Quote of the Day
The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.
Plutarch
Finishing Up the 2010 Mid-Term Elections
- Emmer Concedes Minnesota's Gubernatorial Election to Democrat Dayton. Tom Emmer sought to succeed fellow Republican Tim Pawlenty, retiring two-term governor, a leading candidate for McCain's 2008 running mate and widely expected to announce a run for the White House next year. In only 2 polls (both of them Rasmussen) did Emmer hold up to a 2-point lead, while Dayton maintained an average 5-point lead. Emmer lost by about 9000 votes out of 2.1M.
- Altschuler Concedes NY-1 to Incumbent Congressman Democrat Tim Bishop. This election has a certain smell to it like the Franken (D-MN) Senate "victory" in 2008 or the 2004 Washington state gubernatorial election awarded to Gregoire over Rossi. Among other things, including errant vote counts released on election night, was at least some evidence of people with 2 area residences double-voting (Democrat), which is a felony.
- Joe (Sore Loser) Miller Continues to Block the Certification of Winner Lisa Murkowski. Unlike the cases of Emmer and Alschuler, whom lost legitimately close elections, the stunning (write-in) Senator Murkowski (R-AK) victory (the first in over 55 years) reminds in limbo as Miller attempts to disenfranchise thousands of voters with cosmetic misspellings of Murkowski's surname. Miller's frivolous effort is, in my judgment, a first-order violation of democratic rights.
The House passed the DREAM Act tonight 216-198. Immigration is a toxic topic in the Senate, and GOP support for immigration (e.g., McCain and Graham) has retreated to a seal-the-borders-first talking point, so I suspect that the Senate will not pass the DREAM Act.
I don't like the act as it's currently configured, but a few modest changes could win my full support: (1) establish a compensatory increase in quotas and analogous privileges afforded to applicants from other countries/regions (so potential applicants from countries not in the Americas are provided due protection); (2) I would provide expedited citizenship for military enlistees or officers whom have actively served in designated hazardous duty areas (e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan); (3) I would provide immediate permanent legal status and expedited citizenship for in-demand professional (medical), scientific or technical knowledge and skills, which address nationally recognized labor shortages designated jointly by business and government, including, but not restricted to medical doctors, nurses, scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, math and science teachers; this same path would be extended to applicants from other countries; (4) otherwise, I would defer potential citizenship and chained immigration questions until a comprehensive immigration bill.
I have mixed feelings on this issue, but if I had to vote on the measure as is, I would vote aye. I am fundamentally in disagreement with most arguments forwarded against the DREAM Act. My biggest issue with the DREAM Act has always been the equal protection issue--not trying to make criminals out of maids, gardeners, farmers or construction workers.
When you speak of children whom were not responsible for the decision to immigrate, have attended much of their childhood attending American schools and have built a life here and do not have any ties beyond relatives to their birth country, being deported would be almost like being an orphan of the world, because they really aren't Mexican anymore. America should not abandon these children but do the right thing. The temporary work visa program broke down, and fixes have been repeatedly rejected by unions since they forced JFK/LBJ to ditch the Bracero program.
Let me make myself clear: I don't really care about the political question: who gets the Latino vote. I fully expect that conservatives or Republicans will win at least their fair share. But I don't like the hostile tone of the media conservative rhetoric. I'm not suggesting for Republicans to pander to Latinos the way the Democrats can. What I would like to see is more of a positively-toned, constructive standpoint like I attempted to provide above.
Some Comments About Health Care
I'm sure everyone has their own medical "horror studies", and I respect most medical professionals. But just to share a few minor stories of my own: during the 1990's I was quite religious about going to a fitness center daily in the southwest Chicago suburbs, alternating weight training and aerobics (like stair-climbing and stationary bikes) workouts. After some time, I noticed I was developing some persistent heel pain and went to see the doctor. He ordered some blood workup; I had just lost my job and had a high deductible on my insurance--and even with a discount I spent something like $300. All for nothing, of course. He never really figured out my problem (I think he handed me a couple of web-based printouts and some dietary advice); based on a personal hunch, I decided to cut down my workout routine to 3 days a week, and the pain went away on its own.
A couple of years later I took a job in Santa Clara with a boss I've discussed in a prior post or two. The gig was initially as a contractor commuting from Chicago; he hired me perm and promptly started backtracking on commitments after I moved to California. He started making unpredictable decisions, like expediting project deadlines and assigning tasks to unqualified personnel; in one case, he unwittingly gave Oracle some information that put our maintenance contract at risk. I found myself working long hours, gaining weight since I stopped working out. I also found myself coughing for no good reason--and other weird things; I used to sing in my high school choir but I founded all of a sudden my voice would break outside a very narrow note range (I would sing but my voice was silent). I couldn't even sing along with the radio. (Some would regard that as a blessing.) I went home for Christmas, and my mother became alarmed at my frequent dry coughs. After I went back to California, I got nagged by her until I agreed to go to a doctor, whom promptly diagnosed that I had had a cold (that I didn't realize I had...) and my lungs were "recovering". I had a follow-up visit, and he had nothing new to add; it wasn't worth my co-pay to make subsequent visits. The cough persisted through the several months that followed; it suddenly occurred to me two weeks after I resigned that I wasn't coughing anymore, and my singing voice had returned. A stress-induced cough.
Then there was the time my feet had swollen a few years back. I first went to a clinic whom made a subsequent appointment for me with a new personal physician. He went beyond the diuretics and decided to check for kidney issues. I had something like a $2650 deductible, I was between jobs, and he ordered nearly $2000 in discounted tests (paid out of my rainy day fund). He eventually concluded my kidneys were fine and said that spending $2K was an investment in doing due diligence. I consider myself reasonably well-informed in nutrition (I have a separate blog on that topic I haven't published in a while); I made the mistake of telling him once I ate sardines a few times a week (not that he proactively asked me about sardines, but as soon as he heard that, he jotted it down in his chart and read me the riot act over salt concentrations in sardines (which can vary by brand)). In any event, the condition eventually went away after a few weeks on diuretics and has never returned.
I found the following relevant anecdotal incident in an investment newsletter:
My wife went to the doctor to have her IUD removed and replaced. The doctor couldn't remove it as he claimed the string was cut too short. The recommended hospital visit to perform the removal procedure was quoted at $5,000 [including] an anesthesiologist, a surgeon, and a nurse assistant, among other things. We decided to check out a 'Family Planning (abortion) Clinic'. They did the removal for $100. And they just so happened to have a new IUD at hand that they inserted for $75. The whole thing cost $175! (My wife's original IUD – a $15 device – cost us about $600 the first time it was inserted – with the string cut too short).Don't get me started on absurd list prices; an insurance company used to send me copies of blood workups (covered by the insurance). The list price was in the hundreds, but the insurance company paid something like $25. I have no doubt that without insurance I would be paying far more than the $25.
If you haven't guessed, I think any time we kid ourselves that the federal government is going to be able to effectively micromanage these costs. You have to have consumers vested in the process. We see an entirely different dynamic with respect to cosmetic surgery, which is usually not covered by insurance.
I refuse to take advantage of a customer's lack of knowledge about a problem, even when it costs me a gig. Let me give an example to illustrate the point: in the summer of 2000, I was working at a Los Angeles area aircraft subsidiary as part of a team of Apps DBA's involved in upgrading the company's ERP applications and database. The upgrades normally require production outages and are staffed around the clock to minimize downtime. This consultant from Oracle Corporation (a former employer) was the titular DBA team lead but in fact had not been involved during our dry runs of the upgrade. There was one step in the process that took roughly about 10 hours to complete. I was the third shift on the first day of the production system upgrade (Sunday), but the client had been slow finishing backups, and so I really kicked off the upgrade. The Oracle Corp. DBA was handling something like the 2AM-8AM shift. In fact, he arrived just as the time-consuming process was underway. We had developed some utilities to trace how many records had been processed, so I briefed him in detail--basically telling him that all he had to do was babysit the process, it was in the middle of a long process that would complete after him, here's how you can check the process, etc.
I grabbed some sleep at the hotel arriving back at the beginning of the next shift--but was stunned to find the next shift DBA was redoing stuff I had done nearly 12 hours earlier. I asked him, "What's going on?" My colleague told me the other DBA was convinced that the upgrade was dead and ordered the process started anew. I asked the new guy (whom, in fact, developed the process to check for progress on the 10-hour job), "Did you check to see where the process stood?" The response was, effectively, he's the boss. What he says, goes. It's not my role to question the decision, but to carry it out.
There were other signposts on the job, and I had proof that the project lead had incompetently aborted a process working as expected. To me, it wasn't an innocent mistake; I had specifically briefed him in detail. The guy didn't ask me or anyone else on the team before making a decision to abort: he had just cost the project a full half day off a tight schedule, not to mention Oracle was billing the company at least $200/hour for this guy's services to work on the upgrade, which all went out the window with the unnecessary halt. The Oracle consultant got wind what I had told my contractor liaison and was incensed by my assertion he was billing the client for his boneheaded mistake. Luckily the project completed within the time frame, but the consultant made sure that I wasn't able, as expected, to bill at the client after the project ended.
The reason I bring this experience out is not to point out the obvious fact that people make mistakes. There are a number of different things going on. For one thing, it is extremely difficult to challenge the status quo and/or prevailing authority structure, over which one has little direct control. I have worked on many public sector projects (city, county, state, and federal); the kinds of problems I've observed are breathtaking. Just to give one simple example: for a large American city, we were implementing an ERP system--on the older version, not the newest version of the software suite. Why? I was told we were implementing the version specified in the contract. This meant an unnecessary upgrade project (billable, of course) would be required within 2 to 3 years. I was pointing out the emperor is wearing no clothes. It was not in the best interests of the client.
Second, there is a Management 101 issue: a manager or professional has to listen to the employee or contractor closest to the issue. I've also noticed doctors will often tune out salient issues being mentioned by the patient (at least in my case).
Political Humor
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange turned himself in to police in England today. When the judge asked him where he lived, he said he didn't want to give out that information. Maybe "Wiki-hypocrite" would be a better name for this guy. - Jay Leno
[Dick Cheney has the answer: he's decided to rebrand waterboarding as 'WikiPlumber'.]
Some originals:
Sarah Palin, with an assist from her dad, shot, killed, gutted, and skinned a caribou on TLC's "Sarah Palin's Alaska...
- Santa Claus is pissed; remember the holiday classic "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer"? "You know Dasher and Dancer and..." Not any more; the lyrics had to be changed...
- TLC was surprised; when Sarah Palin originally spoke of shooting a reindeer, they thought she meant she was going to bring along her Nikon camera.
- Sarah Palin initially missed her target by aiming too high... She's learned to set her sights lower. For example, instead of getting nominated as chairman of the Federal Reserve or being named to the Supreme Court, she'll settle for running for the Presidency.
Eartha Kitt, "Santa Baby". There are some signature vocal performances that are so distinctive that the artists have made the song their own and remakes are but a pale imitation of the original. For example, I like many Madonna performances, but her hit remake of "Santa Baby" comes across to me like a cheesy Cyndi Lauper imitation.
