Robin Hanson reports:

I just produced the following draft (PDF), which tries a new statistical approach on the question of which side is “right” in a media controversy. I applied it to the coverage of PAM, but it might also apply it to other controversies.

The Informed Press Favored the Policy Analysis Market
The Policy Analysis Market (PAM), otherwise known as “terrorism futures,” burst into public view in a firestorm of condemnation on July 28, 2003, and was canceled the next day. We look the impression given of PAM by 396 media articles, and how that impression varies with six indicators of article information: mentioning someone with firsthand knowledge, time since the firestorm, article length, a news versus an opinion style, and periodical prestige and period. All six indicators significantly and substantially predict more favorable impressions of PAM. A multiple regression predicts that a two thousand word news article in a prestigious monthly publication one hundred days later that mentioned an insider would give a solidly favorable impression of PAM.

Carol Moore passes along a column by Harvey Wasserman which contains this:

Anti-Defamation League Director Abraham Foxman has played the holocaust card for the Republicans, saying “It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest that the Republican Party’s tactics could in any way resemble those of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party.”

Because no republic could ever be corrupted, or because the scapegoats this time around are not Jews or Communists?

The yellow star lobby’s moral standing is based on having suffered an uniquely gross crime; it is thus motivated to oppose any dilution of that uniqueness, including any observation of warning signs that anything remotely similar could happen again.

A friend of Russell writes:

Stephany is having an interesting problem with the California Transit Authority, and someone on one of your lists or blog might have some advice on how to proceed.

In the last two months, Stephany has received three traffic citations for blowing through the Golden Gate Bridge FastTrak lane without paying. They bill her for the unpaid toll ($5) plus a fine ($25) that must be paid within 15 days or her DMV registration will become attached.

The problem is that Stephany never is anywhere near the Golden Gate Bridge nor crosses the toll plaza (something she can prove when the supposed violations took place), never mind blowing through it without paying. And as is the case for such things, you are guilty by default unless you take the time to contest it. She contested the last two, which they cleared, but she just received her third one in several weeks and now she is quite pissed.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. Whether the cause is incompetence or malice, this is harassment under the color of authority that she is forced to take the time to deal with. The people at the Transit Authority are stupid and unresponsive; they have no reason to give a damn and one gets the impression that this happens all the time.

There are two open questions:

1.) Has anyone else been getting these bogus citations?
2.) What is the best way to generate enough pain for the transit authority that this abuse stops?

Comments and suggestions are welcome, and it would be particularly interesting to know if other people have had the same thing happen to them. I’ve found a few references on Google to other people getting these inexplicable citations over the last couple months, but it seems that some people just pay them rather than deal with it. It would not surprise me to find out that these things are being sent out randomly, trawling for revenue from people to[o] lazy to fight it since the fine is not that steep.

and:

Steph sees no reason to anonymize this. She wants this to stop, and it seems the only way to do that will be to inflict some pain on the transit authority. The citation states that the “toll surveillance system” shows that the vehicle in question committed the infraction, but that they are routinely incapable of providing evidence of any type makes this claim doubtful.

It smells like a revenue fishing exercise, and such scams are not without preceden[ts].

Suggestions are invited.

Wodehouse, the next generation: a fan’s delightful movie concept

Bryan Caplan: The Idea Trap: why bad economic policy is so rarely repealed

Institute for Justice: The 25 Best Friends of Property Rights: amicus briefs in support of petitioners in Kelo v. New London

L Neil Smith, stung by a gross misrepresentation of his view of 9/11, fires back.

Neil’s piece mentions three people by code-names: “Mike”, “Russell” and “Anton”. Mike Lorrey, a vice-chairman of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, lets one cat out of the bag with an equally public response, so I may as well confirm that two of those cunning pseudonyms conceal Lorrey and me; I won’t say which is who, save that I’m definitely not “Mike”.

(Both items were brought to my attention by Russell Whitaker.)

. . . I consider the right of property to consist in the freedom to dispose first of one’s person, then of one’s labor, and finally, of the products of one’s labor — which proves, incidentally, that, from a certain point of view, freedom and the right to property are indistinguishable from each other.

Frédéric Bastiat (1849): Protectionism and Communism. Cited in FFF Email Update.

Cartoon: the parable of the Good Samaritan, revisited

America’s Socialized Health Care by Lawrence Wilson M.D.

The War on Pain Sufferers by Sheldon Richman

Hunger for Dictatorship by Scott McConnell