Easy Opinions Outlink

Inactive

2009-12-07T00:01:00.005-05:00

This blog is inactive as of 11/2009. I am now posting everything at my main blog, and everything is also over there.

We Can't Stop Government Growth

2009-11-03T18:49:00.003-05:00

Can the Rampaging Leviathan Be Stopped or Slowed?
11/02/09 - Independent.org by Robert Higgs
Senior Fellow in Political Economy, and Editor of The Independent Review at The Independent Institute.

[edited] There are critical difficulties restraining the growth of government. Even when restraints on government are enacted into law, the government does not obey. So, constitutional amendments are worthless. The Constitution already contains the NinthThe enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. and TenthThe powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Amendments. With those amendments and four bucks you can get a latté at Starbucks.
"Solutions” to the ongoing growth of government are a dime a dozen and utterly worthless in themselves. Every genuine solution must be implemented by enough people and money. Marshalling people and money will require ideological conversions on a substantial scale. These conversations themselves will require many people and much money, if such conversions are possible at all.
The troubling fact remains, that if any truly effective measures are approved to limit the government, the rulers would likely resort to whatever legal or illegal violence proved necessary to prevent those measures from taking effect.
If Ron PaulCongressman from Texas, noted for wanting a much smaller and limited government were miraculously elected president, he would not live to take office. Opponents of the government’s ongoing growth must bear in mind that we are dealing with violent, heavily armed, utterly unscrupulous people who, if pushed to the brink, will stop at nothing to retain their power and privileges.
We who abhor the continued growth of government cannot stop or slow it in the near term. But, we can take heartNot much of a comfort -ag from the knowledge that ultimately this criminal enterprise will attain such bloated size and scope that it will implode, as the Soviet Union and other overreaching systems have imploded.
Governments that grow without other limits find that their predation becomes greater than their prey can support. Thus, the government in this country and many others contain the seeds of their own destruction.

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Leading the People
08/2008 - EasyOpinions by Andrew Garland

My personal experience with radicals in college was scary. They don't mind threatening others, regardless of the academic setting or discussion.

[excerpt] He argued that only a radical change in government would bring about a better society. I disagreed. He said that I should join the demonstrations against the University to end the Vietnam war. I thought a sit-in demonstration against the University was misdirected. I suggested the he should demonstrate against the government; the University was not at war.
He said that his movement would become stronger, and eventually I would agree with him. I asked, what if I didn't agree with him, even later? He flashed anger and told me that if I didn't agree on my own, he would make me agree. I saw that as the end of the discussion.

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We Must Spend or We Are Going to DIE!
04/2009 - EasyOpinions by Andrew Garland (satire, excerpt)

From: Ruling Class
To : Public
Re : We must tax and spend now, or we are all going to DIE!
We don't want to tax and spend (cough), but we must react to the crisis that we have identified. We are going to borrow, spend, and tax reluctantly to support our actions. The alternative is DEATH. No one wants that.
So what if you are poor in the future? At least you will be alive, and we will continue to guide you through supportive government to help you out of poverty. We will create and assign the jobs of the 21st century. Your children will pay most of the taxes, and we are training our children to have the public spirit that will allow them to rule wisely.

Blunting the Costs of Healthcare Reform

2009-10-14T22:50:00.001-04:00

States of Personal Privilege
10/09/09 - WSJ Opinion by by Kimberley A. Strassel

Quip: This bill is vital to our country and will save a lot of money. We just don't want to depend on it.

[edited]
Powerful senators have avoided the most costly provisions of healthcare reform for their own states. They want "reform" for the nation, so long as it doesn't disadvantage the people who support or vote for them.

The Baucus bill vastly expands state Medicaid programs, requiring the states to pay an additional $37 billion.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is worried about losing his seat next year. He has arranged for the federal government to pay Nevada's increased Medicaid expenses for the next five years. This applies to only three other states: Oregon, Rhode Island, and Michigan, because they "are suffering more than most."
The Baucus bill would tax expensive insurance plans at 40%, so that those with "luxury" health insurance help to pay for the poor. But states like New York and Massachusetts have a lot of those plans, having a lot of union members with great benefits, and high-cost insurance mandated by state regulations.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer didn't want angry, overtaxed voters, so he and other similarly situated Democrats carved out a deal to reduce the tax on 17 states, mostly with Democratic politics.
The Baucus bill taxes pharmaceutical companies, on the principle that they are filthy rich and involved in health care.
But, New Jersey boasts it is the "global epicenter" of the drug industry, where "15 of the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical companies have major facilities." Its Sen. Menendez has a deal for a $1 billion tax credit for companies investing in drug R&D.
Many Dems assure us that the Baucus bill will "bend down" the health-care cost curve. Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry aren't counting on it. They included $5 billion in the bill to reduce costs for union members.

So, health-care "reform" is good, smart, and necessary, so long as it isn't fully applied to the states of the senators who are pushing it.
Most senators are saving up their special demands for the Senate floor. Then, we'll know how much change Democrats truly believe in.

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Baucus Bill Bull: The Hypocrites In DC Are Trying To Pass a Doozy
10/14/09 - PJTV: Medically Incorrect (video 3 minutes)

A video opinion of the Baucus bill by Dr. Peter Weiss.

Dr. Weiss is an OB/GYN at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the Medical Director of Rodeo Drive Women's Health Center and Rodeo Drive Dermatology and Aesthetics, and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine.

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Obamacare Bails Out Medicare
09/12/09 - Easy Opinions by Andrew Garland
"Healthcare Reform" is a huge tax hike plus rationed medical services.

Better Through Creative Statistics

2009-10-03T16:40:00.001-04:00

Reagan's Unemployment Numbers
10/03/09 - DonSurber's blog - Comment by John D.

[edited]
John D: I am a little confused when I see unemployment numbers from the Reagan years compared to unemployment since 1993.
I believe that the Clinton Administration changed the formula for figuring unemployment to make the numbers smaller. They stopped counting the long term unemployed and those that had quit looking for employment.
Are the Reagan numbers being compared to numbers using the new method, or have the Reagan numbers been recalculated?
Surber: They are not recalculated. Good point.

Don't believe government statistics and historical comparisons.

The Democratic President Clinton changed the unemployment computation to make his administration look better compared to Reagan and Bush the father. Bush the son didn't change it back; doing so would have made him look worse.

So, now we have unemployment statistics that specifically leave out the long term unemployed and those not looking regularly for work. People who are in part-time jobs are naturally left out, even if they consider this a fallback from former full-time employment.

This is fine for government, which claims that things are just as good as 20 years ago. This supposed progress is a result of manipulating the numbers.

This distortion builds over time as the definitions change to make things look better. The numbers become more unreal, leaving us ignorant about how effective our policies are.

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USA Healthcare is First - Infant Mortality is Low
01/08/09 - Easy Opinions by Andrew Garland

Health statistics are intentionally misrepresented to argue for socialized medicine. The major argument is that the US spends more than Europe, but lags behind in health outcomes. So, US healthcare is both expensive and inefficient. Actually, government administration hides much of the socialized cost, and the USA has better health.

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Consumer Price Index -
Things You've Suspected But Were Afraid to Ask
10/01/06 - Shadow Stats by Walter J. Williams (John Williams)
Via 11/05/08 - Alpha Dominance

[edited] Inflation, as reported by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is understated by roughly 7% per year, due to recent redefinitions of the numbers and flawed methods, particularly adjusting prices for changes in quality.
The CPI was designed to help everyone adjust their financial planning to the impact of inflation. Since the earyl 1980's, these statistics have changed to meet demands from miscreant politicians. Politicians were and are intent upon stealing income from social security recipients, without public discussion or Congressional approval.
The Clinton Administration changed the CPI to significantly understate inflation, along with changes in the late-Carter and early Reagan Administrations. Thas has reduced current social security payments by roughly half from where they would have been otherwise.
Anyone who receives payments adjusted by the CPI has been similarly damaged. On the other side, the government makes out like a bandit making payments adjusted by this lowered CPI.

Memo - Health Plan Deficit Reduction

2009-09-17T20:00:00.001-04:00

From: Chairman [redacted] of the [redacted] Committee
To: Healthcare Reform Drafting Group II
Re: Finessing the Health Plan Deficit

( This is a Class I rice-paper memo. )

The estimated deficit for our health reorganization plan is causing us trouble in the press. President Obama has promised not to raise taxes on the middle class, and not to increase the deficit. Unfortunately, we have to live with this until the plan passes Congress.

After passage, we will spend what it takes, just like the last times.

Please hold off on more complexity. I asked for enough boards, committees, commissions, and regulators to confuse things and distract our opponents. You went overboard, but that is not a big problem. Just don't add more.

(Jim, that advisory commission on do-it-yourself birthing is out. I know it would save money, but it is out for now.)

Here is how we will handle the cost. Pick a big cost to convince people that we are serious. Too small looks like we might be hiding things. (If they only knew.) Keep it under $1 trillion over 10 years. That seems to be the right psychological price point for the public.

Now, this is how we will "pay for it". Assign whatever fees (not taxes!) you want against insurance companies, big businesses, and "private" doctors. Make the fees big enough to cover the entire added cost of the plan. Yes, even if you think we can't raise that much money from those fees.

The Congressional Budget Office will score the plan based on the fees we say we will raise. They will find that the plan is covered, and that is all we care about. We have convinced the public that only deficits matter, not the actual cost.

Our opponents will express doubt that we can collect all of the money we say we will. But, that is just their opinion, and the CBO will go along with us.

So, we will have a plan that does not increase the deficit, and there are no taxes on the middle class, only fees on evil companies and rich doctors.

To Fred: Yes, the fees would be passed through, and effectively would be a tax on employees and patients. I appreciate your insight. Forget about it. We will be rearranging everything in any event, after the bill is in effect for a while.

Good work everyone. Just a few more all-nighters, and we will get this thing passed. Remember that there are enough boards, committees, commissions, and regulators to provide plum assignments for all of you.

__________
This is a rice-paper memo, distributed on edible paper and written in edible ink (raspberry). Please eat this memo after reading.

Nutrition Label: Fat 0g Protein 0g Carbohydrate 4g
Dietary Fiber 1g. Free of gluten and tree nuts.

US Printing Office G5-034 236 Washington D.C.

Leading the People

2009-09-08T21:20:00.001-04:00

Leading The People
If You Don't Agree Now, You Will Later
08/30/08 - EasyOpinions by Andrew Garland

My post from a year ago still applies. Here are two excerpts:

Brad said that his movement would become stronger, and eventually I would agree with him. I asked, what if I didn't agree with him, even later? He flashed anger and told me that if I didn't agree on my own, he would make me agree. I saw that as the end of the discussion.
Brad's Friends want to be elected, then use that power to make your life better, and you better, whether you agree or not. Brad's Friends are not motivated by respect for their fellow citizens or a regard for the truth. They want to produce a grand experiment to make a better world. Eventually, they will make you agree with them.

Van Jones: What's New?

2009-09-05T19:49:00.005-04:00

To President Obama:

Van Jones is your Green Jobs Czar, a position of importance and power in deciding how to restructure US industry. He has recently been in the news for his speeches and petitions. He signed a petition asking that the US Government, then under President Bush, be investigated for complicity in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

He declared that he became a Comunist in his recent past. He stated that black high school students might shoot another black student, but that they had never tried to shoot many people at once, as two white students did in the Columbine tragedy.

It seems that you will announce soon that he has resigned, or that you have fired him, or that you are going to keep him in your administration.

Whatever you do, please tell me, what is new to you about this information? If you already knew about these aspects of his history, then why should you now fire him or ask him to resign?

If your actions are based on recent information, new to you, then what's new?

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What Van Jones Signifies
09/05/09 - PowerlineBlog by Scott Johnson

[edited] Do not write off Van Jones as a one-off nutjob in the Obama administration. He signifies. The Obama team sought him out and signed him up for his job as green jobs commissar precisely because of who he is.
He is a self-proclaimed Communist. A vulgar Marxist twice over. A supporter of cold-blooded cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal. A 9/11 Truther. A racist hater, whose hatred extends to the United States. And, insofar as his current job is concerned, we have a man who sees the "green jobs" con as a tool for overthrowing capitalism.
He is the complete, left-wing, nightmare package.

I will add that he seems to me to be a well-dressed, fit man, with energy and personal charisma. He speaks very well, simply and with good phrasing, if you ignore the content. He reminds me entirely of President Obama.

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Van Goes Under The Bus — Updated
09/05/09 - PajamasMedia by Ed Driscoll

A collection of links and comment about Van Jones, who he is, what he said, and how people are reacting.

Jennifer Rubin said in Commentary Magazine:

[edited] The immediate issue is that the White House is harboring such a figure. It is under siege for its leftward lurch, and is battling the tag that the president is out of touch with ordinary Americans. It’s hard to believe that Van Jones isn’t a fictional character dreamed up by Obama’s conservative critics. Unfortunately no, Jones is very real.

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Where is the policy paper?
07/26/09 - Easy Opinions by Andrew Garland

Obama and Congress must have thoroughly investigated before writing down new law to change all of healthcare. Where is it? Let's see it.

Or, are they legislating off of a cocktail napkin?

Obama's Green Jobs Snake Oil

2009-09-05T18:44:00.001-04:00

Obama's Green Snake Oil
Obama ignores the cost of his global warming plan.
01/28/09 - Reason Online by Jacob Sullum

[edited]Obama says that his plan to reduce global warming is actually a way of stimulating the economy. The plan immediately spends for weatherizing buildings, alternative energy production, and more power transmission. He ignores the enormous cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. He falsely portrays this economic burden as a boon.
Consider this to see the fallacy: If Obama could snap his fingers and make global warming disappear, should he do it? By his logic, no, because then we'd lose all those wonderful green jobs that will help pull us out of the recession.

Obama: "Climate change could result in violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe." Does Obama's cap-and-trade proposal make sense? We need to know how likely are those outcomes, how costly they would be, and whether his plan would prevent them.
Critic Bjorn Lomborg wrote "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming." He argues that adapting to climate change is much less costly than trying to prevent it. Prevention is unlikely to have any measurable impact. I'd like to hear why Obama thinks this criticism is wrong.

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Dispelling the Global Warming Myth

There is a close correlation between global temperature and solar output. See the graph.

Legislative Language

2009-08-12T13:08:00.010-04:00

3.7(b)(2):
No funds shall be used for pork roasting within any federal facility except in accord with the provisions of 12.14(f)(4).

12.14(f)(4):
Notwithstanding the language in 3.7(b)(2), pork roasting is approved in any amount, anywhere.

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5. Restrictions

5.1 The President's authority under this bill is strictly limited to the explicit provisions of this bill, narrowly considered and constructed.

5.2 The sense of this section 5.2 is constructed from combining the language of sections 5.13 through 5.17 after striking out the words "dog", "cat", and "fish" wherever they appear in those sections.
. . .

5.13 The dog cat President fish
5.14 is fish hereby cat cat
5.15 cat dog empowered dog to cat
5.16 dog dog do dog dog anything cat
5.17 fish dog he fish cat wants. dog fish

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Ignorance is bliss! But see (hhh)(1) Subject to paragraphs (3) and (4)
08/11/09 - Classical Values by Eric

[edited] I finally understand why the Congressmen who are pushing the healthcare bill HR3200 have not read it, and have come up with something unreadable. It's quite deliberate.
If people could actually read it, they might learn too much. If they learned that a new cancer drug would not be available, or that their father's heart surgery would not be covered, millions and millions of ordinary people would be outraged and up in arms, and it would be very bitterly personal, like Mike Sola, the guy whose son has cerebral palsy and who learned he wouldn't be covered.

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A Few Words About Policy
Would Obama try to legislate from some scribbles on a cocktail napkin? Would he think "give me anything, we'll rearrange it later to do what we want"?

Join me in the demand to "Show me the policy paper!" If any politician refuses or says that it doesn't exist, then mock him with "Show me the cocktail napkin!"

ObamaCare May Save Social Security

2009-08-11T15:51:00.003-04:00

ObamaCare Saves Social Security
08/11/09 - InsureBlog by Henry Stern

[edited] The healthcare bill we reference is "America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, Revised Standard Edition". It has the potential to save Social Security from bankruptcy:
Page 425. "The term ‘advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner [doctor] ... if ... the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years."

So, seniors are encouraged to have these consultations at least every 5 years. What are they?
Page 432. "For purposes of reporting data on quality measures for covered professional services furnished during 2011 and any subsequent year, to the extent that measures are available, the Secretary shall include quality measures on end of life care and advanced care planning that have been adopted or endorsed by a consensus-based organization, if appropriate. Such measures shall measure both the creation of and adherence to orders for life sustaining treatment." (note)Can you imagine 1000 pages of this language?

So, a "consensus based organization"The End of Life Quality Treatment Board will come to order. All in favor of 'Non-Heroic Treatment Plan 103' say Aye. The plan is approved by 8 votes to 1. I declare this a consensus. We are adjourned."" will determine advanced care planning. It will create orders for life sustaining treatment that will be measured for compliance. It could order anything from a pain pill to life saving surgery, depending on whatever utilitarian measures it wants. And, that will be that. Are you reassured?

This implements social justice. Rich and poor will be prescribed the most cost-effective lifesaving or pain-numbing treatment, according to expert guidelines.

If you are a federal politician, federal employee, or approved union member, you are not covered by this act. You have other, nicer choices for your care, provided by private insurance companiesAren't the insurance companies supposed to be the spawn of the Devil? arranged for you by your union or the federal government.

Social Security will save a lot as most people's lives end on a more rational basis.

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This prompted my comment (sarcasm warning):

It is shortsighted to bring quality of life issues into discussion only because of explicit costs for healthcare at the end of life.

It is obvious that we cannot support useless members of the tribe who are no longer able to work.

What is less obvious, and much more important, is to factor in carbon use. This is also a cost to society, and to Gaia herself.

We should accept that when our personal carbon footprint goes up past our productivity, then we need a talking to.

When an individual can no longer bicycle to work, it may be better to accept the end rather than be a carbon burden on us all.

It is inescapable. Some must continue on in the cycle of life so that others may live without damaging the Earth.

Cuban Health and Economic News

2009-08-10T22:06:00.000-04:00

Via Don Surber, Daily Scoreboard Item 8.

Cuba must replace tractors with oxen
08/08/09 - Google Hosted News by Will Weissert (AP)

[edited] President Raul Castro suggested expanding a pilot program, giving private farmers fallow government land to cultivate.
"For this program we should forget about tractors and fuel, even if we had enough. The idea is to work basically with oxen. An increasing number of growers have been doing exactly this with excellent results."
The agricultural ministry proposed increasing the use of oxen to save fuel. Factory closings and turning off air conditioners at government offices has saved oil. The ministry said it had more than 265,000 oxen "capable of matching, and in some cases overtaking, machines in labor load and planting."

Cuba is running out of toilet paper
08/10/09 - Reuters by Nelson Acosta and Esteban Israel

[edited] An official with state conglomerate Cimex said: "The corporation has taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper."
The shipment will enable the state-run company "to supply this demand that today is presenting problems." Cuba both imports toilet paper and produces its own, but does not currently have enough raw materials to make it.

CNN reports Cuba is a model for a U.S. healthcare plan
08/10/09 - American Thinker by Humberto Fontova

[edited] The CNN report included clips from Michael Moore's "Sicko". CNN's Morgan Neill reported on location from a Havana hospital. "Cuba's infant mortality rates are the lowest in the hemisphere, in line with those of Canada!"
According to 2009 UN figures for infant mortality per 1000 live birtihs, Canada ranks 23rd best at 4.8, Cuba ranks 28th at 5.1, and The U.S. is 33rd with 6.3. [My link and figures -ag]
Other statistics and reports question the truth of Cuba's rank.

According to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the mortality rate of children aged one to four years is Cuba 11.8 vs U.S. 8.8, 34% higher.
This statistic doesn't figure into UN and World Health Organization spotlighted "infant-mortality rates", so there is no pressure to fudge these figures.
Dr. Juan Felipe García, MD, of Jacksonville, Fla., in April 2001, interviewed several recent doctors who defected from Cuba:
"The official Cuban infant-mortality figure is a farce. Cuban pediatricians constantly falsify figures for the regime. If an infant dies during its first year, the doctors often report he was older. Otherwise, such lapses could cost him severe penalties and his job."
The maternal mortality rate per 1000 births is Cuba 33 vs U.S. 8.4, 3.9 times the death.

The comparison to the U.S. is too strange. Many more Cuban mothers and children aged 1-4 die in Cuba, but the statistic reported to the UN for "infant mortality" (birth to 1 year) shows the same health as in much wealthier countries.

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USA Healthcare is First - Infant Mortality is Low

Health statistics are intentionally misinterpreted to argue for socialized medicine. The major argument is that the US spends more than Europe, but lags behind in health outcomes. So, US healthcare is both expensive and inefficient.

Actually, the USA has better health.

Plants Make Natural Pesticides

2009-07-30T20:34:00.002-04:00

07/29/09 - Via M.D.O.D by 911Doc

Organic foods are not more nutritious than conventional foods, but what about the pesticide residues?

Study Finds Organic Food Is Not Healthier
07/29/09 - Reuters by Ben Hirschler

[edited] A review of 162 scientific papers published in the last 50 years finds no significant difference in nutritional or health benefits between organic and ordinary food.
Alan Dangour: "A small number of differences in nutrient content were found between organic and conventional food, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. There is no evidence to prefer organic over conventional foods based on nutrition."

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Plants Produce Natural Pesticides
5/24/1989 - FortFreedom - Paper by Bruce N. Ames, Chairman of Biochemistry at U.California Berkeley

[edited] The bad news is that our plant foods contain carcinogens, natural pesticides that cause cancer in rats. Examples are basil, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, fennel, grapefruit, mushroom, mustard, orange, parsley, parsnips, pepper, pineapple, and raspberry.
These chemicals are present at levels ranging from 70 ppb (parts per billion) to 4 parts per thousand. These levels are enormously higher than the amounts of man-made pesticide residues in plant foods.
The good news is that the risk of cancer is negligible at levels far below the maximum tolerated dose given to rats. I am not even very concerned about the risk from allyl isothiocyanate, a natural carcinogen present in cabbage at 40,000 ppb and in brown mustard at 900,000 ppb. Most leading scientists and I are very skeptical about making worst-case, low-dose extrapolations from high-dose animal tests.

Here is an example of a low-dose extrapolation. We might observe that 95% of adults will be legally drunk after drinking 6 beers in an hour, 12 ounces each. We might extrapolate that 1.3% (1/72nd) of those people will be drunk after drinking one ounce of beer.

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Organic Pesticides Fail EU Safety Review
03/30/09 - OpenMarket by Greg Conko

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has rejected 13 of 27 commonly used "organic" pesticides. That organic carrot doesn't look as good any more.

Some of the organic pesticides might be dangerous, so it is reasonable to test them. But as above, the risks from pesticides are probably highly exaggerated.

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Synthetic vs Natural Pesticides
06/06/2007 - NYTimes By John Tierney

[edited] About 99.9% of the chemicals humans eat are natural. The amount of synthetic pesticide residues are insignificant compared to the natural pesticides produced by the plants. 99.99% of dietary pesticides are natural. Plants produce these chemicals to defend themselves against fungi, insects, and other animal predators.
Average Americans eat 5,000 to 10,000 natural pesticides and their breakdown products. Each eats 1,500 mg (1/3 teaspoon) of natural pesticides each day, about 10,000 times more than the 0.09 mg of synthetic pesticide residues.
Natural pesticides make up 99.99% of the pesticides in our diet, and synthetic pesticides are the remaining .01%. These pesticides are equally likely to be cancer-causing, but it does not follow that they are causing human cancer.
Dr. Bruce Ames and Dr. Lois Swirsky Gold believe most of these natural or synthetic pesticides don’t present problems because the exposures are very low compared to the high doses given to rodents in lab tests.
Dr. Ames: "Everything you eat in the supermarket is chock full of carcinogens, but most cancers are not due to parts per billion of pesticides. They’re due to causes like smoking, bad diets, and obesity."

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Dietary Pesticides are 99.99% All Natural
07/19/1990 - At JStor - by by Bruce N. Ames, Margie Profet and Lois Swirsky Gold

[edited] We examined the toxicological significance of exposure to synthetic chemicals compared to naturally occurring chemicals. 99.99% by weight of the pesticides in the American diet are produced within plants to defend themselves. Only 52 natural pesticides have been tested in high-dose animal cancer tests; about half (27) are rodent carcinogens present in many common foods.
We conclude that natural and synthetic chemicals are equally likely to be carcinogenic in animal tests. We also conclude that the comparative hazards of synthetic pesticide residues are insignificant at the low doses of typical human exposures.

Not Just Words

2009-07-26T01:32:00.002-04:00

Obama famously said that his speeches were "not just words", that words were powerful and determined a nation’s path.

Unfortunately, Obama thinks that taxes, finance, productivity, unemployment, and income are just numbers.

A Few Words About Policy

2009-07-26T01:02:00.000-04:00

President Obama recently held a prime-time press conference to present his desire to reform healthcare in the U.S. He suggested passing the bill in Congress, and asked for questions. He talked for about an hour and answered about 12 questions.

There has been a flurry of activity discussing what he said, whether there was any new detail, and criticizing some of his examples and facts. This told us very little about what is proposed in this sweeping grant of power to the government.

The press and the country are entirely wrong about what press conferences are good for.

Policy On Paper

Obama should have already released a detailed "white paper" describing his summary and justification for his health care proposals. (And such a paper for his other policy recommendations.) We need proposed results, methods, justifications, comparative studies, past successes, funding sources, the works.

Laws are not written as a random collection of thoughts, although they often look that way. They start with policies and reasons on paper. Legislator's staffs follow those policies when creating the details in these 1000 page bills. The white papers must exist, but they are not being presented to the public.

We should examine, verify, and criticize the policy documents, and then compare these to the details in the bills. Starting with the bills is like trying to approve a new building by looking only at the blueprints, without the purpose, graphics, and site requirements.

This is the United States Government, of, for, and by the People. The public cannot participate in a government that runs on policies that are hidden. The press and public should be able to review these undelivered documents. The government should be proud to display its carefully researched and supported policies. We deserve this as a free people.

The absence of these policy papers is appalling. Instead of open and proud policy, we have closed, imperial government. Sadly, we are controlled by a tyranny if our government sees no reason to explain and justify its actions. Are they ashamed or afraid of what they propose?

Be Informed

A press conference is supposed to question the President on his knowledge of the policy already presented in detailed, written form. The press conference is for the President to announce and defend the policy. It is to reassure the public that he knows about what he is proposing.

Instead, we have a few questions and vague speeches about what we would all like in a perfect world, and about the power and money that Obama wants ahead of time to work on it.

It is a magician's trick, to treat press conferences as if they could communicate the needed information, for either support or criticism.

We must ask our government for the important things. Among them is always a clear explanation of what the law will be, and why. If we ask and are not answered, then the responsible politicians must be voted out.

Minimum Wage Prosperity

2009-07-24T12:14:00.007-04:00

Suddenly, McJobs are Good
07/24/09 - Blogs.DailyMail by DonSurber

[edited] Labor union officials and their handmaidens in Congress, including former congresswoman Solis, derided any increase in employment under a Republican president, calling them "McJobs". They derided them, even if they were above minimum wage, because new jobs do not pay as much as old jobs.
Now that Obanomics has turned a mild recession of 7.6% unemployment into 9.5% unemployment, in just 4 months, we have Solis praising a 70 cents an hour increase in the minimum wage as an economic stimulus.

Solis says that raising the minimum wage to $7.25/hour is going to help the economy and increase employment. I hope she doesn't mean it will help the economy while decreasing employment. Or, hurt the economy while increasing employment.

Where are the studies and information about the ideal minimum wage? Maybe the sky is the limit. Why not set the minimum wage at $50/hour? That would send funds to poor people while lifting the economy, right? (sarcasm)

The minimum wage is just another way of saying: "Fire that person unless you can pay them $7.25 per hour. We would rather that they be out of work, than work for less than we think is polite."

The government cannot help people by restricting their choices.

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A Minimum Wage Equals Minimum Jobs
07/30/09 - Reason.com by John Stossel

[edited] Politicians declare that workers should get a raise, and people assume they will actually get it. But, government can increase wages by decree only if employers set wages arbitrarily. You have to believe that employers are arbitrarily stingy.
Say an employee produces $4 of value each hour after all business expenses, and the employer offers just $2. Another employer will hire him away for $3 or more. Competition drives wages up to the the worker's level of productivity.
Several years ago, Santa Monica, CA made the town a workers' paradise by requiring everyone to be paid at least $12.25 an hour. Restaurant owner Jeff King complained to me, that the law would "dry up the entry-level jobs for just the people they're trying to help."
He was right. It's why gas stations no longer hire teenagers to wash your windshield. Wage minimums tell employers: "Don't give a beginner a chance." The people of Santa Monica later woke up and overturned the "living wage."
If minimum-wage advocates really believe wages are set arbitrarily, why do they favor only a $7.50 or $14 minimum? Why not $100? At those levels, even a diehard interventionist knows that workers would be hurt. But, the principle is the same at lower levels. Wages follow productivity, not whim. If the minimum wage is set above productivity, those workers will be harmed.

Low Skilled Workers Are Not Helped
07/26/09 - Cafe Hayek by economist Don Boudreaux

[edited] Uncle Sam has hiked the minimum wage, raising the hourly cost of employing low-skilled workers by 10.7%. This is always unwise, and more so when unemployment is rising.
Say that Uncle Sam passed a minimum-salary statute for economists, requiring that every employed economist be paid at least $300,000 annually. I would, of course, love to earn this much by teaching economics. My more accomplished colleagues would benefit, such as Tyler Cowen and Walter Williams. But, I would lose my job.

Using the Minimum Wage to Hamper Your Rivals
07/24/09 - Econlog.Econlib by David Henderson

[edited] Forty years ago, politicians who pushed for the increased minimum wage did not hide their motives or their knowledge of who the victims would be.
In a 1957 Senate hearing, Senator (and future President) John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts said:
Having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor depresses wages outside of that group, the wages of the white worker who has to compete.
When an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage, it affects the whole wage structure of an area, doesn't it? There are, as you pointed out, hundreds of thousands of colored workers looking for decent work.

Exploiting the Minimum Wage
07/24/09 - Open Market by Ryan Young

[edited] Young people with little or no work experience may not be able to offer $7.25 per hour worth of productivity. No wonder so many of them are having trouble finding summer jobs. The law says that they have to be paid more than they are worth [if they are hired]. Wage floors reduce the number of jobs.

Raising Rival's Costs
7/24/09 - Marginal Revolution by Alex Tabarrok

[edited] Some employers benefit from an increase in the minimum wage because it raises the cost of labor for their rivals. This is why unions have typically been in favor of the minimum wage even when their own workers make much more than the minimum.

Borrowing Costs Per Legislator

2009-07-20T12:09:00.001-04:00

Consider borrowing $1 billion. This costs $40 million/year at 4%.

There are 535 congressmen and senators. That is $75,000 each per year, without paying back any of the principal loan.

This year, the US is borrowing about $2 trillion. The cost of this is $150 million per federal legislator, per year.

Let's just pay the legislators a few million more per year in salary, if they will stop borrowing money.

Regulations are Too Complex and Dangerous

2009-07-17T01:05:00.003-04:00

"A Crisis Of Politics, Not Economics:
Complexity, Ignorance, And Policy Failure"
07/16/09 - Critical Review by Jeffrey Friedman (PDF)
(Via Cafe Hayek)

The abstract summary seems right to me. Edited.

The financial crisis was caused by the complex, constantly growing web of regulations designed to constrain and redirect modern capitalism.
This complexity made investors, bankers, and perhaps regulators themselves ignorant of regulations previously promulgated across decades and in different “fields” of regulation.
These regulations interacted with each other to foster the issuance and securitization of subprime mortgages; their rating as AA or AAA; and their concentration on and off the balance sheets of many commercial and investment banks.
As a practical matter, it was impossible to predict the disastrous outcome of these interacting regulations.
Government has attempted for 100 years to create a hybrid capitalism in which regulations are supposed to remedy economic problems as they arise. This may be impossible to do in practice due to complexity.

Motto of government: Let's have 50 more regulations and see what happens.

I see the government as falsly advertising that they have produced trustworthy systems. This leads people to trust the governmnet, drop their guards, and be hurt more badly than if they had been prudent and skeptical.

The government creates the idea that regulation makes a business trustworthy even if parts of the business are hidden from investors. In fact, only open disclosure and public audit can give confidence in a business.

The Bernie Madoff theft shows this. People trusted in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate Madoff and find any fraud. The SEC did investigate him twice, and found nothing. They excused themselves by saying that they really didn't have the resources to find fraud.

While not helping much, regulations cost $trillions.

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The Madoff Scandal Exposes Government Failure
07/17/09 - Future of Freedom Foundation by Sheldon Richman

[edited] No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem is blamed on small zones of freedom. The government can’t possibly monitor and regulate everything in a country, but it claims that it must. Anything that displeases the government can be an excuse for stamping out whatever freedom still exists.
A false sense of security is worse than none at all. People are more vulnerable to scams when they believe government is protecting them, because they relax their efforts to protect themselves. The government broadcasts one unmistakable message: Have no fear because Big Brother is watching over you.
Free-market advocates do not claim that we need no protection from the unscrupulous. Rather, protection is maximized by undiluted market discipline, profit, loss, and buyer-beware skepticism.

A Hidden Cost of National Health Care

2009-07-11T22:12:00.000-04:00

The Hidden Cost Of National Health Care
07/11/09 - Washington Examiner Op-Ed by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Treatment will be rationed by slowing the development of new treatments, along with longer waiting times and plain denial.

[edited exerpts] The normal and valid critique of socialized medicine is that people have to wait a long time for treatment in places like Britain.
There is another, hidden cost. A bureaucratized healthcare system will squash medical innovation.
Todays treatments did not come out out of the blue. They were developed by drug companies and device makers who thought they had a good market for things that would make people feel better.
But, under nationalized healthcare, the "market" is whatever the bureaucrats are willing to buy. Treatment for politically stylish diseases will get some money, but the main concern will be cost-control. More treatments mean more costs to bureaucrats.
Bureaucrats have their own view of cost. Medicines like Prilosec have made ulcer surgery a thing of the past. But, to bureaucrats, those pills are a cost, while ulcer-surgery expenses can be reduced by rationing. Let 'em eat Maalox while they wait.
The potential marvels of the next twenty years will never be developed unless some developer sees a market. This is despite the great promise of new medical technology for cancer treatment, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and more.
The existence of a market will be much less certain with bureaucrats in charge of selecting treatments to pay for. Federally funded medical research will still go on, but turning that research into actual treatments is a different story.

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Begging for Medical Care File that emergency request in writing during office hours.
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Will your socialized hospital have enough money to care for you?

The actress Natasha Richardson died after hitting her head in a ski fall. She was very unlucky. Montreal does not have fast transportation to a full-service hospital, even near a ski area. Why not? Patients are a cost to the system.

The bureaucracy sees you as a cost, especially if you have already paid. All people and organizations seek income and avoid costs. Socialized healthcare is paid up-front and delivers services after the fact.

How hard will a system work to earn the money that they have already been paid? This is something that everyone can understand in their gut. A customer is lost without competition for his dollar.

The Actual Role of Government

2009-07-11T17:41:00.001-04:00

Michael Moore Gets It Wrong
07/11/09 - John Stossel

Everyone is greedy, it is how you organize things that matters.

Socialists
The government is a caring institution that has been taken hostage by big business. We can free it by making it big enough to resist these businesses. Then the government can give the citizens a fair and prosperous world.

Libertarians
The government is a regulatory oppressor with a big sign in neon "Buy your favors and loopholes here". The back room has a high cover charge, a gambling casino, and rooms for sleeping with legislators. The front room is musty, with slow service and dirty glasses. The cardboard sign reads "We will improve service after we raise our prices".

Capitalists
The simple ones just want to make and sell things. The sly ones see the government as an opportunity which they can't resist. They all have to find a way around the regulations, mostly by paying to stay in business.

Reformers
Everyone is a reformer. The front room is obviously bad, and there are many speeches about fixing it up. Winners go to the back room, where they go along to get along, and work on the problem of not being poor at the end of their elective careers.

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How do you see the government? Caring mother held hostage, or corrupt ruler selling favors?

Who's the Materialist?

2009-07-11T15:52:00.000-04:00

Who's the Materialist?
07/11/09 - Cafe Hayek by Donald J. Boudreaux

[edited] Capitalism emphatically does improve material living standards. But more, all the great champions of economic freedom ultimately justify capitalism because only it affords true dignity to individuals. That dignity is denied by systems which arbitrarily diminish each person's freedom to choose.
It is fine for "Progressives" such as Mr. Dionne not to share the value of freedom. But it is rather cheeky with one breath to accuse proponents of capitalism as unduly focused on material goods, and with the next breath to insist that a major problem with capitalism is that some people get fewer material goods than do other people.

Government Healthcare by Experts

2009-07-11T14:53:00.000-04:00

The Mayo Clinic weighs in
07/11/09 - Don Surber

Dr. Wood is the chairman of the Mayo Clinic, division of Health Care Policy & Research:

[edited] The clinic supports “value indexing” to determine how providers get paid. This would measure patient outcomes and cost over a period of time. The current bills in Congress contain very little that reflects payment for value.

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar:

[edited]If we just simply change who is paying for something and do nothing to make the system more efficient, we are really not going to get where we want to go.

Don Surber:

[edited] This is exactly what is wrong with government-run health programs. Their goal is to save money, not lives. More than anything, I oppose having Sen. Klobuchar decide how “to make the system more efficient.”

Jim B comments:

[edited] When Sen. Klobuchar can show me a record of the government ever making anything more efficient, ever, then maybe we can talk about health care. But she needs to put up or shut up. Government bureaucrats claim to be able to do things they’ve never once demonstrated an ability to do. There’s absolutely no substance to back it up.
So come on, supporters of ObamaCare, show me where you can back up your claims. Even one of them.

Links

Healthcare Reform Myths

One of the myths: If you like your current plan you can keep it.

You can keep your current plan if it is still offered and the company is still around. This is not a silly consideration. Proponents have learned from the Hillary Care proposal in the 1990's that radical transformation does not sell. The current plan provides a framework to take away freedoms one at a time, to minimize resistance, and obscure the ultimate goal.

A century of monopoly by the Post Office shows us how much Congress likes competition to one of its high-cost, inefficient activities. Private insurance likely will disappear or be made to conform to government rules, standards, limitations, and costs.

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Massachusetts Health Care Cuts

Henry Stern at InsureBlog examines the Massachusetts Health program that is the darling of Washington. Here is a part:

Massachusetts can't pay for the plan by itself. It needs Washington to distribute funds from the national money tree to pay for this program.
$32 million of the $115 million in claimed savings comes from slowing payments to the managed-care health insurance companies that won bids to offer insurance through the Commonwealth Care program. Regulators said that by slowing enrollment growth, the companies would receive less money than they had banked on when they submitted their bids earlier this year.

Overselling Science

2009-07-10T19:17:00.001-04:00

Overselling Science
07/10/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love

Why polls of scientists don't mean much, even if they are real scientists making their living from research. Read it all.

[edited] The problem with polling “scientists” is that there is a wide range in the predictive power of the studies that we lump together as “science”.
Physics has tremendous predictive power, but sociology has almost none. Worse, scientists in highly predictive fields tend to have too much trust in less predictive fields, and scientists in low- or non-predictive fields try to gain public trust by referring to the success of highly predictive fields.
Non-predictive sciences invite social and political fads. There was wide agreement a hundred years ago on the validity of eugenics, Improving a human population by discouraging people with undesirable traits from having children, or of mating people who have desireable traits. more agreement than we have today on global warming. Darwin strongly opposed implementing eugenics, but nevertheless believed in its validity.
Likewise, most scientists of that era thought it was obvious that races differed in behavior because they had different biology. Much bad policy, even in politically liberal countries, was based on this flawed and oversold “scientific” idea.
The theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) has the same social and political dynamics as did eugenics. Climatology has not predicted climate either in the short or long term. The computer models [and their predictions for tens or hundreds of years into the future] cannot be tested by any observation in the here and now. Yet, the public gives climatology the same respect as meteorology, physics, and chemistry.
To global warming, we could add each past “scientific” consensus on the population bomb, resource depletion, energy crisis, and inevitable nuclear war. In all of these cases, scientists and the public thought untested models with no predictive power were similar to the highly predictive models [of the experimental, physical sciences].

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Global warming caused by humans is a scam
The proponents of Global Warming don't mind lying for the good of us all. Saving the world justifies much cutting of corners.

Be Skeptical About Scientists and Polls

2009-07-10T16:16:00.002-04:00

Scientists Versus The Great Unwashed
07/10/09 - Just One Minute by Tom Maguire

Survey Shows Gap Between Scientists and the Public
07/09/09 - New York Times by Cornelia Dean

Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public and Media
07/09/09 - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

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I don't trust Pew research polls, after seeing this poll and information about it. I am skeptical of all polls, and the word "scientist".

Mr. Maguire reviews an article in the NY Times which reports a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, working with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Opinions differed between scientists and the general public.

Pew said "scientists". I credit Ms. Dean for the following, which is not emphasized in the Pew report:

NYT Ms. Dean: [edited] The survey involved about 2,000 of the public and 2,500 scientists drawn from the rolls of the AAAS, which includes teachers, administrators and others involved in science, as well as researchers.

The Pew report section About the survey is at the end of the report, the last segment of 10, and says:

Pew Report [edited] Results for the scientist survey are based on 2,533 online interviews. A sample of 9,998 members was drawn from the AAAS membership list excluding those who were not based in the United States or whose membership type identified them as primary or secondary-level educators.

The term "scientist" is used everywhere, but the survey contacted the AAAS membership, which includes people with a career related to science, and can include anyone. The survey excluded grade-school and high-school teachers, but included administrators. It seems that this classification is whatever each member listed when joining.

Rhetoric and Bias

It bothers me that Ms. Dean reports on a survey and inserts her own beliefs. For evolution and global warming, the supposed scientists agree with her, and the public is dumb. For nuclear power, she does not report on the supposed scientists who come to a conclusion different from liberal opinion.

This is a common misuse of surveys and group opinions. We often hear that we should believe something because "almost all scientists agree".

How can we know that thay all agree?
What does "all" mean?
Who are the "scientists"?
If "scientists" are all trustworthy, how can they disagree? If they are not all trustworthy, why are we polling them?
Who employs them and how will they benefit from acceptance of their results?
What are their areas of expertise?
Have they opened their research, data, methods, and computer models to public examination?
Has their research survived critical attention? Did they respond to criticism with thoughtful detail, or dismiss their critics as evil idiots?

Macguire selected these parts of the NY Times article.

[edited] There is a large gap between the views of scientists and ordinary Americans about climate change, evolution, and the state of the nation’s research enterprise.
Almost all of the scientists accept that human beings evolved by natural processes and that human activity, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global warming. The general public is far less sure.
Almost a third of ordinary Americans say human beings have always existed in their current form. Only 2% of the scientists agree. Only half of the public agrees that people cause climate change, and 11% does not believe there is any warming at all.
About a third of Americans think there is lively scientific debate on both topics. In fact, there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution and there is little doubt that humans are altering the atmosphere in ways that threaten global climate.

Dean associates evolution and global warming as two settled theories. Evolution has been studied for 150 years with confirmation from many directions and sources that has survived public evaluation and criticism. Global Warming investigations are recent, biased by government support and political pressure, and results are unsettled and exaggerated The proponents of Global Warming don't mind lying for the good of us all.

Dean says "almost all of the scientists accept", implying that the issue is settled, except for the dumb public that has not yet accepted the uncomfortable implications.

Macguire points out something Dean does not report. The supposed scientists want more power plants, an action that is not supported by liberals.

[edited] Interesting, the Times forgot to report this factoid from a Pew chart. 70% of scientists (but only 51% of the public) favor "building more nuclear power plants". On global warming, 49% of the public and 84% of scientists believe that "the earth is getting warmer because of human activity".

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Global warming caused by humans is a scam
The proponents of Global Warming don't mind lying for the good of us all. Saving the world justifies much cutting of corners.

Obama Can Win The Chicago Way

2009-07-10T01:16:00.001-04:00

Quote of the Day . . 07/08/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Jonathan
Minus Five . . 07/08/09 - Belmont Club by Richard Fernandez

Life Of The Mind commented on Obama's declining polls and his re-election prospects if this trend continues. Despite any development, Obama plans to win.

[edited] Soros, Axelrod, and Obama know what they are doing. They won't cancel elections or do anything spectacular that will rally resistance. I don't expect them to worry much about sagging poll numbers.
They intend to win the next election, despite 15-20% unemployment and inflation in 18 months. They intend to do it the Chicago way, to buy it with your money.

The Democrats will have $500 billion of slush funds ready to pump out for the 2010 election.
Acorn and an army of hacks will push to hold onto Congress in 2010.
The census will be cooked to deliver the Congress in 2012.
The declining economy will drain resources from the opposition.
The carping left will discover a new discipline that Republicans could never threaten them with. Recalcitrant academics and think tanks will be defunded, and media jobs will be increasingly under the control of Obama aligned conglomerates.
Immigration reform will complete the picture for Obama’s reelection.

Much of this will be technically illegal and corrupt. But, they will not resort to violence or attempt to repeal the 2nd Amendment before 2012.
People should stop assuming that Obama will make a mistake and do something overtly revolutionary. This hope puts people in a passive, reactive mode. Some expect that his birth certificate or college transcript will magically appear and then somehow force someone to invalidate the election.
Anyone thinking that way needs to have Cher slap him in the face and yell "Snap out of it". Can we win this battle? Yes, but it will take hard sustained work.

Newspaper Influence Peddling

2009-07-07T19:21:00.001-04:00

A Question That Needs to be Asked
07/06/09 - ChicagoBoyz by James R. Rummel

Newspapers influence public opinion, and that influence is quite valuable. It seems that some newspapers are selling that influence. Do you still trust your newspaper?

[edited] The Washington Post salon scandal reveals that publisher Katharine Weymouth invited people to pay up to $25,000 USD in order to have dinner at her house.
For that money, the movers and shakers at the newspaper would personally introduce you to the movers and shakers at the White House, as well as the reporters who covered them. Pay them cash, and the good folks at the WaPo would create an instant handshake relationship with the people who are shaping the future of the country, and the reporters who shape public perception. This was irresistible to special interest groups, corporations, and lobbyists.
This is done all the time by newspapers with their foot in the door of the White House press room. But, this time it was jsut too blatant to pass the smell test.
David Bradley is chairman of the board at Atlantic Media. He emphasized that there can be no influence/access peddling going on, because everything that happens at the get-togethers is strictly off the record!
Idiots rarely work their way up to become ultra-rich, and dumb inheritors rarely hang on to wealth for long. They were not idiots. They expected good value for their bucks, and they must have received that value because they kept coming back for more.

Obama Explains Millionaire Grants (smile)

2009-07-05T00:51:00.003-04:00

Future News:

It is just weeks after Barack Obama won the 2012 election to his second term as President. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs provided some details today about President Obama's campaign promise to "make 95% of all citizens a millionaire".

Participants must earn less than $50,000, with a net worth less than $50,000. They must be a legal resident for 3 years at the time of the grant. Illegal status will incur a $10,000 penalty in exchange for immediate citizenship. Gibbs said: "It just seems fair not to spoil such a happy event because of a technicality".

The White House will establish the Department of Citizen Grants to administer the program. Applicants can sign up at WhiteHouse.gov or write to an address to be announced. DCG will be fully established "by next year, or a bit later". Until then, one grant per month will be "completed by hand". Grant ceremonies may be televised.

The DCG will issue at least 1,000 grants each month, "or even more" when fully operational.

Gibbs deflected criticism that this plan was too expensive and was proposed merely to buy votes. "We are all tired of hearing 'NO' from Republicans. They should propose their own plan if they object to ours."

Republicans complain that this program will cost at least $12 billion per year and will take approximately 11,000 years to award grants to just the 130 million people who are taxpayers.

Gibbs: "We disagree with our opponents figures. Our economic advisors fully approve of this plan. These negative projections do not take into account future advances in money creation and grant making, which will result in net savings to the government overall and a revenue neutral program. The economy will receive $18 billion per year from this money injection, a 1.5 multiplier. The 60% tax on incomes over $100,000 will raise more than $6.5 billion per year for government programs to help the poor."

A reporter from Fox News asked Gibbs to "just look at the numbers". Gibbs: "I am not an economist, and I am not authorized to scribble things on a blackboard, even if we had a blackboard. We live in the richest country in the world, and $12 billion per year is quite affordable within the $20 trillion 2013 federal budget."

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Let's Counterfeit Our Way to Wealth
When an idea leads directly to a crazy result, what should we think about that idea? Maybe laugh at it until Obama explains in detail how it works.

If you believe Obama, Keynes, and their proclaimed wealth multiplier of 1.5 on government spending, then it would be valuable to counterfeit as much money as possible, of course under government regulation. You don't have to borrow counterfeit money, or pay it back. It is ideal for Keynesian government projects.

Gaining Power Through Public Policy

2009-07-03T15:28:00.001-04:00

Social Science and Public Policy
07/03/09 - EconLog by economist Arnold Kling

[edited] Political Economy is the science of obtaining and retaining power. The pollster, the fundraiser, and the media expert supply expertise to the operation. The public policy expert is for decoration. If you want to be an economic policy adviser, my advice is to learn how to put a good spin on the methods used by leading politicians to obtain power.
Is Health care reform about health, the stimulus about recovery, cap and trade about global warming, or TARP about the financial system? No, they are about seizing and retaining power.
The social scientist's role is to say, "X is a problem. Government must solve X. Here are some solutions." The solutions that rationalize seizing and retaining power will bubble to the top.
Suppose you believe that regulators cannot possibly have the wisdom to direct human activity, and that politicians spending other people's money tend to choose unwisely. Keep those beliefs to yourself, if you want to get anywhere as a public policy adviser.

Obama: Honduras Should Accept Tyranny

2009-06-30T22:52:00.009-04:00

Banana Democrats
06/29/09 - Investor's Business Daily - Editorial

We might think that President Obama likes ballot-box stuffing and doesn't like term limits.

[edited] President Obama while campaigning, strongly criticized leaders who are elected democratically but don't govern democratically. He has not applied this to Honduras.
Mel Zelaya is Honduras' now ex-president after defying a Honduras Supreme Court ruling last Thursday. He tried to hold a "survey" to rewrite the constitution for his permanent re-election. It's the same blueprint for a rigged political system that has made the former democracies Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador into shells of free countries.
Zelaya's operatives did their dirt all the way through. First, they used threats to collect signatures to launch their "citizen's power" survey. They warned those who didn't sign that they would be denied medical care, and worse. Zelaya then flew the ballots to Tegucigalpa on Venezuelan planes. This was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, but he did it anyway.
As a result of his brazen disregard for the law, the military escorted Zelaya into exile Sunday morning. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro rushed to blame the U.S., calling it a "yanqui coup".
Zelaya committed the coup, not the U.S. or the Honduran court. Zelaya defied the law, and Hondurans overwhelmingly supported his removal. A pro-Zelaya rally Monday drew a mere 200 acolytes.
The U.S. response has been disgraceful. The administration stands with Chavez and Castro, calling Zelaya's lawful removal "a coup". A State Department official told reporters: "We recognize Zelaya as the duly elected and constitutional president of Honduras. We see no other". Obama called the action "not legal and a terrible precedent", and said Zelaya remains president. The U.S. now contemplates sanctions on the tiny, drug-plagued, dirt-poor country of 7 million.
The U.S. condemns Honduran democrats who acted to save their democracy. Honduras' actions are actually a historic turning of the tide against the false democracies of the region. It's time for a more sophisticated definition of democracy — one that includes the rule of law and the will of the people.

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Honduras Under the Bus
06/30/09 - National Review by Jonah Goldberg

A Honduran writes:

[excerpt] The country is bewildered that the world, especially the United States, is not on their side. Zelaya was confident of his plans to convert Honduras into a Venezuelan satellite.
The Honduran people are proud of their constitution and are proud to have a functioning democratic system. Zelaya was replaced by a member of his own party who vows to see that this November's presidential election takes place. What happened was not a "coup" but a bipartisan effort to save the nation.

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Coup Rocks Honduras Coup Rocks Honduras
07/01/09 - WSJ by Paul Kiernan, Jose De Cordoba, and Jay Solomon (via American Thinker)

It seems that the Honduran constitution anticipated and excluded the type of referendum that Zelaya wanted to hold. I find it reasonable to keep a President from declaring himself "popular leader for life".

[edited] Honduran soldiers rousted President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and exiled him at gunpoint Sunday to Costa Rica. This halted his controversial push to redraw the constitution, and raised concerns about democratic rule.
Mr. Zelaya said he was kidnappped and was still president. The U.S. and other countries condemned the coup. President Barack Obama said he was "deeply concerned" and called on all political actors in Honduras to "respect democratic norms."
Venezuela President Hugo Chávez is a close ally of Mr. Zelaya and nemesis of the U.S. He said it would be an "act of war" if there were hostilities against his diplomats, and "I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert".
Mr. Zelaya is a frequent critic of the U.S. He has been locked in a growing confrontation with his country's Congress, courts, and military over his plans for the Sunday referendum. It would have asked voters whether they want to scrap the constitution, which the president says benefits the country's elites.
The Supreme Court had ruled the vote was illegal because it flouted the constitution's own ban on such referendums within six months of elections. The military had refused to take its usual role of distributing ballots. But Mr. Zelaya fired the chief of the army last week and pledged to press ahead.

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The Wages of Chavismo
07/01/09 - WSJ Opinion (via Instapundit)

[edited] The Honduran coup is a reaction to Chávez's rule by mob in Venezuela. As military "coups" go, the one in Honduras was strangely democratic. The military didn't oust President Manuel Zelaya on its own, but followed an order of the Supreme Court. It also quickly turned power over to the president of the Honduran Congress, a man from the same party as Mr. Zelaya. The legislature and legal authorities remain intact.
We mention these not so small details because they are being overlooked as the world, including the U.S. President, denounces tiny Honduras in a way that it never has Iran. President Obama is joining the U.N., Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and other model democrats (smile) in demanding that Mr. Zelaya be allowed to return from exile and be restored to power. Maybe it's time to sort the real from the phony Latin American democrats.

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A 'coup' in Honduras? Nonsense
07/02/09 - Christian Science Monitor by Octavio Sánchez

[edited] Don't believe the myth. The arrest of President Zelaya represents the triumph of the rule of law.
Constitutional assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. When Zelaya published his decree to initiate an "opinion poll" about the possibility of convening a national assembly, he contravened the unchangeable articles of the Constitution that deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term.
His actions showed intent, and our Constitution takes such intent seriously. According to Article 239:
No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.

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The Chavez Playbook
07/18/09 - Babalu Blog by Alberto de la Cruz

[edited] Honduran authorities have seized computers from the Presidential Palace belonging to deposed president Mel Zelaya. These computers contained the official and certified results of the illegal constitutional referendum that Zelaya wanted to conduct and which never took place.
The results of this fraudulent vote heavily favored Zelaya, ensuring he could illegally change the constitution and remain in power.

Introduction to Medical Billing

2009-06-30T17:35:00.004-04:00

Medical Economics
06/30/09 - M.D.O.D by ERDoc85

Read the whole thing. The quote only gives a map and a feeling about the post. Will the best, most caring people continue to choose medicine under these conditions?

[edited] You may want to know how the government determines what to pay physicians. Government involvement is already a major problem in medicine!
As you read through the following (it might be hazardous to your health), consider the vast bureaucracy of people necessary to determine, process, audit, and bill all of this stuff. You will understand why there are so many clipboard carrying, useless flesh-bags in hospitals today.

RVU is Relative Value Unit
RVUwork        = Actual Physician Work
RVUexpense     = Practice Expenses
RVUliability   = Liability Insurance
RVUtotal = RVUwork + RVUexpense + RVUliability

GPCI = Geographic Practice Cost Index
       1.0 to 1.5 according to geographic area

CF = Medicare Conversion Factor
     $36.067 (for 2009) per RVUtotal
   
BF = Billing factor by treatment level 1-5
     or Critical (according to medical records)
   
Medicare Payment = RVUtotal × GPCI × CF × BF

You thought your medical record was only for keeping your medical history, but it also serves for legal defense and billing.
It is a source of medico-legal protection for the health care staff. Your record is replete with exactly what you said, including symptoms you denied having and warnings you were given. Anything you refused or argued about will be in great detail. This isn't for your benefit. It's to protect us from the vultures.
And, it has become your billing template! In order to bill you at any of the 6 billing levels, it must be documented that you were asked certain numbers of questions and examined in a specific number of areas.

( The complicated part is omitted here to protect the sanity of vulnerable readers. You have been warned. Smile. )

Legions of people known as "Medical Coders" sit down with every chart, count these items, and bill accordingly! All of these people make a good living, and their salaries are built into your medical care costs. It is government regulations that cause these people to exist.
Will it be simple to reform the health care system? The government has simplified it so far. No doubt (smile) more government involvement will simplify it further, supposedly lowering expenses without cutting services.
Now you know why your doc has his/her face buried in a chart instead of making eye contact with you. And why your doc spends 5 minutes with you, then excuses himself to sit outside for 15 minutes with the chart.

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The Department of Work and Production

The average guy hasn't seen government control close up, except for those in banking and auto manufacturing. Why can't knowledgeable, fact-based, systematic government oversight bring community and efficiency to everyone? (smile)

A possible encounter of an ordinary guy with a government agency that is going to make his profession more efficient, by saving or increasing his salary.

Predicting No Climate Change

2009-06-29T22:00:00.001-04:00

MIT's unscientific, catastrophic climate forecast
06/17/09 - Financial Post by Kesten C. Green and J. Scott Armstrong (via John Stossel)

Forcasting is the heart of science. It is easy to convince yourself that you understand something until you must predict what will happen. It is hard to predict things even when you can repeat the experiment. You must be very careful when you are predicting events that cannot be repeated.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sponsors a Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. It released a report last month: "Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate based on uncertainties in emissions (without policy) and climate parameters."

Green and Armstrong examined this report. They found serious problems in trusting the MIT results, related to proper forcasting methods and skepticism. A forcast of "climate change" may seem to fit the data, until you find out that "no change" fits the data better.

[edited] The MIT authors predicted that global warming could be twice as severe as previously forecast, and more severe than the official projections of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their prediction is based in part on 400 runs of a computer model of climate and economic activity. So, they recommend massive government action.
The MIT group espouses lofty objectives based on "independent policy analysis and public education in global environmental change". But, we found they violated 49 important forcasting principles. For such an important problem, they should not have violated even one.
So what's really wrong with their report? Their phrase "global environmental change" provides a clue. The group implicitly rejects the possibility of no or unimportant change, or the possibility of unpredictable change.
A forecast of "no-change" can be hard to beat in many circumstances. No-change can be appropriate even when a great deal of change is possible, but the direction, extent, or duration is uncertain.
Earth's temperature has gone up and down irregularly over periods from one year to thousands of years. Moreover, science has not been able to tell us why. There is much uncertainty about past climate changes and about the strength and even direction of causal relationships.
Do warming temperatures result in more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or is it the other way around, or a bit of both? Does warming of the atmosphere result in negative or positive feedback from clouds? There are many more such questions without answers. All this strongly suggests that a no-change forecast is the appropriate long-term forecast.
We compared the IPCC projection of 0.03 C temperature increase per year with what actually happened from 1850 to 2007. The errors from the IPCC prediction were 12 times larger than the errors of the no-change prediction.
The forecasts from the MIT modellers and from the IPCC are merely the opinions of some scientists and computer modellers. These are not truly scientific forecasts.

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Dr. Kesten C. Green is a senior research fellow of the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit at Monash University, Australia.

Dr. J. Scott Armstrong is Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

They are co-directors of the public service Web site Forecasting Principles sponsored by the International Institute of Forecasters.

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Dispelling the Global Warming Myth
There is a very close match between global temperature and solar output. See the graph. That even seems reasonable in its own way. (smile)

AGW Scientists Can't Predict
Academic degrees mean nothing if you can't say what is going to happen. Watch out for global warming scientists who can't predict the details. And watch out for "economists" who fiddle some equation as a reason to take your money to improve your life.

Better Bank Robbery

2009-06-28T19:20:00.007-04:00

Future News:

An upsurge in bank robberies and muggings is sweeping the nation. The government is calling this phenomenon "Suggested Resource Reallocation".

There is an eerily consistent pattern. The robber approaches the bank or victim and says "Please give me your money. It is for the environment and Global Warming". People then hand over their money without protest, and actually report a warm and happy feeling. No robber has yet been caught. In some cases, people refuse to identify the person who robbed them, or have destroyed surveillance tapes.

One victim reported: "It was for the environment. How could I refuse?"

Psychologists blame a pervasave desire to "be good", rooted in early pre-school instruction. Even when informed of the scam, many respond that "the poor robber probably needed the money".

Police departments are at a loss for what message will protect the public. A government spokesman presented the dilemma. "Of course we want them to give their money for the environment, but it should be to the right people."

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Global Warming Caused by Humans is a Scam
The famous Hockey Stick graph showing global warming is based on bad data, political motivation, and an overt attempt to exclude a detailed review and alternate explanations.

EPA Supresses Climate Study

2009-06-28T16:48:00.001-04:00

Obama's EPA Quashes Climate Change Science
06/28/09 - Powerline Blog by John Hinderaker

Science is about open debate and analysis of published data. A scientist wants his results to stand as a guide to future generations, as a truth on which to build. Emotionally, he may not enjoy criticism, but no one can devote energy and insight into criticising his own work. So, real science welcomes review and criticism. It is an ethical standard.

A politician wants his program to be approved along with lots of pretty money. The truth is secondary to getting the bill passed.

It seems that the EPA made a political mistake. It hired real scientists to evaluate the data, and they wouldn't suppress the results.

When tobacco companies hid the results of their own studies, they were tagged as monsters. How dare they suppress the best data about smoking? How dare the EPA suppress the best data about the environment, when the lives and prosperity of hundreds of millions of people are at stake?

[edited] The EPA (US Environmental Protecion Agency) has suppressed its own study which concludes that carbon dioxide is not a significant cause of climate change.
The report by Carlin and Davidson reveals that the EPA has not done its own evaluation of global warming. Rather, it has relied on analyses by others, mostly the U.N.'s IPCC report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
The IPCC report was a political, not a scientific document. The U.N. ordered that no recent research be considered, knowing that recent research disproves the anthropogenic (man-made) global warming theory, This is a scandal. As science, the U.N. report is a bad joke.
Carlin and Davidson recite and summarize the scientific work that shows rather clearly that human activity is at most a minor factor in climate change.
EPA Emails obtained by CEI are revealing. Carlin's and Davidson's superior declines to make their report public because "the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment". A second email orders them not to communicate to the public their conclusion that the global warming theory is bunk. (See the emails at Powerline)

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Dispelling the Global Warming Myth
There is a very close correlation between global temperature and solar output. See the graph. That even seems reasonable in its own way. (smile)

"Do The Right Thing" Bill

2009-06-28T14:01:00.008-04:00

Inspired by Not Reading Is Fundamental, 06/27/09 by Ed Driscol

Future News:

An ashamed Congress has debated the "Do The Right Thing" bill for a week, and it is expected to pass today. Senate approval should follow in short order.

A leading Congressman spoke anonymously to avoid "electoral difficulties":

None of us has read any of the bills this year before voting for them. Or, for that matter, after voting for them. Even the sponsors don't know the contents; this is left to the staff and lobbyists.
We certainly are ashamed. It is clear to all of us that we cannot go on this way. The average bill is now 1,500 pages, and the details of government have gotten out of hand.
'Do The Right Thing' will give us open, consistent, dynamic government. It grants President Michele Obama (now in her 3rd successful term in office) all principles and powers to consider all matters and then "Do the right thing". The Congress retains the important function of advising on the President's actions should she desire this.
The Congress is now free to do what it does best, arrange for hospital admissions and allocate liquor licenses.

A congressional colleague added:

We are being unfairly blamed for our YES votes. The opposition is just as bad for not reading or understanding the bill before voting NO. They are monuments to an ignorant opposition to anything new that they don't understand.

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The Political Manual
The "Bible of Politics" has come to light. (smile)

Windmill Jobs are Expensive

2009-06-25T12:28:00.001-04:00

Tilting at Green Windmills
06/25/09 - Washington Post by George F. Will (via Cafe Hayek)

[edited] Gabriel Calzada is a professor of economics at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain. He has produced a report that is inconvenient for Obama's green agenda and for budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.
Spain is the leading country in aggressively supporting production of electricity from renewable sources. Calzada says Spain's huge spending on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But his report concludes that they are often temporary and have cost $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies, and $1.4 million each in the wind industry. Each such new job also destroys 2.2 other jobs in other industries because of the inefficient political allocation of capital.
European media regularly report "eco-corruption" leaving a "footprint of sleaze", such as gaming the subsidy systems and profiteering from land sales for wind farms. Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain's economy.
Robert Gibbs is the president's press secretary. It is weird that he dismisses this report as false witout reading it. He can't believe that some American importers are cashing in on the U.S. government's promotion of wind power, despite this being an economically unproductive project.
Calzada has come to conclusions that he, as a libertarian, finds ideologically congenial. And his study was supported by a like-minded U.S. think tank, The Institute for Energy Research, for which this columnist has given a paid speech. Many Spanish critics have impugned his patriotism because he faulted something in Spain which Obama has praised. But, they have not tried to refute the content of his report.

The Medicare Tomato Market

2009-06-24T23:57:00.004-04:00

You Are Living In The Medicare Tomato
06/21/09 - The Happy Hospitalist

Say that tomatoes were declared vital to life and made available free through the Medicare National Tomato Bank. This translates the story of the healthcare market to the tomato market. A long, readable, and informative post. This is only an excerpt.

[edited] The government took over. A midnight Congressional mandate ended the free market in tomatoes, and replaced it with the Medicare National Tomato Bank (MNTB).
The demand for tomatoes took off. Grocery stores everywhere were selling out. Nobody could keep tomatoes in stock. The grocers were ecstatic. They sold their tomatoes and sent the bill to Uncle Sam, who then sent them a check for the market price. The people were happy. They were getting free tomatoes. Entitled Tomato Eaters (ETEs) everywhere loved Congress.
Unfortunately, the MNTB was not happy. They were paying the bill. That $200 billion tomato bill was rising quickly, faster and faster, 10% a year, year after year. The MNTB could not afford to continue paying for free tomatoes for everyone. Congress did something completely anti-American in an effort to control the costs of the MNTB. They took capitalism out of the tomato market.
In their stroke of genius, they tried something that had never been tried before under capitalism. They would lower the cost to the MNTB, not by cutting the demand (political suicide), but by paying only 80% of the market price.
The ETEs remained happy with free tomatoes. The grocers were not so happy.
(skip to near the end)
Access to free tomatoes was dwindling. No longer could the ETEs walk to the grocer down the street. They had to drive miles to get the government mandated access to the tomato market. Known as the emergency tomato grocer (ETG), the MNTB created rules and regulations that forced this group of grocers to stay open at all costs. No matter what. And to accept the price paid by the MNTB.
Grocer after grocer, bogged down by incredible regulatory costs associated with receiving 20, 30, 40 cents on the dollar for their tomatoes, one by one, they all left the entitled tomato market. No longer could you walk into any grocer, grab a bag of your favorite guaranteed tomato, and expect someone else to pay for it.

Moral

The Medicare Tomato is the reality of health care delivery today. It is the backwards approach to the rationing of a service that is finite. Health care is not an unlimited resource, and the policies of rationing will always best be determined by the personal financial stake that everyone has in their health care.
This doesn't mean cash only, insurance only, free care for all, or universal access. It is a rational approach to control demand, whether that be means tested or income dependent. Whether that means balance billing or high deductable policies. Whether that means shopping for service and quality through price transparency. Whether that means strictly catastrophic insurance coverage. Whether that means tort reform to reign in defensive medicine. Whether that means judicious use of a gate keeper Medical Home model. Whatever it means.

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Health Insurance is Not Health Care
High health insurance premiums result from high health care costs. If health care were not expensive, health insurance would not be expensive.

Military Healthcare is Not a Shining Example

2009-06-24T16:06:00.006-04:00

Fix Military Healthcare First
06/24/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love

We should test ideas and promises at a scale smaller than "everyone".

[edited] Megan McArdle asks (Via Instapundit): Why isn’t military healthcare a shining example, if socialized, politically managed healthcare is so great,? In fact, care sucks for both service personnel and their dependents.
My son-in-law in the Army injured his knee in a minor training accident. The Army hospital botched his treatment and almost cost him his career. Almost everyone in the military can tell a similar first- or second-hand story of poor treatment.
Pediatrician appointments must be arranged three days in advance. If my granddaughter develops a fever, my daughter must decide to tough it out or take her to the emergency room. The rules make care hard to get and increases costs by relying on emergency room visits.
The military system has all the advantages claimed for politically managed healthcare.

It is huge and can buy medicines and technology at bulk discounts.
Their personnel work for far less than the market
They are under military discipline that no civil system can match.
They have an integrated, computerized records system.
The military standardizes treatments according to measured effectiveness.

All of these nominal advantages fail because the military healthcare system is a giant, politically managed system.

The shear size of it makes it difficult for those at the top to know what is going on in the system. Small scale, bottom-up innovation is difficult.
The system pays for the training of its personnel (just as Obamacare plans to), so managers have a disincentive to remove the careless or the incompetent. [A manager must spend money to train any replacements.]
Patients have no other choices, so the system faces no market pressure. [It is a pre-paid service.]
Politicians are more interested in cost control than in quality of care.

Leftists seem befuddled when asked to demonstrate that their ideas work on a small scale before imposing them on everyone. They believe that articulation and logic is enough and see no need to experiment.
For the rest of us, ideas need testing.

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VA Medical System in Shambles
06/24/09 - Fox News by Joseph Abrams (via Instapundit)

So, a healthcare agency administered by government, for say 60 years, for veterans, isn't yet managed properly? Who would have thought that? (smile) Where is the internal oversight, dialogue, and search for excellence? More importantly, who are you going to sue?

[edited] Veterans Affairs hospitals botched radiation treatments to nearly 100 vets and exposed 10,000 to HIV and hepatitis viruses. Veterans advocates and lawmakers say the VA health system is in dire need of proper oversight and funding.
Veterans groups and lawmakers say VA hospitals have permitted these violations because federal regulations allow doctors to work with little outside scrutiny. They say the VA health system, with its under-funded hospitals and overworked doctors, is showing signs of an "institutional breakdown," in the words of one congressman.
"Lack of inspections, lack of transparency" were likely to blame, said Joe Wilson, deputy director of the Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Commission for the American Legion, who testified before Congress this month on transparency problems in a budgeting arm of the VA.

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Canada's Healthcare Has Hidden Costs
"Access to a waiting list is not the same thing as access to health care"

No Progress on Nuclear Energy

2009-06-21T17:14:00.000-04:00

Nuclear Energy Update
06/20/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Carl from Chicago

[edited] Nuclear energy provides a significant portion of the world’s base load power capacity, along with coal power, gas, and hydro-electricity. [Base Load is the power that is available all the time without interruption. -ag] While “renewable” energy and conservation receive the lion’s share of the media coverage, they make up a minuscule proportion of our total generation.
The United States has invested little in new base-load energy capacity, other than natural gas. Our existing plants are aging. New plants have a long lead-time. If no new plants are started soon, we will have retirements and no reasonably priced options to replace them. This will drive up the total cost of energy [electric rates] and make our economy less competitive.
I see two common views.

The "Greens" view nuclear plants as a possible solution for greenhouse emissions and a substitute for "dirty" coal.
The "Engineers" talk about new, efficient plant designs and how technology can help us resolve this situation. The technology in current nuclear and coal plants comes from the 60’s and early 70’s.

I will call my viewpoint “bitter realist”. I have decades of experience with the utility industry, primarily on the financing side, which also requires a fair dose of regulatory experience.

Carl talks about some recent government decisions that are not helpful.

Obama decided not to fund the Yucca Mountain storage facility in the 2010 budget. This was intended to store spent nuclear fuel after use in electricity generation. It is almost finished after $9 billion spent ($9,000 million).
The US Government recently selected four companies for Federal loan guarantees for new nuclear plant construction. Why just four, and why these four? Hard to tell. Further, the loan guarantees are small compared to the regulatory demands and future risks.

There is continuing legislative heavy handedness (NRC decommissioning) and ineptitude (Yucca Mountain) which would make any rational investor think twice before investing.
I am a fan of nuclear power and believe that it is a great way to make our country more competitive. Done correctly, it is far cheaper to run in the long term, and reliable under all conditions.
As a “bitter realist”, however, it isn’t going to happen.

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A blog recommended by Carl: Life in the Great Midwest
50+ posts on the energy industry in the US

Medicaid and Its Children

2009-06-18T00:44:00.000-04:00

Medical Insurance 'Public Option' is Son of Medicaid
06/17/09 - WSJ by Daniel Henninger

Lard atop lard that only a politician could love

Medicaid is 44 years old, the first attempt to provide a healthcare safety net for the poor. Its scope has expanded and its costs are bankrupting the states. Obama's plan is a further expansion. Will a bankrupt country make good on its promises?

[edited] In 1965 Congress erected the nation's first two monuments to health-care "reform", Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid was described as a modest solution to the problem of health care for the poor. It would be run by the states and "monitored" by the federal government.
Medicaid is worth our attention now because Mr. Obama is more or less demanding that the nation accept another reform, his "optional" federalized health insurance program.
Whatever Medicaid's merits, more than any other factor, it has put California and New York on the brink of fiscal catastrophe. I'd even call it scary.
Spending on health and welfare, largely under Medicaid, makes up one-third of California's budget of some $100 billion. Governor David Paterson notes in his budget message that "New York spends more per capita ($2,283) on Medicaid than any other state in the country."

I believe that $2,283 is the average cost per state resident to pay for the benefits that are delivered to only the medicaid recipients.

Medicaid has crushed state budgets. Over the years, Congress has loaded up more coverage, shifting about 43% of the ever-upward cost onto someone else, mainly the states. A 1988 congressional mandate requires local schools to pay for schooling and related services for disabled children. Because Congress underfunds its mandates, the states pay the rest through Medicaid.
The list of add-ons is endless, and little is thoughtful. Obama's "Public Option", like Medicare and Medicaid, will become an impossible fog for patients to navigate. The administrative complexity will provide work for bureaucrats, Members of Congress, their staffs, lobbyist spouses, and the "health-care" establishment of foundations and economists.
This is a public program inviting congressional meddling and litigation. Over time, the Sotomayors of the federal bench will make it bigger. For example, one piece of California's incredible budget mess flows from a federal judge's 2006 decision. He seized control of the state's prison-health system and made the state pay additional billions for new health benefits.
In his speech, Mr. Obama said the cost of the Public Option won't add to the deficit: "I've set down a rule for my staff, and I've said this to Congress. Healthcare reform must be, and will be, deficit-neutral in the next decade."
If we are honest, that means tax increases are inevitable. Sounds scary to me.

Lack of Competition in Health Care Insurance

2009-06-12T16:38:00.000-04:00

Health care reform: The real problem is lack of competition
06/11/09 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch by David C. Rose

[edited] The Obama Administration is moving ahead on health care reform. Obama's plan will push nearly all Americans into government-provided health insurance. That is not a good thing. The problem with American health care is too little competition.
There is justifiable concern about the uninsured. Most Americans end up getting health care when they need it, but the current approach produces incredible anxiety and is ridiculously inefficient.
There is rising frustration with the increasingly shabby way insurance companies treat patients. Patients can't do what restaurant patrons do when they receive poor service, which is to go elsewhere. Most health insurance is tied to a job, so most patients are stuck with their insurance company. And it shows.
The Obama administration's plan will produce less competition. But, the solution is more competition.
Why is the health insurance market so uncompetitive, unlike other insurance markets? During World War II, a tax break was granted to non-wage benefits such as employer-paid health insurance premiums. Over time, this cost saving tied most American health insurance to employment. This forces patients to fire their employer before they can fire their insurance company. So, we get poor treatment from insurance companies.
For true competition in health care, it must be possible for individuals to fire their insurance company. This requires extending the tax break on employer-provided health insurance to all health insurance, including privately purchased policies.
Medicare is a good deal partly because the government drives a hard bargain with health care providers by offering artificially low payments. In a competitive market of many insurers, no one insurer could do this.
Artificially low payments don't cover the full cost of procedures, so health care providers shift costs to everyone else. In other words, the lack of competition in today's market leads to higher insurance costs for people who aren't old enough to qualify for Medicare. Extending Medicare-like insurance to everyone won't work, because no one will remain to pay the shifted costs.
[ The same applies to emergency room (hospital emergency department) prices. The law EMTALA forces ER's to treat all patients equally regardless of ability to pay. They must shift these costs onto those who can pay. This produces the amazing $10 ER aspirin. -ag ]
In a competitive market, driving such hard bargains is impossible, so prices reflect actual costs. The Obama administration plan will give us the worst of both worlds.

Artificially low premiums will drive most private insurance out of business.
There will be no place to shift costs.
Shortly, we will have no reduction in cost from cost shifting.
We will have substantially less competition.
Less competition will result in higher actual costs.

This has been the experience in countries with nationalized health care. Many have an even worse looming entitlement problem than the United States.
The better solution is to give the same tax-free treatment to both individual-purchase and employer-provided health insurance. That would indirectly reduce the costs for covering the uninsured, which is the other major problem in American health care.
It is now very difficult to purchase insurance if you are not employed or if you work for a very small employer. Once insurance migrates out of large employer pools, sufficiently large pools will become possible with individualized insurance. Customers then would be able to vote with their feet if they are unsatisfied, and those who don't work for large employers no longer would have to pay higher premiums than everyone else.
There still would be some uninsured people. That could be handled directly through insurance vouchers. A voucher program would further eliminate distortions and reduce costs, not just shift costs.
A successful example is food stamps, which have essentially eliminated the problem of hunger in America. Food stamps are vouchers that provide direct payments while preserving competition. Small wonder they work so well.

A society may decide to provide benefits to people. The wrong way is to force the producers of those benefits to raise their prices to cover the extra costs. The right way is to give vouchers to those who are favored. The political problem is that vouchers reveal the value of the benefits, rather than hiding those benefits within the market.

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ER Medicine and Bureacracy
08/31/08 - MDOD by 911DOC

Medicine becomes more expensive, harder to do, with worse outcomes, as government imposes intrusive regulation and arbitrary quality measures, despite any good intentions. Government Motto: "You say you are a caring doctor, so treat the poor for free."

Changing Oil Prices Are Not a Conspiracy

2009-06-11T20:59:00.000-04:00

Explaining Oil Prices
06/11/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love

A detailed article. Only an incomplete excerpt here.

[edited] Oil prices are headed up even though the world economy is headed down. What gives? Shouldn’t a declining economy lead to decreased demand which keeps down prices?
Well, yes and no. Oil is a strange commodity. It doesn’t change price and availability in the same pattern as other commodities that are based on natural resources. This strangeness arises out of the technology of oil production, distribution, and refining.
(5) Distributors and refiners can’t store oil: This is the most important factor of all. There is no economical means of storing large amounts of oil save pumping it back into the ground. The big oil tanks you see around are just temporary buffer tanks at refineries or the ends of pipelines. Once oil comes out of the ground anywhere in the world it is going to be an end product within a maximum of 120 days.
Most other natural resources can be stored for long periods. Distributors and refiners of those commodities can store up against falling prices or to take advantage of suddenly increasing prices.
Once oil is pumped it is going to move through the system to be sold as an end product, as inexorably as a boulder rolls down a mountain.
Once the extractors pump the oil and hand it off to the distributors, the oil has to be consumed by someone. In principle, it wouldn’t matter if the price dropped to zero. They can’t store oil, so they’d just have to just give it away.
When people suddenly stop driving in response to high prices, an economic downturn, or some unforeseen major event, the supply of oil takes weeks or months to adjust. In the interim, gasoline prices drop like a rock.
The current rise in prices comes from a similar effect. 30 to 120 days ago, extractors believed that future prices would be low so they stopped pumping as much oil. Since they have no central coordination, and since no one knows how much oil is actually pumped at any given time, too many extractors stopped pumping at once.
When the supplies get short, retailers can’t just order up more end products and refiners can’t just make them. They both have to wait for the extractors to decide to pump more oil and for the oil to make its way through the system.

The price is set by gas stations to just sell their supply. A price too high doesn't sell as much. A price too low results in running out, angering customers late in the day. So, supply and demand actually set prices.

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No Price Gouging Here
Higher prices in emergencies is not gouging. It actually helps a lot, if it is allowed.

Universal Health Care in Italy

2009-06-11T00:14:00.000-04:00

Universal Health Care - Been There, Done That
06/10/09 - InsureBlog by Bob Vineyard

Cristina Folchitto reports her experience.

[edited] As an Italian citizen, I have experienced the “Utopia” of universal health care. It is a noble and ethically good idea, but it simply does not work.
It is not free. Every month a percent of your salary is taken out of your paycheck. You have no control of that money, you have no freedom to choose whether to have health care coverage or not. The more money you make, the more you pay, which is not fair nor directly linked to your health status or habits.
Hospitals are overcrowded, understaffed, mostly old buildings and infrastructure, without enough physicians or resources. You might have to wait several months to get a sonogram or an MRI. For a surgical procedure, you are put on a waiting list. You could be called months later at any time, any day to have the procedure.
If you cannot afford private care, after going through the painful process of public infrastructure, you still pay a co-pay according to the treatment you receive.
Private health care guarantees competition between doctors and medical institutions. The monetary gain stimulates a higher level of care and professionalism. This does not apply to the public system that often cannot afford to pay adequate wages to doctors, lowering the quality of medical service and almost eliminating research projects.
The psychological comfort of having health care “paid by the government” lowers the awareness and responsibility that people have towards their own health. It is easier for them to rely on future care instead of making the best lifestyle choices to stay healthy and in shape.
Having lived under both systems, I appreciate the freedom of choice that is given to me by a private health care system.

----------

They will pretend to pay - We will pretend to Treat

Political control of healthcare promises and payments has a sad history. Delaying payments has the same effect as reducing payments, since the state doesn’t catch up for a long time. The payment delays ensure that providers need to hold a big “rainy day” fund, since their employees want to be paid cash rather than IOU’s.

Medical providers can do little except complain to their local legislators. They can’t sue the State to speed up payments, and if they did, the state wouldn't care. Unlike insurance, which may be popularly perceived as unfair, there are no avenues of appeal if you feel the state is killing your business.

Begging for Medical Care

Natasha Richardson died from a ski accident due to a delay in treatment. Montreal does not have fast transportation to a full-service hospital, even near a ski area. Why not? Patients are a cost to the system.

The bureaucracy sees you as a cost, especially if you have already paid. All people and organizations seek income and avoid costs. Socialized or centralized healthcare is paid up-front and delivers services after the fact.

How hard will a system work to earn the money that they have already been paid? This is something that everyone can understand in their gut. A customer is lost without competition for his dollar.

Phony Jobs Claims

2009-06-09T03:05:00.001-04:00

The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims
06/09/09 - Online.WSJ by William McGurn

The Obama Numbers Are Pure Fiction.

[edited] "Saved or created" has become Barack Obama's signature phrase. Obama declared yesterday that the stimulus had already saved or created 150,000 American jobs.
He announced faster stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. Obama promised earlier that his recovery plan would "save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years."
Tony Fratto was a senior member of the Bush administration communications office. He sees a double standard at play.
We would never have used a formula like "save or create". To begin with, the number is pure fiction. The administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being 'saved.' If we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it.

The inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one actually measures "jobs saved". Neither the Labor Department, the Treasury, nor the Bureau of Labor Statistics does it. The New York Times delicately reports that Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it.
Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw writes:
The expression "save or create" is political genius. You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. There is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus.

Economists Surprised That People Read the Paper

2009-06-08T13:39:00.002-04:00

The Grand Unification Theory of Sucking
06/07/09 - VodkaPundit by Stephen Green

[edited] Big Government Spending Programs are Having an Opposite Effect

The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market.
But this and other big government spending programs are having the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation.

Well, duh! Stimulus spending can’t work, because these things happen, and I’d say we will indeed get all three:
1. Extra spending means extra taxes, which means the whole thing is a wash. It is a big, fat lie that Government spending has a “multiplier” effect different from consumer or business spending.
2. Extra spending means extra debt, driving up interest rates and choking growth.
3. Extra spending means printing money. Resulting inflation makes any growth an illusion.

This is a great comment by Shannon Love who posts at ChicagoBoys

[edited] Leftist economists don't understand that people read the paper.
The problem with their stimulus theory starts with their assumption that everyone will behave just as they would have without a stimulus, up to the point that the stimulus spending reaches a critical mass sometime next year.
However, people read the newspaper, see the tsunami of taxes, regulation, and inflation coming their way, and they alter their behavior immediately. Passing the stimulus bill today and planning to raise taxes tomorrow, alters people’s behavior right now. The expectation of paying for the stimulus later drives down economic activity now, long before the stimulus can hope to have any effect.
Obama’s team can’t see this because they have an ivory tower model of the economy. They think people do not make economic decisions until they actually receive money. They can’t seem to grasp that the economy results from the choices of real, live, human beings who can and do make plans based on their predictions of future conditions.
Obama expects people to stand around passively until Obama does something that makes them react. Instead, they’re anticipating him.

+ + + +
Stimulus Does Not Cure a Recession
Jobs change when people change what they want to buy or can afford. This takes time and adjustment. Businesses won't hire because of a short-term boost to their income that is being borrowed from later taxes.

Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail
Government spending merely transfers jobs and income from one part of the economy to another.

Econ 201: The Myth of the Economic Multiplier
Government spending doesn't multiply anything. It takes resources from taxpayers and applies them to government projects. You get a bridge or some paperwork, that is it.

The Climate Change That Isn't

2009-06-06T00:47:00.000-04:00

Climate Change Reconsidered
06/05/09 - PowerLineBlog by John Hinderaker

The 880 page book Climate Change Reconsidered has been published by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). At the highest level, these are the conclusions:

[edited] This is an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress are relying on bad conclusions from the IPCC.
The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific evidence that

The warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented.
Its impact on human health and wildlife was positive.
Carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change.

The authors cite thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books that were ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific research that became available after the IPCC's self-imposed deadline of May 2006.

* The IPCC uses warming data from surface recording stations, yielding a 1905-2005 temperature increase of 0.74ºC. But, this temperature record is not corrected for the urban heat island (UHI) effect. [UHI is warming from streets, buildings, and roofs which are the sites for the temperature stations.] The UHI of even small towns dwarfs any greenhouse effect that might be present [making that data useless].
* Highly accurate satellite data, adjusted for orbit drift and other factors, show a much more modest warming trend in 1980-2000 and a dramatic decline in the warming trend in 2000-2009.
* The observed pattern of warming differs from the pattern predicted by global climate models based on CO2 greenhouse effects.
Data from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) is unequivocal. All greenhouse models show an increasing warming trend with altitude in the tropics, peaking around 10 km at roughly twice the surface value. But, the actual temperature data from balloons give the opposite result: no increasing warming, but rather a slight cooling with altitude.
* Temperature records in Greenland and other Arctic areas reveal that temperatures reached a maximum around 1930 and have decreased in recent decades. Longer-term studies show oscillatory cooling since the Climatic Optimum of the mid-Holocene (~9000-5000 years ago), when it was perhaps 2.5º C warmer than it is now.
* The average temperature history of Antarctica provides no evidence of twentieth century warming. The Antarctic peninsula shows recent warming, but several research teams have documented a cooling trend for the interior of the continent since the 1970s.

A Liberal Judge

2009-06-05T23:39:00.001-04:00

I Don’t Know What Liberal Means
06/05/09 - National Review by Ed Whelan
Via PowerLine

Mr. Whelan fills in a weak area in Judge Sontomayor's knowledge, and offers a directory to her statements and opinions. [Quotes are edited.]

Judge Sotomayor gave a speech in January 2001, and provided this account. She explained her problems being confirmed to the Second Circuit court:
Senate Republican leaders believed that I was a potential for the Supreme Court one day. They also believed that I am a liberal, and therefore did not want the nomination to go through. I don’t know what liberal means.
Sotomayor was an assistant district attorney in 1983. Evidently she knew what “liberal” meant when quoted in a New York Times article.
I had more problems during my first year in the office with the low-grade crimes such as shoplifting, prostitution, and minor assault cases. In large measure, in those cases you were dealing with socio-economic crimes, crimes that could be the product of the environment and of poverty.
Once I started doing felonies, it became less hard. No matter how liberal I am, I’m still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.
Sotomayor's phrase "No matter how liberal I am" is the same as saying "Even though I am very liberal".
Among other things, Sotomayor understood back then that a liberal "sympathizes with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes" and is inclined to explain crimes as "the product of the environment and of poverty."
But I think that I can offer Sotomayor even more help on what liberal means, at least in the context of judging.
A liberal judge thinks that it is proper to indulge her own identity in deciding cases.
A liberal judge celebrates "the importance of indefiniteness in the law" and the "unpredictability" that results when a judge "develops a novel approach" that "pushes the law in a new direction."
A liberal judge resorts to shenanigans to bury the claims of white firefighters that they have been discriminated against on the basis of their race.
A liberal judge favors campaign-finance restrictions over the First Amendment.
A liberal judge embraces novel equal-protection theories that would compromise public safety.
A liberal judge publicly cheerleads liberal politicians.
A liberal judge excuses her own acts of discrimination.
A liberal judge thinks that Supreme Court justices are entitled to make policy.
A liberal judge hides her support for racial quotas behind gauzy euphemisms.
A liberal judge commends lawsuits that promote abortion and illegal immigration and that undermine welfare reform.

My Fantasy Beats Your Reality

2009-06-03T19:44:00.003-04:00

Reality Versus Leftist Fantasy
06/03/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love

[edited] Leftists claim that every economic crisis shows the failure of the free market, and assume that they would never have economic crises. Leftists have a wildly exaggerated sense of their own understanding of the economy and everything else.
The left doesn’t actually have a developed system of thought regarding the economy. They can’t actually explain why the real world political process will make better decisions than the free-market. Instead, they point to any reversals in the real economy, regardless of cause, and assert that in their imaginations leftist politicians could have done better.
Leftists create elaborate fantasies. Then everyone else must argue for reality against the fantasies. The real-world system always comes out worse.
Alternative-energy advocates feel entitled to paper over any shortcomings of their favored technology by evoking future technological breakthroughs. But, they won’t let you postulate future technological breakthroughs that would make current energy sources even more attractive.
If you point out that wind and solar power is unreliable to the point of near uselessness, proponents will breezily respond that future technological breakthroughs in power storage or distribution will overcome the problem.
However, if you point out that developments in nuclear technology could create power systems that would completely recycle their waste, they respond that we should not plan for nuclear power unless we have absolutely proven that the technology works. And, let’s cut funding for the research that would prove it works.

There are More Ways to Go Wrong Than to Go Right
06/19/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love

Many leftists debate in this style: “I have an idea and you don’t, therefore I must have the best plan”.
I see this in debates about energy. Some believe fossil fuels cause global warming and nuclear power is too dangerous, so solar and wind power must be viable technologies. Unfortunately, the fact that one specific technology has problems has nothing to do with whether another unrelated technology will work.
The urge to do something, anything, to solve a problem can backfire badly. People immersed in politics begin to think that because there are only two major divisions in our politics, there must be only two altnerate solutions to any problem.
They begin to think that if the idea of one side is bad, then the idea of the other side must be good. If we think that any idea is better than no idea at all, we are more likely to do more harm than good. There are more ways to go wrong than to go right.

Will universal healthcare control costs?
06/16/09 - The Atlantic by Meang McArdle

There have been promised cost reductions for Medicare in the past. Why haven’t they happened, and what has changed to make them feasible now? When I ask this question, I get angry demands that I put forward my plan for cost control, rather than merely critiquing everyone else’s. This seems rather like demanding that I put forward my design for a perpetual motion machine before I am allowed to point out problems in the US energy market.

+ + + +
Magic Power
Could the nerds give us cheap power if they wanted to?

Problems With Green Energy
"Honey, please go up on the roof and sweep off the solar panels."

Stimulus Shrinks Economy

2009-05-31T19:01:00.000-04:00

Stimulus Package Shrinks Economy, Destroys Private Sector Jobs
05/31/09 - OpenMarket by Hans Bader

This is only the last part:

[edited] A provision in the stimulus package that blocked a mere 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads "caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade", destroying 40,000 American jobs.
The vague "buy American" provisions of the stimulus, doing little to promote purchases of U.S. products, managed to ignite a trade war with Canada.
Obama's policies echo those of Herbert Hoover, who helped spawn the Great Depression through his protectionism and tax increases.
One of Obama's advisers admits that “the barrage of tax increases proposed in President Barack Obama’s budget could kill any chance of an early and sustained recovery.” Even the Washington Post, which endorsed Obama and once supported his auto bailouts, now has soured on them and their waste of taxpayer money.

Access vs Honest Reporting

2009-05-31T00:15:00.001-04:00

An Open Letter to Amnesty International
05/29/09 - National Review by Michael Rubin

[edited] Eason Jordan is the chief news executive at CNN. After the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he wrote "The News We Kept to Ourselves" about the balance between access and honest reporting. That balance affects many other fields as well. Autocratic regimes control visas (access) to influence reporting and other activities.
Journalists report from southern Lebanon under Hezbollah's eye, and from Gaza under the control of Hamas minders. Their reporting is followed. Crossing certain lines is a matter of life-and-death.
Untenured academics need access to country-based resources for their study of Iran, Chechnya, North Korea, or China. They will not acquire visas should their writing displease those governments. Without visas, they cannot do more research to compete for tenure.
The same is true for human-rights organizations. Their pronouncements are often taken at face-value by news outlets. In reality, they are intensely compromised organizations, often putting organizational interests above mission.
Fathi El Jahmi was Libya's most prominent dissident. He died this week while detained at the Tripoli Medical Centre since July 2007. His brother Mohamed El Jahmi wrote to Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International. He asks whether Amnesty's desire to operate inside Libya led it to self-censor criticism of El Jahmi's detention and death.

Mohamed El Jahmi wrote:

[excerpt] Your organization received independent confirmation that Fathi was in very bad condition. While Fathi was in Jordan, Amnesty and other organizations were denied access to Fathi. Qadhafi’s regime has consistently objected to releasing Fathi’s medical record, why would it consider Amnesty’s gentle request now?.
For many months, the Qadhafi regime kept your organization neutralized – you couldn’t issue a press release because the regime was holding the access carrot in front of your eyes. You got your access and betrayed Fathi.

Obama and Sotomayor Are Anti-Gun

2009-05-30T23:33:00.001-04:00

Sotomayor is Obama’s End Run on the Second Amendment
05/29/09 - Pajamas Media by Bob Owens

The Constitution protects your right to own guns. Sorry, Obama and Sotomayor interpret it as not applying to the individual States. This is the beauty of having a law professor as President.

[edited] The recent landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller put an end to decades of argument about the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court rejected 5-4 the collectivist interpretation favored by gun control advocates such as President Obama.
The Court found that the Second Amendment protects the right of citizens to own firearms for private use; that this is an individual right predating the Constitution; and that its authority is tied directly to the natural right of self-defense.
Six months after Heller, Sotomayor issued an opinion in Maloney v. Cuomo that the protections of the Second Amendment do not apply to the states. She found that your city or state can ban all guns and disarm you.
Such an opinion seems to fly directly in the face of Heller. This exposes Sotomayor as an anti-gun radical who believes that you have no right to own a firearm, even for the most basic right of defending your family in your own home.
The Supreme Court will hear an appeal of Maloney on June 26. Sotomayor would almost certainly have to recuse herself from Maloney if confirmed. But her views, so attractive to an anti-gun President, would be applied to similar cases appealed to the Court.
Obama was a director of the Joyce Foundation when it attempted to corrupt Second Amendment legal scholarship and undermine the decision-making processes of the Supreme Court. Only a concerted effort by America’s gun owners may keep Obama from appointing an anti-gun, activist judge to the Court.

First, Let's Pay All the Lawyers

2009-05-29T14:08:00.001-04:00

A Stimulus You Can Believe In
05/29/09 - Overlawyered by Ted Frank

Opportunistic lawsuits are expensive for us all.

[edited] As I recently testified to Congress, I have formed a conservative estimate from these economic studies. Excessive litigation costs the economy $600 to $900 billion a year. The vast majority of this is simply wealth destruction. That is 4% to 6% of GNP, a tort (litigation for injury) tax of $8,000 to $12,000 a year for an average family of four.

Homeopathic Waterboarding (smile)

2009-05-28T19:05:00.001-04:00

Homeopathic Waterboarding
05/28/09 - Throckmorton's Other Signs

The whole post is even funnier.

[edited] Waterboarding causes an intense feeling of distress and panic. Much like using a Nettie pot, I found out. With one of these, much hyped by Oprah, you twist your head back and pour water into your nose while it spouts out the other side, and down your throat and out your nose. This first caused much dread, panic, and a bit of suffocation.
When I first did this to treat my sinus infection, I would have given up my social security number and ATM pin to not have to do it again.
Now I pretty much waterboard myself whenever I have sinus problems.

Medical Rationing Details

2009-05-25T11:47:00.002-04:00

How Will Medical Rationing Occur?
05/24/09 - MDOD by 911DOC

Dr. JN is a board certified Neurologist dealing with a flunky to get an MRI imaging test approved.

[edited] A 44 year old Rwandan woman with controlled HIV developed back pain with radiation down both legs. Bed rest and Advil don't work.
MRI Rejected by Medicaid "Not enough documentation, does not meet criteria". Call the MD line. Dr. X calls back, claims that he is a neurologist. "You're just too lazy to prescribe Advil, is that it? Or maybe you're just a chickenshit who doesn't want to get sued. You know it's nothing". Refused.
In 33 years out of school, no one has ever talked to me like that, least of all another physician.
Resubmitted with extensive documentation of infection risk in African patients with poor cellular immunity. Rejected.
Called again. Now they say, if I send her to a specialist and the specialist orders the MRI they'll do it. I AM a specialist.
5 weeks later, it's approved and finds a big spinal abscess, likely TB, cultures pending.

--------------
Can I Get Prior-Authorization To Kick Your Ass?
04/29/09 - MDOD by Lofty Zahari

[edited] Let me tell you how it usually goes when I try to get a wonderful, newer drug approved for my patients. I love Byetta and prescribe a ton of it. It is the only commonly-used drug for type 2 diabetes that lowers glucose AND helps patients lose weight. It often requires pre-approval from insurance carriers.
Dr. Lofty: Hi, I'm calling to get prior approval for Byetta for my patient.
CSR: And your question is?
Dr. Lofty: My question is, what information do you need to get this drug approved for my patient?
CSR: Yes (looks up questions to ask under 'Byetta protocol'). So, why does this patient need Byetta?
Dr. Lofty: Because they have gained 20 pounds over the past year on Actos and glyburide and in my experience I can get this patient's hemoglobin A1c down about 1% with about 20 pounds of weight loss using Byetta, and get them off of these other drugs.
CSR: I see. And what is the medical justification?
Dr. Lofty: I just told you the medical justification.
CSR: Yes, well, I'll need to fax over a two-page prior authorization form that will need to be filled out completely along with the last three chart notes documenting failure to achieve control with....
[Now, into the TWILIGHT ZONE, where we are magically free of social convention and can say what we wished we could say to one another ... ]
Dr. Lofty: Hey f---head with your G.E.D. diploma hanging on your cubicle wall, I went to f---ing medical school for four years, did three years of residency training plus a chief resident year, and have been practicing diabetes almost exclusively for ten years. My experience tells me this patient needs Byetta and I want him to have it NOW! Losing weight and shrinking the waist probably reduces cardiovascular risk in patients with type 2 diabetes.
CSR: Sir, we really don't give a flying f--- if your patient loses weight. We would prefer he or she remain on the cheaper, generic drugs that they are currently taking.
Dr. Lofty: Well, the patient sure would feel better in the long run losing twenty pounds and losing about 2 gallons of fluid from his legs.
CSR: Again, don't give a shit about this patient's quality of life. Too expensive to use this drug. This person won't be on our plan in two years, so we could give a rat's ass whether or not they lose weight or feel better. They'll be someone else's problem in two years.

--------------
Lateral Boomerangs
05/24/09 - Throckmorton's Other Signs by Throckmorton

Medicare makes the rules and people play the rules.

[edited] Medicare has a whole bunch of diagnoses that it will not pay for if a patient is discharged and readmitted within a short period of time. Nursing homes and extended care facilities are decreasing in number and want nothing to do with complicated patients, because of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits. Home care is the only option for patients that do no meet Medicare admission criteria and can't get into an extended care faclility. So, many go home and then need to be re-admitted.
The practical answer is to re-admit them at another hospital. A so-called "lateral".
A lot of folks went away for the holiday weekend, so they took grandma to the hospital! She was there 2 weeks ago for COPD breathing problems. The ER must admit her, but then the shell game starts to do the "lateral". Welcome to the world of federally managed healthcare.

+ + + + +

Why Test? You Are Already in the Hospital
It seems that Medicare wants to cut down on unneeded testing. The answer: Don't give the test at all if the patient is in the hospital. That will do it!

Did You Love "Life After People"?

2009-05-21T00:19:00.002-04:00

Movie Reveals Truth About Environmentalism
05/18/09 - PajamasMedia by Andrew Klavan

... then you will love the new "The Day The Earth Stood Still".

[edited] The moviemakers as environmentalists worship Earth as a god, like the savages of old. They believe it’s worth hobbling civilization, at the very least, and killing the human race if it will save the precious Earth from destruction.
But why? What’s so great about the earth? It’s just a rock floating in space, after all. The only really interesting thing about it is that it happens to support life - and the only thing that makes life itself interesting is the consciousness capable of perceiving it.
That’s us, you environmental boneheads! The majesty of the whale, the grace of the leopard, the beauty of the sunset, even the blue of the sky - none of these even exists outside the imagination of man. And it’s that imagination that expresses itself, not just in the concertos of Bach and the plays of Shakespeare, but in our cities and factories and machines and systems of trade - in civilization itself.
Let’s conserve and replenish our natural resources for sure so we can keep building what we build. But it profits us nothing to save the world if we lose the achievements of humanity.

+ + + + +
A discussion of "Life After People"

The Will to Have Efficient Cars

2009-05-20T15:51:00.003-04:00

How Will You Spend Your $2,800?
05/20/09 - CafeHayek by Don Boudreaux

[edited] President Obama has no experience as an entrepreneur or in the automotive industry, but has supposedly designed fuel-efficiency standards that he assures us will save the average car buyer $2,800 over the life of the vehicle.
No one in Detroit, Britain, Japan, Germany, Korea, Sweden, Italy, or France, and no one with decades of experience producing and selling automobiles has yet devised vehicles that are so obviously attractive as the ones now promised to us by the Obama administration.
We can admire Obama for freely offering his idea to the public. If his idea is workable, he could have earned billions by licensing his idea to auto companies. We are certainly lucky that he is simply forcing us to use his idea without charging for it.

+ + + + +

Magic Power
There seems to be a leftist belief that technologists are holding back the cheap, efficient world that they could deliver, if they would just stop being grasping and lazy. Why don't they just do the math and make everything work faster and better? Could the nerds give us cheap power if they wanted to?

Efficiency Breakthrough: Small Cars With Small Engines
The Obama administration estimates paying $1,300 more per car to meet mileage goals. This is absurd. Consumers would need to pay more AND move down a few vehicle sizes. See the European equivalents, engineering considerations, and the financing.

Good Guns Don't Make News

2009-05-06T23:20:00.001-04:00

Observational Bias in Mass-Shooting Stories
05/06/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love

[edited] Why do we spend so much money on fire proofing buildings when we seem to have so few major fires?
Instapundit links to a news story in which an armed college student prevented a mass killing. This story appeared only on the website of a local TV station.
There are no news stories about crimes that didn't happen because gun owners prevented them. This creates a one-sided distortion about the tradeoffs of having an armed citizenry. People only see the negative events caused by armed citizens, never the many, many positive events that don’t make the news.
No one cares if planes land safely or if building don’t burn down. When an armed citizen prevents a major crime, it is only local news. When the prospect of encountering an armed citizen causes a criminal to not attempt a crime, it doesn’t make news anywhere.
The “gun control” debate boils down to arguments between people who understand this distortion and those who don’t.

Treasury Recalls All Dollars (smile)

2009-05-05T17:59:00.001-04:00

Treasury Issues Emergency Recall of All U.S. Dollars
05/04/09 - Reason by Katherine Mangu-Ward

See the short video by The Onion. Very funny, if it doesn't become true. "Just put all of your money into the plastic bag and mail it in. Don't worry, in time you will earn it back."

There is a link to actions by the Federal Reserve that are somewhat similar.

Freedom Supports Our Humanity

2009-05-05T16:37:00.003-04:00

Brooks channels Hayek
05/05/09 - CafeHayek by Russell Roberts

[edited] The classical liberal prescription for the good life is not about making as much money as possible. It's about the freedom to choose. It's about voluntary rather than coercive solutions, decentralized rather than centralized solutions, bottom-up solutions that are the result of many actions and actors rather than top-down solutions by experts.
Unfortunately, economists, Republicans, and columnists often use "the market" to mean only economic freedom. Most people take it to mean the stock market, or at most the monetary parts of our lives. (This seems to promote economics at the expense of community. -AG)
People ask how the poor can possibly survive if there is more liberty? Or they argue that the market "delivers the goods" but produces inequality. Some respond that economic freedom does indeed help the poor. They're right, but that doesn't comfort the skeptic who is worried about today's poor.
Freedom doesn't mean poor people starving. Freedom means that the government doesn't try to solve the problem of poverty, but rather it leaves the door open to voluntary community rather than coerced community.
Pocketbook issues are important, but they don't inspire. Freedom is important not because it makes us rich, but because it makes our lives more meaningful. Freedom does let us prosper, and it also lets us express what is important about our humanity. Top down approaches deaden that humanity.

Bombing Japan Was Not a War Crime

2009-05-03T16:06:00.001-04:00

War Criminals and The True Story of the Atomic Bombs
05/01/09 - Pajamas TV by Bill Whittle (video 17 min)

( Wait through the one minute PJTV introduction )

Bill Whittle speaks fast, clearly, and makes his points. War is life versus life. Japan was led by a fanatic military and supported by a civilian religious subservience to the Emperor of Japan. The Japanese military had promised the Emperor that 20 million kamakase civilians would repel the Americans with their lives.

US Atomic weapons killed over 200,000 Japanese military and civilians. Conventional weapons had aleady killed more. Like today's terrorists, Japanese military factories and installations were dispersed among the civilian population.

A prolonged war would have killed millions on both sides. The Japanese military was willing to make this sacrifice, and admitted this later. Atomic weapons convinced the Emperor that peace was the better option, and saved those lives.

Consider the circumstances, the will of Japan, their military ruling party and philosophy, and the careful warnings made by the US military. The use of atomic weapons was not a war crime.

Personal Experience of Terrorism

2009-05-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

Storm Windows
05/02/09 - Cara Ellison

An experience of the 9/11/2001 attack on New York. An excerpt.

That was it. Everything was gone.
He knew this on some instinctive level, though the had no time to really understand what that meant. He rolled from underneath an SUV, jelly-legs, and looked around.
The building would not stop collapsing. It came down, then the giant clouds of dust, coffee cups, motherboards, phones, people, a burning Pompeii in the sky. Now the air was full of dust lighter than air, floating on the currents. When he rubbed his eyes, they stung. He tasted gritty metal in his mouth, and he spat on the ground.
. . .
It was all gone. His wife. His job. He tried to wash off the dust. The dust was in his nose, in the seashell curves of his ear, between his teeth, under his fingernails, in his hair. He lifted his face to the stream of water.

Together, We All Pay More For Healthcare

2009-04-30T14:40:00.001-04:00

Health Care's Simple Economics
04/30/09 - by Donald J. Boudreaux, Chairman of the Economics Department at George Mason University.

Parable: "The ten of us went to dinner together. We agreed to split the bill. I ordered a bottle of wine, the Steak Grande, and the Fudge Remorse dessert. Eating as a group is quite expensive."

[edited] Consider Medicaid and Medicare, huge socialized health-care programs funded with tax dollars. Millions of Americans covered by them consume medical services without paying the full costs. The result is that these services are over-consumed.
Russell Roberts is my George Mason University colleague. He asks, if you go to dinner with a large group of strangers, and you know that the bill will be split evenly, will you order pricier dishes and drinks than if you were paying only for yourself?
The answer is surely "yes." Let's say that you'd be content to order the pork chop priced at $15, but would get even greater enjoyment from ordering the rack of lamb priced at $25. If you alone were responsible for your tab, you'd order the lamb only if it is worth to you at least the extra $10 that it costs. So suppose that you value the lamb by only $8 more than you value the pork chop. In that case, you'd order the pork chop. You wouldn't spend an extra $10 to get extra satisfaction worth only $8.
But if the bill is evenly shared among yourself and nine others, then if you order the lamb, your share of the higher bill will be only $1. That's $10 split evenly 10 ways. You'll order the lamb.
Such sharing of our medical-care bills takes place now on a massive scale. It is impossible to see how expanding this sharing will reduce the bill for each of us.

Fact Check on Obama

2009-04-29T23:15:00.002-04:00

FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape
04/29/09 - Associated Press by Calvin Woodward at KnoxNews.com

Calvin Woodward examines and criticizes Obama's statements. [edited]

Obama met citizens Wednesday at a high school in Arnold, MO in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.

Here are Obama's claims. The analysis is in the linked article.

I am not responsible for the huge budget deficit waiting for me on Day One.
The Recovery Act has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs.
This budget will strengthen our economy.

- Investments in education will equip our workers with the right skills and training;
- Investments in renewable energy will create millions of jobs and new industries;
- Investments in health care will cut costs for families and businesses;
- Savings will bring down our deficit.
I inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. That wasn't me. There is almost uniform consensus among economists that we are in the middle of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. We had to do a stimulus package, and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges
We know that the more we do to prevent disease, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. If we make those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term.
We can support Social Security benefits by raising the cap on the payroll tax.
I hope that by working in a bipartisan fashion, we are going to get a health care reform bill by the end of the year, and we'll make the kinds of investments that will make everybody healthier.

Why Test? You Are Already in the Hospital

2009-04-24T18:33:00.004-04:00

The "Too Sick to be in the Hospital" Test
04/24/09 - Throckmorton's Other Signs by Throckmorton

Bureaucracies are amazing. They divide responsibility and ignore obvious problems to satisfy some grand plan.

It seems that Medicare wants to cut down on unneeded testing. The answer: Don't give the test at all if the patient is in the hospital. That will do it!

[edited] Medicare will not pay for a PET or CT scan unless it is done as an outpatient. If the patient is really sick from their cancer and is in the hospital, they can't have the test, even though it would help determine how best to treat them so that they can get better and leave the hospital!

Diagnosing people is expensive. If they are already very sick, just what is the point? (sarcasm warning)

All people and organizations seek income and avoid costs. Socialized or centralized healthcare is paid up-front and delivers services after the fact. How hard will a system work to earn the money that they have already been paid? This is something that everyone can understand in their gut. A customer is lost without competition for his dollar.

Begging for Medical Care
The bureaucracy sees you as a cost, especially if you have already paid.

A Quick Explanation for the Recession

2009-04-24T01:20:00.002-04:00

An Explanation for the Great Recession
03/25/09 - The Angry Economist

Warning. You will need some self confidence to read this explanation. It is short and understandable. You may tend to believe complicated presentations that you don't understand. Really, if you don't understand something, they haven't explained it very well, or they are hiding their own ignorance.

[edited] Austrian Economists can explain this recession in the same way that all the other ones are explained:
[ Sorry, you will have to go to the original article to find out. ]
What is Krugman (the moron) telling us that we need to do? Spend, spend, spend, don't save!
Every REAL economist will tell you that's stupid. Everyone believes Krugman only because he got a Nobel Prize back before his brain failed.

+ + + + +

Cargo Cult Economics
Obama's economic team says "Spend, Spend, Spend". They claim that government spending multiplies wealth. Actually, private spending AND SAVING has the same effect in creating a vibrant economy. Savings don't sit around being lazy at the bank. They provide the means to build businesses, employ people, and buy commercial goods.

We Can't Stop Carbon Emissions

2009-04-21T13:06:00.002-04:00

From Peter Huber's book "Bound to Burn"
04/21/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Jonathan

[edited] We rich people can’t make a lasting dent in emissions. We don’t control the global supply of carbon.
We can't stop 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. The 80% of humanity in the developing world desperately need cheap energy, and that will drive global carbon emissions. If we are foolish enough, we can impose carbon controls on ourselves that will send jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.
Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80% of the planet’s oil reserves, about 1 trillion barrels worth about $40 trillion. They can lift most of their oil for a cost under $10 a barrel. They will drill, pump, and find buyers. Oil is all they have.

The bad news is that we will have to adapt, if human production of CO₂ is a problem. We won't be able to stop it. The good news is that CO₂ is not a problem in the first place.

Dispelling the Global Warming Myth
The atmosphere warms and cools because of solar output, not carbon dioxide.

The Global Warming Hockey Stick Hoax
The data and computer models in support of global warming are poorly constructed and don't predict anything.

The Fake History of the Depression

2009-04-20T15:40:00.001-04:00

The Fake History of the Depression
04/20/2009 - Mises Daily by Robert P. Murphy

His new book is "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal".

[edited] Nobel laureates and presidential advisors proclaim that it was Herbert Hoover's free-market penny pinching that exacerbated the Depression. They say that the economy was saved only when FDR boldly ran up enormous deficits to fight the Nazis. But, this official history is utterly false.
Contrary to what you have heard, Hoover was a textbook Keynesian after the stock-market crash. He cut income tax rates for 1929 by one percentage point and increased federal spending by 42% from 1930 to 1932.
This enormous jump in spending occurred while tax receipts collapsed, due to the decline in economic activity and the price deflation of the early 1930s. This combination led to unprecedented peacetime deficits under the Hoover administration — something FDR railed against during the 1932 campaign!
Hoover spent $4.6 billion against only $2 billion in tax receipts. The 1932 deficit would translate into an astounding $3.3 trillion deficit in 2007 (instead of the actual deficit of $162 billion for that year). Hoover's 1932 deficit was 4% of GDP.
GDP is Gross Domestic Product, or total national income. The official government measures of rising GDP during the war years is misleading. Massive military spending was included in GDP, even though producing tanks is hardly the same measure of prosperity as producing consumer goods.
Normally, when the Fed prints money to buy massive quantities of goods (such as war supplies), the price level and cost of living goes through the roof. The price level is expressed as the CPI, the Consumer Price Index. The government applied price controls during the war. [ Price controls were either ineffective or produced shortages. -AG ]

Say that your salary goes up from $30,000 to $33,000, a 10% increase. But, the cost of what you buy goes up 10% also because of inflation. Your "inflation adjusted" income is still $30,000. The same applies to GDP, which is supposed to measure total income.

Statisticians would normally adjust for the price level to compute the "inflation adjusted" GDP. This adjustment couldn't occur, because the government made it illegal for the CPI to go through the roof. Official measures showing "real GDP" rising during World War II are as phony as the Soviet Union's announcements of industrial achievements.

+ + + + +

Building tanks and bombs doesn't make you rich. Building new infrastructure (bridges, roads, and railroads) only increases prosperity if it is highly useful. Just the building of the structures doesn't do a thing.

A Tested Stimulus Plan
The housing crisis is the result of our last stimulus plan. How do we like it?

Cargo Cult Economics
Spending and saving by individiuals is more "stimulative" than taxing and spending by government.

An Artwork Thought to Have Merit

2009-04-18T20:55:00.004-04:00

Thought to Have Merit
06/20/06 - WSJ OpinionJournal by Lionel Shriver

An English sculptor loses his head.

[edited] "Exhibit 1201" is a large rectangular tablet of slate with a tiny barbell-shaped bit of boxwood on top. David Hensel created and submitted it to this year's summer show at London's Royal Academy of Arts. He must be pleased to have been selected from among some 9,000 applicants for the world's largest open-submission exhibit of contemporary art.
Nevertheless, he was bemused to discover that his sculpture had separated from its base in transit. Judging the two components as separate submissions, the Royal Academy had rejected his artwork proper, a finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite. Instead, they selected the support plinth, the bit of boxwood. Mr. Hensel: "It says something about the state of visual arts today." He didn't say what. He didn't need to.

A "support plinth" is a short piece of wood for supporting the sculpture from the back. This one was quite nice, in its own way. See the picture at the above link.

Organic Pesticides Fail Safety Review

2009-03-30T22:00:00.001-04:00

Organic Pesticides Fail EU Safety Review
03/30/09 - OpenMarket by Greg Conko

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has rejected 13 of 27 commonly used "organic" pesticides. That organic carrot doesn't look as good any more.

[edited] Many people buy organic food because “they’re grown without pesticides.” That is not true. Organic farmers use a variety of chemicals to control insects and plant diseases, including potentially dangerous substances such as copper sulfate, rotenone, pyrethrum, ryania, and sabadilla.
These “organic” pesticides are derived from minerals or plants, are lightly processed, and thus are considered to be “natural” for use in organic agriculture. Yet, ounce for ounce, most are at least as toxic or carcinogenic as many of the newest synthetic chemical pesticides.
According to the Farmer’s Guardian newpaper, EFSA “has approved just 14 of the 27 organic pesticides put before it … although many have received a derogation for continued use.” Because more stringent rules are due to be promulgated next year, the European pesticide industry expects that more of the organic pesticides will be found unsafe.

Plants Make Natural Pesticides
To confuse the issue, plants produce their own carcinogenic pesticides in amounts that far exceed any residues from the pesticides applied by farmers. Fortunately, they have no significant affect on us. Broccoli, anyone?

Is There a Future for Business Schools?

2009-03-30T20:19:00.001-04:00

Is there a future for Business Schools?
03/24/09 - Mises.org by Tim Swanson
This short post supplied the links below.

- - - -

The End of Business Schools?
09/01/02 - AOM Online by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina T. Fong

This study has a scholarly approach. They find that it took about one month to convert professionals from other fields into business consultants.

[edited] Available data suggests that business schools are not very effective. Career success does not correlate with having an MBA degree or grades earned in courses. There is little evidence that business school research influences management practice. These results question the relevance of management scholarship.
Consulting firms in the late 1990s found it difficult to compete with high-technology start-ups for talent. They had always hired some people without MBA degrees, but they increased the numbers, to include lawyers, doctors, and philosophers.
Consulting firms had to provide training so these individuals could give advice to companies using business knowledge and language. Many started or expanded 3-week programs to teach new hires the basics. Apparently, it took only 3-4 weeks for people to cover what business schools take 2 years to teach.
Internal studies found that the non-MBAs did no worse and sometimes better than their business school counterparts.

- - - -

MBA Schools Have Nothing to Offer in Our New World
03/25/09 - Bloomberg by Matthew Lynn

A general complaint against business schools. What could they have been teaching?

[edited] The MBA factories took a pseudo-scientific approach to finance. They promoted a mechanistic management style, and they taught a managerial elite more interested in rewards than producing lasting wealth for their societies.
They taught that running a company could be mastered by anyone through a set series of formulas from a textbook. The entire private-equity industry, mergers, and acquisitions are founded on that principle.
Academia largely invented the intellectual tools that led us into the financial meltdown. Complex models for pricing risk created the market for the options and derivatives contracts that have caused so much trouble in the past year.
The business schools took mysterious and unknowable "risk" and tried to make it as easy to count as peas in a pod. They encouraged a generation to go into investment banking armed with the belief that they had mastered risk.
In reality, management is a skill that is acquired through experience, judgment, and flair. Billions are about to be wasted relearning a simple fact that should never have been forgotten.

- - - -

Did Joseph Wharton Cause The US Financial Meltdown?
10/21/08 - Mises.org by Tim Hartnett

A disapproving review of what Americans will support, as long as an MBA in finance is proposing it. If you can't understand what they are saying, they must be smarter than you.

[edited] Americans are raised to believe there can be no such thing as a glut in graduate degrees. We don't think that any form of schooling can do harm.
What are the talents of the guys who rise to the top of established business empires? A good lot of them seem to specialize in finding ways to produce revenue, but not much of anything else.
Well into the 20th century, journeymanship in a business was a natural route to an executive position in big-time corporate America. People with the hands-on experience in mechanics, sales, manufacturing, and agriculture were residing at the top of many fields of trade. As late as the 1950s, entrepreneurs with widely divergent perspectives arising from a vast array of influences and experiences held sway in American industry. Today, those back roads are almost unknown.
The latest line is that government bailouts are good investments. This comes from politicians, ex-politicians, TV personalities, and people who run the cocktail circuit from the west side of the District to the east side of Manhattan.
"Remember Chrysler, we all made out big on that one." is the common refrain. Skeptics might have difficulty recalling it as quite so clear cut. Sure, number three of the one-time "Big Three" is still with us, but who-got-what out of that sweetheart deal remains hazy.
Money passing back and forth between the amorphous blob in DC and listed corporations is as difficult to follow as a shell game. Finding our end of the "profits" is like trying to unravel derivatives. So we take their word that all is soundly managed. Between cigar puffs, the MBAs reassure us that "in five or ten years everyone will be sitting pretty." The public is expected to sit blinking like a corporate mistress in a James Thurber cartoon.

The Revolutionaries Ayers, Dohrn, and Rudd

2009-03-24T14:40:00.000-04:00

Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen
03/22/09 - NewYorkPost by Ronald Radosh

Mark Rudd worked with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to change the world through terrorist violence.

[edited] In 1969, Rudd, Ayers, Ayers' wife Bernardine Dohrn favored "the necessity for violence in order to end the war and also to make revolution." They were fighting "a revolutionary war from within the United States," Rudd explains. When successful, the Weathermen would then build a new revolutionary army staffed by young defectors from the US armed forces.
At some level, Rudd knew that all he was doing was a terrible mistake, but, he writes, "I felt like a member of the crew on a speeding train, dimly aware of disaster ahead but unable to put on the bakes." Rudd acknowledges he was part of a "classic cult, true believers surrounded by a hostile world that we rejected. We had a holy faith, revolution, which could not be shaken."
Their attempts at guerrilla warfare ended with the 1970 New York City town house bombing, which Rudd, Ayers, and Dohrn approved. Rudd is honest about its intent, emphasizing how the bomb they built was meant to kill hundreds of GIs and their dates at a Fort Dix dance. It was, he now knows, a "fantasy of revolutionary urban-guerrilla warfare," done on their own, without police agents provoking them. He and his associates, he ruefully reflects, killed a broad and powerful movement opposed to the Vietnam War, all in the name of a fanciful goal.

Energy Can't Get Here From There

2009-03-22T21:58:00.001-04:00

Energy “Plan” - No New Transmission
03/22/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Carl from Chicago

Deception and Policy

[edited] We are allowing our energy infrastructure to deteriorate. The Greens and the Left are disingenuous when they propose their “solutions”, because they don’t want to do anything constructive. They decry “old school” solutions like building new coal plants, which are known, sensible and cost-effective. They promote complicated and unproven alternatives.
This New York Times opinion article shows their duplicity by clearly stating that they don’t WANT to solve the transmission problem, even if someone could wind their way through the rat's nest of financing, legal issues, and permit requirements. The article is a “confession” of their duplicity.
The US has failed to invest much in generation and transmission assets over the last 25 years. “Base load” generation consists of

Coal plants -- no one is building new ones because of environmental legislation.
Hydroelectric plants -- no one is damming rivers due to the Sierra Club.
Nuclear plants -- far too expensive, regulation is uncertain, and Three Mile Island hasn’t gone away.

Even if all the forces were lined up for building generation and transmission, financing is very difficult right now, and the utilities have little incentive to stretch and fund something that the states could invalidate even after giving all the permits to go forward.
The greens and the Left will sabotage any constructive solution. Remember, they dismantled the completely constructed Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island, pretty much bankrupting the Long Island utility company in the process. Needless to say, the utility had the permits to build it, but the Left played dirty with politics and lawyers and had it disassembled.
The actual platform of the Left is:

Do nothing about generation.
Do nothing about transmission.
Invest a little bit in distribution.
Talk a lot about conservation.
Dance for a few years, let the problem get much worse, and hand it to the next administration. Really, it will go to the states, since the Federal government can’t fix the problems, but can make them worse thru legislation.

----
Magic Power
Could they do the magic if they wanted to?

Posts about energy.

Begging for Medical Care

2009-03-21T13:52:00.011-04:00

Natasha Richardson and "Medical Capital"
03/21/09 - Blog.Mises.Org by William Anderson

The famous actress Natasha Richardson hit her head in a minor fall while skiing. She developed an increasing headache and serious symptoms that required emergency treatment.

She died from an epidural hematoma, bleeding between the skull and the tough membrane (dura) surrounding the brain. The blood pools, clots, and puts pressure on the brain, contained by the rigid skull. Pressure eventually pushes down on the brain stem enough to shut down neurological functions controlling heartbeat and breathing.

Montreal does not have fast transportation to a primary hospital, even near a ski area. Why not? Patients are a cost to the system.

[edited] Canada has socialist medical care. Socialist systems tend to be undercapitalized, because equipment costs money, but doesn't increase reimbursements from the state. For example, the county where I work in the U.S. has 80,000 residents and has as many MRI machines (internal imaging) as does Montreal with millions of residents.
It took three hours to drive Natasha Richardson from the Mount Tremblant ski area to the trauma center in Montreal, because Quebec has no medical helicopter system. Helicopters are common in the USA.
In Canada, no medical device or advanced service produces income for the hospital, because no one can charge medical consumers for anything. An MRI machine or helicopter is purely a cost in a budget. Medical facilities have only so much money, and the purchase of costly machines removes funds from paying medical workers.
When a hospital in the USA (for now) purchases an MRI, that machine provides an income to the provider as patients use it. It pays for itself by delivering superior care.

Lack of medical helicopter cost actress
03/21/09 - News.Yahoo by Mesfin Fekadu (via Econlog.Econlib) by David Henderson.

[edited] Tarek Razek is Director of Trauma Services for the McGill University Health Centre, representing six of Montreal's hospitals.
Driving to Mont Tremblant from Montreal is a 2 1/2 hour trip. That is the closest trauma center. Our medical system isn't set up for traumas and doesn't match what's available in other Canadian cities, let alone in the States. Not being airlifted directly to a trauma center could have cost Richardson crucial moments. [This is what is available near a busy ski area -amg]
Richardson's initial refusal of medical treatment cost her two hours. Someone called 911 twice from her hotel room at the Mont Tremblant ski resort. She was driven to a local hospital that could not handle head trauma, then to a specialized hospital in Montreal, arriving about four hours after the second 911 call.

David Henderson:

[edited] The essence of "single payer" medicine in Canada is that only the government is allowed to pay for medical care. Thus the term "single payer."
The more serious the ailment, the more stringent the ban, with a few exceptions. So, if you want special treatment for cancer, you can't get it legally, and any doctor or hospital that tries to charge you faces serious penalties, up to and including a prison sentence. In that sense, Canadian health care is one of the most totalitarian systems in the industrialized world. It is far more extreme than the National Health Service of Britain.

That is what the world is like when you are a cost rather than a customer. When you go to an emergency room under socialized medicine, you are a pure cost. Your treatment may be directed by caring people of good will, but the institution is treating you only to raise its statistics, within the budget set at the annual (say) Medical Cost Process Review.

Another thought. What would the food be like at a socialized "free" gourmet restaurant run by the government? Would they even wipe the tables? Of course, tipping is forbidden, and please eat everything on your plate.

Did the Canadian health system fail Natasha Richardson?
03/20/09 - KevinMD

[edited] Would Natasha Richardson be alive today if she had gone skiing in the United States instead? I don't think it would have made a difference.
Epidural bleeds are treated by drilling a hole in the skull to relieve the pressure. This often results in complete recovery. However, time is of the essence, and some are wondering if Ms. Richardson would have fared better Stateside.
Community hospitals would likely lack neurosurgical coverage in remote resort areas in the United States. In fact, because of the huge malpractice risk associated with the field, a neurosurgeon might not respond to an emergency call at a community hospital.
It is very likely that Ms. Richardson would have been transported to a tertiary care center if her accident happened here. The difference is that she would have been flown by helicopter, rather than taking hour-long drives by ambulance.
Dr. Crippen in the UK blames the American wussification of today's doctor. A brave physician would have drilled the burr holes without the benefit of a CT scan (explanation and typical x-rays at the link):
It would be a career making or breaking decision. Few American doctors are brave. Defensive medicine is the order of the day. You cannot have a migraine in the USA without someone ordering an MRI scan.
Had this accident happened at base camp on Mt. Everest in a helicopter-blocking snowstorm, a doctor would likely have drilled. Had this accident happened in a ski resort forty years ago, before CT Scanners had been invented, a doctor would likely have drilled.
Then, a subdural/epidural haemorrhage was a clinical diagnosis. Apparently minor head injury, lucid interval, headache, sudden deterioration in consciousness, a dilated pupil, all adds up to an obvious diagnosis.
Medical technology has deskilled doctors.

The Policies of Bush -- I mean Obama

2009-03-20T15:10:00.003-04:00

Bush Did It
03/20/09 - NationalReview by Victor Davis Hanson

What a difference an election makes. (sarcasm)

Obama's policy choices were so much better than the current policies of the hated President ~~Bush~~ ~~Obama~~ Bush. Hold on here. Just exactly who is in office? ?

[edited] President Bush was ridiculed today by critics of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility when he suggested that his administration no longer was incarcerating “unlawful combatants,” but was instead in the process of renaming them as mere “detainees.” The President also promised to close Guantanamo “within the year,” and added that he had assigned a “special task force” to look into the matter.
“Orwellian,” the New York Times fumed in an editorial entitled “Just Close It!”: “If the President’s Ministry of Truth thinks that his metamorphosing words change reality, then it is going to be a long four years.
This latest Doublespeak comes on top of the President’s ignoring his past assertions that ‘signing statements are unacceptable’ and continuing the policy unchanged from the Clinton administration.”
The Los Angeles Times joined in, adding, “Remember that Bush promise about posting pending legislation on his administration’s website before signing it into law? Well, somehow several days’ notice has evaporated into 24 hours, and now zilch.”

Much more at the link.

Obama Thanks Himself Reading Teleprompter

2009-03-18T10:22:00.005-04:00

The truth about Barack Obama's Irish teleprompter "gaffe"
03/24/09 - Telegraph.co.UK by Toby Harnden

Well, it seemed a bit fishy to me and there was no video. And upon further investigation - Obamaphobes and dittoheads brace yourselves for a big disappointment - I can confirm that there was no gaffe by the president.

Harnden reports that Obama's remarks were a joke, following up on Brian Cowen's minor mistake in reading a few words of Obama's speech from the teleprompter. There is really nothing here but a simple mistake and good humor all around.

-----------
The following was my take on what was reported.

Obama Reads Teleprompter and Thanks Himself
03/18/09 - Fox News via AP

There is now strong evidence that some politicians are "replacements". They have been kidnapped by aliens and replaced with lifelike but imperfect substitutes. (smile)

[edited] Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen gave a speech at a St. Patrick's Day celebration at the White House. It was the second time that evening he would give the same speech to two different groups.
Cowen was 20 seconds into his second presentation when it dawned on him that he was reading word for word the speech that Obama had just read from the same teleprompter.
Cowen stopped and looked back at the president to say "That's your speech."
Obama laughed and returned to the podium to offer some remarks. It seems that he then read some of Cowen's remarks from the Teleprompter. In doing so, President Obama thanked President Obama for inviting everyone over.

So, politics isn't so hard. Just read from the little screen. Probably this is why politicians have been chosen as the first to be replaced. Few of the public will notice.

Thankfully, the replacements do not think ahead. "Obama" knew that the Teleprompter had just shown the wrong speech. You would think that he would be wary of what was displayed. But, he automatically read what was there.

Fellow humans, the replacements have weaknesses, and we have some hope in our fight to regain the world.

The Godfather's White House

2009-03-17T16:49:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Franicis Ford Coppola's White House
03/17/09 - PajamasMedia by Nicholas Guariglia

Thin-skinned President Corleone and his crew go after their enemies.

The Godfather, part IV
03//09 - PowerLineBlog by Scott Johnson

About the above article.

[edited] The Obama administration has taken on a thuggish mien from Obama's first days in the White House. Nicholas Guariglia captures the essence of what is transpiring by comparing Obama's White House to "The Godfather".
About the press:
The Obama-journalist relationship has been a one-sided love affair: the more they appease him, the more he disdains them. And yet, still, many journalists are all too willing to bow their heads, kiss the don's ring, and play the role of hit man, stuttering and stammering in the presence of their boss like an overly eager Luca Brasi rehearsing what he's going to say.

Regulatory Costs

2009-03-16T20:42:00.000-04:00

Take the pressure off
03/16/09 - WashingtonTimes by Wayne Crews

Lifting heavy regulation by government would be a big stimulus.

[edited] America now has the biggest government in world history. It will spend $3.55 trillion ($3,550 thousand million), before counting President Obama's ambitious "stimulus" agenda.
Renewable energy, carbon caps, internet neutrality, and universal health care will cost trillions more. There are also hidden regulatory costs these and other proposals will impose on American business and the people.
The Federal Office of Management and Budget seeks public comment on how “to improve the process and principles governing regulation.” We're glad they asked!
Nearly 70 agencies created 4,004 rules in 2008, and the Federal Register of regulations adds almost 80,000 pages annually. These regulations on business, health, safety, and environment cost an additional $1.2 trillion annually.
Deregulation would stimulate the economy. But, federal agencies rarely admit that rules are poorly targeted or too costly. For example, a 15 MPH speed limit would save lives. A benefit could be claimed, if you ignore the costs hidden in delays. Costly agency regulation isn't affordable anymore.

The recent Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) regulates testing of items intended for use by children. This "zero tolerance" regulation is threatening to close 10,000+ small businesses that make children's goods such as quilts, toy blocks, and books.

Bailouts by John Stossel

2009-03-14T19:39:00.001-04:00

20/20 and Reason: “Bailouts & Bull”
03/14/09 - QAndO.net by Jason Pye

John Stossel of ABC's "20/20" program asks questions about the bailouts. At the end, he asks Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer if the stimulus will work. "I hope so" replies Hoyer. Video 1:00 to 7:46.

[edited] There are six videos. In the first one, Stossel talks to 18 economists about why the “stimulus” was a bad idea. He asks House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer if debt got us into this recession, then why is creating more debt going to get us out? One economist says that one dollar taken out of the economy is one less dollar to be spent in the private sector.

-------------
Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail
They take a dollar to give a dollar.

A Short Argument Against Stimulus
Economist Henry Hazlitt reminds us that you can't help an economy by spending when you have to hurt the economy with taxes or inflation.

Let's Counterfeit Our Way to Wealth
If the Obama team is right about economics, then counterfeiting should be a way for us all to become rich.

A Tested Stimulus Plan
The housing bubble was a giant stimulus. We are now living in the post-stimulus economy. How do we like it?

The Bank's Mistake was Trusting the Government

2009-03-14T14:40:00.001-04:00

Their Mistake Was Trusting the Government
03/13/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love

Rep. Maxine Waters was a major investor in OneUnited Bank, which lost heavily on its investment in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares when they were taken over by the Treasury.

Ironically, she fully supported Fannie and Freddie in her congressional role on the House Financial Services Committee. That committee had oversight and detailed knowledge of what Fannie and Freddie were doing. They were lending to risky borrowers without verifying their loan applications.

Her experience is an example of what happened to banks worldwide because of Fannie and Freddie and their government supported actions in the housing market.

[edited] For leftists, OneUnited should represent the perfect small, minority owned bank. The “socially responsible” Maxine Water’s invested in the bank and sat on its board. There’s no evidence it made predatory loans. Yet, it failed.
It failed not due to any short-sighted greedy decisions of the bank’s management, but because the bank’s management and board members, like Waters, trusted that the mortgage-backed securities issued by the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were worth the paper they were written on.
OneUnited is a microcosm of the entire financial collapse. Over the past 40 years the GSEs have piled up a vast store of toxic assets created by the attempt to get something for nothing by fooling the market about the risk of residential mortgages. Ratings firms gave the GSEs top ratings because of their implied government guarantee and oversight. Banks like OneUnited bought into the political myth and now they and everyone else are paying for it.

A comment posed that the housing crisis is a failure of the free market under lax regulation. Shannon Love replied:

[edited] The commercial real estate market has no government intervention at all, it has some securitization, and it was fine until the entire financial system tanked. You argued that private individuals cannot price risk without the guiding hand of the State. If so, then why didn’t the commercial real estate market bubble and burst before the heavily regulated residential market?
The residential market couldn’t price risk properly because the government set out specifically to blind the market to the risk of residential mortgages. The entire point of the creation of Freddie Mac and other GSEs was to hide the risk of residential mortgage lending!

Use Inflation to Fool People

2009-03-10T22:51:00.001-04:00

We Were All Keynesians Then
01/09/06 - Cato.org by economist Ike Brannon
(via The Angry Economist)

Keynesian economists expect most people to be slow-witted and unable to make rational economic decisions. The government tries to fool people into working harder by inflating the currency to just the right amount. But, it doesn't work for long.

[edited] In 1961, John Muth published in the journal Econometrica, demonstrating that people thoughtfully use available information to predict future prices, and then make economic decisions based on "rational expectations".
Muth's insight was radical during that heyday of Keynesian economics. Today, it is an accepted part of the canon of economics.
"Rational expectations" says that entrepreneurs and workers do not assume that prices will be constant when they need to forecast future prices. They use all available information to estimate what prices will be, and their estimate is correct on average. They will make mistakes, but they will not be consistently wrong.
Muth demonstrated that rational expectations explained prices quite well for a market in hogs, thought to exhibit wide, predictable price swings.
Muth's paper was published at the time that Keynesian economics had become ascendant in the political world. Policymakers thought they could permanently increase employment by increasing inflation. Supposedly, higher inflation fools workers, who mistake a rising dollar wage for a real increase in their buying power. As a result, people would take jobs they would not otherwise take, and work more hours than they would otherwise work, increasing employment and output.
Muth's work explains why the 1970's economy experienced "stagflation", slow economic growth and inflation at the same time. Rational expectations predicted that people may not always make economically optimal decisions, but they can't be consistently fooled by government policies.

Publicly Challenge Politicians

2009-03-09T22:41:00.001-04:00

Congressman McClintock Urges Opposition to Climate Change Legislation
03/09/09 - Business & Media Institute by Jeff Poor

[edited] Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) advised how to fight the good fight against Draconian climate change legislation.
Don’t write officials a letter. Write that same letter to the local newspaper, or put it on a blog. Mention them by name and ask how they’re voting, and other inconvenient questions.
Don’t visit them in their office. Visit them at a public meeting where you can hold them accountable in front of their constituents. Call them on a local talk show, not at their office.

Obama Team: No Nuclear Energy

2009-03-06T22:56:00.000-05:00

Obama Administration: No on Nuclear Energy
03/06/09 - RedState by Francis Cianfrocca

Modern nuclear power can be stopped in many ways.

[edited] Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that using the Yucca Mountain underground repository for storing nuclear waste is no longer an option. The proposed budget provides only token funding for the site.
Chu: We have better options than Yucca Moutain for storing commercial nuclear waste.
Providing nuclear waste storage has been a key barrier to expanding nuclear power in America. There are no clear alternatives to the Yucca site. America’s nuclear plants now store their waste on-site, above ground.
Chu and President Obama are saying in veiled language that they will not allow nuclear power to stage a comeback. If these guys get everything they want, America faces a future of much higher energy costs.

The Government Bailout IS the Problem

2009-03-05T22:02:00.001-05:00

The Failout and Krugman
02/29/09 - Angry-Economist by Russ Nelson

The economy is bad because no one can predict the future with a big government elephant stomping around. The elephant can't solve the problem, and it scares away the elves who can solve the problem. The elves are small, but they are smart and there are a lot of them. The economist Paul Krugman has spun a theory for recovery. Will he bet on its success?

[edited] The problem here is simple: credit is scarce because nobody wants to lend and nobody wants to buy. The Federal Government is threatening to borrow and spend a TRILLION dollars.
If you are bank, would you loan money if you knew that an A-grade customer was going to be spending a TRILLION dollars soon? Of course not. Even if they choose not to get their loan from you, the price of lending is going to go up. It must go up when a TRILLION dollar buyer is showing up. So nobody is lending now.
And why would anyone buy anything now. You want to be positioned correctly for the TRILLION dollars which is going to enter the market soon. You don't want to invest your money in something, only to find that the market has shifted and your investment is toast.
The failout is not the solution to our problems. It is the CAUSE of our problems, merely by being threatened as a government action.
Why is this not obvious to everyone? I blame Krugman.
I wonder if Paul Krugman has borrowed huge amounts of money and spent it already? If he hasn't done it, then why should we do it? If he doesn't trust his own theory for his own household, then why should we trust his theory for our country?
Of course he hasn't done it, because his theory requires that many people behave differently together than each person would for himself. The group is made up of individuals, so how can that be?
Krugman's theory has no legs. That dog don't hunt.

The Housing Crisis in a Nutshell

2009-03-05T19:38:00.002-05:00

The Housing Crisis, in a nutshell
02/24/09 - Angry-Economist by Russ Nelson

[edited] Pretend that you are a bank.

You make a loan to somebody, say with no down payment at all.
Because you're loaning money to everyone that doesn't run away fast enough, everyone thinks they can own a house.
The price of houses rises 20%. The loan you originated is now only a loan for 80% of the value of the house, so your risk has gone down.
In fact, your risk has gone up; way up.
But because there's a school of thought that says that your risk has gone down, people are willing to buy your risk and turn it into a stock.
All sorts of people bought "80%" risk mortgage stocks that were really 100% risk mortgage stocks; people who shouldn't have been investing in anything that risky.
And because these mortgages were intermingled with real 80% risk mortgages, nobody knows which of these stocks is worthless, so nobody realy knows how much money they have.
Time is the only cure for this, but during that time nobody really knows how much money they have, so nobody will want to spend anything.
What will the stimulus do to change this? Nothing. In fact, it will make the problem worse because if the feds are borrowing that much money, nobody has any incentive to loan to more risky folks (which is everyone).

Obama is a Gifted Talker

2009-03-04T10:55:00.002-05:00

The sobering voice of Mr. Market
03/04/09 - PowerLineBlog by Scott Johnson

[edited] Obama's self-awareness has been a source of his strength. Has he been misled by it?
Fred Barnes quotes Obama letting his hair down with a group of television anchors at a White House lunch. Obama assured them he likes being president. "And it turns out I'm very good at it."
What could he mean? Paul Mirengoff has rightly identified Obama's "faith in words" as his leading characteristic:
"Obama's faith in words is a function of his life experiences. His faciility with words is extraordinary, and it accounts almost entirely for his astonishing success in life. Obama has never run anything substantial other than a political campaign, so he has not yet confronted the limits of his words. He has dabbled in lawyering, where words can take on a disproportionate significance, and in teaching law, where words are the be-all and end-all."

Don't Worry, Be Happy
Obama gives the markets the back of his hand.
03/03/09 - WeeklyStandard by William Kristol

[edited] Now, Obama wants to focus on "long term" issues like health care, energy, and education -- while not showing any urgency about the banking crisis.
Instead, the Obama administration throws more money at Citi and AIG. This at best simply puts off the day of reckoning (but at some considerable cost); at worst, Obama's Treasury is fiddling while Rome burns.
Everyone agrees the toxic assets have to be separated from the rest. The Obama administration has shied away from embracing any solution. Has a single toxic asset actually been seized, separated, sold, or de-toxified? I don't think so.
The stock market isn't like a tracking poll. Polls were about the electoral prospects of Barack Obama. The stock market is about real money, about the livelihoods of real Americans.
Obama's political advisors may have told him that dealing with the banking system will be politically difficult. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner may want to build up his political capital after a rough confirmation before he steps up to the plate. Larry Summers may not want to endanger his chance to be Fed chairman by being identified with an unpopular bank "bailout".
I'm told almost every theme in Obama's speech last Tuesday night was focus-group tested, and the speech played pretty well politically. But the markets weren't impressed. Isn't it time for Obama and his team to get up the nerve to stop playing politics and to govern?

Government vs The Market

2009-03-01T21:54:00.000-05:00

Government, the Downturn, and Responsibility
03/01/09 - CafeHayek by Don Boudreaux

Mr. Nouriel Roubini is an economist, interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on Februry 21. He recommended nationlizing the banks because markets have failed to price and trade assets, due to excesses, greed, and irrational exuberance. Some readers responded in letters to the editor.

[edited] Mr. Roubini makes no mention whatsoever of the government interventionism that is largely the cause of our current crisis.

Was the Federal Reserve's policy of holding interest rates below the real rate of interest and thereby causing a credit bubble and debt-fueled consumption a market failure?
Or was the market failure that market participants did not read F.A. Hayek's "Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle" and divine the peril that was not being signaled through the price mechanism?
Or does Mr. Roubini consider it a market failure that lenders were coerced by the government to make mortgage loans that never would have been made based on market-driven underwriting standards?
Is the failure of unqualified homebuyers to decline the cheap, no-down-payment loans that lenders were coerced to offer them another market failure?
Was it market failure that lenders knew they would never have to suffer the consequences of reckless underwriting when they could dump their rotten portfolio on the taxpayers via the government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

The word "market" does not mean an old man in a turban who rubs his chin and suggests a price. It means all of the people with an interest in the problem, with intelligence and experience bought with thousands of hours of study and action.

These people are wiser and better than an academic economist who has spun theories and equations, claiming to understand what government-forced result is good for us all. But, the government pushes the self-interest of its politicians and favored interests, claiming that it knows best.

Tolerance, Muslim-Style

2009-03-01T11:31:00.000-05:00

Tolerance, Muslim-Style
03/01/09 - AdviceGoddess by Amy Alkon

[edited] Ramzan Kadyrov is age 32, a former militia leader, and president of the Russian state of Chechnya. He finished afternoon prayers and explained "with chilling composure" why seven young women were shot in the head and deserved to die.
He said the women had loose morals and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings. "If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed." Kadyrov is imposing Islamic values to strengthen the traditional customs of predominantly Muslim Chechnya.

Keynes Likes Totalitarians

2009-02-27T14:42:00.000-05:00

Keynes Politely Explains How to Destroy Civilization
02/27/09 - Blog.Mises.org by Jeffrey Tucker

The late economist Lord John Maynard Keynes regarded his own theories as a best fit for totalitarian societies. It is so much easier to achieve full employment when you can tell everyone what to do and decide what they will be paid. Every member of an ant colony is employed, and seemingly happy.

Keynes impresses me with the long, jumpy, tedious construction of his sentences, to express the simplest and fuzziest thoughts. I find that saying something directly is easy. Saying nothing, or everything, with detailed qualifications and exceptions, in one sentence, is quite difficult. Why bother with paragraphs when long sentences are so much more impressive?

[edited] I'm sorry, but reading Keynes gives me the chills. I can easily imagine his dispassionate narrative about events in a Gulag, justifying every horror with a pseudo-scientific rationale made up on the spot.
Oh wait: he did do that. From the 1936 foreword to the German edition of The General Theory:
Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free competition and a lance measure of laissez-faire.

----------
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chap. 24
Dig into the thought of Lord Keynes at Marxists.org.

The Political Dictionary: "Keynesian Economics"
A satirical definition, unfortunately true.

Why Should I Believe You?

2009-02-27T13:48:00.001-05:00

Brain Rinse
02/27/09 - ChcagoBoyz by John Jay

First impressions are usually the strongest ones. The acclaim or possible danger associated with a product or idea leads to thinking it is the best or worst, even when better ones appear or studies show safety.

Shannon Love comments that this is Social Reasoning, a result of our brains being specialized for cooperation and competition within groups. Groups started 2 million years ago. Individuality is only a thin thread starting 2 thousand years ago.

John Jay:

[edited] What I call “mental aftertaste” is that on many topics, there is no way for the layman to perform a test, such as directly comparing the washing efficacy of Dreft and Tide. No test is available that would once and for all change their perceptions. In most arenas, once the tone has been set by the first mover, it is extremely difficult to shake a perception.
Con-men, tricksters, marketers, and intelligence agents realize that once an idea gets into someone’s head, even if it is disproven to the rational brain, there is an emotional residue akin to an aftertaste that colors perceptions. Unless the new idea totally dominates the old one, the old one tends to stick. This is at the core of the marketing adage that "perception is reality".

Shannon Love:

[edited] People fall for all of these hoaxes because they use social reasoning instead of the evidence of each phenomena. Consider astrology, vaccine fears, suspect technology, alternative medicine, and suppressed miracles. The common factor is deep suspicion of other people or the need to believe one’s self to have unique knowledge.
People trained in the sciences are taught to ignore social reasoning. For the majority of people outside the sciences, even well educated people, social reasoning is their primary modality of thought. This is especially true in political and economic thought. The dominant idea in post-modernist thought holds that who advances an idea is the most powerful predictor of validity.
Thus, who a scientist is determines whether their ideas about global warming have any validity. Ditto for economists, politicians, and academics. Those in the tribe are trusted, those outside are automatically wrong.

The Hamas - Israel War

2009-02-27T12:21:00.000-05:00

Mubarak is the Only One Who Got it Right
02/27/09 - AmericanThinker by Dan Gordon

President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak:

[edited] Why did Hamas object to prolonging the cease fire? And why did they not heed our warnings that their positions constitute an open invitation for an Israeli assault? Was this planned and deliberate? For whose benefit?
The recent crisis is an attempt to exploit the Israeli aggression in order to impose a new reality on the Palestinian and Arab arena that will favor the agenda of Iran.

Dan Gordon:

[edited] The villages of the Gaza strip were crisscrossed with kidnapping and communication tunnels dug underneath the houses. Hamas militants could go unseen from house to house and carry out combat in a civilian environment, disappearing from one house, as it came under fire, to pop up in another.
They prepared this battlefield to launch rockets from civilian areas in order to draw in Israeli troops. They turned whole villages into booby trapped battlefields while the villagers were still in them. They hoped to kill two to three hundred Israeli soldiers and take prisoner as many as fifty.
They planned to maximize civilian casualties amongst their own people. Any action Israel took against Hamas fighters would become a war crime. Photos of innocent Palestinians killed in an Israeli onslaught would arouse public sympathy, to be translated into political pressure to effectuate a cease fire advantageous to Hamas. In that way, they could wear both the mantle of victimhood and victor.

You Will Pay, With the Rich

2009-02-26T15:08:00.001-05:00

The 2% Illusion
02/26/09 - Online.WSJ.com OpinionJournal

Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.

[edited] If taxes took 100% of the taxable income of everyone earning over $500,000 in 2006, this would have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion, and only one-third of the $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010.
Taking every taxable "dime" of those earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.
The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well.
Mr. Obama's climate-change plans will hit all Americans with higher expenses. Selling cap-and-trade permits to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and so on all Americans.
Mr. Obama portrays his agenda as center-left pragmatism. But pragmatists don't ignore the data. The only way to pay for Mr. Obama's ambitions is to reach deeper into the pockets of the American middle class.

I Won't Do the Paying

2009-02-26T10:55:00.000-05:00

Comment of the Week
02/25/09 - CafeHayek by Russel Roberts
Comment by Methinks

The problem with high income people is that they can make plans and act on them. They are better than most people at finding loopholes in government. In my opinion, if they have to, they will buy the government. That is what things were like in the 1960's.

[edited] I'm in the target group, the top 2% of taxpayers to do the paying for the trillion dollar spending. I won't do it.
I own my business and have the option to work as much or as little as I like. At some tax rate, the marginal dollar won't be worth earning. I'll fire some employees, scale down the business or retire altogether and stick my money in tax advantaged municipal bonds, and do all the traveling and relaxing I can't do now. The tax advantage of muni bonds will NEVER go away because municipalities will scream bloody murder.
If I'm not ready to retire and the tax rate gets too high, I may just immigrate to another country because it's very easy for me to get almost instant citizenship. I respond to incentives and I'm not incentivized by enslavement and neither is anyone I know.
The specialness of this country is the lack of totalitarian regime and individual liberty. Once that's gone, this country is no longer special. You can call me evil or "not doing my part" because I'm not willing to work myself into the grave for your family instead of mine, but the reality is that unless you plan to start a Gulag, you can't make me.
Why should I be expected to work and risk more than you to provide you with the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed?
Yes, it's sustainable to raise taxes on the most productive. However, it's not sustainable at a high standard of living. It's sustainable only at ever decreasing standards of living. France and Germany are good examples.
There's a difference between the natural altruism that occurs between family members and confiscation by the state. I feel great when I donate to charity. I feel really crappy when I write the check to the IRS. Maybe I should figure out how to receive one instead. Seems a lot less time consuming.

Politicians Like Thoreau

2009-02-26T09:56:00.001-05:00

Thoreau Smacks Down Clinton
02/26/09 - Corner.NationalReview by Fred Schwarz
Via AdviceGoddess

Liberal politicans love the image of Thoreau, living by a quiet pond, loving nature. They forget that he was sitting there as a tax protest. Thoreau:

[edited] Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate.
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.
Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

Obama Challenges Us

2009-02-25T14:36:00.001-05:00

Obama, Say Again?
02/25/09 - TheLipstickRepublican by Jamie

[edited] Then, Pres. Obama reached the part where he "challenged" every American to commit to at least one year of higher education, and I was brought up short. Who the bleeping bleep does he think he is, telling me I should seek more education?
It so happens that I want more education. But I want it for me, not to fulfill some "duty to my country." A politician from an earlier generation might have told me it was my duty to produce more children.
If this nation was founded on anything at all, it was founded on the right of individuals to chart the course of their lives.

Iran Might Stop Killing Brits

2009-02-24T12:29:00.000-05:00

Iran Offered to Halt Attacks on UK Troops
02/21/09 - Telegraph.co.uk by Damien McElroy
Via Grand Bargain at NeptunusLex.

[edited] Sir John Sawers is the British ambassador to the United Nations.
The Iranians wanted to strike a deal. They would stop killing our forces in Iraq and stop undermining the political process there, in return for being allowed to continue their nuclear programme without hindrance and without economic sanctions.
Iran supplied arms, training, and strategic direction to Shia Muslim militias that were battling British forces for control of Basra. Iran supplied a deadly shaped-charge bomb that required precision engineering at Iranian military factories.

The Solution Is Simple

2009-02-23T23:09:00.005-05:00

Proving Reagan wrong
02/23/09 - BobKrumm.com by Bob Krumm

"Why are they doing all this when they have to know that it isn’t going to work?” was the question my wife asked about the stimulus package.
I answered: “It’s not about fixing the economy; it’s about proving Reagan wrong.” It’s about proving that an enlightened government is superior to a country led by tens of millions of individual sovereign decision makers.

A comment by Joe Y
An insight into the simple view that many people have of the world. An explanation why hope and change is so attractive. An evaluation of President Obama's abilities.

[edited] The oddest thing about this election, was the continual leitmotif of Obama’s genius, from people that should have known better. People like Obama, of which I know and am related to far too many, are unable to seriously consider that there is any job (oil company CEO, football coach, running the local post office) that they cannot do as well or better than the person currently in the role, should they ever exert the effort to do so. It’s not a matter of faith, as faith requires a conscious effort; rather, it is a prejudice in the true sense of the word.
They believe that the government is better at running the country, because the solution to the problem, whatever the problem, is just so obvious. From their point of view, for example, the comprehensive national medical database in the Stimulus Package is obviously a good idea.
The person I was talking to said “Only idiots, paranoids, and Republicans - to repeat myself - want to stop this.” She then gave the several well-known and excellent reasons for the database, concluding with “Who could be against that?”
I replied that no one could, but what about the hundreds of thousands of medical personnel who have potential access to the database? What about the innumerable terrifying stunts that hackers, and not just American hackers, have been able to pull off in attacks on supposedly invulnerable networks? What about people not reporting medical conditions because they don’t want a record of them? What about erroneous data being mistakenly entered? What about erroneous data being deliberately entered? Of course, that was just a start.
To her credit, she got what I was saying, particularly when I applied it to our respective teenage children. A few minutes consideration revealed many problems to answer the question “It’s so obvious! What could go wrong?”.

These considerations were foreign to her, not because she was stupid (quite the opposite), but out of a prejudice that she and people like her can see the solution to any problem. That is why they attack people who disagree with them as stupid, morons, and idiots.
There is one major exception to this attitude, which is in the person's area of knowledge. Then, they are as smart and good as advertised, but rarely anywhere else.

This brings us to the President. Obama is clearly a very bright man, as anyone who becomes president has to be. But, there are a lot of smart guys around. He gives a marvelous television performance of an intellectual, but I would be grateful for a link to any genuine evidence of such.

Like most Ivy leaguers, he’s a smart operator and a dedicated hustler obsessed with accomplishment. Like almost all Harvard men and women, he lacks an aptitude for self-doubt and humility, which people usually, and a bit unfairly, mistake for Harvard arrogance. He is superb at his chosen field; but that field is not being President, it is becoming President.

-----
Dunning-Kruger effect: The hubris of the incompetent
10/31/09 - Neo-Neocon

Quip: I could do that better than you, if I wanted to.

Wikipedia [edited]: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a bias in thinking. People may make bad choices, and be incompetent to realize it.
The unskilled overrate their own ability as above average. The highly-skilled underrate their abilities, often below the self-rating of the unskilled.
Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, because competent individuals wrongly assume that others are also competent. The incompetent misjudges himself, whereas the highly competent misjudges others.
Incompetent individuals:

Tend to overestimate their own level of skill, and do not recognize their true inadequacy.
Fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
Can come to recognize and acknowledge their previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level.

Where Did Barbers Go?

2009-02-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

Of Plumbers And Barbers
02/23/09 - RiehlWorldView by Dan Riehl

Barbers were regulated out of existence.

[edited] In the 70's and 80's many states merged their Barber and Cosmetology Boards into one. A young man who could make a decent living as a Barber couldn't do a partly paid apprenticeship, taking just months to learn a career that could serve him for life. He had to pay to attend a Community College or private tech education program that could last two years, while making him learn a variety of skills he'd never employ. And he, or she was also taught to charge much more for the service.
Costs of a haircut more than doubled, and businesses saw their overhead costs rise dramatically. All because the government was just looking out for you, or perhaps they were paid off by the tech education and cosmetic industries. Maybe they found a clever way to extract more dollars from a male public that never actually needed them in the first place

Nurse Practitioners

2009-02-20T17:12:00.001-05:00

Bilateral Queckenstedt's sign
02/20/09 - Throckmorton's Other Signs by Throckmorton

It seems that nurse practioners (NP's) are not a good replacement for doctors in an emergency room. But, they are "cost effective".

[edited] Nurse practicioners are nurses with 17 months of extra training. They replace an MD or DO who has 4 years of medical education plus 3-4 years of speciality emergency medical training.
ER cases that a doctor could treat and release can not be handled by NP's who either can't or don't know how. Worse, I am often called in for one problem and find that there is something totally different wrong with the patient. I wonder how many of the patients have been sent home with something badly wrong!
I asked a hospital administrator why the NPs are not discussing patients with their supervising MD's. He informed me that the supervising MD only reviews patient's charts. Further, the NPs can act independently.
Why don't they hire MD's? MD's cost too much because of their liability insurance. Nurse Practicioners are cheaper, with minimal insurance, because they are not held to the same standards! With EMTALA in the mix, I get called in for everything.

Elevator Lawsuit Safety

2009-02-20T04:29:00.002-05:00

Elevator Logic
02/18/09 - Throckmorton's Other Signs by Throckmorton

I suppose the legal theory of "attractive nuisance" is used here. Escape doors are so attractive and dangerous that people must be protected against themselves. There could be a sign "Warning: Only professionals should attempt to escape from this elevator." I have wondered, if I am supposed to escape, where is the ladder?

[edited] The hospital has fancy ceilings in their elevators, and I wondered what I would do if I got stuck. The maintenance man explained that the escape door was behind the lighted panel in the ceiling. It was almost impossible to get to, and the escape doors are locked from the outside. Someone has to let you out.
There have been lawsuits when people stuck in elevators have hurt themselves climbing out or when the elevator starts moving. So, the escape hatches are locked from the outside. If you are trapped in the elevator in a fire? He said, "Hope someone can get you out before you burn!"
It is even code to have the escape hatches locked! I wonder if the glass in the fire alarm box that states "break glass in case of fire" is unbreakable to prevent lawsuits because of people cutting themselves!

Medicare Witch Hunt

2009-02-19T21:22:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr President, Medicare Stinks
02/03/09 - Distractible.org by Dr. Rob

Medicare is controlling waste, fraud, and abuse by driving doctors out of Medicare. We can wonder who will be left to treat Medicare patients "for free".

[edited] I am a primary care physician. About 20% of my patients are covered by Medicare. I consider it an honor to be a doctor to the elderly. The complexity of a person’s medical problems goes up exponentially as they near the end of their life. I spend more time per patient for my Medicare population - which is OK if I can be paid for my extra time and effort.
If Medicare auditors find “problems” with our charting we will be told to send money back to CMS for our whole Medicare population. We are obligated to prove that we did not defraud Medicare to reclaim the money for the work we did. We will be presumed guilty unless we can prove that we are innocent.
They are looking for inconsistencies in the charting and the billing. These can be little things like:

Failure to mention in the note the EKG we ordered, even if it is in the chart.
The appearance of a “cookie-cutter template” in our notes. If all of our physical exams, review of systems, or impressions look similar, then it will be assumed we are trying to defraud Medicare.
Forgetting to document a discussion about a diabetic eye exam.
Certain ICD-9 codes will be accepted, but will “flag” that we are possibly trying to cheat Medicare. We need to be specific in our coding to avoid immediate suspicion.

We practice very good medicine and probably save money for the system, as a higher percentage of primary care in a community means lower cost. We use an EMR and are NCQA recognized for our diabetes care, and I think that our quality of care and documentation is in the top 10%. Yet we fear that your government employees are going to use us as scapegoats for the out-of-control costs of Medicare and put us out of business in the process.
We see what is being done to the hospitals by not accepting “No Pay” diagnoses (Never Events). That debacle is irrational and unfair, but the hospitals have no recourse.
That makes us extremely pessimistic about our odds when facing the hit-men from CMS. If a hospital with its lawyers and other resources can be hung out to dry, what chance does a primary care physician have?
We have never considered our acceptance of Medicare as something that actually makes business sense - we just like to care for the patients. But the increasing hostility we are seeing from the witch-hunters with their torches and angry mobs is making us really consider whether we can afford to stay on board.

Delayed Medical Tests

2009-02-19T09:09:00.000-05:00

Emergency Primary Care (Not)
02/18/09 - DocsOnTheWeb by 911Doc

The Stark law (below) "stops" waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating effective services. The government favors one-stop, no-other-choice shopping when the government provides medical services, but they require private doctors to fragment and delay their services.

[edited] Doctor's clinics are no longer allowed to provide on-site lab and Xray. The "Stark" law comes to mind. I witnessed a combination of poor primary care skills and the heavy hand of government.
An old man went in to his physician's office yesterday for a checkup. He 'wasn't feeling well' and the doc took him off one of his anti-hypertensive meds. Today he feels worse and WOW! the labs drawn at his checkup were resulted today and showed kidney failure and high potassium.
When the patient got to us in the emergency department, he was 'almost dead' with a pulse of 30. We brought him back from the precipice. I asked his primary doctor why the labs took so long to be resulted. He said, "We have to send out all labs".
This adds another pressure point to ER medicine. People know that their primary physician will not get answers that day. In this case it was almost a day late and a dollar short. Thanks Uncle Sam, you have prevented primary care physicians from committing fraud by over-ordering tests. Good job. Bunch of freaking putzes.

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Physician self-referral

The Stark law governs physician self-referral for Medicare and Medicaid patients.
Self Referral is a physician referring a patient to a medical facility in which he has a financial interest, be it ownership, investment, or a structured compensation arrangement.
Critics of self-referral allege an inherent conflict of interest, because the physician can benefit from the referral. They suggest that such arrangements may encourage over-utilization of services, in turn driving up health care costs. They believe that it would create a captive referral system, limiting competition by other providers.
Others say that some problems may exist, but are not widespread. Physicians are responding to a need which would otherwise not be met, particularly in a medically underserved area.

Most laws are not written with a delicate hand. Instead of auditing abuse, our government eliminates efficient services, including standard lab tests, for all of the patients and doctors who are not defrauding the system. Broad-brush laws have real consequences.

AGW Scientists Can't Predict

2009-02-17T20:28:00.000-05:00

The Caine Mutiny Teaches Us about Global Warming Scientists
02/17/09 - PajamasMedia by Frank J. Tipler

Academic degrees mean nothing if you can't say what is going to happen. Watch out for global warming scientists who can't predict the details. And watch out for "economists" who fiddle some equation as a reason to take your money to improve your life.

[edited] Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is justified via argument from authority: a consensus of “experts” holds that humans are responsible for the increase in the Earth’s average temperature.
I was once a leader in forming a scientific consensus based on expert opinion. In the late 1970s, most cosmologists believed the universe could not accelerate, based on very weak experimental evidence. In the late 1990's, we discovered that dark energy is accelerating the universe. I now regard “scientific consensus” as a synonym for “wrong.”
I am struck by the lack of accomplishments by the leaders of the AGW consensus. In fact, it is the leading opponents of AGW who have genuine scientific achievements in climatology. Reid Bryson was the “father of climatology,” a leading AGW skeptic, and had the achievements of a genuine scientist.
A true scientist demonstrates his knowledge by making predictions which can be confirmed or refuted. What counter-intuitive predictions have the Global Warmers ever made? I invite you to look.
I could not find a single counter-intuitive prediction made by any major Global Warmer. But, I have found cases of them trying to cover up failed predictions.