Approaches to the end of life

Dhruv Khullar writes about the differing opinions about how to approach the so-called “‘marginal decade’ at the end of our lives, when medicine keeps us alive but our independence and capacities bleed away.” He points out that in 1900, the life expectancy at birth was 47 years. But at that time, one in five children died before the age of 10. Now life expectancy at birth is close to 77. Much of this improvement came about rapidly due to improved sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccines that have reduced infant and child mortality considerably.

But in the last six decades, increases in longevity have slowed, to only about seven years, and are more due to extending the lives of of old people, many of whom are in ill health. In other words, Khullar says, “we are prolonging the time it takes to die.” The goal of compressing mortality, i.e., shortening the gap between the end of a healthy life and death, may be slipping away.

If anything, longer lives now appear to include more difficult years. The “compression of morbidity may be as illusory as immortality,” two demographers, Eileen Crimmins and Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez, wrote in 2010. According to the World Health Organization, the average American can expect just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. (Health spans are greater in countries such as Switzerland, Japan, Panama, Turkey, and Sri Lanka.)

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There is no indignity that some people will not accept

This is especially true for people who worked with serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) in his administration who, after they left office, tried to reclaim some shred of credibility by distancing themselves form some of his actions. But even after SSAT severely ridiculed them, they still go back to him with their tails between their legs.

Bill Barr, the U.S. Attorney General under former President Donald Trump — who once called his former boss “erratic” and “petty” and dismissed his false claims of a stolen 2020 election — told Fox News that he would still vote for the former president in November.

“The real danger to the country — the real danger to democracy, as I say — is the progressive agenda,” Barr said, calling the prosecution of Trump for illegally covering up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels a “perversion of justice.”

Trump rewarded Barr’s renewed allegiance with a mocking Truth Social post that doubled down on past name-calling. “Former A.G. Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country, has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him ‘Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy’ (New York Post!),” he wrote. “Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement.”

Before distancing himself from Trump, Barr was one of the administration’s most prominent figures, using his position to protect Trump from legal probes, enforce his orders targeting anti-fascist protesters, and echo his inflammatory rhetoric on everything from pandemic restrictions to the security of mail-in ballots. But the fallout of the 2020 election persuaded Barr to jump ship, at least for a time, as he rejected Trump’s false claims of mass fraud. When Barr published a book to defend his own reputation, Trump called him “a disappointment in every sense of the word.”

There are many things that one can criticize Joe Biden for, but representing a threat to democracy is not one of them. He is like every mainstream Democrat, a devoted defender of the status quo, only willing to tweak policy at the margins.

I expect many of the other people who criticized SSAT to also slink back to him as the election gets closer.

Ban on noncompete clauses gets challenged in court

I wrote yesterday about how the FTC had banned noncompete clauses for all but high-level employees. It is absurd to think that low-level employees in places like fast food and the hospitality industry have valuable proprietary information that they could give to their new employers. These clauses are nothing but a way to prevent such employees from finding better jobs, and thus has the effect of suppressing wages.

It should come as no surprise that the US Chamber of Commerce immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the power of the FTC to ban those clauses.
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Good riddance to non-compete clauses

When people are hired, their contracts can sometimes include what are called non-compete clauses. These were originally designed to prevent someone from learning trade secrets at one company and then switch to another company or start their own business using that knowledge to the detriment of the original employer. As you can imagine, the only people who are likely to know valuable insider information are high-level employees. But companies realized that they could use those clauses to keep many more of their workers captive and started extending the clauses to cover lower and lower level employers, thus preventing them from finding better jobs.

Now the Federal Trade Commission under the admirable leadership of Lina Khan has forbidden the use of such clauses for all but top-level employees. As Kevin Drum says:

The vote was 3-2 in favor of banning noncompete agreements for new workers and voiding them for all existing workers (except C-suite executives). This will eliminate the ridiculous practice of fast food chains hiring sandwich makers and then prohibiting them from quitting and going to work for a different fast food chain—and giving their valuable, proprietary sandwich making expertise to the competition.

Corporate America has only itself to blame for this. Noncompetes used to be limited to high-end jobs like coders or lawyers. But then, as usual, some bright boys got the idea of expanding the idea to poor shlubs working minimum wage jobs. That was outrageous enough that it finally produced support for killing noncompetes completely.
…

A Labor Department study published in June 2022 estimated that 18 percent of Americans are bound by noncompete agreements, while other research suggests it could be closer to 50 percent. They are used in a wide range of industries, including technology, hairstyling, medicine and even dance instruction, while imposing restrictions on both high- and low-wage earners.

The FTC estimates that banning noncompete agreements could create jobs for 30 million Americans and raise wages by nearly $300 billion per year.

All good free-market capitalists—as opposed to those who are merely shills for big corporations—should be happy about this. The United States will do nothing but benefit from it.¹

Apparently California banned these clauses over a century ago and and despite that has had a booming economy.

Trump did not have a good day in court

After the jury was seated last week, yesterday was the second day of the trial for serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) on the charges of fraud arising from his payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election. The only witness yesterday was the former publisher of the tabloid newspaper National Enquirer David Pecker who testified to working with then SSAT fixer Michael Cohen about arrangements to buy the rights to any damaging stories about SSAT’s affairs and then not publish them. He testified that his newspaper would be on the look out for those stories.

But that was not all. Pecker was also asked earlier in the campaign to publish negative stories about SSAT’s opponents in the Republican primaries

David Pecker is saying that during the campaign, Michael Cohen would call him and said “we would like you to run a negative article” on a political opponent, such as Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson, or Marco Rubio.

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What is the size of a ‘majority’?

The full US House of Representatives consists of 435 voting members. Currently there are 218 Republicans and 213 Democrats with four seats vacant.

So how should one describe the size of the Republican majority? The answer ‘five’ sounds reasonable since it is the difference between the numbers in the two parties. But many news articles, such as in this one, say it is ‘two’,

This is because if three Republicans decide to vote against their party on any issue and join with Democrats who all vote together, then the Republican party loses 215-216. So saying that the Republicans have a majority of two is shorthand for saying that the party can only afford two defections on an otherwise party line vote and still win.

It kind of makes sense but I don’t like it. If used that way, then a 218-216 or 218-217 margin would mean that they had no majority at all since they cannot afford even a single defection.

The Good Liars confront Trump supporters

Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler are two comedians who call themselves ‘The Good Liars‘ and pull political pranks such as attending a rally for serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) and then yelling “boring” and saying that they “came here to be entertained” before they were escorted out. In the clip below, they do something similar to what Jordan Klepper does, and that is attend an SSAT rally in Greensboro, North Carolina and talk to the people waiting in line to get in.

The convoluted ‘reasoning’ of SSAT supporters is a source of endless fascination. Listen (first at the 4:58 mark and then again later) to the guy who insists that he has no problem with gay people existing (how generous of him!) but objects to how the gay community is forcing their lifestyle on everyone. When pressed by Selvig as to specifics as to how the presence of gay people adversely affects him, he of course could not say, but then finally resorts to saying that nowadays gay people are everywhere in the media, even in cartoon shows, and hence he feels oppressed.

I wished that Selvig had asked him whether, by that same logic, the much greater prevalence of heterosexual people in the media meant that heterosexuals were forcing their lifestyles on everyone else and oppressing them.

In another case, the duo interviewed school book banners and got them to confront the fact that the Bible is full of the kinds of things that they claim to deplore in books.

Film review: My Scientology Movie (2015)

I am both fascinated and disturbed by cults. Fascinated because of my interest in the psychology of the kind of people who are drawn to cults and then get indoctrinated, and disturbed because of the often tragic consequences that ensue to them and their loved ones. One of the most pernicious cults is the highly secretive Church of Scientology, notorious for the reports of how they exploit and abuse cult members and viciously attack anyone who manages to escape from their clutches, not to mention anyone that seeks to shine a light on them. As a result, even some of the people who have escaped are too frightened to talk publicly about what they went through.

This article in Vice gives the account of someone who managed to escape the church and describes the methods they use to suck people into it and what life was like once you had been recruited. The person is disguised and has their voice altered because of fear of being recognized by the church and hounded.

More comprehensive treatments can be found in the 2013 book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright and the 2015 Alex Gibney documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief based on that book. I wrote about this cult before and reviewed both the book and the film.

In an interview at the Sundance Film Festival where the film was screened, Gibney and Wright discuss how they were fascinated by the question of how it could be that people who were smart and idealistic and caring, by no means simpletons, could get sucked into an organization that was so exploitative and abusive. These people, once they left, were themselves shocked at how they did not see what was so obvious to them now.

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College presidents, student protests, and major political issues

There has been an outpouring of student protests at university campuses in the US as a result of the unfolding atrocities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Many of those protestors have been condemning the horrific situation in which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been bombed, shot, and starved to death. Since it is Israel that has been behind these attacks, there is always a thin line between protesting Israeli government actions and attacking Jews. Antisemitism is reprehensible and should be condemned as much as Islamophobia or indeed any attack on people that is not due to their actions but is based on their identity, whether it be ethnicity or religion or gender or sexuality or nationality. But it has too often been used to try and silence criticisms of Israel.

Some groups, including members of congress, have tried to shut down criticisms of Israeli policies and actions and of Zionism (which is a political stance) by equating those with antisemitism and have strongly pressurized university presidents to crack down on anti-Israeli protests and have refused to take seriously their difficulty in trying to balance the rights of students to protest while at the same time protecting individual students from harm. The presidents of Harvard and University of Pennsylvania tried to make that delicate case but some members of congress were determined to make an example of them and they were forced to resign as a result of this pressure.
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