Scary stuff! Phony stuff! And a desperate effort to distract from an alarmist media’s greatest nightmare: That the epidemic has peaked, as I write in National Review Online.

Yet the mainstream may possibly, maybe, sorta, be starting to catch on.

“Health officials say swine flu cases appear to declining throughout most of the U.S.,” reports AP. But, making evident its reporter hadn’t actually bothered to look at the data or try to comprehend it, the story concluded “They say it’s hard to know whether the epidemic has peaked or not, and many people will be gathering - and spreading germs - next week at Thanksgiving.” Well, there you go, there is a possible  exception to the rule of infectious disease epidemic curves known as Farr’s law. It’s called “Thanksgiving.”

He makes some excellent points about the pointlessness of taxing telephone usage to subsidize broadband services and the fact that it is innovation not intervention that will propagate and push new technologies while decreasing costs to consumers.  As Mr. Young notes, land-based internet is neither cost effective nor as advanced as wireless broadband technology, which as he also notes is not yet ready for mass markets. This made me wonder about the reasons behind the tech-lag in the US–why isn’t our country ready for nation-wide wireless broadband? It also reminded me of a great EconTalk podcast I heard recently that suggested some possible answers.

The cause of wireless underdevelopment according to Michael Heller, author of Gridlock Economy, is that there are too many owners invested in the resource of radio frequencies; there are many owners of small slivers of spectrum which leaves the entire resource “underused”. So, creating a new technology that would allow one to transmit across the country would require the utilization of all these small licensed slivers of spectrum which is simply too expensive for most companies to attempt. This leads to his concept of the “tragedy of the anticommons” where, rather than a resource becoming overused through a lack of property ownership, too many owners of a resource lead to its underutilization. At first this idea of the tragedy of the anticommons might lead one to believe Heller is suggesting we socialize radio waves for the maximum benefit, but on the contrary, Heller suggests that policy change so that ownership of frequencies resembles more closely real property rights with licenses having wider application and being much more transferable.

If government truly wants Americans to have greater access to cheaper broadband solution, they ought to stop interfering with frequency owners’ right to utilize their property as they see fit. This would, presumably, result in the advancement of nation-wide wireless broadband services. This would not only result in a newer more cost-effective communication technology, but would also force competing technologies to lower their prices.

More cash/Fewer Clunkers

Via the Von Mises blog:  According to the consumer pricing index report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the price of used cars rose 3.4% in October thanks to the government’s cash-for-clunkers that spirited away a large portion of the used-car inventory. So, for those of us who chose not to buy a new “greener” car last month, and who want to purchase a dirty old used car, we have a smaller pool from which to select. Fewer goods results in increased demand and increased prices. Thanks a lot Big Government. You helped rich folks knock off a few grand on their brand new cars that cost tens of thousands of dollars and left those working on a much smaller budget potentially priced out of the used-car market, with no car to get to work or shuttle around kids, and left without a bailout to stand on.

About three-fourths of the nation’s 17- to 24-year-olds can’t join the military, largely due to these problems, says a report from Mission: Readiness, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. It’s one reason President Obama is dithering over whether he should order an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan. Today we have just 1.4 million people in the active military, whereas in 1944 we had over 2 million serving in France alone, out of a U.S. population less than half its current size.

Read my Forbes article to find out how our public education system is a serious threat to national defense.

In one example, the stimulus tracking website reported that 30 jobs have been “created or saved” in Arizona’s 15th congressional district. Arizona only has eight congressional districts.

Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.

“We report what the recipients submit to us,” said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.

Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.

Has the government ever heard of research assistants? Fresh college grads willing to do menial tasks (like research and fact-checking) for a small pittance are in no short supply in Washington DC. Hiring a small staff of people to double-check the validity of reported numbers would be a minor cost for the Recovery Board, but it would save them the embarrassment of looking either shady and deceptive or downright incompetent.

In Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provided an apology for his country, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to issue his own country’s apology for initiating these child migrant programs.

According to the parliamentary report, the shipping out of children was done for a mix of reasons: 1) philanthropic - to remove children from the streets or from parents who posed a serious risk; 2) economic - in England, to lower the budgetary costs of the government providing for neglected children, and in the other countries, to provide a source of cheap labor; 3) racist - as the report states, “the importation of ‘good white stock’  was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies.”  In Victorian England, poor families were moving to the cities, many living in tenements and “rookeries,” or destitute and homeless, in the streets.

The British program mirrors to some extent the migrant program in the U.S. known as the “Orphan Trains,” in which from 100,000 to 200,000 children - mainly from immigrant families in New York - were sent in trains to other states, where they were put into foster homes and institutions or were put to work.  In New York, life for many of the poor, uneducated immigrants was grim, and many children were abandoned because the families could not care for them. The U.S. “Orphan Train” program, begun in 1854 by the Children’s Aid Society, persisted until about 1929. Under the auspices of philanthropic organizations, rather than the government, children, sometimes against the wishes of their parents, were herded onto trains in New York and shipped to 47 other states and Canada.

These programs raise difficult issues.  Does the state or a private entity have a right to remove a child — not yet able to make decisions — from his biological parents or from his environment if the child is homeless or uncared for?  What are a child’s rights and interests in relation to organizations - state or private - that place the child in another environment?  Philosophical and legal questions relating to children and their rights have been debated often in libertarian and other circles.  These issues aren’t easy to resolve with a satisfactory answer.

[Ed.’s note: The mother of one of my close friends was a three-year-old Orphan Train migrant.]

Here we see a sharp decline in both new deaths and hospitalizations.

Last week there was a massive decline in samples submitted to the CDC surveillance labs and a small decline in those testing positive. This week the bottom fell out. Samples submitted have gone from about 26,000 to 21,000 to just 13,000. Almost 39% of those samples were positive two weeks ago; now it’s just 30%. Put another way, the CDC labs received 10,076 positive samples two weeks ago, 7,557 last week, and just 3,834 this week. That’s a plummet of positive sample of over 60% in just two weeks!

Even hysteria seems to have peaked - if only ever so slightly. Last week just under 8% of all emergency room visits were for those ubiquitous “flu-like symptoms.” This week, it’s just under 7%. Not exactly a 60% drop in the last three weeks, but then the media are laboring mightily to prop up those figures.

College infections have are still essentially flat.

In other countries, at least, it seems people are starting to catch on. London’s Independent newspaper asks: “Pandemic? What Pandemic?” It gives the following figures:

65,000
Number of deaths in worst-case scenario for Britain published in July

19,000
Revised worst-case scenario outlined in September

1,000
Revised worst-case scenario last month

154
Number of deaths in Britain so far

4-8,000
Average annual death toll in Britain from seasonal winter flu

But in America we remain with wool firmly pulled over eyes. Still, some are having fun with all this. Check out this neat swine flu music video, “The Swine Flu Blues!”

What makes them think these drinks are not safe? As difficult as this is to believe, some consumers have reported that the drinks apparently encourage “risky behavior.”  Shocker.

The FDA contends that the real purpose of their investigation is to make sure the beverage companies are not pandering these products toward underage adolescents because the cans look very much like non-alcoholic energy drinks that are marketed toward youths. This video details the dangers of low prices and appealing packaging. Careful corporations, you might just improve your sales!

Stories like this highlight the utter worthlessness of the FDA. It isn’t that consumers are complaining that the drinks are bad, that the beverage companies are making false claims, or that they have broken any laws or violated anyone’s rights. Simply put, some people have it in their heads that these drinks have effects they don’t like and they are appealing to government to stop others from voluntarily consuming these products, the effects of which they seem enjoy.

Regardless of marketing, it’s illegal to sell alcohol to minors. So, if it is the case that youths are purchasing these alcoholic energy drinks, is it the beverage companies fault and responsibility? Or should the appropriate enforcement agency i.e. the police, investigate potential violations of the law?

Other data collected by Michael Fumento from the Washington Times, reveal that people are panicked in the U.S. to seven percent of all visitors to clinics! Most of those who not been affected by H1N1 virus. And they have struck again with such weak signs that do not require hospitalization. By going to the crowded hospital, may greatly help the spread of disease.

Actually, it never occurred to me that mildly ill people going to emergency rooms were spreading the disease to the worried well. But obviously that must be the case. It’s a false attribution I embrace! God bless the Czech Republic!

And those beautiful women.

Except that they’re not. Remember the expression “Don’t forget; hire the vet”? We’ve forgotten.

Read my Philadelphia Inquirer piece, “No Medals for Hiring Vets,” and be enraged.

On the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall (see CEI’s video celebrating that), it’s interesting to note that a pizza parlor in Shirlington, VA is promoting heroes of communism and Marxism.  And the source of that information is none other than the Washington Post’s Reliable Source today, which records an email exchange between a customer objecting to posters of Vladimir Lenin and Che Guevara on the walls of Busboys and Poets restaurant and the owner’s response praising those two icons.

The customer, Bradley Blakeman, should have known that his pizza would be served with a side dish of leftist politics.  After all, the owner of B&P, Andy Shallal, makes no bones about his commitment to leftist causes on his website.  And he emailed back to his disgruntled customer (and the Washington Post) that

Guevara and Lenin “represent the struggles of working people. . . . They fought against the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few.”

To be sure, that’s a fairly narrow way of looking at both of these figures. To some prominent scholars, Che is known for his “murderous collectivism,” while Lenin is widely regarded as one of history’s mass murderers.

It doesn’t sound like Blakeman will be a repeat customer at Shallal’s restaurant, but if comments on the Post article are any indication, Shallal will have no trouble finding fellow travelers.  Here’s one, for instance:

The lives of Che and Lenin are known and respected in every town of every country in the world in spite of the millions of words written and billions spent trying to rewrite history.

And that is because the struggle they dedicated themselves to is the same struggle working people all over the world today are still fighting.

If only that poster would read a bit of that history, including what the Berlin wall represented.

How do we know?

Here we see it’s going down the right side of the bell curve both in terms of deaths and hospitalizations.

And there’s both a massive decline in samples submitted to CDC surveillance labs and a small decline in those testing positive.

College infections have essentially gone flat.

And finally we see from the Australian swine flu data in figures 1,2, and 7 that swine flu does indeed resemble the normal epidemiological curve. Once cases start going down they keep going down.

Unfortunately, the “hysteria curve” as indicated by emergency room visits is still at the highest level in the century. You can probably credit the Obama administration declaration of a “national emergency” for that.

UPDATE: Check out photos and video from today’s rally.

She called businessmen “America’s persecuted minority.” And today-as has been the case at least since the start of the Industrial Revolution-many businessmen and -women feel they are the victims of a special scorn directed at them not because they cheat or steal but, rather, because they grow wealthy through their own honest efforts by producing goods and services that they sell to willing customers. Politicians translate this disdain into higher taxes, regulations, and special criminal penalties on these producers.

On the centenary of her birth, Ayn Rand remains a unique defender of capitalism. She showed in both her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged-published in 1957-and in her non-fiction essays the disastrous effects of mixing politics with economics. But she went further than other laissez-faire advocates, emphasizing the moral foundations of economic liberty. In this way, she provided an even deeper understanding of how freedom is lost and how it might be protected or restored.

Here’s part of his conclusion on what’s needed to address the attacks on free markets:

Rand offered not only insights into statism but also the ethical antidote to the assault on free markets. Individuals must stand up for their rights. American businessmen and -women must reject unearned guilt and stop apologizing for creating the richest country on Earth. Those who value freedom must offer moral justice to entrepreneurs by celebrating their great achievements and recognizing that they should be proud of themselves. In a culture based on these values, politicians who offer to redistribute wealth or threaten to limit freedom would be treated like pickpockets or bank robbers, and thus would stick to their job of protecting the lives, liberties, and property of the citizens.

It is ridiculous that The Post has dedicated so much of the A section the past several weeks to the swine flu outbreak. Being a young “survivor” of the swine flu, I have to say that it was the most anticlimactic experience I have ever had. No deathbed, no fever.

The way the media continue to portray the virus is creating unnecessary panic around the world. Many people infected with the virus don’t even know they have it. The public should be outraged at news outlets that have caused mass hysteria and a mad rush for vaccines, medication and hand sanitizer.

Unfortunately, right now they’re too busy being outraged at the lack of the promised vaccine. But hopefully the day will come. Until then, you can read my bevy of swine flu anti-hype articles.

Between 1934 and 1937—during the heart of the Great Depression—GDP grew at by an average of 9.5 percent annually.  In 1934, GDP grew by nearly 11 percent, but it would be six more years until the depression finally ended.  Clearly, GDP growth alone cannot be taken as an indicator that the economy is on the upswing.

It is also disheartening that the two major contributors to GDP growth in the third quarter were housing construction and auto sales, both of which were propped up by government subsidies.  Auto sales were boosted by the Cash for Clunkers program, and housing construction was driven by the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit.

Combine this with other spurious accounting maneuvers used to calculate third quarter GDP, and it begins to appear that GDP might actually have decreased during this period.

In addition to phony GDP growth, there are other signs that the recession is not yet over.  Employment during the third quarter fell by over 750,000, and it is expected to fall further still.  Employment has been called a lagging indicator of economic health, but when economic health is measured in terms of the financial well-being of the population, employment is not a lagging indicator, it is the indicator.

The recent bankruptcy of CIT Group is another sign that our economic woes are far from over.  A recipient of $2.3 billion in TARP funds—deemed likely unrecoverable—CIT Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 today, seeking protection from $10 billion in debt.  CIT finances close to one million businesses, and conducts business with over 80 percent of all Fortune 1000 companies, so there is enormous potential for negative secondary effects stemming from the bankruptcy.

The CIT Group bankruptcy comes on the heels of nine more bank failures on Friday, which brings this year’s total to 115.  These bank failures came at a cost of $2.5 billion to the FDIC deposit insurance fund.

There is a clear political incentive for Geithner and others to make efforts to convince us that this economic slump is over.  It is unfortunate that these efforts include no actual facts.

Okay — it’s almost Halloween, so I should be forgiven for a non-policy posting on the Top Ten Scariest Movies.  I’ve picked a sample of top ten listings to check out any unanimity in the selections.  Not really, ‘though several films appear on almost every list - Psycho (1960), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Halloween (1978).  Most of the scariest are horror or sci-fi films, with lots of gore and special effects, but a significant number of the top ones are psychological thrillers.  Here are some links to the lists here, here, here and here.

There’s also a list of the 10 Top Terrifying Non-Horror movies here. Two of my own favorites in that category - but not listed - are Brazil (1985) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

Here’s my compilation of the 10 scariest:

Psycho (1960)

The Exorcist  (1973)

The Shining (1980)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Halloween (1978)

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Alien (1979)

Rosemary’s Baby (1979)

Silence of the Lambs (1991)

With truly scary things happening on Capitol Hill — government takeover of the health care system, attempts to suppress the use of energy through diabolical cap-and-trade schemes, more government controls on private markets together with expansion of government enterprises, and higher and higher taxes to finance the largess — maybe these films won’t seem so scary at all.