Do the math

 Limits on government power  No Responses »
Mar 232009
 

Jay Leno asked a good question of his guest the other night when Barak Obama made a celebrity appearance. Well, technically speaking it wasn’t a question. But he pointed out how it’s scary that Congress can decide to tax people because they are unpopular.

I didn’t watch the program, but activerain.com has a link to a YouTube clip of this part. And I’m also glad to see that activerain makes the points that our Constitution prohibits Bills of Attainder and Ex Post Facto laws.

I don’t know why Obama didn’t take the opportunity to demonstrate that he’s a statesman-like person by expounding on those topics. It has been reported elsewhere that in the same Jay Leno show he made some comments about how Congress was being more vindictive than constructive, so it would seem he has some understanding of why those things are bad. (I watched as much of the show as I could stand on other video clips, but my tolerance for television and politician talk is very low, even when people I like are talking. I didn’t find the part of the Leno show where he said this before my stomach said to stop, so I’ll just have to assume that the written word about it is correct.)

Obama could also have told how this sort of Congressional behavior could lead to hate crimes and pogroms if not kept in check.

But instead, he changed the subject. Before the Leno show went to a commercial break he said he had a good answer, but as is usual with politicians, he wanted to talk about something else.

He said the change he would like is to tax well-off people like himself and Leno a “little bit more” to pay for health care, to pay for energy, and to make sure kids can go to college.

He got applause for that line, but he can’t possibly have done the math if he thinks a small tax on the rich is going to pay for all of those things. To mislead people about the cost of these projects is not going to lead to the kind of responsible economic behavior we need to get us out of our current mess.

Carbon emissions power the government

 Netzero gas tax  No Responses »
Mar 222009
 

Alex Harrowell at A Fistful of Euros provided me with some new examples of why cap-and-trade systems are a really bad idea. I’m not sure he’s against cap-and-trade like I am, but he makes the point that a carbon tax is a lot simpler to enforce, and a lot less prone to political influence trading. For one thing, with a carbon tax there are a lot fewer entities to keep track of:

Further, how many SKUs (Stock-Keeping Units – individual products) does the Chinese export sector produce? It’s got to be in the tens of thousands at the least. Under this proposal, each one would have to be carbon-audited accurately and regularly and assessed for taxation on that basis. It is far from clear whether the importing state or the exporting state would do this. Just taxing fossil fuel, already, involves less than a dozen SKUs, which happen to be bulky, smelly, heavy, or black and dusty, and therefore difficult to hide on a big scale.

Of course, the governments of the world have little motivation to institute a simpler, easier-enforced scheme that would deal with the problem of carbon emissions directly.

If tens of thousands of carbon-emitting products need to be audited and assessed, that will create lots of jobs for government employees, which directly or indirectly will create lots of rewards that can be offered to political supporters. And it would provide lots of reasons for lobbyists to come, hat in hand, to the governing officials to make sure their products are treated well in the process.

If global warming was really an important issue, we’d go with the carbon tax instead. But unfortunately, there are very few people out there who think it’s more important than an oportunity to expand governmental power.

[spelling correction, 24-Mar]

Customer support

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 222009
 

I will be spending some time in a hospital waiting room tomorrow, so I went to the web site to find out what the policy is on computers and cell phones. For example, I can go to the University of Michigan Health System site to learn that cell phone use is restricted, but wireless access is available for computers.

So I went to bchealth.com, hoping to learn whether the policies and facilities are the same at our local hospital. There is no link on the main page for Visitor Information, but there is one for Patient Info. I clicked on that and found no information, but there are two (2) links.

  • Patient Grievance Process Brochure
  • Patient Grievance Form

and over on the sidebar:

  • Questions or Comments.

That last one is a place where one can e-mail questions. It’s a little late for that now, but I tried using the search function to look up pages about wireless. No help there, either.

Oh, well. I don’t think our local hospital has as much money to spend on web design as the U of Michigan hospital does, but this gave me an idea on how companies that sell electronic products could save a ton of money on their web sites. Under “Support,” instead of providing links to FAQs, manuals, and downloads, they could just provide a link to lawyers who will handle class-action lawsuits. Not only would it eliminate the need to employ a lot of geeky web types, but it would instill confidence in the products — the kind of confidence that comes from knowing that the products require no explanation.

Picking the Overdogs for Underdog Upsets

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 212009
 

Matt Spivey comments on President Obama’s NCAA picks. (URL here.)

Throughout his campaign and into his presidency, we learned of our new leader’s affinity for hoops. President Obama revealed his NCAA Tournament bracket yesterday, and to no one’s surprise, he has chosen the most obvious teams to advance in every single round, with three number one seeds predicted to advance to the Final Four. No creativity. No gambles. Not even an often-reliable 12-seed over 5-seed upset pick. His riskiest choices are (11) Virginia Commonwealth over (6) UCLA and (10) Maryland over (7) California. Hardly out on a limb. Hardly very generous to the overmatched and underprivileged that Obama seems to love so much in his domestic policies. Rather, he has chosen to root for the big boys, the evil corporate teams with the deep pockets. Perhaps his basketball mind is as contradictory as his political one.

Matt missed one point about Obama’s two upset picks: He picked two teams close to the seat of government — you know, the place that accounts for the giant sucking sound of power and money leaving the states and going to the federal government at an ever accelerating rate.

It would be interesting to know if he favors government towns generally. Other things being equal, I usually root against teams from government towns. I especially root against the Baltimore Orioles because of the anti-human-rights record of their owner. But other things are seldom equal.

I became somewhat aware of how government towns are different on my 1996 bicycle tour to all the towns in the Midwest League (Class A minor league baseball). One of the teams is located in a state capital. Before the game, a police chief addressed the crowd, going on and on and on about some program — I think it was called “Take Back the Night.” It could be a worthy program, but this was supposed to be a baseball game. Any comments should be short and sweet. In any other town, the crowd would have gotten restless and called for the game to get started. But I was amazed to note that people listened respectfully. And if I’m any judge of dress and demeanor, a lot of these respectfullly-listening fans were government workers. Only in a government town could something like that happen. (Some of the crowd were university professors who were trying hard not to look and dress like university professors. But they listened respectfully, too.)

Successful shopping expedition

 Free markets  No Responses »
Mar 212009
 

My Kensington Pocket Mouse broke the other day, so tonight I sat down to order one of those Logitech Nano mice. I wanted the tiny USB receiver so I could put it in my notebook computer and leave it there, without worrying about breaking it off when I move around. But I learned that the mice are not full-sized. For some reason neither Kensington nor Logitech puts mouse dimensions on their web site, but I was able to find some reviewers who had measured the things. The Logitech Nano 550 is bigger than my Kensington mouse was, but I want full size. Googling for “full-size mouse nano receiver” tells me I’m not the only one. So I’ve put my credit card away. For now I’ll just drag my corded optical mouse around with my computer, and wait for Kensington or Logitech or somebody to come out with what I want.

No Politicians Please: We’re British

 Leviathan Ankle-Biter, Rule of law  No Responses »
Mar 212009
 

It has been a while since the last Leviathan Ankle-Biter award. But here are some exceptionally deserving recipients — a bunch of British combat veterans of World War II. (“We’ll Fight Brown on the Beaches : D-Day veterans angry at ‘politicisation’ of anniversary“, in The Independent.)

They raised money so those who are fit for the trip could go to the Normandy beaches for the 65th anniversary. There are about 500 who can go. It will be the last opportunity for a lot of them. It was with some difficulty that they raised the money, but they got it — through private contributions.

Then the politicians wanted to horn in on the event. But the veterans are telling them to buzz off:

But Peter Hodge, secretary of the Normandy Veterans Association (NVA), said: “Ministers on the beaches is not really what we wanted or needed. We never complained about the Government not giving us money. We wanted this to be between the veterans and the British people. The public response to our appeal, first publicised in The Independent, has already been fantastic.”

“We also wanted this to be mostly about the veterans themselves. If ministers go along, the extra security tends to mean that veterans are pushed into the background.”

It’s good to hear that something like this can still happen in a country that has been busy trashing its heritage (e.g. throwing out the rule of law in favor of anti-social-behaviour ordinances). Even though these guys are old, they’re going out by setting an example that the rest of the country would do well to learn from, as would those in our own country.

It’s 1983 again

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 202009
 

Remember 1983? I do. That’s when Secretary of the Interior James Watt said, “”I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” He had to resign shortly after. I wrote a letter to the Battle Creek Enquirer saying he should have been fired because his policies were repudiated, not because he said that.

Now President Barak Obama does a modern version of a fireside chat and makes a joke about the Special Olympics. Which standard should we hold him to?

No problem solving, please

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 192009
 

Philanthropy consultant Thomas Tierney argues for bigger, longer grants to fewer organizations. “How many social problems can be solved with $50,000? Over 18 months? Not many.” (This is in The Weekly Standard: “Rich Rewards” by Martin Morse Wooster. Good article.)

But I’d like to know how many social problems can be solved with $50 million or even $50 trillion over whatever timespan you want. No more than with $50,000, I’d wager.

What business do philanthropic organizations have in trying to solve social problems anyway. Why can’t they just try to help people who need help? There are all sorts of good things they can do — helping build institutions by which people can help themselves, funding technological improvements, and who knows what else. But solving social problems? I think that one is beyond their competence, just as much as it’s beyond government’s competence.

Do American horses speak Belorussian?

 Sustainability, Welfare-police state  No Responses »
Mar 182009
 

I hope the Animal Services and Enforcement Director in Kalamazoo County doesn’t hear about this. Or if he does, I hope he doesn’t like it.

Just because an impoverished cat owner in Belarus sends the animal out to beg money for its own upkeep doesn’t mean the impoverished horse owners in Kalamazoo County should do that, does it? Because if that’s allowed, it might argue against the idea that leftish people now owe the rest of us support money for our upkeep.

Comprehensive

 Regulation, Sustainability  No Responses »
Mar 182009
 

left-right

Today I came to realize that in the world of politics, the word “comprehensive” is a near-synonym for totalitarian.

In Tuesday’s WSJ there was a letter in response to an article explaining how cap-and-trade is a corrupt, expensive system. The letter-writer said we should instead think about the benefits of having a “comprehensive” energy and climate system. And then there are the people who say we need to make all of our existing health systems fail so we can have a “comprehensive” system of national health insurance. (They don’t say so quite that explicitly, but this came up in connection with Obama’s recent statements about cutting benefits for combat veterans.)

I’ve now officially decided that I am very anti-comprehensive anything. I am a raging incrementalist, as the late Representative Barber Conable used to call himself.

The comprehensivists always have an excuse for failure. We didn’t spend enough money, fast enough, they will say. A little reform will never do. Yes, everything they’ve done so far has caused misery. That’s why we need to have more — lots more. We must have a comprehensive, all-or-nothing reform system. (Think of those people who say communism hasn’t failed because it hasn’t been tried. Yes, the more of it you have, the more miserable people get — until you get to 100 percent, and then nirvana! See the graph above.)

It’s different with us free-marketers. For our side, a little more is always better. When Stalin and Khruschev backed off of their grand, comprehensive plans and allowed a little bit of market freedom, things got better, not worse. We don’t need comprehensive.

The comprehensivists are like Linus Pauling and his Vitamin C. “Yes,” I would say, “I took Vitamin C and I still got a cold.” “But you didn’t take enough!” they say. So next time I would tell them, “I took a gazillion milligrams, and I still got a cold!” “But you need to take more — lots more!” they say. It’s never enough.

That’s the way it will be with health care or cap-and-trade. It will fail, and we’ll find out that the reason will be because it wasn’t comprehensive enough. “Of course things got worse,” they will tell us. “We need a comprehensive, all-or-nothing, totalitarian system!” (Holistic might be another term they’ll use.)

They will refuse to enact market-based reforms that will merely improve the environment and health-care.

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