The unemployment rate is a sham and a lie.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics simply removes unemployed people from the unemployment calculation.

If you stop looking for work completely – if you just give up – the BLS doesn’t count you in the unemployment rate.

If there are 1,000,000 people in the work force and 100,000 out of work, the unemployment rate is 10%.

If there are 1,000,000 people in the work force and 90,000 out of work, the unemployment rate goes down to 9%.

But what if the number of people out of work is the same?  What if the government just stopped counting 10,000 people because they had given up looking?

That’s exactly what is happening.

Here’s a great skit by Barry Levinson:

COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.
ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible Times. It’s 9%.

COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?
ABBOTT: No, that’s 16%.

COSTELLO: You just said 9%.
ABBOTT: 9% Unemployed.

COSTELLO: Right 9% out of work.
ABBOTT: No, that’s 16%.

COSTELLO: Okay, so it’s 16% unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, that’s 9%…

COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 9% or 16%?
ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.

COSTELLO: IF you are out of work you are unemployed?
ABBOTT: No, you can’t count the “Out of Work” as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.

COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!!
ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.

COSTELLO: What point?
ABBOTT: Someone who doesn’t look for work, can’t be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn’t be fair.

COSTELLO: To who?
ABBOTT: The unemployed.

COSTELLO: But they are ALL out of work.
ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work… Those who are out of work stopped looking. They gave up. And, if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.

COSTELLO: So if you’re off the unemployment roles, that would count as less unemployment?
ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!

COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don’t look for work?
ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That’s how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don’t want to read about 16% unemployment do ya?

COSTELLO: That would be frightening.
ABBOTT: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means they’re two ways to bring down the unemployment number?
ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.

COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?
ABBOTT: Correct.

COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?
ABBOTT: Bingo.

COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work.
ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like an economist.

COSTELLO: I don’t even know what the hell I just said!

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhritz/

Valentine’s Day is a terrible thing. Chocolate candies, jelly beans, and God forbid Peeps!

The Principle at Horace Mann School near Boston is fed up. He thinks that Valentine’s Day candy is a very bad thing, and so has banned it from his school.

The school sent an email home to parents saying that any candy on Valentine’s Day violated the schools prohibition against “food sharing” (oh, the horror!) and also ran against efforts to help children make healthy choices.

This morning, I saw a school administration official claiming that it was more about protecting students who have food allergies.

But I found the real reason for this politically correct madness.

The email sent home to parents included this sentence:

“This year, as children decorate cards, write poems, and send notes, I am asking that parents eliminate sending candy, treats and snacks as part of the gift giving tradition,” (My emphasis added.)

This stupid prohibition is nothing more than yet another liberal attempt to strip tradition out of the minds of our kids.  They want our kids to be mind-numbed drones who grow up to preach more politically correct nonsense.

And let’s not forget the idiots in the LA Unified Schhol District trying to make kids eat brown rice cutlets (whatever the hell that is) and Quinoa (whatever the hell that is).  The students quickly developed a lunch black market for all the good stuff.

So I ask you…  what will it take for these self-righteous, holier than though, liberal jackasses to get run from the schools once and for all?

I was Tweeting last night during the hour before the Joke of the Union address.

(See!  There I go!  Why would I have written “Joke” instead of “State?”  Because if the emotions behind the idea.  Let me explain…)

So I’m tweeting away with my couple thousand online friends.   It was fun; Obama, Biden and the crew are seriously easy targets for mockery.

But as I tweeted away, I started thinking – what is it that so animates us about this?

Why are people so interested in politics and why do they hold the positions they do?

Really think about this:  what makes you a conservative?  A liberal? Why do you care?

Here, I could easily do a riff about freedom, our founding principles, tyranny, incrementalism, Saul Alinsky, communism.

But that’s not what it’s really about.  What drives people to act?  What drives them to Tweet about Obama being a joke?  What drives them to donate money?

It’s the emotion associated with an idea.

Here’s my idea of conservatism…

Traditional family – sure there is disfunction in every family.  But we work through it and help each other.  A family with a Mom and a Dad is always best.

Opportunity – I once had a rich uncle tell me that the way to get rich is to own your own business or make the right stock investments.  I believe him.

Taking advantage – It pisses me off when people take 150 weeks of unemployment.  It makes me furious when people claim disability assistance when they have no real problem.

Ridiculous waste – When I think about the amount of money the government takes from us, and the amount they spend, it makes me crazy.  It makes me resent paying my taxes.

Fairness – It pisses me off that my wife and I have to deplete every cent that we manage to save up over the year to pay our tax bill, while HALF of the people in the country don’t pay a goddamn thing.  Oh, by the way, we’re not rich.  Not by a long shot.

Tattoos and Piercings - I don’t care what you do with your body, but understand that if you’re a 22 year old girl with a pierced tongue, you’ll never get the job babysitting my kids.  It’s about making judgements.  We should make judgements about people.

Being racist – Being called a racist at every turn pisses me off.  Just because I happen to be white doesn’t make me a racist.  But if you keep accusing me of being racist, you can be damn sure that I’m going to get resentful.

Affirmative action – You need to have lower standards because you’re black?  Bullshit.  Black people are no different than me.  They are just as smart and just as capable.  Act like it.

Safety - When we strip search 80 year old women from Arkansas and go out of our way NOT to strip search muslims dressed in their garb, it pisses me off.  Terrorists are overwhelmingly middle eastern men.  Overlooking that is stupid.

I think those are the basics.  Notice that this list is kind of negative.  It’s a list of things that make me mad.  Things that elicit an emotional reaction.

The idea is that we should be self-reliant, God fearing, family oriented people who are capable of all manner of achievement, and we’ll take no guff from anybody in our pursuit of happiness.

This idea produces a visceral, emotional reaction.

And therein lies the political implication.

Smart politicians understand this and will play to your emotions.  Hell, this is how Obama got elected – by an idea…  ”hope.”

Turns out he’s an empty suit with a socialist briefcase, but I digress.

If conservative politicians would stop trying to sell tactical plans for programs and start articulating the ideas, they would tap into the emotions that surround conservatism, they will succeed like never before.

What drives your interest in politics?

But since Gingrich took South Carolina, the tables have turned in some circles. My opinion is that Newt won SC because he slammed John King so bad, voters were simply giving him a pat on the back.

Regardless, there is an important question to answer:

Should we hasten to get behind a single candidate?

I get emails from all kinds of people with all kinds of opinions. With permission from the emailer, here is an email I received from Andy Beumer, of Cincinnati, OH. (I removed irrelevant, personal portions of the email.)

My main issue of concern is having the very best presidential nominee for the Republican Party to go up against President Obama in the 2012 election. After taking a hard look at all of the candidates and watching each and every debate thus far, it is clear to me that Mitt Romney, although highly organized and having raised plenty of money for the fight, simply does not truly encompass the core conservative beliefs that the majority of the Republican electorate are looking for in a candidate. Although I believe his mostly moderate views might be attractive to many independents in the general election, I do not believe that he will generate enough passion from the conservative base in order to defeat the president.

Rick Santorum on the other hand, although truly a conservative at heart, in my opinion simply is not electable in a general election. Although I applaud his tenacity and his passion for wanting to improve our country, having him stay in the race at this point, only hinders the conservative movement’s ability to elect a truly conservative nominee (Newt Gingrich). For this reason, I am asking for conservatives everywhere not only to rally their support behind Newt Gingrich, but also to call on Rick Santorum to suspend his campaign and to endorse Newt Gingrich himself, in an effort to nominate the only conservative in the race who truly has a chance to defeat President Obama in the fall.

Andy is passionate, no question about that.  I see where he is coming from too.  I don’t necessarily agree with him, but I get his point.

Here’s where I’m at with this…

I don’t think there’s that much difference between these three candidates.

I’m not talking about their particular brand of conservatism, but in terms of how they’ll govern.

I think each of the three would work to eliminate Obamacare and to de-regulate.  Beyond that, I don’t think any of them will do much of anything that real constitutional conservatives want.

So, we get down to who can beat Obama.  Well, I just don’t know.  My instinct is that Romney or Santorum would have an easier time of it.  Gingrich would fare worse only because he is not so likable.

Be that as it may, Gingrich has a bluntness to him that I think most Americans find refreshing.

So….  I guess I’m still on the couch on this one.  I’ll look forward to seeing this through for a couple of more months before throwing my support behind someone.

But – mark my words….whoever the nominee, he will have my support.

My hope is that my friends over at various conservative and libertarian blogs support the chosen candidate too.  Regardless of velocity, now is not the time for a third party.

That would ensure defeat.

Don’t you think so?

(Insert Ding Dong song from Wizard of Oz here.)

By 2003, the scourge of the Internet – these creatures known as “bloggers” – started appearing in large numbers.

By the 2006 election, there were a few news stories about how the Internet was having an impact.  The dinosaurs at ABC, NBC and CBS were mumbling about “social media” though none of them knew what it was.

Between 2006 and 2009 the main stream media – called “MSM” by blogger types – was losing ground, and losing it fast.  The term “Lame Stream Media” became a regular part of the vernacular. I forget who coined the term. Michelle Malkin? Bernie Goldberg?

By 2009, the Tea Party was born and it spread like wild fire because of the new media.

Sure, the networks get millions of viewers on their nightly newscasts.  But Americans LIVE on the Internet.  Hours and hours are spent on Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and Forums.  The combined voices of self-published analysts are far louder than a stiff network anchor with a leftist bone to pick.

Last night, Newt Gingrich called John King part of the “elite media.”

The crowd went CRAZY.

I don’t think the audience at the South Carolina debate was cheering Gingrich because they were Gingrich supporters.  They were cheering Gingrich because he finally said out loud what so many Americans think:

The main stream media are a bunch of hatchet job hacks, just tabloid jackoff’s with expensive stylists.

How refreshing it was to hear a politician speak truth to power.  Save Chris Christie, I can’t imagine another candidate saying what Newt said.

If you didn’t see it, here it is in all it’s glory:

SOPA - House Bill HR3261.  The purpose of this bill is to protect the owners of copyrighted material from unlicensed sale and distribution.  The bill was first introduced by Lamar Smith, a Republican Congressman from Texas.

PIPA – A closely related bill officially known as the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act” The bill originated in the Senate by Democrat Senator from Vermont Patrick Leahy.  S. 968 is similar in its stated goals to SOPA.

What Powers Does SOPA Give the Federal Government? According to the Library of Congress:

Authorizes the Attorney General (AG) to seek a court order against a U.S.-directed foreign Internet site committing or facilitating online piracy to require the owner, operator, or domain name registrant, or the site or domain name itself if such persons are unable to be found, to cease and desist further activities constituting specified intellectual property offenses under the federal criminal code including criminal copyright infringement, unauthorized fixation and trafficking of sound recordings or videos of live musical performances, the recording of exhibited motion pictures, or trafficking in counterfeit labels, goods, or services.

Think about what this means.  If this blog used a picture and it was (unknowingly) copyrighted, this site could be shutdown.  If you post a video on YouTube of your kids birthday party and there is music in the background, you are violating this law.  If you post a news clip on Facebook about an event near your home, you are in violation.  The response from the people that provide these services i.e., Google, Facebook, bloggers, etc., will be to either censor everything, or prevent you from doing anything.

How Does SOPA Affect Internet Service Providers?

Please re-read the powers the AG has.  The bill goes further:

Requires online service providers, Internet search engines, payment network providers, and Internet advertising services, upon receiving a copy of a court order relating to an AG action, to carry out certain preventative measures including withholding services from an infringing site or preventing users located in the United States from accessing the infringing site. Requires payment network providers and Internet advertising services, upon receiving a copy of such an order relating to a right holder’s action, to carry out similar preventative measures.

That’s right.  This is the black boot of government stepping on the neck of American businesses.  If the service providers don’t comply, they too can be shut down and blacklisted.  If they comply with the federal givernment, they get immunity, if not, they get the book thrown at them.  Note immunity is only given if the service providers comply:

Provides immunity from liability for service providers, payment network providers, Internet advertising services, advertisers, Internet search engines, domain name registries, or domain name registrars that take actions required by this Act or otherwise voluntarily block access to or end financial affiliation with such sites.

What Does Google Think of the Bill? Here’s a collection of quotes from Eric Schmidt:

“If there is a law that requires DNSs [domain name systems, the protocol that allows users to connect to websites] to do X and it’s passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it,” he added. “If it’s a request the answer is we wouldn’t do it, if it’s a discussion we wouldn’t do it.”

That’s good.  Google has some serious weight in Washington.  He goes on:

“I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems,” he said. “So, ‘let’s whack off the DNS’. Okay, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say ‘I don’t like free speech so I’ll whack off all those DNSs’ – that country would be China.”It doesn’t seem right. I would be very, very careful about that stuff. If [the UK government] do [sic] it the wrong way it could have disastrous precedent setting in other areas.”

What is DNS? For those who don’t know, DNS (Domain Name System) is the system used to route email and web surfing requests.  It exists so that if you type www.toberight.com into a browser, you see this site.  Without DNS, you’d have to type in an IP Address, a set of numbers that identifies each web entity.

Yeah, we want the federal government monkeying around with DNS.

Who in Washington is Supporting This Bill? Chris Dodd – the guy who caused the housing crisis – is still behind this bill.  As are many other lame brain megalomaniacs in Congress.

Finally, it looks like we’re getting some traction on this.  Supporters, even original sponsors, of the bill are dropping like flies.  Senator Marco Rubio, a favorite of ToBeRIGHT, has withdrawn his support for the bill.  From Fox News:

“I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. Furthermore, I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor,” Rubio posted on his Facebook page, ”Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet.”

It looks like Daryl Issa is taking a good strong stand too:

“I think the Republican House leadership will look and say, ‘Unless we have the support of the vast majority of Republicans, we’re not going to take the bill to the floor.’”

For more information, there is an excellent write up and FAQ at CNet, see their information.

If you have not heard of SOPA, you need to know what it is.

SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act. This is a law that gives the government the authority to put websites on a blacklist, so that the site is not accessible in the USA.

Seriously.

This is what communist China does.

SOPA doesn’t just do that. SOPA gives the federal government such huge powers to prevent websites from functioning.

Read this page with information about SOPA over at WikiPedia. This is BIG TIME SCARY stuff.

Between this and Obamacare, our Republic is gone. Over. Done. When the government can examine your bank accounts, determine what health care you get, compel you to buy certain things, shut down your online business…

What’s left?

As an Internet Marketer, I hang out over at the Warrior Forum a lot. This is a great place where marketers of all strips can get together. They have the best – easiest to understand – explanation on SOPA that I have found.

I’m pasting their write up here, because I’m not sure if the page containing the info will remain in place.

Please see the original article here.

Everyone – please call your Congressman and tell them to STOP SOPA! If you don’t know how to do that, find your Congressman’s phone number here: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

“Stop SOPA

… or else you could find many of the sites you use on a regular basis permanently closed to you. And maybe find your sites closed to many of your regular visitors.

The Basics

SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill currently in the US Congress that would allow the US Government to add sites to a blacklist, preventing anyone in the United States from accessing them. The stated goal is to limit access to pirate (“warez”) sites, and sites that sell counterfeit physical products. Fake Rolexes, designer clothes, prescription drugs, etc.

The intent of the bill is something we strongly support. Piracy affects those of us in the Warrior group more than most, as a lot of us make our livings selling our own intellectual property. Our membership includes tens of thousands of authors, musicians, graphic designers, photographers, programmers, copywriters, videographers, public speakers and others, from nearly every creative field.

We feel the impact of digital thievery first hand.

This bill is not the way to handle the problem. It is a disaster in the making.

It would damage the Internet’s basic security infrastructure, possibly require ISPs to monitor every site you visit, and make the operation of any website that contains user-generated content (blogs, forums, digital marketplaces, and social media sites) too risky for investors and new developers.

Wikipedia has posted a good basic summary of the potential problems. Read it. It is frightening. And you need to be scared.

How It Would Work

Here’s the simple version: If the Justice Department or any copyright holder accused a site of “encouraging or facilitating” piracy, the government could order that site removed from US-based search engines and ad networks, forbid payment processors from handling transactions for them, and require ISPs to block access to those sites by their customers.

Let’s consider how that might apply to this forum… There are currently over 335,000 pages on this site. If just one of those pages contained a single post promoting an illegal download, or one WSO seller has used graphics or code from a copyrighted product without permission, or we miss just one Chinese spam for counterfeit goods, we could be blocked.

Would it matter that we actively look for and delete those posts? Maybe, but only after the process had begun. And we’d probably never know about it until the block was in place.

The amount of time that it would take to correct such an unjustified blocking would cause permanent damage to any interactive site. Shifting the membership away from a destination for that long nearly guarantees the site would never recover.

Along with that, there is no requirement that payment processors re-accept a site that has been blocked this way. You know how these guys work: They don’t care if the site is eventually found innocent. They’d label it as “high risk,” and never deal with it again. And they’d probably start creating whole new categories to lock out, just to avoid the headaches.

“You let visitors post on your site? Sorry. We don’t accept interactive services in our network.”

And, unless the ISPs are working from a centralized and regularly updated database, it’s unlikely most of them would ever remove the blocks once they were in place.

Mistakes would almost certainly be fatal to the target sites. We’re talking about legitimate sites that provide real value for their visitors and real incomes for their operators and their families.

It is unclear at this point whether the legislation would affect sites based in the US, or if it applies only to “foreign” sites. Even if it doesn’t start out applying to sites hosted in the United States, do you really think it will stay limited to “offshore sites” for long?

And how do we justify sitting by while our friends around the world are subjected to this potential for arbitrary blocking within the US?

Don’t Think This Will Affect You?

Maybe you aren’t involved in a market where this would seem to matter, and you’re not interested in the principle of the thing. Consider a few possible examples that might make the reach of this Congressional folly clearer.

Any blogs you like? Keep in mind how many of them are hacked every day. One of the main activities for those hackers is pointing the victim sites to online shops selling illegal drugs.

*POOF*

Gone.

Hang out at any scrapbooking sites? A lot of them let the members share their original page themes and other digital scrapbooking elements. If one clueless designer uses graphics from a catalog or other copyrighted source, your fun little hobby community could be taken away from you. And the site owner could lose their income.

Use shareware or freeware? Legitimate software libraries, like CNet’s, would be prime targets. After all, it only takes one mistake.

Do you surf using proxies to protect your privacy? Forget that. It’s only a matter of time before that’s marked as a refuge for pirates and they’re blocked.

Have you ever tried to keep track of which sites are pirating your products? If you live in the US, you can forget that, too. Once they hit the blocklist, you can’t see them. Which means you can’t take any action to reduce the damage.

That’s just the tip of the virtual iceberg.

The real damage will begin when the pirates implement new systems for distributing their warez. Evading a domain-based list is child’s play for experienced people, and pirates really don’t care if it’s illegal. If they did, they wouldn’t be pirates.

And it won’t just be the traditional pirates who join in. Anyone who’s studied history knows that prohibition just romanticizes the suppliers and users, and creates networks dedicated to serving that “heroic” image.

And, of course, there’s the problem of retribution. If the US starts arbitrarily blocking access to foreign sites from within our country, how long do you think it will be before other countries develop similar approaches to advancing their political goals, and block their citizens from accessing sites they don’t deem suitable?

At that point, it isn’t even nominally about piracy any more. It’s about politics, pure and simple. If you doubt the temptation, consider how quickly nations in the Middle East tried to block their citizens from accessing western social networks at the first sign of unrest over the past few years.

Think about how this would look to the world after all our comments about the Chinese “Great Firewall.”

If you believe our bureaucrats would be careful enough to only list sites that existed for the sole purpose of piracy, remember: These are the same bureaucrats who listed a then-sitting US Senator (the late Edward Kennedy, of MA) on our anti-terrorist “no fly” list.

What’s your recourse if someone accuses you of “encouraging or facilitating” piracy and you’re found to be innocent? Good luck with that. The only way you could get any satisfaction there would be if you could prove they wilfully and knowingly made false allegations.

Ask your lawyer what the chances are of proving that. Be prepared from them to laugh and say “Zero.”

This is the single most dangerous piece of legislation to regulate the Internet that has ever had any real chance of becoming law in the US.

What Can You Do?

If you live in the US, contact your Senators and Representatives and encourage them to vote against SOPA (H.R. 3621) and PIPA, the Senate version (S. 968).

When you contact them, be calm, clear, and concise. Tell them that you support the goal but oppose the legislation, because of the damage it will do to small businesses and the security of the Internet in general.

If you feel the need to cite a source for them, point them to the Wikipedia article, which lists a number of US government studies and reports that show just how much damage the legislation could do.

And be clear that you don’t want to see an edited version of the bill passed. This thing is not just poorly implemented. The concept itself is flawed and dangerous.

Emails count a little. Phone calls and faxes count more. A short, clear printed letter mailed to them counts the most.

If you’re contacting your representative, mention H.R. 3621 (SOPA). If it’s your Senators, the bill number to mention is S. 968 (PIPA).

You can find the contact information for both Senators and Representatives at Contacting the Congress. Just select your state, type in your zip code, and click the “Submit It” button.

When contacting them, be sure to either mention your name and address to the person you speak with on the phone or include it in your correspondence. They want to know you’re actually one of their constituents.

Remember to be polite, clear, and brief. These folks are trying to protect your interests. Most of them simply don’t understand the potential problems the bill would create.

Calling them, or typing a brief letter and putting a stamp on it, will probably take less time than you were about to spend in this forum today. And it could make a huge difference.

If every US citizen who reads this takes that few minutes’ worth of action, we can generate a ton of pressure against the bill. If we all just leave it to everyone else, we’re likely to be stuck with this as law, along with all the problems it brings.

It’s up to you. Choose wisely.”

I think Liberty & Tyranny, Mark’s last book, changed the course of American political discourse.

Think about what I just said!

I really believe this to be true.  When I read L&T I was thunderstruck.  Never before had I read something that so crystalized just what “liberty” meant.

And this is coming from someone who reads a TON of this stuff.  I’ve read em all!

So, Ameritopia is on the news stands.  I ordered my copy this afternoon and will post a review after I do.

BUY IT HERE – Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America

In the meantime, here’s a little excerpt from David Limbaugh’s review from Human Events:

Levin takes us through the seminal thoughts of some of the most noted political philosophers and writers who laid out the utopian vision — from Plato to Thomas More, Thomas Hobbs and Karl Marx — and then unpacks the contrasting vision of John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu and others whose ideas greatly influenced America’s founders.

Liberal utopianism is a fantasy of arrogant philosophers and philosopher kings who believe their vision is superior to those of other lowly mortals. Levin calls them the “masterminds” — the latest and most prominent being President Barack Obama and his cadre of utopian elitists. They believe they are proponents of enlightenment thinking and rationalism who could construct the ideal society if deniers and other obstructionists would just get out of their way.

In reality, however, they couldn’t be more irrational, as they reject human nature, history and all empirical evidence that contradicts their vision. Indeed, writes Levin, “utopianism is regressive, irrational, and pre-Enlightenment.”

History and the whole of human experience be damned; utopians can achieve the ideal society even if all similar utopians who preceded them failed. As Levin says, they always believe that “what went before them” was “piecemeal and therefore inadequate. The steps necessary to achieve true utopianism have yet to be tried.”