may be, but dead kids make for bad laws.

Raising awareness of social ills is important, but so is truth and justice, and the media serve neither when they engage in reporting that looks less like responsible journalism and more like alarmist propaganda for an ever-encroaching state.

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Is Paul Krugman stupid, or just dishonest?

Business, Corporatism
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It seems that Nobel Prize-winning economist and reliable regime apologist Paul Krugman thinks he can wave away the Solyndra scandal with a reference to an iconic business failure from the dot-com era:

But it is indeed a terrible scandal, because the private sector never ever puts money into ventures that end up failing:

Pets.com sock puppet
No truth to the rumor that he's Obama's new campaign manager.

He then punctuates his point (oh so pithy!) by posting an image of Pets.com and its sock puppet.  I’m not sure if the sock puppet is equivalent to President Obama or Solyndra backer George Kaiser, who raised significant funds for Obama’s campaign, in this context.

What I’m also unsure about is if Krugman is an idiot, or just disingenuous, if he believes he can refute the criticism leveled at the Solyndra fiasco – not just from media, but from House investigators wondering how the company secured half a billion dollars in loan guarantees and made it all go up in smoke – merely by pointing out that private investors screw up, too.  He cannot possibly be oblivious to the huge difference in moral hazard presented when government throws taxpayers’ money at private business versus when private investors use their own money.

It isn’t that private equity is never lost in business ventures.  It’s that there’s a level of accountability when it happens.  And there is little doubt that venture capital investors learned a lot from the dot-com bubble.  Government will never learn the same lessons, because it throws stolen wealth at the ventures which are best connected politically, not those which it thinks will succeed.

Coyote Blog has a few more salient points in a response to Krugman.

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It’s always sunny in Washington

Business, Mercantilism
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The future's so brightSolyndra, the solar panel manufacturer who abruptly shut its doors last week and filed for bankruptcy, received a $500 million loan guarantee in 2009 from the Department of Energy, who was so eager to prop up President Obama’s “green jobs” initiative that it short-circuited its own review process to approve the loan, which probably had nothing to do with the sizable contributions Solyndra’s backers made to the Obama campaign.  This is no doubt an embarrassment for the president, but I’m sure that had nothing to do with Federal agents swooping down on Solyndra’s offices on the day of his big jobs-plan speech.  Happiness is never having to say you’re sorry, especially when you can throw some other guy in prison to cover for your own incompetence.

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On the crime of being an anarchist

Anti-Statism, Police Statism, Totalitarianism
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It’s become rather clichéd to invoke the nightmarish police state envisioned by George Orwell in 1984, but damned if the old boy isn’t vindicated on an almost daily basis.  The most recent move to making thoughtcrime a reality comes, unsurprisingly, from the UK:

…next to an image of the anarchist emblem, the City of Westminster police’s “counter terrorist focus desk” called for anti-anarchist whistleblowers stating: “Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.”

The move angered some anarchists who complained that being an anarchist should not imply criminal behaviour. They said they feel unfairly criminalised for holding a set of political beliefs.

This wouldn’t be so worrisome, had the police characterized anarchism in the uninformed and sensationalist fashion still common in mainstream media: that of radically leftist vandals intent on dismantling not just the state but the capitalist infrastructure that in their view props it up.  Violent thugs, in other words; the kind who show up at G-20 summits to smash windows and set fires.  Yet these people make up a minuscule fraction of anarchists, despite the disproportionate amount of TV time they receive.

Now, however, the police are prepared to view anyone who promotes a stateless society — from old hippies to free-market Rothbardians — as potential criminals, regardless of which values they promote, and what crimes they’ve actually committed.  Which, for the vast majority of anarchists, is none at all.

Given their Stasi-like call on citizens to serve as snitches (at least it’s still voluntary…for now), it makes one wonder what the police are truly afraid of: the infrequent real crimes of self-styled “anarchists”; or the growing popularity of the ideas advanced by peaceful radicals — property, prosperity, and the end of the criminal, Leviathan state.

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