We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Pi is a cosmic mystery. How about home-made Pizza Pi instead? Photo is how I like my Pi - not exactly round according to Pi but rustic, and slightly burnt in an outdoor wood-burning oven. Goat cheese, pancetta, a little asparagus? Why not?
With some beer. Note that they are using Pi to try to find that missing airplane. Pi is handy.
I swim at my own risk routinely. I drink a couple of Coronas with limes, then jump off the boat in the middle of Nantucket Sound to swim with the Bluefish and the sharks. Good fun. I also will drive my boat through tough summer squalls just for the challenge and thrill of it.
I was thinking about my post a week or so ago about federally-subsidized flood insurance, and why it provoked so much response. I am not insensitive to the pain, chaos, and tragedy of seeing one's home damaged or destroyed. However, I want to focus on the policy issue which, in effect, enables - encourages - these things to happen.
Why? Because it seems to me that it's a provocative issue not so much about flooding but because it is related to the proper role of government vis a vis the private sector and the power of nature - and of human-nature - itself.
Government interventions usually distort markets, sometimes in the ways government policy hopes they will and, very frequently, with unintended (but predictable if you have half a brain) consequences. The Army Corps of Engineers has spent huge bucks over the years on Mississippi levees to prevent flooding. As a result, Delta farmlands in states like Mississippi no longer receive their regular dose of nutrients, flooding is worse when it does occur, and the environmental and property damage to the Louisiana delta is ongoing. It's entirely predictable. The levees prevent the mighty river from using its flood plains - and much of New Orleans was constructed, foolishly, but they didn't care at the time - below sea level.
Before LBJ passed federally-subsidized flood insurance, construction in flood-prone areas was limited to those who were able to obtain (expensive, and rightly-so) private flood insurance, or people who didn't care. People who built on beachfront, near marshes or river flood plains, tornado alley, etc., expected the worse to occur sooner or later, and took the risk or bought insurance on the free market. Before then (and before wetlands protection laws), construction on wetlands landfill (now illegal) or near beaches and rivers was at your own risk, mostly. "Acts of God" were excluded from homeowner's insurance without additional riders and naturally, flood-prone areas also had lower property values to reflect the risk and the occasional unpleasantness.)
Federally-subsidized flood insurance (designed to subsidize developers doing risky water-proximate construction) has had the effect of encouraging reckless behavior and, at the same time, enabled the development of fragile and ever-changing water-related habitats that would have been better left alone.
But what does the developer care? He builds, sells, profits, and leaves. Eventually, water goes wherever it wants to go and every human knows that. The consequence of living near water is that Nor'easters like Sandy, hurricanes, etc. are more damaging to property than they have have been historically in the US. Historically, for examples, Sandy Hook, New Jersey, waterfront, the Rockaways, and the North Carolina barrier beaches had, at most, rustic shacks which washed away with every big storm.Now, people build permanent residences and complain to the government when they get washed away or flooded out.
Risk is incentivized by not paying free market rates. Risky life choices (eg smoking, living in a forest-fire area, DUIs, drug abuse, having a home without fire alarms and fire-extinguishers, sky-diving, having a home with antiquated electric, living 50 miles from a fire department, piloting small airplanes, mountain-climbing, driving race cars, etc etc) have a market cost reflecting the risk taken and most of the time they do when people chose to buy insurance. Actuaries are statistical geniuses and very good at calculating and costing-out the risks of almost everything people do - which is why they make big bucks. In free markets, you can insure anything if you want to. Lloyd's will even insure an opera diva's larynx.
My solution to federally-subsidized flood insurance is similar to what my solution would be to many government-induced unintended negative consequences: phase government out of the way entirely and let free markets and nature work their will. Much misery and catastrophe would be eliminated that way in the long run. It's not about compassion. It's about facing reality honestly.
(NB: I am opposed to government wildfire suppression so I guess this makes me an environmental radical, or something heartless. The local fire department is fine with me, however, so you cannot call me an anarchist. I also oppose the mortgage interest tax deduction. Just a covert subsidy to the construction biz.)
Here’s the Kremlin’s summary of the call. In a nutshell: a) The U.S. wanted the call so Putin took it. b) Nothing Obama said to Putin was particularly worth noting. c) Putin explicitly told Obama he reserves the right to move further into Ukraine.
Smart diplomacy at work. Putin is surely quaking in his boots.
Russia is a crappy country full of poor drunks run by KGB thugs. It just happens to produce the most beautiful women in the world - until they turn 35. The Ukraine is another crappy country run by thugs. Should I - or Obama - really care what these people do? I can find no reason to care, but I do feel for all of the people in the world who are living in crappy places with crappy and corrupt governments with delusions of grandeur. It's the norm in the world.
Whether you accept global warming alarmism or not, on the face of it it makes no sense for the average sensible taxpayer to subsidize others' living or building in recognized flood zones, whether on the NJ coast, the Mississippi, the North Carolina barrier beaches, or anywhere else. It's like pitching a tent in a Western river gulch which is prone to flash floods. Periodic flooding in coastal areas and on flood plains is natural and environmentally-beneficial. The unpleasant consequences for people are entirely predictable. I would neither live in a flood zone nor in a wildfire zone without calculating that I could lose it all. People do not act this stupid unless they are paid or subsidized to do so. At the least, let the owner pay the full cost of the insurance. Caveat Emptor.
Yes, I do remember that Al Gore just built one of his new mansions in an ocean flood zone in San Francisco, but that's Al Gore and he can hold back the water (or was that Moses, or Obama?).
From the Google-only bus that bypasses the heralded “public mass transit” to pick up the richeral in his overpriced, Hetch Hetchy-fed San Francisco Victorian, to the tony private academies that richerals’ kids attend, to the Mexican national help that cleans the floors and watches the toddlers before going home to the crammed garage in Redwood City, to the big money that always seems to find exemption from the redistributionist tentacles — such hypocrisy and self-righteousness sermonizing have done more harm to the culture and social fabric of the U.S. than any ideology of the last half-century.
Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau. They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines.
Also,
The tragedy of government dependence is the tragedy of the slowly-dying human heart - the loss of hope and the rejection of any personal revitalization that requires more than a bare minimum of effort (followed by immediate and dramatic rewards). In my own time working with at-risk youth in Kentucky, my wife and I found it extraordinarily difficult to compete with the no-strings-attached federal money, where it was all too easy to reject any true reform or true personal initiative in favor of the life they knew.
Here at Maggie's, we are convinced that a degree of financial security is a more meaningful goal than retirement. At the same time, we seem to feel that a miserly life is a sterile one and that life without skiing and boating is a wasted one. There's a balance somewhere. Even if you have some bucks in the bank, picking and choosing expenditures carefully on their life/family enhancement makes sense. In those cases, we like spending a lot to make it great and memorable. Penny-wise and adventure foolish.
I believe in creating great memories to enjoy when I'm over the hill.
I am not referring to Washington and Lincoln, two very fine and important fellows and the latter was a politician (who brought about America's most horrible and probably pointless war, but that's another subject). It's about two other shapers of American life and I admire both of them.
Is today a holiday? Not for me. My team will be in the office until midnight at least, preparing a big presentation to a client for tomorrow morning. No excuses. We are ordinary Americans, not great ones. We must keep making things happen or we will end up on food stamps instead of on ski trips. That is motivation. You can relax when you're dead.
To say that math has to be useful is like