Category Archives: Law

UPDATED: Armstrong’s ‘Very Strong’ Post-Office Culture

Drug War, Ethics, Law, libertarianism, Sport

A friend of Lance Armstrong assured fans of the disgraced cyclist, who has been accused of doping, that Armstrong “is doing O.K. for a guy that has had his livelihood and his life torn from him, but he’s very strong.”

Armstrong may be strong but he’s also very weird.

Disgustingly weird.

Armstrong is the Michael Jackson of sport. The late Michael Jackson had hired a doctor to feed narcotics directly into his bloodstream. Taking his “milk” is how the disturbed, body dysmorphic, drug-addicted Mr. Jackson referred to this necrophilic practice.

Armstrong is alleged to have resorted to “saline and plasma transfusions,” as well as blood transfusions, where “an athlete re-injects stored backup units of blood for a red blood cell boost.”

Via The NYT:

Lance Armstrong and two of his teammates on the United States Postal Service cycling squad flew on a private jet to Valencia, Spain, in June 2000, to have blood extracted. In a hotel room there, two doctors and the team’s manager stood by to see their plan unfold, watching the blood of their best riders drip into plastic bags.
The next month, during the Tour de France, the cyclists lay on beds with those blood bags affixed to the wall. They shivered as the cool blood re-entered their bodies. The reinfused blood would boost the riders’ oxygen-carrying capacity and improve stamina during the second of Armstrong’s seven Tour wins

The guy from the loopy webzine Slate concludes that “Lance Armstrong Is Like Lehman Bros,” and that there are “striking similarities between the culture of cycling and the culture of Wall Street.”

Come again?

Armstrong was riding for the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team.

He and his teammates had a strong Uncle-Sam culture.

Of course, there should be no United States Anti-Doping Agency. There should be no ban on doped-up games and competitions. These events should be held openly and be funded privately. Some spectators will want to watch souped-up sportsmen compete; others will prefer unenhanced athletes. Organizers can cater variously to these preferences. Athletes will have a choice: compete for the title of Tour de Frances au naturel, or on drugs.

UPDATE: Oh yes “blood doping” is weird and wacky. As I understand it, “blood doping” is not merely about removing a vial of blood. It’s about draining a whole lot of it, re-engineering it and then transfusing it back into the body. It’s easily more repulsive than mainlining. As I said, Armstrong is an athletic Michael Jackson. Imagine the track marks Armstrong sported on his arms.

UPDATED: Fiscal Cliff Cadenza* Simplified (‘Cuts’ In Spending-Rate Increases)

Conflict, Debt, Democrats, Economy, Law, Republicans

Cuts to designated increases in federal spending: that’s all the “spending cuts” or “budget sequestration” portion of the fiscal cliff cadenza amount to.

These cuts were mandated by a law, The Budget Control Act of 2011, enacted by our miserable legislators. They now refuse to abide by this meager law.

The media, lying simpletons that they are, are framing the government-cutting component of the fiscal free-fall as a catastrophe.

Whoever believes that cuts to the rate of government growth would be catastrophic should fry.

For good measure, the same mind-fucking media are using phrases such as “Congressional stubbornness” as proxies for Republican recalcitrance.

The next component in the fiscal-cliff equation, or The Budget Control Act of 2011, are tax hikes. The Bush tax cuts will sunset, as will the temporary payroll tax cuts and certain tax breaks for businesses. Also to take effect are taxes tied to President Obama’s health-care behemoth.

As I understand it, in addition to their refusal to consider any cuts in spending rates, Democrats are insisting on replacing the tax raising provisions of the law with tax hikes on The Rich.

The mindless masses (and the pea brains of Hollywood), however, are already against Congress, which, for all its timidity also stands accused, preemptively, of failing to raise “the national borrowing limit.”

What are the Democrats doing? Put in Charlie Sheen speak, they are “Winning.”

* Cadenza: South African informal for a fit or convulsion

UPDATE (12/29/012): ‘Cuts’ In Spending-Rate Increases.

Finally, Republicans and a couple of Democrats and their anointed experts are framing all budget proposals out there as they should: “cuts to designated increases in spending.”

Via Bret Baier:

With the government spending roughly $10 billion a day, the cuts that are being proposed wouldn’t even cover the interest on the debt.
Spending is not projected to go down. At best, the rate of growth in spending would slow.
“The word ‘cut’ is what government statisticians and budget officials call it — but in fact it’s just really a slowing of growth, and sometimes the growth is still quite high even after it’s slowed down,” said John Taylor, a Stanford University economist.
“They assume that if this year we spend 5 percent, next year we’re gonna spend 8 percent, and the year after that we’re gonna spend 10 percent. And they say ‘well I’ll tell you what, why don’t we cut a percentage point off each one of those rates of growth?’ … Well, that’s not a cut.”
Former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh noted that “no family, no business, no philanthropy” would operate that way.
“I think there are some passages in Alice in Wonderland that must have dealt with this, because in Washington less of an increase is considered a cut, even though it’s more money…”

UPDATE II: Freedom To Choose? Only When It Comes to Abortion (BHO Agrees)

Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Labor, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Reason

For a libertarian, it is “highly problematic to insist that by virtue of her fertility, a woman loses a title in her body.” It is equally wrong to tell a dope-head (or a fat-head, for that matter) what not to ingest, inject or smoke.

In libertarian law, the legislator has no place in a voluntary exchange between adults, as dodgy and as dangerous as these may be (like dwarf tossing).

Ever selective, and never principled, about the freedoms they champion, left-liberals (as opposed to classical liberals) believe that the right to have an abortion (at the public’s expense) is sacred. Nobody should come between a woman seeking such a procedure and her doctor. (Agreed, so long as she and not me pays for the termination.)

Forget about the right of the same woman to work for whomever she wants to without the intervention of a third party (a union). Freedom of association holds no sway with liberals when it comes to labor law. Pinko pukes religiously believe that it is good and just to compel an employee to join a union and remit union dues.

The Michigan Statehouse has changed this sorry state of affairs. “Organized crime” is outraged.

Predictably, CNN reporters and anchors have utterly ignored individual rights in their coverage of the Michigan vote, focusing the network’s collective bias on the fact that wages in right-to-work states are freer to adjust with the market (read lower):

The House approved two bills, which the Senate already passed last week. Both chambers are dominated by Republicans.
On Tuesday evening. Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, signed the legislation, which allows workers at union-represented employers to forgo paying dues.
Thousands of people, many of them union workers, gathered outside the statehouse, chanting and holding signs as snow fell. At least three school districts were closed as teachers traveled to Lansing to protest.
There are 23 states which have right-to-work laws, mostly in the South and western plains states, where union membership is relatively weak. Nationwide, union membership stands at 11.8%. …”

UPDATE: BHO Agrees. The language of rights doesn’t belong in the “escalating fight over changing Michigan into a right-to-work state.” Rights are about things like publicly sponsored abortion, welfare, and so on.

The ass with ears (AWE) said that “the State Legislature’s move to ban the required paying of union dues was all about politics.”

That’s a non sequitur, professa. For even if the Michigan Legislature’s vote were political, whatever that means—everything politicians do, by definition, is political—it does not make it wrong.

Logic was never “The Ass With Ears'” strong suit.

A Free Lunch, Or The Last Supper?

Business, Europe, Labor, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Private Property, Regulation, Welfare

Permanently tethered to the welfare state, Europeans are unwilling to make the connections between the regulatory state and steep prices, high unemployment, and a declining standard of living. It would seem obvious that the greater the cost of doing business, the less business will be done. But not to the individual who is motivated to keep the gravy train chugging along.

He wants to get that free lunch, even if it is his Last Supper.

Via John Stossel:

In Europe …workers … get “vacation do-overs”- if they are sick on vacation, they get additional paid time off to make up for it. In Spain, employers must give 24 months of severance pay after they fire someone. No wonder companies don’t hire. [Unemployment among youth there is 50 percent.]
America doesn’t have mandatory vacation time, but we still have 170,000 pages of rules.

Want to expand your business? The costs to a proprietor of adding new workers will be prohibitive, often in excess of the workers’ productivity.

In Italy, it is near impossible to fire an employee once he has been hired. If he steals and worse; the onus is on the business owner to prove his case before he can fire the offender. Bad work habits and low productivity don’t constitute cause for dismissal.

In all, a European business is better off staying small. Don’t reach for the sky. Limp along below the regulator’s radar.


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