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This is the rough draft for my first writing assignment in my Introduction to Critical Inquiry class at St. Edward's University. I touched upon my initial feelings regarding this class in my previous post. This essay's guidelines are to have a roughly 500-word limit (this draft has about 860) and to present the central reasons why you strongly believe something as well as the central reasons of those who would disagree. The topic of this essay is my belief that education should be a private matter among individuals and the state has no place in those matters.
Charles Hueter
Rene Eakins
A-NCCI 3330: Belief Paper Essay
August 31, 2004A Strong Belief of Mine
Of the many issues on which I possess an opinion, the situation regarding how to fund a child's education is one that gives rise to an uniquely high level of emotion. Until recently, I passively borrowed the common opinion that state and federal governments should shoulder this financial burden. However, upon deeper reflection and the consistent application of my principles, I am now of the opinion that only individuals are responsible for their education and therefore, the public school system should be replaced entirely with a privatized and fully independent system of education.
There are several good reasons for this belief and though one justification has already been stated, it needs further elaboration. Only individuals can act. A group is a social abstraction created for purposes of mental organization. Responsibility is a function of causation and therefore only individuals can be responsible for actions, for they are the only entities capable of performing them. Asserting the state or any group is responsible for our education perverts the doctrine of responsibility.
It must be understood that an education is, at a fundamental level, the result of a service. This service can come in the form of home schooling or an organized effort on behalf of hundreds of strangers in exchange for something. As such, it is no different than delivering pizza, selling cars, or offering Internet access. If the experience of the last century has shown us anything, it is that a free market will outperform a restricted or unfree market in most - if not all - respects. Additionally, one has but to glance at the news to see instances of parents vehemently disagreeing with the form and substance of the education their children receive at the hands of the public school system - often for very good reason.
The combination of these two reasons results in a moral reason to oppose state-funded education: to say the government should pay for school is to actually say citizens should be forced to pay for the educations of others. For how could government pay for the billions necessary without taxation? Suppose I do not wish to pay for Billy's education and suppose I calculate the portion of my yearly taxes that go towards that education. If I were to simply withhold that portion of my taxes and refuse to pay it (and assuming the criminal justice system were to function effectively), I would be charged with something I would not recognize as a crime. Supposing I was unable to get out of the punishment in court, I would be fined, possibly jailed, and may have my wages and assets seized. The result of refusing to pay for Billy's education is physical violence against my person and my property. I declare that act is no different than an armed robber's.
To discuss this point of view amongst the public is to take a very controversial and unpopular stand. Common objections to my belief would take several forms. First of all, many would state that a true laissez-faire system of education would result in a great portion of children going without an education due to an inability to pay the costs associated with schooling. Obviously, the greatest percentage of people unable to afford an education would be among the lower rungs of the economic ladder and they would both benefit the most from a solid educational background and need it the most in order to acquire wealth. Education is a right that should not be abridged on the basis of one's class.
Another objection would be concerning the nature of the education obtained from a system unrestrained by government. In such a system, educators would only have to follow the guidelines set forth by their employers and those guidelines would be as loose as the school's owner wishes them to be. Therefore, it is possible "corners will be cut" and kids will get a quick and cheap education designed to maximize profit at the expense of quality. It is also possible students would be exposed to false or invalid information and reasoning that may mar their ability to successfully integrate future data. The lack of enforced standards would hurt the nation as a whole.
In addition to these criticisms, opponents of a fully capitalist education system claim that due to any number of mismanagement issues, a school system could go bankrupt and close its doors, leaving dozens if not thousands of students without classrooms and teachers. Even though a campus would be as free to be insured and bonded as any other enterprise, economic failure is still a potential issue. It wouldn't be right to leave students in the lurch like that.
Even though the arguments of those who disagree with me have merit, they are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the functions individuals within a free market perform. Just as product and service quality increases within a free system, so too would education. More importantly, such a system would be based on the universally recognized principle that forcing you to do what I want against your wishes is morally invalid and wrong.
I welcome criticism in the comments. This paper is due tomorrow, so unless you get in your few cents now, it isn't likely your suggestions will make the cut. Style and form criticism is preferred over content, but if you feel the need to speak out on that as well, go ahead.
I'll post the final draft tomorrow.
UPDATE(9/1/2004 4:40pm)
The final draft is up.
- Perry E. Metzger, a blogger of whom I had never heard, wants to know why there are pro-war libertarians. He has also posted a follow-up to a response to that post written by Johnathan Pearce of Samizdata. The comments in that thread drove Perry de Havilland to respond with his views as well.
For the record, I take the anarcho-capitalist position: force is never justified unless it is imposed in response to initiated force. That means, no government taxes ever and no government laws ever, thus including the notion of a state military and state-directed war.
- It appears that, after some consideration, Arthur Silber is now a free market anarchist...provisionally. Hopefully, we'll hear from him in detail in the future. I've always been curious to understand his take on individualist anarchism given what I consider Ayn Rand's unthinking dismissal of it.
- Stephen den Beste is tired of writing. I once lauded and admired what he wrote, but at least concerning politics, he's long since lost me as I've changed my direction away from statism and towards individualism. I still think he has a creative and intelligent mind; it just doesn't get it right on politics.
- After getting admitted to St. Edward's University and experiencing Day One of Introduction to Critical Inquiry, I'm not sure it will eventually meet the course description given:
Critical Inquiry is a mission course that not only orients entering students to the programs and policies that pertain to adult learners in New College, but it also acquaints them with the services available to them from the university at large. While the course's emphasis on critical thinking, research, writing and reasoning skills is intended to prepare students for general academic success, it also lays the foundation for subsequent mission courses in keeping with the university's purpose and goals by integrating moral decision making into the analysis of contemporary, value-laden issues. In the process, students explore and clarify their personal values as they proceed through the various writing assignments that lead to the preparation of an argumentatively sound and properly documented position paper in which they apply the principles of moral decision making in reasoning to a conclusion on a controversial issue.
The rest of the schedule is still ahead of the class, but the book written by John Chaffee (Thinking Critically) is gratingly repetitive and in my opinion reads around a 8th or 10th grade level. I expected more. It also suffers from a tilt towards empiricism and subjectivism in regards to truth and rationality.This week also has the first class of my *gritting teeth* Introduction to Public Management course, required for my Public Safety Management degree. From my cursory reading of the book, it looks to be as annoying as it sounds. A true test of my ability to shut the hell up and study starkly alternative perspectives.
- I've also - possibly, hopefully, thankfully - secured myself another intimate friend of the opposite sex. Even though we've known each other for more than a month and have gone out a few times, it's still very early in this relationship to say more than this. I will note that I think she's awesome and beautiful and refreshingly quirky.
Austin-American Statesman: Costco likely on its way to Southwest Austin (Link will rot)
Barring any last-minute developments, Costco Wholesale Corp. is going where Lowe's and Wal-Mart of late have failed to tread: the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone.This week, the Austin City Council will consider final approval of a development that would put a 153,000-square-foot Costco store on William Cannon Drive at MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1), near areas where neighborhoods successfully fought two other big-box projects in the past year.
Neighbors and several council members say this project is different because it protects the site's 72 acres from further big-box development and enacts strict environmental controls.
[...]
But some people, including members of the Save Our Springs Alliance and Council Member Brewster McCracken, aren't convinced. They say the project, known as the Southwest Marketplace retail center, is too large, would worsen traffic congestion and would defeat the spirit of a ban on big-box retail enacted by the council late last year.
"This proposal violates every planning effort in this community in the last quarter-century," McCracken said Thursday. "I cannot vote for a plan that will massively increase traffic on MoPac."
Copyright 2001-2004 Cox Texas Newspapers, L.P. All rights reserved.
Fuck the extra jobs, business, and market competition. Keeping a high-priority voter issue in the spotlight is more important. Whatta asshole.
I was sick of this shit in the past (Austin Bans "Big Boxes" Over Edwards Aquifer, Another Victim of Democracy, Walgreens, South Austin, and Zoning Regs) and I'm sick of it now. What is it with some people and their unerring desire to rule the lives of others? Why do they think that their rule is legitimate?
A neighborhood association has every right to be concerned about the impact of business development in its area. It does not have the right to block those businesses' legitimate purchase and usage of that land.
News8Austin: Boot store faces neighborhood opposition to expansion
Allen's Boots has been in the same building on South Congress for almost 30 years. The larger than life Justin® boot is a landmark to many.Now, owner Jim Bennett wants to expand. An extension to the back of the building would provide needed storage space, but there's one problem.
Austin's Board of Adjustment said the store will also have to add 10 more parking spots to be in compliance with city regulations. Any time a business expands square footage, it must also add addition parking.
Yet another stupid Austin regulation. Who is in the best position to determine how many parking spaces a business needs? The business owner. Who has the right to determine how many parking spaces to build? The business owner.
"It's not going to create additional floor space, which is not going to create additional sales, which is not going to create additional parking demand," Bennett said.No new business means no new traffic. So, Allen's requested a variance to keep the 12 spots it currently has, but the board rejected it.
A lot of people spend a great deal of their time focusing on the federal and state governments and their ugly intrusions on our freedom, but there is a nontrivial amount of damage is done on the margin at the local level that doesn't get enough attention.
The Bouldin Creek Neighborhood Association (BCNA) supports the board's decision. Members say they worry about potential redevelopment at the site if the store closes."The variance in zoning doesn't go with Allen's; it goes with the building,” Cory Walton of BCNA said.
This doesn't make any sense. Why support the decision when it makes it harder to do business and therefore more likely the business will close?
South Congress is an in demand area these days, and parking often overflows into neighborhoods.Bouldin Creek residents say it's time businesses take responsibility.
How is a business responsible for what it's customers do? How?
When you live in an area like South Congress, you fucking damn well better know you're going to get - along with a cool location and unique atmosphere - growth problems. If you don't like it, don't bitch and moan and force businesses to comply with your demands. Reach an agreement voluntarily with the businesses, shut up and endure it, or move.
“With the storage space he wants, he's got other options. He can put it in rental storage space like the rest of residents do when our houses are too small. He could build a second story on top of his building," Walton said.Allen's has requested the board reconsider its decision. Walton hopes it won't.
"Allen's has options, the neighborhood doesn't," he said.
The Board of Adjustment will decide whether to reconsider Allen's variance request on Sept. 23.
Copyright ©2004TWEAN News Channel of Austin, L.P. d.b.a. News 8 Austin
Mr. Walton, someday you'll come to the understanding you don't have the right to push people around. Hopefully, that day will come soon.
Associated Press via ABCNews: U.N.: Most Terror Attacks Cost Under $50G
The Al-Qaida terror network spent less than $50,000 on each of its major attacks except the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings and one of its hallmarks is using readily available items like cell phones and knives as weapons, a U.N. report says.[...]
For example, the report said the March attacks in the Spanish capital, Madrid, in which nearly 10 simultaneous bombs exploded on four commuter trains, used mining explosives and cell phones as detonators and cost about $10,000 to carry out. The blasts killed 191 people, Spain's worst terror attack.
Only the sophisticated attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, using four hijacked aircraft "required significant funding of over six figures," the report said. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, the vast majority in the collapse of the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.
[...]
The twin nightclub bombings in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2002 killed 202 people and cost less than $50,000. So did the twin truck bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which killed 231 people, including 12 Americans, the report said. And the November 2003 attacks in Istanbul, Turkey four suicide truck bombings that killed 62 people cost less than $40,000.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Why such efficiency? What is so special about the al Qaeda structure that permits this?
My first impressions are the obvious ones:
- They are acutely aware of their limited resources and their limited ability to earn revenue.
- Therefore, they choose to make the best use of them to accomplish their goals.
- Killing some people and causing localized damage isn't difficult in today's world when you are actually seeking to cause collateral damage.
- Therefore, they don't have to invest as heavily as government militaries do to get what they want done.
Having spent just under half my life living on Army bases, I've had my experience with the military logistical system. My father worked on REFORGER and helped run a few hospitals. I doubt the Department of Defense could ship a squad of regular infantry across the border to Canada before burning through $50,000. Militaries are attachments to governments and governments raise money through taxes. Hardly an efficient business-customer relationship.
Reuters via ABCNews: Bush Admits Iraq 'Miscalculations' in Times Interview
In an interview published on Friday in USA Today, Bush said that Americans will re-elect him to a second term even if they disagree with his decision to invade Iraq.Bush said voters "know who I am and I believe they're comfortable with the fact that they know I'm not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups."
Copyright 2004 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved.
You can't shift principles when there aren't any with which to begin, buddy.
A principle is a path of action and thought you refuse to deviate from and consider deeply important. Name me an issue where President Bush has taken an utterly firm and uncompromising stand that can be reconciled with reality that doesn't conflict with other things he has said and done. I promise to leave the comments open.
Besides, given the nature of politics and the negotiating process it demands, no politician can remain true to noncontradictory principles for very long.
Associated Press: Producer Won't Release Tiger Attack Video
The company that produced the Siegfried & Roy magic show said Wednesday that it won't give federal investigators a video of the tiger attack on illusionist Roy Horn because it's protecting the performer's privacy.Feld Entertainment Inc. said it's offered on several occasions to show footage of the October attack to the U.S. Department of Agriculture but the agency has not accepted the invitation.
"Feld Entertainment is cooperating with the USDA and will continue to provide the agency with the necessary information to complete its pending investigation, while also protecting Roy Horn and his family's privacy," the Vienna, Va.-based company said in a written statement.
Agriculture Department spokesman Jim Rogers declined to comment Wednesday, after confirming Tuesday that the agency is investigating possible violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
My emphasis, which I'd like readers to consider very carefully.
Horn was mauled by a 300-pound tiger [this is probably a typo as I've seen the weight described closer to 600 pounds] during a performance at a Las Vegas Strip hotel. The tiger bit Horn in the neck and dragged him off stage. One of the show's employees was able to break the animal's grip by hitting it with a fire extinguisher.Horn, 59, survived the attack but suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and his long-running show with Siegfried Fischbacher closed.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Who was the victim here? Roy or Montecore, the tiger?
This AP report mentions:
Amy Sherman, who was sitting in the front row with her mother about 10 yards away from the stage, said the attack happened right after Horn introduced the tiger."Right after that, the tiger kind of turned its head and bit him on the arm," Sherman said. "Roy started taking a microphone and started whapping the tiger on the head."
The tiger, who was on a short leash, then dragged Horn to the ground and they struggled before the tiger dragged him behind a curtain by his neck, she said. Trainers on stage rushed to aid Horn, trying to subdue the tiger.
"We just heard all this commotion behind the curtain and you could hear Roy scream," Sherman said. "Everyone at our table was kind of looking at each other, like 'Oh my God,'" she said.
CNN reported:
Crew members backstage sprayed a fire extinguisher at the big cat to force him to release his grip, a tactic they are trained to use in such an event, Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said.
Three E! Online articles to consider:
Siegfried & Roy Tiger Sprung
Oct 14, 2003
The question still on everyone's mind is: What caused the usually mellow Montecore to lose his cool?Siegfried & Roy buddy Steve Wynn told People that Siegfried believes that Montecore was bothered by a woman seated in the front row with a freakishly large hairdo.
Roy tried to get Montecore to focus, and the tiger growled at him. Roy told the tiger "no," and bopped him on the nose with his microphone. Montecore responded by grabbing Roy's sleeve in his mouth. According to audience members, Roy then stumbled and fell back, at which point Montecore went for the kill.
Or maybe not. Siegfried believes the cat was trying to help Roy, protecting him from danger after he fell.
"If the animal would attack Roy, Roy would be no more after that. 10 seconds," Siegfried said on CNN, in defense of the tiger. Animal experts have disputed that claim, and animal-rights group PETA has called on the duo to retire their big cats.
Copyright © 2004 E! Entertainment Television, Inc. All rights reserved
Siegfried & Roy's Roy Still Critical
Oct 6, 2003
On stage alone, Horn introduced the sold-out audience of 1,500 to Montecore the tiger. As is his shtick, Horn announced that Montecore was making his stage debut. In reality, the big cat was a veteran of the show and was, in the words of a source in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "a favorite of most of the handlers."But on Friday, Horn and Montecore experienced a nearly fatal failure to communicate.
"Roy tugged the tiger to get him into the middle of the stage, but the tiger didn't like that so much and came up and bumped him with his head," audience member Jonathan Cohen told the New York Post.
Horn responded by tapping Montecore with his microphone. Montecore responded by biting Horn in the arm. Horn tried to fight off the animal with his mic.
"Then the tiger just went for him," Cohen said in the Post. "He bit him in the neck and literally picked him up and dragged him [off the stage] as if he were a wild animal attacking his prey."
Away from confused audience members' sight lines, crewmembers sprayed the tiger with fire extinguishers.
Copyright © 2004 E! Entertainment Television, Inc. All rights reserved
Siegfried & Roy Video Mystery
Aug 25, 2004
All along, Roy's reps have maintained that the attack was simply an accident, but the USDA has kept open an investigation into possible violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Abuse of the act could result in a fine and suspended or revoked licenses. "But an investigation doesn't mean something bad's going to happen," said USDA spokesperson Jim Rogers. "We just need to determine if any of our regulations were violated."Copyright © 2004 E! Entertainment Television, Inc. All rights reserved
Since the USDA isn't explaining what part of the AWA it thinks might have been violated, I don't know what they are investigating. You can dig around here to read the full text, the amendments over the years, and the Federal Register regulations published.
The show is over for good, a human is in a difficult phase of physical therapy, and the world has been reminded that even the most highly trained animals are still animals and cannot be fully trusted to do what we want them to do. The USDA should back off.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK -- and working well. I sent my passport off for renewal on Thursday, and got it back today. Nice work!UPDATE: More praise for the State Department here. And reader Steve Schonebaum reports a similar experience: "Speaking of passports, mine came within 2 weeks of submitting the forms. Impressive. (I didn't just get a renewal - mine had expired.)"
It's always nice when people get this stuff right.
Professor Reynolds may be enthused that our taxes are doing something useful, but I'm not. Why do I have to chip in for a service:
- that is rightly the responsibility of the person(s) using that service to pay through their own means;
- that constitutes a significant restriction on my freedoms of travel and association;
- and that I consider should be provided through the market in the first place?
It isn't "nice" when the rest of the country is forced to pay for those people to get it right. It also isn't "nice" when our freedoms are restricted when we have done nothing wrong.
The Department of State says:
A passport is an internationally recognized travel document that verifies the identity and nationality of the bearer. A valid U.S. passport is required to enter and leave most foreign countries. Only the U.S. Department of State has the authority to grant, issue or verify United States passports.
I view this as a property issue. The government of any country, both through its actions and statements, asserts it owns all property within that country. Whether it's labeled "private" or "personal" or "public" or "military" doesn't matter. Since it enforces its laws upon all land, levies taxes upon various goods and services people possess and provide, and tells us who can and can't even set foot in the nation, it is implicitly claiming primary property rights within its borders. It's a massive claim of collective property ownership.
I consider that belief wrong and immoral. Individuals and contracted parties should rightly own their land and have full say in who enters and exits it.
UPDATE 1/20/2005 12:25pm
Glenn Reynolds is NOT a Libertarian
UPDATED 3/10/2005 8:06am
I've closed the comments because for some reason comment spammers have targeted this entry multiple times over the last few days. If you want to leave a comment, you may e-mail me and I'll add it to the body of this post.
Some people think we should have more Open Threads. They remind me of the people who argue that the solution to urban traffic congestion is to widen existing freeways and build more new ones.But every time that's done, all the extra pavement fills up with cars in half the time it was predicted.
You guys are like that. Give you a shiny new pavement, and the next thing happens is you're driving on it bumper-to-bumper with your Links and Rants, Complaints and Praise, Worries and Hopes. When will you ever get enough?
There aren't many goods in existence that humans want that aren't scarce. There are even fewer services in such a situation. We exist in a world of limited resources and time and this extends to our online digital lives as well. Daily Kos gets hundreds of thousands of hits per day and has an large, active, and registered user base that regularly pushes the blog's Open Threads past 100 comments.
So what's going on? It's a combination of the Tragedy of the Commons and the Free Rider Problem. Even though the owner of Daily Kos has "© 2004. Steal what you want." and "...everything I do on this site I do for the benefit of my readers." noted on his website, the idea of an "open thread" falls victim to the two problems mentioned above, particularly when the thread is stored on such an active server.
An apt quote from Professor Garrett Hardin, the author of the tragedy of the commons article above:
Congestion on public roads that don't charge tolls is another example of a government-created tragedy of the commons. If roads were privately owned, owners would charge tolls and people would take the toll into account in deciding whether to use them. Owners of private roads would probably also engage in what is called peak-load pricing, charging higher prices during times of peak demand and lower prices at other times. But because governments own roads that they finance with tax dollars, they normally do not charge tolls. The government makes roads into a commons. The result is congestion.
Obviously, Daily Kos is not government-owned. It is privately-owned property (to the extent that such a concept is respected by the state these days and to the extend it's owner wishes to recognize it) and as such doesn't suffer nearly as greatly as it otherwise would if anyone could anonymously comment without the restrictions of registration, moderation, and the "Mojo" rating system. However, the capabilities of the property and the size of its users are still large enough to trigger concern, even if mentioned as a wry comment.
Meteor Blades and others should keep that in mind whenever they propose further socialization of goods and services, such as they've done in regards to health care.
The answer to Meteor Blade's question is: probably never. When provided a free or near-free service, people will flock to it as long as it meets their needs. Given the value the blog's users see in Daily Kos and its continued climb in popularity, it is obvious those needs are being met and then some. People will use it more often and spread news of the service's usefulness to their friends, building a network effect that strains the infrastructure of the service.
As long as the costs don't outweigh the benefits, people will tend to consume goods and services at whatever rates they desire. This isn't complex capitalism. It's basic economics.
UPDATED 4/19/2005 10:26am
The Democratic Party: The Party of Personal Liberty?, Daily Kos Wants It All, Fiscal Responsibility?, Meteor Blades Needs Economics, The Hypocrisy of Daily Kos, Kos Continues to Amaze, Economic Ignorance, For the Privatization of Freedom, Sacred Cows and Kossack Hypocrisy, and Kos Strikes Again
Miss anything?
The Olympics have been entertaining.
Since my primary Internet access point is through my computer at work, my blogging will be minimal during the next week. I'll make sure to check on the comment spam from day to day, but otherwise I'll be offline from the 16th through the 20th.
Adios.
Associated Press via CNN: Outrage over rapist's lottery win
British Home Secretary David Blunkett said Thursday he plans to bar convicted felons from benefiting from financial windfalls while behind bars after a jailed rapist won £7 million ($12.6 million) on the national lottery.Blunkett said that proposed legislation before parliament would force offenders who won the lottery or other wealthy criminals to contribute to a compensation fund for victims of crime.
What is justice? Dictionary.com defines it as:
- The quality of being just; fairness.
- The principle of moral rightness; equity.
- Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
- The principle of moral rightness; equity.
- The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
- Law. The administration and procedure of law.
- The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
- Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason: The overcharged customer was angry, and with justice.
People conceive of justice as being roughly "getting what you deserve" and "being given what you are owed."
His comments follow public outrage in Britain over the lottery win of convicted rapist Iorworth Hoare, who was on day release from his low-security prison when he bought the winning ticket on Saturday."There's no justice in a convicted rapist winning the lottery while his victims still suffer from what he did to them," Blunkett wrote in The Sun newspaper.
"We can't stop a prisoner or their family from buying a ticket, but we can look closely at making sure they don't benefit from a single penny while in prison," he added.
I disagree with the outrage and with Mr. Blunkett. The purpose of the criminal justice system is to mete out punishment to offenders and reform them to never do crime again. I don't necessarily agree with that, but that isn't important at this time.
What these people are saying is the justice system isn't doing it's job. It isn't punishing criminals enough. The sentence handed down doesn't meet their standards of justice. Therefore, criminals need to be punished for the rest of their lives. Thus, we have things like sex offender registration lists.
Mr. Hoare earned that lottery money the very same way every other legitimate lottery winner earned that money: through the voluntary purchase of a ticket with the hope it may win. That act alone doesn't entitle anyone else to his wealth.
Hoare was jailed between 1973 and 1987 for a series of sex attacks on women. He was returned to prison in 1989 for attempting to rape a 60-year-old woman in a park.
Assuming his convictions are valid, I'm not standing up for his crimes and his actions. He's an ugly violator of rights and his victims deserve restitution. But does his prison sentence serve that purpose?
Prison officials said Hoare has been moved to a closed prison following his lottery win for his safety.Neil Sugarman, a lawyer specializing in personal injury and compensation claims, said some of Hoare's victims may be able to claim a share of his newfound wealth.
"The biggest difficulty any claimant will face is the limitation periods, and generally speaking ... you are looking at three years," Sugarman said.
"But someone assaulted before that period may be able to say they didn't take any action at the time because the offender had no money."
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
In that sense, I can agree that if he was unable to pay his victims for the damage he caused, he owes them a debt. Of course, all this assumes the money from the lottery and the lottery itself isn't tied to the state.
Guardian: Rapist serving life term wins lottery £7m
A prisoner serving life for attempted rape has won £7m in the national lottery.Iorworth Hoare, 52, was jailed for life at Leeds crown court in 1989. He was on temporary release from a Middlesbrough bail hostel when his numbers came up in last Saturday's Lotto Extra draw.
Hoare, formerly of Seacroft Gate, Leeds, was convicted of attempting to rape a 60-year-old woman in a park in the city, after a series of crimes that included one rape, two attempted rapes and three indecent assaults.
According to the Sun, Hoare began a series of sex attacks while he was still in his 20s and was sentenced to a total of 18 years between 1973 and 1987.
Home Office guidelines allow prisoners in open conditions - such as day release or community projects - to take part in the lottery and claim any prize they may win.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
If I'm getting this correctly, the only reason there is uproar is because he's an egregious offender and few if any prisoners have won the lottery while in jail. Those are flimsy grounds for such condemnation.
The man has already lost his freedom to the prison system. People should not be so flippant about dismissing such a change. I have a friend who works in the Travis County State Jail and the stories he tells are frightening. Getting jailed for a month would be unreal. Being locked up for the rest of your years (and Mr. Hoare has just under half his life ahead of him) is something I can't conceive of.
It isn't justice to continue punishing criminals after they've been handed their "justice." As Roy Childs said in The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism:
A man, by an act of aggression, causes a value-loss in his victim (i.e., he causes him to lose some state of being which he saw as beneficial to himself, some rank on his value hierarchy). By his act of aggression, then, the aggressor creates a debt which he owes and must pay to his victim. "Justice demands that the aggressor who causes the loss, damage, or destruction of an innocent man's values pay for his aggression by repaying the victim for his loss, plus all reasonable expenses directly occasioned by the aggression (such as apprehending the aggressor. Furthermore, the aggressor owes a specific amount which can be objectively determined, and he owes no more than that amount (if this were not true, there could be no justice). To make him pay more than he owes (as punishment - 'to teach him a lesson') is an act of injustice. An aggressor owes no more than the debt he has created by his irrational actions." (From Morris and Linda Tannehill's Liberty via the Market, p. 7. Emphases in original.)This is, basically, the principle of objective justice in retaliation. The purpose of retaliation is to repay the victim for the loss suffered. Now, there is an immense difficulty in applying this principle to certain contexts - granted. But the problem exists in every other realm as well, and is an epistemological difficulty (i.e., "How do we know?"). The standard by which one judges what is owed is an objective one; that is, it is determined by the nature of reality. The standard is, simply, the contextual hierarchy of values of the victim when the aggression took place - for all losses are value losses, and there is no way to "measure" values outside the context and hierarchy in which they exist. As all acts of aggression are against individual people, it is only individual men who are harmed and suffer loss. Those who were not harmed by the act of aggression can have no concern in retaliating, with two exceptions: (1) if the aggressor shows by a pattern of behavior that he is a real threat to those others not yet involved, they are justified in stopping him, and (2) since the victim possesses the right of self-defense and retaliation, he can delegate his authority to judge and act (his "right" to self-defense and retaliation, in a sense) to representatives or agents, who may then properly act on his behalf. At any time, of course, other people may impose any other sanctions against the criminal they wish, since they must judge with whom to deal. There is of course an immense problem here when we are considering the problem of the destruction of an irreplaceable value, such as a human life. But this is outside the scope of this paper, and it does not in any sense negate the validity of the general principle in question.
Emphasis in the original.
Iorworth Hoare's property is his. If people actually wanted justice, they'd free him on the condition he gave his winnings to his victims.
UPDATED 9/30/2005 12:35pm
BBC: Lotto rapist case to be reviewed
The case of a millionaire rapist living in the community under a publicly funded scheme will be reviewed by Home Secretary Charles Clarke.The Sun newspaper said the government has spent £10,000 a month to protect the identity of Iorworth Hoare, 52, since his release in March.
Mr Clarke said he would study the case and the "broader issues" raised.
Hoare, from Leeds but said by the Sun to be living in Sunderland, won £7m on Lotto Extra while on temporary release.
How about the "broader issue" of forcing anyone to pay for the protection of criminals? Mr. Hoare's case is merely an egregious example of what happens every day, folks. The fact that he's a lottery winner and can afford to pay for these kinds of costs doesn't make it fundamentally different than a rapist without such winnings.
Austin-American Statesman: Money for bike trails tied up in Congress
East Austin's fledgling system of bike and pedestrian trails received the promise of a $9 million boost Tuesday, but for now that potential federal grant remains something short of money in the bank.
Whose money, of course, is apparently irrelevant these days.
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, engaged in a campaign to represent a redrawn district stretching from Travis County to the Rio Grande Valley, announced that the House version of the pending federal transportation funding bill contains a $9 million "earmark" he inserted for East Austin trails. That money would go primarily to build planned trails along Walnut Creek and Boggy Creek, make connections to the proposed Lance Armstrong Bikeway's eastern end near the Colorado River and close gaps in the county trail system in southeast Travis County."We have a very big, very aggressive bicycle plan for Austin," said Austin Mayor Will Wynn at a news conference to announce the possible federal help. "The tough part is how are we going to fund it and get there sooner rather than later. I promise you, a $9 million appropriation like this is a huge step."
Copyright 2001-2004 Cox Texas Newspapers, L.P. All rights reserved.
I don't want Austin to receive this money. I don't want local communities to get these fucking handouts from the feds who don't have the right to give it away because they didn't have the right to take it in the first place. This is enrichment of some at the expense of others.
Bike trails! Jesus Christ. I hate politicians.
Austin has a Bike Plan, didja know? I live in Sector A-2 and yet I derive no benefit from these and other routes because I don't own a bike. So through local taxes, others are forced to provide for others.
Via Redstate.org, Tacitus transcribes an NPR interview and publishes this bit by Senator Kerry:
If I get other countries involved in the training of troops, and we're training them more rapidly, the Iraqis themselves can take over a great deal more of their own security. But you need stability to be able to do that. How do you achieve the stability? You need to have more people involved in the process. We have not seen this Administration do the statesmanship, do the diplomacy necessary, and America is paying a very high price both in terms of the lives of our young, and the money that's coming out of the taxpayer's pockets. I will do a better job of building those alliances and getting our troops home. And I will do a much better job of reducing the burden on the National Guard and Reserves and their families who are paying a very high price for the President's rush.
My emphasis.
This general tendency of the belief that diversity of opinion and background within groups, coalition-building, and expanded democratic action are the solutions to our problems is something I've never quite understood. Why the repeated emphasis on coalitions, groupthink, and consensus is so high up on the lists of statists is something I'll never really understand.
For the record, I have strong doubts that any collection of individuals can coerce Iraq into a better nation and end the war. Expanding the actors in the field to include nations currently hostile or unhappy with us won't solve the various problems within the country. Especially when you consider the problems of multilateralizing the pacification of Iraq and disagreement in regards to negotiation.
Jo's Coffee Shop had a premier screening of the new documentary about the Burning Man Festival Sunday night at 9pm. The event was free for anyone willing to attend and quite a few did. I'd estimate the crowd to be around 250-300 people at the peak.
The film was shot and edited very professionally and gave me a much better perspective on the festival, which I have never experienced. The audience was mostly familiar with the philosophy and goings-on and enthusiastically enjoyed the movie's various quirks and characters. The documentary follows and interviews a wide variety of people involved with the 2003 festival, but focuses on a few in particular: Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, people from the "Department of Public Works" (DPW) who ran things in the background, and David Best.
Obviously, with the subject matter being what it is, the themes presented involved a few things that got under my skin. The repeated condemnations of acting in pursuit of profit or self-gain and the almost deliberate attempt to undefine what the event is about and what it represents chaff my sensibilities somewhat. However, it isn't hard to sympathize with the artists and partygoers who want to experiment with creativity outside the traditional settings and contexts of society. And the movie is bursting with that.
It rocked and you should go see it if you have the chance. There is no central plot tying the various black and white conversations together, but it is the individuals and what they say to each other that keeps you interested. I thought the best were between Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, Jack and Meg White, Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan, and the GZA the RZA and Bill Murray. Here is a Newsweek interview with the director, Jim Jarmusch for more details.
Does Russian Wimbledon champ Maria Sharapova look 17 years old to you? How about someone whose career tennis winnings are at least $1,450,345?
Damn.
You closed the turnaround under 183 at the Burnet intersection!
The south to north turnaround at Burnet Rd. will be closed until further notice.
Are you people aware how fucked traffic is right next to my apartment now? The two left turning lanes onto Burnet become jammed with vehicles and the jam goes from the light all the way to the 183 off ramp in front of Maxwell Mitsubishi/Nissan dealership. That means the remaining two lanes that move straight past the light become high-speed zones of impatient commuter death with jerks blasting out of the pack in the hope that they might skip a few car lengths ahead and then cut back in line, all the while dodging and nearly missing people like me who just want to get to the 183 south onramp.
But that's not the real bad news. That shit is temporary.
What really sucks is one of the features of the new construction: the addition of a long curb separating the turnaround lane from the rest of the traffic on the other side of Research Blvd. Before, if you had the balls, you could take the turnaround and then cut over to the Exxon station and the other businesses across from the turnaround. Now, that's all over with. The same daring maneuver can now be performed at the earliest for the Gold's Gym, but by that time most of the traffic has accelerated to merge on 183 South or MOPAC.
The only consolation I could get out of this is if the construction resulted in a nice banked turnaround so we could keep up our speed and merge easier. Doesn't look like it'll happen from what I've seen of the construction. Our tax dollars at work and another example of the emptiness of the common idea that "the people" own property through the government. I'm a person and I think the old turnaround worked fine.
News8Austin: Top law firms not diverse enough, study says
Most of the top law firms in town employ fewer minorities than the state average, a new study reports.Of the 25 biggest firms, three had staffs that were at least 14 percent minority, according to an annual minority hiring report card put out by the local chapter of the Hispanic Bar Association and the Austin Black Lawyers Association.
Copyright ©2004TWEAN News Channel of Austin, L.P. d.b.a. News 8 Austin
The link in the quote sends you to a PDF of the report.
Apparently, 14% of lawyers in Texas are minorities. Firms that at least match that percentage are graded 'A'. Firms that reach 6.5% or lower are graded 'F'. The law firms and their grades are:
- A, Locke Liddell - 20.9% of 43 attorneys
- A, Bickerstaff, Heath, Smiley - 16.1% of 31 attorneys
- A+, Andrews Kurth - 15.6% of 32 attorneys
- A, Winstead Sechrest - 14.3% of 42 attorneys
- B, Gray Cary - 13.8% of 29 attorneys
- B, Bracewell & Patterson - 13% of 23 attorneys
- B, Baker Botts - 12.7% of 55 attorneys
- B+, Thompson & Knight - 12.5% of 16 attorneys
- B-, Wilson Sonsini - 12.5% of 24 attorneys
- B-, Haynes and Boone - 12.5% of 24 attorneys
- B, Clark Thomas - 12.4% of 113 attorneys
- B, Brown McCarroll - 12.3% of 106 attorneys
- B, Fulbright & Jaworski - 11.8% of 85 attorneys
- C-, Hughes & Luce - 11.1% of 18 attorneys
- C+, Jenkens & Gilchrist - 10.3% of 29 attorneys
- C, Davis & Wilkerson - 10.3% of 29 attorneys
- C, Strasburger & Price - 10% of 20 attorneys
- D, Jackson Walker - 8.9% of 56 attorneys
- D, Vinson & Elkins - 8.7% of 92 attorneys
- D, McGinnis, Lochkridge - 8.2% of 62 attorneys
- D-, Lloyd, Gosselink - 6.5% of 31 attorneys
- F, Akin Gump - 5.6% of 54 attorneys
- F, Scott, Douglass - 5% of 40 attorneys
- F, Graves, Dougherty - 3.4% of 59 attorneys
- F, DuBois, Bryant - 0% of 18 attorneys
Pluses and minuses are partially dependent on other factors, such as the number of minorities employed as partners and law clerks. Overall, out of 1,131 attorneys employed by these law firms, 10.7% of them are minorities, giving the top tier firms in Austin roughly a grade of 'C'. There are thirty-nine partners and twenty-eight law clerks.
I really dislike these kinds of things.
They assume that the ideal is the average, something any thinking person should view with horror. The ideal should have nothing to do with race, background, gender, religion, etc. The ideal should have everything to do with excellence in capability, performance, and achievement. Any business that takes on the goal of accurately representing some local, state, or national average in demographics is a business that isn't taking its job seriously.
Making a public comparison of business activities is fine. People should be free to do so and discuss the results. But publicly pressuring businesses to change their hiring habits to accommodate more hispanics, blacks, women, gays, or whatever just to boost their numbers to the average tells me they think symbolism is more important than reality.
It exhibits the general tendency these days for pressure groups to want to exert control over private property and collectivize the business process. No one outside of the business knows what's right for the business; even fewer inside the business can discriminate among what is needed, what's wanted, and what would be nice to have. Picking the state bar's average is as arbitrary as picking 15%, 20%, or 50%. It doesn't represent reality; it represents a quick feel-good resolution that looks good in the news and the eyes of benefactors and supporters.
As individuals, we are all different in a variety of ways. I'm willing to grant that your racial makeup can be responsible for some of them. More likely, the social environments you've lived in make a bigger impact. Grandly assuming all or most hispanics are the same and bring the same benefits or experience with them is a racist mindset that ignores individual circumstances and abilities.
If I ever need a lawyer, I'd want the best my money can get from a reputable company that is ethical. It's racial makeup is utterly unimportant.
UPDATE(8/5/2004 12:15pm)
More of this silliness from the Chicago Tribune via Yahoo!: Minority journalists cite lack of diversity
A study released Wednesday by Unity, a coalition of minority journalists, found that 60 out of 574, or roughly 10 percent, of Washington newspaper reporters and editors are non-white, compared with 30.9 percent of the U.S. population."There is no justification for any media company to staff its bureau in Washington, D.C., without people of color," said Ernest Sotomayor, president of Unity and Long Island editor for Newsday.com in New York. Newsday.com is owned by Tribune Co., which also owns the Chicago Tribune.
Mr. Sotomayer, yes, there is justification. The justification is contextual and based on the needs of the media company and the characteristics of the individuals applying for jobs there. There is no imperative moral law that says an institution's or business's labor force reflect some abitrarily chosen racial makeup. I challenge any readers to come up with one.
Carl Leubsdorf, Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News, which has no minority reporters in Washington, said his newspaper's hiring is based on a reporter's qualifications and not skin color, but agreed that diversity is an important component of a newsroom."You should not have a uniform staff, whether it is politically, or by sex, by race, by anything," Leubsdorf said.
Copyright © 2004 Chicago Tribune
Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Mr. Leubsdorf is conceding righteous ground with that last sentence. To succeed in life and in business, you do need a uniform staff: a staff uniformly intelligent and capable. It's certainly fine to want a diverse staff from a variety of backgrounds, educations, and such. But calling on all employers in an industry or on all industries to have a diverse staff isn't.
News8Austin via the AP: Schlotzsky's files for bankruptcy protection
The Schlotzsky's sandwich shop chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors on Tuesday. The Austin-based chain says it filed its voluntary petition for protection in a federal bankruptcy court in San Antonio.It reported assets of more than $111 million against liabilities of about $72 million. But it said almost $65 million of its assets are intangible.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press, All rights reserved.
Here's the press release:
Schlotzsky's, Inc. (NASDAQ: BUNZ) today filed for voluntary Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Antonio, Texas. The Company reported liabilities of approximately $71.3 million and assets of approximately $111.7 million, including approximately $64.8 million of intangible assets, according to the court filing. The Company reported a net loss of $11.7 million in 2003, compared to a net loss of $199,000 in 2002, and a net loss of $671,000 in the first quarter of 2004."Today we have taken an important step toward creating a stronger Schlotzsky's," said Sam Coats, Schlotzsky's President and Chief Executive Officer. "It became apparent to our Board that this action was necessary to protect Schlotzsky's from millions of dollars in claims, judgments, and debts accumulated during the past few years, while enabling us to restructure the Company. I believe the actions taken by the Board took great courage and are clearly in the best interest of the Company."
Ouch, I had no idea the company was in bad shape. A while back, they changed the look to the restaraunts in Austin and some of their sandwich recipes, particularly The Original. I didn't like the changes and neither did any of my friends, so we stopped going for a while. The interiors are still updated with the new decor, but, thankfully, the sandwiches seem to be back to normal.
I do like the new wraps. The free Net access has also come in handy.
Over 95 percent of the restaurants in the Schlotzsky's system are franchisee-operated. At present there are 471 domestic franchisee-operated restaurants, 21 international franchisee-operated restaurants, and 21 Company-operated restaurants. Coats said that both franchisee-operated restaurants and company-operated restaurants are expected to continue normal operations during Schlotzsky's financial restructuring. "Our customers should not notice any changes in our great Schlotzsky's products as a result of today's court action," he said. Schlotzsky's closed 15 unprofitable Company-operated restaurants during the month of July, reducing its Company-operated restaurants by over 40 percent.The Company will request that the bankruptcy court issue a sale order that would allow Schlotzsky's to sell nine pieces of real estate to Westdale Asset Management, Ltd., an affiliate of the Company's largest shareholder, for approximately $3.4 million. With this sale, the Company would have an additional source of liquidity for its operations over the next few months.
Might be time for employees to take a look at employment alternatives in the near future.
"Schlotzsky's has taken a number of steps during recent months to reduce expenses, decrease overhead and improve the Company's cash position," said Coats. "Unfortunately, the situation in which we found ourselves made it impossible to go forward without a formal reorganization. We believe that by taking this action, we can restructure our financial obligations, obtain new financial resources, and emerge from this proceeding as a stronger company."In addition to the bankruptcy filing, Schlotzsky's reported that it has eliminated 15 positions. Four of those eliminated were currently unfilled positions. Of the remaining 11, approximately half were located in the corporate headquarters and half were in the field.
The case number for Schlotzsky's filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Texas and further information will be available online at http://www.haynesboone.com/schlotzskys.
Via Drudge, I learn of something that sounds good, but loses it's luster after further reading.
The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation's current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE."People ask me if I'm really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I think that's a great thing to do for future generations of Americans," Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert explains in his new book, to be released on Wednesday.
I'm no fan of the IRS, but taxation is theft, whether it's in the form of an income tax, tariffs, or "fees".
Quoth Speaker Hastert in his book
"If you own property, stock, or, say, one hundred acres of farmland and tax time is approaching, you don't want to make a mistake, so you’re almost obliged to go to a certified public accountant, tax preparer, or tax attorney to help you file a correct return. That costs a lot of money. Now multiply the amount you have to pay by the total number of people who are in the same boat. You can't. No one can because precise numbers don't exist. But we can stipulate that we're talking about a huge amount. Now consider that a flat tax, national sales tax, or VAT would not only eliminate the need to do this, it could also eliminate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) itself and make the process of paying taxes much easier.""By adopting a VAT, sales tax, or some other alternative, we could begin to change productivity. If you can do that, you can change gross national product and start growing the economy. You could double the economy over the next fifteen years. All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won’t be so daunting anymore. The answer is to grow the economy, and the key to doing that is making sure we have a tax system that attracts capital and builds incentives to keep it here instead of forcing it out to other nations."
A few points.
- We shouldn't use a system of coerced money to mold the economy (and by extension, individual people) into doing what we want them to do.
- We shouldn't even have the dual injustices of Social Security and socialized medicine hanging over our necks, Mr. Hastert. Abolish them.
- Until he thinks it's wrong to spend other people's money, he's hardly different from the other hordes of parasites in government.
Evening Standard via Thisislondon.com: 340 killed in inferno
Hundreds of people were left to die inside a blazing supermarket after security staff locked doors to prevent customers from running out without paying, it emerged today.Initial reports suggested as many as 340 people were killed when the fire tore through a large shopping centre in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion after an industrial propane tank exploded.
Police have charged the store's owner Juan Pio Paiva and his son Daniel with homicide after they allegedly ordered security personnel to lock down every exit. Firefighters had to batter down the locked main entrance to the complex before they could reach hundreds of trapped shoppers.
BBC News: Paraguay mourns shop fire victims
President Nicanor Duarte, who rushed to the scene of the disaster, has promised a full investigation.Witnesses have said that people had to escape through the windows because the doors within the centre had been deliberately closed to prevent people leaving without paying.
One survivor told reporters: "They closed the door in our face."
The shopping centre owner, who is being questioned by police, told local television that he did not believe he was "the least bit to blame".
Juan Pio Paiva added that he "greatly regretted" the tragedy and "shared" in the victims' sorrow.
© BBC
Associated Press: Paraguay Survivors Say Doors Were Blocked
Survivors of an inferno in a crowded supermarket said Monday that locked doors slowed their escape from a fast-spreading fire that killed at least 311 people Paraguay's worst disaster in more than half a century.[...]
Authorities said they had detained two owners of the supermarket for questioning about reports by some survivors that doors had been locked. A statement released by the management denied doors were locked after the fire broke out to prevent looting.
Juan Pio Paiva, one of the detained owners, also dismissed speculation that doors had been deliberately locked.
"The security guards confirmed that the doors weren't closed by them," he said, angrily. He said he "lamented" the disaster and said the building met safety standards.
One survivor, Celeste Silva Hermosa, told Paraguayan television Canal 13 that she found her way blocked as she tried to escape. "The door was closed," said Silva Hermoso, adding that she was not sure how she made it outside. "The people just kept pushing me along."
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Reuters: Paraguay probes fire deaths
Investigators in Paraguay are searching for evidence that security guards might have trapped shoppers in a burning supermarket by locking the doors to stop looting, while the death toll in the country's worst tragedy in decades rose to nearly 300.President Nicanor Duarte Frutos called for a rapid investigation into Sunday's blaze "so those responsible are punished with the full force of the law."
"There are several witnesses who saw how they shut the doors to the supermarket and we also confirmed that the emergency exit was welded," Paraguay's Police Chief Humberto Nunez told Reuters on Monday.
Three owners of the Ycua Bolanos supermarket and three security guards are in police custody, but main shareholder Juan Pio Paiva said no orders were given to lock the doors.
"The company has insurance against vandalism," he told a news conference. "It does not make sense in a fire of this magnitude for security guards to close the doors and stay inside."
© Reuters 2004. All rights reserved.
Independent Online: Paraguay in mourning after supermarket blaze
"There are several witnesses who saw how they shut the doors to the supermarket and we also confirmed that the emergency exit was soldered," Paraguay's police chief Humberto Nunez said.© 2004 Independent Online. All rights strictly reserved.
Big News Network: Paraguay: Owners arrested in market blaze
Paraguayan authorities have arrested the owners of a supermarket that caught on fire over the weekend, killing almost 300 people and injuring another 300.ABC Color newspaper reported Monday that Juan Paiva and his son Daniel were taken into custody on charges of negligible homicide. According to eyewitness testimony, the doors to the Asuncion supermarket were locked when the blaze broke out Sunday, as the owners did not want customers to leave without paying.
Copyright © 1998-2003 Big News Network.com. All rights reserved.
Channel NewsAsia: Paraguay shopping center inferno toll tops 300
"Most of the people were killed by asphyxiation because they breathed in toxic fumes. If they had been allowed to get out they would not have died," said fire chief Hugo Onieva.Prosecutors have said Juan Pio Paiva, owner of the supermarket, will be charged with second degree homicide.
[...]
Firefighters believe a spark hit an industrial-sized propane gas tank in the food court of the complex, which also housed offices and a parking garage. Witnesses said they heard several explosions.
The fire started just before midday when the supermarket was at its busiest with between 500 and 700 customers. The complex was destroyed in less than half an hour.
[...]
"By some miracle I got out before the doors closed. After me no-one got out," said 23-year-old student Juan Morinigo, who was in shock.
Another survivor, Rosa Resquin, said she heard someone ordering the store doors closed, yelling "no one gets out of here without paying."
"When they arrived, the police and firemen opened the doors, but it was already too late," she told reporters.
Copyright © 104 MCN International Pte Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Mid-Day Mumbai: Nearly 300 killed in Paraguay fire
Prosecutor Edgar Sanchez, in charge of investigating the blaze, told reporters that shopping centre owner Juan Pio Paiva will be charged with homicide for blocking the doors. Paiva surrendered to the authorities, but denied ordering workers to close the shopping centre doors.© 2003 Mid-Day Multimedia Ltd. All rights reserved
Bloomberg: Paraguay Authorities Detain Shopping Center Owner After Fire
Police are questioning Juan Pio Paiva, owner and president of Ycua Bolanos SA, and the rest of the six-member board to determine whether they authorized locking the doors of the center to prevent looting after the fire began, Manuel Sarquis, director of the government's national emergency committee, said in a telephone interview from Asuncion, Paraguay's capital.©2004 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved.
It's too early to tell if the allegations against the store's management are true. Regardless of their validity, the situation raises interesting questions for property rights and self-ownership.
Theft is a clear-cut case of immoral behavior and should never be dismissed, rationalized, or ignored. Any business owner is right to condemn it and want it reduced as much as possible. Anyone caught, no matter what the value of the loot, deserves punishment.
However, does that mean the owner of the property can do whatever he or she feels is necessary to do to keep that property safe? Assuming Mr. Paiva did order the doors locked, I'd say no.
Given the swift and chaotic nature of the fire, it would require an almost Herculean effort to identify the potential thieves and detain them in the window of time available. Only individuals act and capitalism demands respect for individual rights, beginning with the right to one's own life. Detaining hundreds of people, innocent of theft or not, within a ferociously burning building is an open-handed slap in the face of those rights. It is within the realm of possibility that every rational human tried to flee with something tucked under their clothing but it is far more likely that upon seeing the situation deteriorate, most people dropped what they were doing and anything not critical to their lives. Locking the doors would be an act of collective punishment, condemning hundreds to injury or death for the actions of a few.
Furthermore, by ordering the guards to close the doors, their lives are placed at risk as well. No man has the right to order another to his death.
For those few who might have attempted to steal, Mr. Paiva's own statement is instructive:
The company has insurance against vandalism. It does not make sense in a fire of this magnitude for security guards to close the doors and stay inside.
For catastrophic disasters, the destruction is either complete or near complete. The loss of a few dozen dollars worth of goods is immaterial to a businessman who just lost his business to a fire. After a certain degree of damage and loss, insurance tends to rather just assume a total loss and compensate accordingly.
What would the store's owner, assuming the doors were ordered closed, expected to accomplish with that course of action? Would these people have returned to the checkout isles and waited in line to pay at the cash register while a blaze eats up the building around them? Would the clerks working the checkout lines stayed behind to conduct the transactions knowing the same? It would be flatly stupid to try this. The fire would have destroyed the money anyway a few minutes after changing hands.
Accusations of greed for the purpose of defaming the free market are sure to follow this. But greed isn't just about wanting money. It's about lusting after it at the expense of all other values. This would be greed heightened to insanity and entirely different from the charges of greed we hear about every day.
Given my ignorance of the situation and the people involved, I assume nothing about this incident. Hopefully, what started out as a tragedy won't get worse.
UPDATE(8/6/2004 9:02am)
A quick scan of the news reveals some new info.
Taipei Times: Forensics team analyzes Paraguay market fire site
An international forensic team examined the charred interior of a Paraguayan supermarket to determine the cause of a weekend blaze that killed more than 400 people, many of whom were trapped inside by locked doors.As the specialists from Argentina, Colombia and the US took burn samples from the building, Interior Minister Orlando Fiorott said the investigation "clearly points" to an accidental gas leak that ignited. He said that it didn't look as if Sunday's blaze had been intentionally set, but cautioned that the findings were preliminary.
The death toll was revised to 426 on Wednesday, down from 464 a day earlier; 520 people remained hospitalized with burns and other injuries. The attorney general's office said 153 were reported missing.
Copyright © 1999-2004 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved.
AP via ABC News: Paraguay Kids Return to School After Fire
Children across Paraguay returned to school Thursday after a three-day national mourning for the 45 youngsters and nearly 400 adults killed by a weekend fire at a supermarket in Asuncion.Teachers at the Uruguayan Republic school, just blocks from the destroyed Ycua Bolanos market, opened the day with a prayer and hymns as some teary-eyed children stood quietly during a ceremony remembering six classmates who died in the blaze.
At least 25 parents of children who attend the school in a middle-class neighborhood also died in Paraguay's worst disaster in decades.
[...]
Rescue workers said they found the bodies of about 45 children, a few still in the arms of their parents. The store was inaugurating a new play area at the time of the fire, and many families had come to shop with their children, officials said.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
AP via the Arizona Daily Sun: Paraguay supermarket death toll reaches 426
Officials charged a co-owner of the supermarket and four others with manslaughter Tuesday after a security guard said he was ordered to lock the doors to prevent people from stealing.Officials have said they were checking reports that an exploding gas canister could have started the flames, which forced a floor to collapse, crushing cars and burning many bodies beyond recognition.
[...]
The charges came after chief investigator Edgar Sanchez said a security guard testified he was told via radio to lock the doors when the fire began. Sanchez said the guard didn't know who gave the order.
[...]
Paraguayan officials said they've begun reviewing leading shopping centers in the capital and their emergency preparations.
Angel Villalba, the president of the Paraguayan Association of Supermarkets, told a radio station that initial findings have been alarming.
"Almost none of them have emergency exits," he said.
© 2000-2004 Arizona Daily Sun
Xinhuanet: Paraguayan president admits security defects in collapsed building
Paraguayan president said Thursday that irregularities existed in the construction of the building, in which 504 people were killed in a weekend blaze on the outskirts of Asuncion, Paraguay's capital."Bribery prevails," Nicanor Duarte said during his second visitto the site of the fire that destroyed Ycua Bolanos supermarket.
Construction regulations were breached, and the buildings lack an efficient security system, the president said, adding there were not enough emergency exits and extinguishers.
Bolanos said the incident, considered as the worst in the history of the country, must lead to reflections among people so as to avoid the repetition of the "terrible vices."
[...]
The supermarket owner Juan Pio Paiva and his son Victor Daniel Paiva, accused of manslaughter, were held in preventive detention on Tuesday, as eyewitnesses said the son ordered supermarket guards to close doors to prevent people from leaving without paying.
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
I think they've got that death toll wrong, considering what I've read in other recent news items.
Xinhuanet: Investigation on cause of fire in Asuncion starts
"We don't rule out any hypothesis because the investigation has just started," Teresa Sosa, the prosecutor for the case, told the press at the coordination center set up by the parking lot of the destroyed Ycua Bolanos supermarket.[...]
Agent Benedicto Perez of the Argentine province of Formosa, in the border with Paraguay, assured that the possibility of an attack was ruled out and, in principle, the fire could be an accident.
His views echoed those of Paraguay's Interior Minister Orlando Fiorotto, who labeled the incident that has left 504 dead and 500 injured as "accidental."
[...]
Nine agents of the United States Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency (ATF) arrived Thursday in Asuncion to join the team of investigators, which added the number of agents from that country in Paraguay to 12, according to information released by Paraguayandaily ABC Color.
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
Again, everything else that I've seen reported so far says the body count is at 464.
News24: Short-circuit caused blaze
An electrical short-circuit apparently caused the Asuncion supermarket blaze last Sunday, Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte said on Thursday, blaming locked gates for many of the more than 400 deaths."Initial information shows it probably was a short-circuit," the president said as he surveyed the aftermath of the fire.
"People were locked in. That is why the number of victims was enormous," said Duarte.
The president also said there were not enough emergency exits.
The owners of the shopping centre and four guards have been arrested and charged with ordering the gates locked during the blaze so shoppers would not leave without paying.
Even children said security personnel prevented them from leaving as flames engulfed the shopping center,
Firefighter Juan Carlos Valiente recalled the horror of seeing the lifeless bodies of children who died in each others' arms.
As the fire raged, guards used rifles to hold back the fleeing crowd, said Valiente, adding that one of them threatened him with a pistol and fired it in the air.
BBC News: Paraguay's lax fire rules slammed
Paraguay's President Nicanor Duarte has said Sunday's deadly fire at a shopping centre exposed a serious failure to enforce building regulations.Mr Duarte made a second visit to the scene of the blaze on the outskirts of the capital, Asuncion, in which more than 420 people were killed.
[...]
President Duarte said: "If buildings are put up and corners are cut, so that instead of 15 fire extinguishers there are eight or five, and instead of seven emergency exits there are three, and very narrow ones at that... then someone has been bribed, there are bribers and bribe-takers."
© BBC
I'll hold my tongue for now, but I have some disagreement with what's been said in this report.
Newsday: WORLD BRIEFS
The co-owner of a supermarket and four security guards were charged with manslaughter for a fire in Asuncion, Paraguay, that killed 464 people on Sunday. The charges came after a guard testified he was ordered to lock the burning store's doors to prevent looting, trapping shoppers inside. Owner Juan Pio Paiva rejected the allegations as he was brought to jail Tuesday, shouting, "My conscience is clear." Paiva's son, Daniel, was under investigation.Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
UPDATE(8/26/2004 8:35am)
Little new to report.
UNICEF backs emotional recovery plan for child survivors of Paraguayan fire
In an effort to help grieving Paraguayan children cope with their emotions and begin resuming a normal life after the disastrous supermarket fire earlier this month that killed some 400 people, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is supporting a programme of psychosocial assistance called 'Return to Happiness.'The programme, involving play-related activities in which youngsters aged between 6 and 14 share their stories, games and music, is intended to benefit 1,500 children under the direct supervision of professional psychologists, with 150 young volunteers helping to carry it out.
Another link to the UN here: 'Return to happiness' programme helps children recover from trauma.
The Herald Press: Rotary sending 'team' to help in Ecuador
City officials and local Rotarians will be making a trek to South America to help prevent tragic deaths and suggest formulating safety standards.Rotary Club members John Forneris, John Parker and Al Santostefano will be traveling with Forneris’ son Stephen to Guayaquil, Ecuador in an effort to aid in the possible initiation of building codes within the city. The foursome will be leaving for their week-long trip on Aug. 31 and work with officials and Rotary Club members from Guayaquil.
"We’re there to help," Forneris said, adding the officials will be looking at high-profile buildings, give analyses and look at what threats there may be to life safety. "We’re applying technology and engineering in a humanitarian way. It’s a unique approach."
[...]
The Rotarians said they believed building and fire codes may have more attention brought upon them following the fatal mall fire in Paraguay earlier this month.
Nearly 300 people were killed and several hundred were injured when a fire swept through a shopping complex in Asuncion, and the doors were blocked by security personnel to prevent shoplifting.
Parker and Santostefano said they will be showing how they perform inspections, such as why doors should not be locked in public places and the need for emergency lighting in case of a fire.
"We’re kind of excited. We’re getting involved in this to help another country and community," Forneris said.
"I’m looking forward to it," Parker said, adding the project has been in the making for nearly a year. "John Forneris made this thing come together."
Parker, in turn, brought the idea of the trip to Santostefano’s attention.
"I thought it’d be interesting," Santostefano said, adding it would be a learning process for him of what it is like with no building or fire safety codes. "It makes me think more about why we have codes. I’m excited about going."
"It should be very educational. I think it will be very well received," Parker added. "I hope the government takes this (information) and builds on it."
©The Middletown Press 2004
*sigh*
A private initiative with the goal of increasing public intrusion.
Xinhua: Paraguayan supermarket fire affects 1,000 families
The fire in a supermarket on the outskirts of Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, left at least 1,000 families affected for the death, disappearance and injuries of their relatives.The incident, which occurred on Aug. 1 in the Ycua Bolanos supermarket, left 417 dead and 55 charred human remains, plus 49 missing, according to Director of the National Emergency Council, Aristides Gonzalez. In addition, 477 injured were hospitalized.
The Mental Health Direction of the Public Health Ministry is providing psychological assistance to 376 people affected in one way or another in the fire, said the official.
The fire broke out when the supermarket was crowded with Sunday midday shoppers. Reports said nearly 1,000 people had been inside the shopping center, which is part of the complex that also houses offices and an underground parking lot.
The supermarket owner Juan Pio Paiva and his son Victor Daniel Paiva, accused of manslaughter, were held in preventive detention. Eyewitnesses said the son ordered supermarket guards to close doors to prevent people from leaving without paying.
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
Still haven't gotten a consistent body count over time.