Friday, July 23. 2010
Advocates of a “public option”, meaning a government medical plan, haven’t given up. There’s a highly debatable $27 billion assumption in the CBO estimate, relating to increased federal revenues from reduced employer spending on medical premiums. I phoned the CBO to clarify.
Congressman Stark requested an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. (Full pdf here.)
The CBO estimate says,
that the proposal would reduce federal budget deficits through 2019 by about $53 billion. That estimate includes a $37 billion reduction in exchange subsidies and a $27 billion increase in tax revenues that would result because a greater share of employees’ compensation would take the form of taxable wages and salaries (rather than nontaxable health benefits) partly offset by an $11 billion increase in costs for providing tax credits to small employers.
Continue reading "Off And On Record With CBO Re: "Public Plan" Analysis"
 People love to make fun of Psychiatry, but here's a sample of what life could be like in a world without us.
Remember that Dr. Benjamin Rush, the founder of American Psychiatry, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was vehemently opposed to the chaining of the mentally ill, and proposed treating them with compassion and understanding. He also opposed slavery.
Image is Benjamin Rush, MD. Charles Wilson Peale, 1818.
Rhee fires 226 teachers.
This is only a big deal because public school teachers are so often unionized. Pre-teachers unions, they were professionals - meaning that their work was subject to their own conscience, honor, best reasonable effort, etc., - and the judgement of those paying the salary. Today, only private school teachers can be regarded as true professionals, even though I acknowledge the vast numbers of utterly dedicated public school teachers (including many who bemoan the industrialization of their chosen field).
Why should teachers get tenure anyway? Nobody else does, not even pastors.
As in the post below about medical insurance, teaching should be opened up. Throw out those worthless teaching degrees and let the marketplace decide. I'd bet there are plenty of retired guys who would love to teach math or literature or history, and could do a better job than kids just out of their education degrees.
The best English teacher two of my kids had (in private school) was a retired Sports Illustrated writer and editor. He knew his way around choice of words and the construction of sentences, but the "idea" and the "image" were keys. Essay structure had to be perfect, Francis Bacon-style.
And with grammar, he would have ripped my posts to shreds (but I "fly casual" at Maggie's, conversational English - and it is a relief for me to do so).
An expert’s review of “The Internet And The Organization Of Innovation” from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) casts light on the Rasmussen poll that “75% Say Free Markets Better Than Government Management of Economy, Political Class Disagrees.”
The Rasmussen survey, by contrast to the 75% of Likely Voters who say “more competition and less regulation is better for the economy“ finds “America’s Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters [“the clique that revolves around Washington, DC, and Wall Street”] narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin.”
Professor Shane Greenstein, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management examines the origins and development of the Internet.
From a synopsis provided by NBER, he “uses the example of the creation of the internet to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of two distinct ways of organizing a long-term program for accumulating innovation.”
One approach, which characterized the early development of the internet, relies on autonomous research institutions ("skunk works") to organize and nurture innovators. The other, which has applied more recently, relies on commercial markets to aggregate dispersed initiatives from a wide array of entrepreneurial participants.
The "skunk works" approach runs the risk that innovation will veer into areas where there is no demand, and thus no economic value. The pre-commercial Internet avoided some of those dangers because the participants in that phase of the internet assessed value from their own experiences. Their managers, in turn, nurtured them and permitted experimentation to blossom -- leading to useful and innovative applications, such as e-mail and packet switching. In addition, the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation (NSF) played a pivotal role as "demanders" for innovation. Their substantial funding of research institutions, and their distributed investments to universities, supported the innovative activity that led to the breakthrough technologies that underlie today's Internet. This "skunk works" approach, however, restricted participation and truncated experimentation by excluding innovation along lines that did not support the "acceptable use" requirements of the government agencies. Such restrictions limited learning to an artificially narrow range of issues, and left a wide array of other applications untouched.
In contrast to the early "skunk works" days, the more recent commercial era of the Internet has played to the strength of market-based innovation. It has permitted decentralized exploration from commercial firms facing a wide array of incentives and a wide variety of circumstances. Once released to commercial interests, the Internet became the springboard for a dizzying array of applications that were not envisioned by the sponsoring government agencies. These applications include the World Wide Web and its associated browsing technology.
In other words, government funding or direction of basic research or new programs may be useful and in some cases critical but further development of useful applications, adaptation, and wider spread acceptance and utility are best the province of free enterprise, or as Greenstein calls it "market-oriented and widely distributed investment and adoption."
Instead, in most government programs, the initial laws enacted that seek to foster or enlarge reform or innovation are too often crafted with further government controls in mind or as ignored unintended consequences due to hidden agendas. Not unintended but usually hidden is the self-serving enrichment and enlarged sway of the political class. If initiatives have any validity, they are still often more dangerous than presented just by not being geared to a hand-off to the private sector to adjust and improve but to enlarge the power of the political class while – by the nature of government programs – hindering transparent review and adaptive innovation.
Even in the case of the Internet, as complex and involved in most aspects of business and individual lives as healthcare, if left in the hands of the centralized “skunk works” we wouldn’t have seen the developments we enjoy today. In the case of other government programs, like ObamaCare as one of the worst instances, the clear objectives and consequences are nationalization of close to 20% of the economy and 100% of our lives, and even more stultifying – indeed deadly - to free market development of improved access, delivery and economics.
Hot Air is currently running a video clip of Glenn Beck and his studio guy listening to a Keith Olbermann MSNBC rant and yucking it up. There's nothing particularly hilarious said, but it's always fun seeing celebs hang out off-camera.
But what's notable about the clip doesn't have anything to do with Beck, but with one brief clause Olby spits out during his tirade.
Scenario:
You're an ardent liberal. Keith Olbermann is a god amongst men, perhaps the only man alive with the courage to tell it like it really is.
You believe every word he says.
Shall we run over that check list one more time?
The howling fools of the far right — Check!
The stand-aside pathetic bureaucrats of the Dept. of Agriculture — Check!
The whole of the cowering media, MSNBC included — Check!
(wow, this Olbermann guy is fearless!) — Check!
The whole of the government — Check!
This self-defeatingly above-it-all president — Che-
Wait — WTF?? What did he say?
But this is Keith Olbermann speaking, a god amongst men. You said so yourself.
Ergo it must be true.
The next time you hear some righty screaming for Olby's head, bear in mind the old expression useful idiots. Ol' Keith is doing a superb job.
 Via Surber:
“The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of Progressivism.
Breitbart on Breitbart
Examiner: Failure is success for Obama fans
Onward Toward an Entitlement Society
Quinnipiac Poll: Obama Would Lose to 'Unnamed Republican'
Powerline: Get your hand out of my shower
Liberal Tax Revolt - Some Democrats decide they prefer lower rates. Obama isn't one of them. Jerrold Nadler?!?!?
Why do some (supposedly) smart liberals have so much trouble with the mere expression of conservative ideas?*
How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others
Am Thinker: Of Course Obama's a Socialist
Democrats pull plug on climate bill
Tiger:
Once again, the Obama administration proposes to increase the risks to businesses that might, some day, want to hire somebody. Because no pay is better than theoretically unequal pay. Perhaps related: A slide deck of economic ugliness.
Saw many of these in bloom on Cape Cod, growing in sandy dry soil. Seems to be a succulent variant of some wildflower. (I do not know what they are, but I know they are not Joe Pye Weed.)
Thursday, July 22. 2010
I do not know what they are saying or who these people are, but I kinda like the simple folky tune.
Oh. I see. They are a Filipino reggae group. What a world. We love the Filipino people, for several good reasons.
Ah, the Florida Keys.
A tropical island paradise.
I honestly don't know if I could describe it any better than I did in Gift Ideas, in the section on Verizon Wireless:
Even out here in the boonies of the Florida Keys I've had superb results. As the freezing winter temperatures plummet into the low upper-mid 70's, I find myself taking my laptop over to the tiki hut, draping the obligatory floral leis around my neck, grabbing my ukulele, greeting the wahinis with hugs and kisses, then firing up the Verizon Wireless so we tropical islanders can tune in to Weather.com and marvel with wonderment and awe at the winter hell our fellow Americans will endure.
Willingly, I might add.
Yep, this is heaven on earth. Make no mistake about it.
Well, at least until you click on a link and see one of these barreling ass over teakettle your way:
So there's that.
It's hot. Wellfleet would be a good place to be today. In the cool water, floating like flotsam. Plymouth Rock is across the bay, below the horizon. It's a good-sized bay.
For a random beach reading fact via Carpe:
Books sold on the Kindle are now outpacing the hardcover books Amazon sells. In the past month, for every 100 hardcover books sold, there have been 180 Kindle books sold through Amazon.
At NRO:
What’s so remarkable — people of supposedly that high level, opinion-makers and teachers, speaking with unbelievable venom, never crediting the opposition with ideas, sincerity, evidence or principle, talking about them as Nazis.
I was also impressed by the low level of the discussion ... If this is the best liberal journalism can do, that is probably why our side is winning the argument
 From the article:
Some recent surveys have calculated there could be as many as 100 million Chinese Protestants. That would mean that China has more Christians than Communist Party members, which now number 75 million.
Perhaps governments cannot really replace God - as much as they might like to.
Story at many sites, but this via Volokh
 Ever hear of Bikini Ideology? Sounds like envy to me.
What's next in space?
Chesterton on the Three Stages of Conversion (h/t Anchoress)
Oakland allows industrial-scale marijuana farms. Groovy, dude. As if CA didn't have enough stoners.
Poll: Faith in Social Security system tanking
Jobless Giving Up on Obama Economy
Rasmussen: Paul up 8 in Kentucky
Limbaugh responds to JournoList death wish report
AL GORE SEX SCANDAL SHOCKER, POLICE INVESTIGATE TWO MORE! Me so horney.
It’s come to this: Some California civil servants making close to $1 million per year. Also, Oakland’s well-paid police. It's simple plunder of the hapless taxpayers.
Harsanyi: Obama's Faith in Government Force:
...progressives regard government as a moral enterprise. And in church, you gotta have faith.
Rick Moran has no friends, wants no friends. One blogger's personal profile:
...looking at this solitary lifestyle in a different light, it personifies Thoreau’s observation of a life lived in “quiet desperation.” The lack of real friendships in my life - save my lovely Zsu-Zsu who doubles as lover and nursemaid - leaves a hole in the soul that is the largest price one pays for shunning the kind of superficial relationships that pass as friendships. For by shunning all it shuts off the possibility that you will find that diamond in the rough - that “true” friend that brings intimacy without sex and closeness without the kind of cloying stickiness many sexual relationships embody. I stopped looking for that mythical beast long ago and have settled for meeting the greatest minds who ever lived in books, while playing with the ignorant savages who inhabit the more fascinating parts of the internet.
And Washington Reb talks about his view of the world:
I grew up in a time and place where a man had to prove himself. Pretty? No one cared. 'Can you roof a house?' was the relevant question. Rich? Fuck you. 'Are you a man of your word?' is what persons asked about you. Smart? That's nice. 'What have you done for the town lately?' 'Are you pulling your weight?' 'Are you a proud man, or a peacock?' 'A coward, or brave?' Being 70s boys, we were smack dab in the middle between the World War II generation, and what came after. We understood what we were witnessing, though of course we've had nearly 40 years to digest it some. The basic pieces were in play then.
I have a sister who loves to remind me that I was a "hippie" then. What she failed to see then -- what she fails to see now -- is that the Left is composed of folks who are mentally ill. I don't think there's any one cause of it, but if I had to put my finger on it, I'd say they're crybaby washrags. They needed to be spanked more.
Inconvenient satellite data disappears
Also, I like this one via Powerline:
ERIC ALTERMAN, AUTHOR, WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?: Fucking Nascar retards...
Wednesday, July 21. 2010
As an antidote, I assume, to political insanity (like my shirt and duck hunting posts were today) Buddy emails this timely post:
Oscar Greeley Hammerstein's birthday was a few days ago. The New Yorker wrote nearly 1000 songs in his career. In the "Rogers & Hammerstein" partnership enterprise, he wrote the lyrics while Richard Rogers wrote the melody.
OH's parents were immigrants - father a German Jew, mother a - Scots-English (the son was raised Episcopalian). The father is credited with inventing the 'pie in the face' vaudeville routine.
Oscar pronounced his name not as 'hammer-styne' but in the German 'ohmer-schteen'. He spanned the time of America's great rise, born in Belle-Epoch 1895, and left this earth in in the JFK era, as we began to go the moon, in 1960.
Only in America.
And this clip from the eponymous 1955 film of the wartime Broadway hit (it opened in bloody and depressing 1943, when the Axis was yet rampant, and won a Special Pulitzer in the dark year 1944) depicts a time from the turn of the 19th to 20th century.
So we get a layered helping of entertainment here - the great talent and performance, but also three looks at America, all roughly a half-century apart per each.
Wiki doesn't (but should) mention that the familiar hollywood supporting actors are by-and-large not professional singers. The effect of the common (AKA "not all that technically good") voice seems to "break the fourth wall" and charm the audience plumb silly.
Of course the leads, Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, are sher-nuff professional singers (Jones makes her debut here, but still you have to call that voice 'professional').
 For generations (since 1818), those who need to look well put-together but not Wall Street glam have relied on Brooks Brothers for their basics.
I kinda like the feel of a rumpled normal cotton Brooks shirt, but Mrs. BD and Mrs. Gwynnie recently chatted about how much they can save in dry cleaner bills with the Brooks Non-Iron shirts, which can be washed in the washer and refuse to reach that rumpled look.
The slim-fits and traditional fits (many of them) are half-off right now.
I ask "Why do we always have to spend money to save money?"
"Now it is only tactical."
Maybe Leftism really is a mental illness. I have always regarded that claim as hyperbole, while acknowledging the totalitarian impulses implicit in "Progressivism."
"Who are these people?", as a snobby pal often says in his obnoxious way. But really, who do these people think they are? And why do they think they are better or smarter than me? I do not want to control them, so why do they want to control what I do or read or think? It is strange.
He says:
Sean Hannity says that journalism died in 2008, when the mainstream media discarded even the pretense of professionalism and objectivity for the sake of installing an unqualified, ultra-radical community organizer in the White House.
It's time to plan hunting trips. I know of two guide services that host Cape Cod duck hunting - mostly, but not only, sea ducks. November-January:
Cape Cod Sportsmen and East Coast Guide Service.
The latter even offers an Eider recipe: Eider Cape Cod. If you aren't planning to eat 'em, you shouldn't shoot 'em.
Here's one of Capt. Perez' Eider hunts in Cape Cod. These guys are good shots, and make it look far easier than it is even though Eiders decoy readily:
Character is what we do in the dark when no one is looking. It is defining.
Today, there's less darkness and more lights.
That may be a hindrance to some, sometimes justifiably and sometimes not, but that's the way it is, and it is preferable to have more character than less, even if forced by fear of exposure. Character is innate as well as a developed habit.
This is particularly so if one ventures into the public arena, as recognized in both our libel laws and common sense. (See here.)
Many of the NAACP meeting attendees openly expressed racism. Many of the Journolist members openly expressed collusion to suppress news via their positions.
That's free speech, and it carries accountability. Furthermore, those among both conclaves, and others, who don't speak up and out are complicit by their silence or non-exit, red-herrings thrown on the path aside and further condemning. And, Journolist founder Ezra Klein similarly misses the point when he says, "If I had thought there was some deep and dark conspiracy to protect, I can guarantee you I would've been a bit more selective." The point is that he founded and ran a selected "progressive" group of many influentials, and their views - although at times differing - were secretly shared to advance their causes. Klein says they should "assume privacy." Nonsense and sophistry, as usual, from Klein's immaturity of age and character.
Conspiracies of silence are as damning as conspiracies of silencing or nefarious abuses.
Insty's link says it has some, but I very much doubt it. Internet legs maybe, but does anybody expect the MSM itself to take on an expose of itself?
This is like Climategate - just some silly emails. Isn't it?
Add: What a fine "conversation about race" the country is having. I want people to shut up about race. It's a dumb topic. I see no improvement in the level of political discourse.
From Classical:
I saw a study once that in the US in the 1700s about 1/3 of the brides were already knocked up...
You want to do something about Western morality? Forget gays. The bigger hole is adultery and divorce. If we could bring back stoning for adultery and 40 lashes for fornication we might get somewhere. It all started going bad long before women got the vote. But it didn't help.
Grim has a good site but he appears to lack permalinks. Scroll down for Let's Make Sex a Lot More Heartless
Breitbart's dirty trick? Maybe dirtier than he realized. Says Lowry:
... her full speech is heartfelt and moving. It's the tale of someone overcoming hatred and rancor when she had every reason not to.
Sowell: Race Card Fraud
ADHD and marriage
What is being sold here?
Tenure is dying
Afghanistan 113 years ago
Pethokoukis: Just how high would taxes need to go?
Rabbi Shmuley: No Holds Barred: What's up with Tom Friedman?
Tiger: Health care "reform": What if the individual mandate is unconstitutional?
Are unemployment checks turning into welfare? Next step, permanent unemployment checks.
Political snobbery
Hungary's IMF revolt augurs ill for Greece (h/t EU Ref)
JournoList Members Discussed Whether the Government Should Shut Down Fox News. It's an ugly story. At Powerline, The Vast Left-Wing Journalists' Conspiracy
MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
Tuesday, July 20. 2010
 Medicine has always abounded with quackery, and placebo effect is real. Hope springs eternal...
However, when tax dollars are expected to pay for it, it's another matter: Europeans Cast Critical Eye on Homeopathy.
In a free country, folks are welcome to buy their own quackery if they want, on their own nickel. Most docs privately think of Chiropractic as quackery, but the Chiropractors have a lobby in DC, and I believe there is a legal injunction against MDs terming chiropractors "quacks" in public. They sometimes do help people with sore backs. I am just imagining the debates about whether federal guidelines will include crystal therapy and massage therapy.
American medicine itself has little intentional quackery, but many treatments which are of dubious value. For examples, futile treatments for terminal cancer, or those $15,000 treatments for "Chronic Lyme". Thus far, in America you can pretty much get whatever medical treatment you want regardless of its usefulness for you. Problem is, others are usually paying for it.
My prediction is that government-controlled medical care will be determined by politics and, to some extent, politically- or bureaucratically-oriented docs. That is not good medicine.
Good medicine is individualized, not based on statistics.
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