Day: May 14, 2001

Round 2 of Million Mom March Draws Only 200

The folks behind the Million Mom March were furiously trying to spin control the low turnout in Washington, DC, for their second march, but they had to be severely disappointed that only 200 people showed up to protest in favor of gun control.

The MMM spin is that they were intentionally focusing at the local, rather than national, level. In fact, the groups is in deep financial trouble and as the Post notes, the anti-gun fervor that was supposedly behind the Million Mom phenomenon never showed up at the ballot box in November. Al Gore and other Democratic nominees ran away from the issue as fast as they could, knowing that the pro-gun constituency is far more motivated than are anti-gun voters.

Two dozen pro-gun supporters turned up to protest the second Million Mom March event, chanting slogans including, “Control your kids, not our guns!” I still can’t get over the irony of holding a rally in favor of gun control in Washington, DC, where it is illegal to own a handgun and yet the violent crime rate is among the highest in the country.

The way things are going, MMM might not even be around as a serious organization by the time Mother’s Day 2002 rolls around.

Source:

This Time, No Million To March Over Guns. Mary Beth Sheridan and Jennifer Lenhart, The Washington Post, May 13, 2001.

Bush Lacks Constitutional Authority for Taiwan Guarantee

When George W. Bush recently said that the United States would come to the defense of Taiwan if the island nation were invaded by the People’s Republic of China, the ensuing firestorm in the media centered around whether or not such a guarantee was wise from a foreign policy standpoint. Myles Kantor is the only other person I’ve run across who noticed that Bush lacks the Constitutional authority to make such a promise.

Apparently Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution has now officially joined the Second and Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments as being no longer in force, despite the lack of their repeal through the processes called for in Article 5.

Bruce Springsteen & The E. Street Band: Live In New York (Review)

Live In New York is a two-CD set of the live Springsteen performances that were broadcast on HBO in April. It includes all the performances from that broadcast, plus six songs that didn’t make the cut for the HBO special. Whether or not this set is worth buying depends on how you feel about Springsteen. If you’re a Boss fanatic like myself, the album is a must have despite its flaws. For casual Springsteen fans, however, there’s nothing on this CD worth $23.

The strong points of the album are the live performances of some of Springsteen’s early, stronger material. As far as I’m concerned, “Badlands” is one of the top 20 or so songs of the pop music era, and there can’t possibly be too many versions of it. Songs like “The River,” “Jungleland,” “Prove It All Night,” and even “Born to Run” (which is a “hidden” track on the first CD) have aged gracefully and still pack a lot of power.

On the other hand, Springsteen hasn’t aged gracefully and seems to be more than willing to fall into some of the same traps of other aging rock stars. First, except for the controversial “American Skin (41 Shots),” most of Springsteen’s more recent songs are extremely forgettable.

Part of the problem is the habit of muscisians to go from taking rock music seriously ato imbuing it with full blown pretension. This results in a wholly unlistenable version of “Born In the U.S.A.” which is performed acoustically as a ballad. Springsteen’s been doing this for several years with “Born In The U.S.A.,” and its as if he is embarrassed at the song’s, and by extension his own, success in the 1980s. Unfortunately Springsteen doesn’t have the voice nor “Born in the U.S.A.” the lyrics to survive a transformation into an acoustic ballad.

The same problem afflicts his new material — Springsteen’s started writing songs that self-consciously call out, “Hey, I’m an artist, not just a rock musician,” and the result so far has been less-than-compelling.

Still, for the hardcore Springsteen fans, Live In New York is a welcome edition to the plethora of Springsteen material (bootlegged and otherwise) out there.

WHO Study in Tanzania Drastically Cuts Infant Malaria Incidence

A study recently published in The Lancet found that researchers in Tanzania were able to cut malaria incidence by two-thirds through a combination of anti-malarial drugs and iron supplements.

Malaria is especially lethal in infants and children because the malaria parasite destroys the red blood cells creating a life-threatening anemia.

Researchers with the World Health Organizations gave anti-malarial drugs and iron supplements to more than 700 infants as a part of their routine vaccinations. In that study group, malaria infections were cut by two-thirds, and anemia cases were halved.

Researchers have been reticent to use anti-malarial drugs preventively out of concerns that it might accelerate the rise of drug-resistant strains of the parasite. Dr. Pedro Alonso, who led the research project, said that if given as part of standard infant vaccinations, however, many of the concerns about using anti-malarials preventively could be addressed and the result would likely be slowing the rate at which drug-resistant forms of malaria are emerging.

The next step for WHO is larger trials of the treatment combination to test its safety and efficacy.

Source:

Tanzania baby malaria halved. The BBC, May 11, 2001.

Can Worms Suffer?

This weekend I happened to be watching cartoons on the WB Network. Several times during the commercial breaks an anti-dissection advertisement paid for by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In the ad, which features WB actor David Gallagher, Gallagher makes the absurd claim that worms can suffer.

Gallagher explains that around the country many students are asked to dissect rabbits and other animals. As an aside, Gallahger adds that kids are also asked to dissect worms and assures the viewer that they can suffer too (PETA has a RealVideo version of the advertisement linked from this page).

When opponents of animal rights point out that the claims made for higher order animals will inevitably lead to protection for even insects and other lower forms of life, they are accused of using a straw man. But here’s the largest animal rights organization in the United States explicitly backing the view that even a worm can suffer and should be given special protections.

There really is no end to the absurdities that animal rights ultimately entails.

How Accurate Are NOW’s Membership, Budget Figures?

The National Organization for Women routinely claims that it has 250,000 to 500,000 members and a budget of $10 million, but are those figures accurate? That’s what Marie-Jose Ragab of the renegade Dulles, Virginia, NOW chapter, wanted to know. Based on NOW’s required 501(c) filings with the IRS, Ragab claims the figures don’t even come close.

As Ragab notes, almost all nonprofits exaggerate their membership figures somewhat, but NOW appears to be one of the select few who take such exaggerations to outrageous levels. Ragab notes that in its 501(c) filing for 1999, NOW reported income from memberships at $2,903,383. Since a yearly individual membership to NOW costs $35, that would yield about 89,500 paying members.

It is true that NOW has a sliding scale of memberships that allow some people to pay as little as $15 for membership, but even if we assume that everyone pays just $15 to be a member and nobody pays the $35 fee, that’s still just over 190,000 members — not even close to the recent claims it has made of 500,000 members.

There are similar distortions in the overall NOW budget. Although NOW claims to have a budget approaching $10 million, in fact its IRS filings puts its highest level of income over the past five years at just over $5.5 million, and that figure has seriously declined. Ragab reports that NOW’s IRS forms show that NOW’s annual revenues declined by almost $1 million from 1996-1999, with most of the decline in revenues coming from a decline in memberships. Ragab believes that the decline in revenues was linked to NOW’s position (or lack thereof) on the Monica Lewinsky affair, noting that NOW revenues declined by an astounding $660,000 from 1998 to 1999.

NOW’s level of exaggeration is nothing compared to the closely-associated Feminist Majority Foundation, however. That group claims to have 100,000 members, with an annual membership costing $35. But its 1998 tax returns show that its total revenues for 1998 were a mere $318,000 which would give the foundation at most one-tenth the number of paying members it claims.

A likely explanation for how the figures are inflated is that they count past members who are no longer contributing to the organization. A number of other non-profits such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals claim astounding levels of membership by counting anyone who has ever contributed money to the organization over, say, the last five years.

Source:

Ten Million Dollars Budget? 250,000 Members? Think Again! Marie-Jose Ragab, Dulles Now, April 5, 2001.